Filling the Bookshelf

Al-Ahram journalist Nahed El Sayed went to the bookstore looking for a story. Not a news story, but a story her three children could enjoy; a story about their culture and their questions. She couldn’t find one. What few Arabic language books for children on the market were mostly translations, lacking that Egyptian cultural feel that would let her kids relate to the story. So in 2000, El Sayed, who heads the culture section of Al-Ahram’s Arabic daily, decided to write her own children’s book. And she hasn’t stopped since. “I realized that the child needs different things than what’s available in bookstores […] It’s mostly all Mickey and Tin Tin. I realized that my daughter read more translated things and reacted more to them,” El Sayed recalls. “So I started working on some books to introduce to her. I also showed them to close family and friends, and they all loved them.” In 2003, she sent her story Aroos el Nile (Bride of the Nile) to the Lebanese Egyptian publishing house Maktabat Al-Dar Al-Arabiyya Lilkitab. Not only did the publishers accept the story, but they sent it to the famous artist Ahmed Ibrahim Hegazy, who agreed to illustrate the book. “This was so big for me because he never draws anything unless he likes it,” El Sayed says, “so this was a great honor for me.” Aroos el Nile is about how people pollute the Nile and why they should keep it clean. Motivated by the positive feedback, El Sayed donated copies to public libraries and turned the book into a performance show in many schools. Egypt and the Arab world lack publishing houses specializing in children’s literature, but El Sayed kept writing for her own pleasure. Then she was contacted by Tebar, a Sudanese-Egyptian publishing house whose owners are artists. “They have a good vision concerning publicizing children’s literature in the Arab world,” she says. “They also translate books and they published three books for me.” El Sayed has published four children’s books, with two more due to be released this month. Her most recent book, Ostaz Chebr wa Nos (Professor One and a Half Foot), is written in both Arabic and French, with illustrations by acclaimed artist Georges Bahgory. In the story, the parents tell their child how to behave, but forget to behave that way themselves. So the child asks his parents to follow their own lessons. “I was inspired by my then two-year-old son. I felt like he was teaching us, not the other way around,” El Sayed says. “It was like he was saying, ‘You are teaching me to do something and you are not doing it’.” Ostaz Chebr wa Nos is written for children around four years old, but parents or teachers have to read it to them, explains El Sayed. The book offers children a story told from their own perspective of the world. It’s like talking to a friend with a wider vocabulary and a better understanding of his feelings and the world around him. Tebar arranged for the French translation, as it distributes mostly to Francophone countries. It is also the publisher who connects the author with the illustrators. “Bahgory liked the title and the book,” El Sayed notes, “and said I am very intelligent to be able to write a book from a child’s point of view.” A prolific writer, El Sayed has a book called “El Chiateen El 13” being finalized for publication. In the book, a mother grows closer to her 13-year-old daughter by becoming friends with her by chatting on social network websites. The story is written in the shorthand used for chatting, “It’s a bit crazy,” she admits, “but I think it’s going to be loved by this young generation, as it speaks to them in their own language.” She doesn’t just write to entertain. “My general aim is to make the child understand the world around him and enhance his imagination and perception of reality. Because now there is internet and games so we have to understand that his intelligence exceeds that of some adults.” El Sayed’s children, who now range in age from 4 to 15, provide the inspiration for her books. Her current project is a book for young teenagers called Wagt Nafsy (I Found Myself.) “There is a street child, a blind boy, a young milk seller, mostly all children around 13 years old. No one cares about them, from the literary standpoint,” she explains, adding she got the idea “because my middle daughter cares so much about those ignored children.” So far, El Sayed has focused on short books, and their small size, attractive covers and vibrant illustrations are very appealing to young readers. They make good stories for parents to read to their children, and the slightly advanced language push the kids to increase their vocabulary. Before publishing, she tests her stories on her own children, so she can rephrase sections her audience might not understand. A Missing Market While El Sayed has found her publishing niche with Tebar, she acknowledges the children’s Arabic book market still has a long way to go. “We need publishing houses to support literature for children from 8 to 15 years old. In this age range we don’t have any books for them,” she says, “and in this age you need to monitor the child and give him something rich to read.” In general, books have a hard time competing against the internet, El Sayed notes, “so we have to make extra effort to pull kid’s minds back to the book by bringing them interesting content or fairy tales inspired from reality.” She has been following the progress of local children’s literature since 2000, when she started writing books for children, and says that this year children’s literature is flourishing more. In her opinion, Egyptian publishers can improve the scene by hosting competitions to encourage people to write for children and actively searching for talented new authors. Don’t Wait for Life For two years El Sayed has been visiting an orphanage as research for a book about young orphans. “I think they have the same questions as all kids but they don’t have parents to answer them. It’s a bit long so it’s going to be a novel.” El Sayed says it is hard to sell publishers on the idea of children’s novels because they think that children do not have the patience to read a whole novel. “But I think this is not true. Harry Potter and others like it have been very successful,” she says. The success of the Harry Potter series has clearly given El Sayed high hopes for her future novel. “The book has imagination, drama, action and everything,” she says. “It would make a good movie.” “I would like my works to be made into TV episodes and cartoons, or movies. […] The Cartoon Cairo channel is a good choice to do this,” El Sayed says. “I don’t wait for life to happen to me, I knock on doors, so I am going to pay them a visit and see what happens. I just want to publish all my works and leave a good mark for children, and do cartoons, songs and movies.”