Influencing society

He walks around the breakfast room at a posh hotel in Abu Dhabi, choosing his breakfast as carefully as he chooses his words.

Dressed in a dark blue suit, the 73-year-old Egyptian is the least bit annoyed as dozens of people interrupt him to offer their congratulations on his win at the previous night's award ceremony.

Baha Taher's Sunset Oasis was internationally recognised last Monday by the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).

The newly formed IPAF is the brainchild of the Emirates Foundation, a philanthropic organisation dedicated to promoting UAE as a culture capital.

He shakes their hands and then turns his deep thought to what he will eat for breakfast, until someone else interrupts him again.

At a corner table for two, Taher shares the books that inspired him when he was growing up and his rather unique ideology on fiction.

Taher's eloquence in both Arabic and English makes him a man slow to speak.

In between long pauses, he stares at the floor until every word he is about to utter is properly lined up ... and then he speaks with a soft voice.

Literary journey

Born in Giza, Cairo, Taher takes pride in his family's roots. “But my parents are Upper Egyptians. Saida,'' he laughs.

His journey as a writer started when he was 10 years old. “It was an assignment and we had to write this story on a specific topic that I have forgotten,'' he pauses and stares at the floor as he tries to remember.

“Anyway, after I wrote the assignment, my headmaster was so impressed with it that he used it as a part of the curriculum. My peers hated me for that,'' he chuckles.

Growing up, Taher read many books that were far beyond his age.

Among these were Shakespeare's Hamlet, undoubtedly his favourite book, and many of Naguib Mahfouz's and Ernest Hemingway's books.

“Many of these books I have read several times over and each time I read something new,'' he adds.

After studying history in university, Taher wrote several non-fiction books.

Although becoming a writer was not as prestigious to an Egyptian family as being a doctor, engineer or lawyer, Taher says “it was every boy's dream to become a Taha Hussain,'' a blind Egyptian intellectual who devoted much of his life to writing everything — from novels to the scientific study of Arabic literature.

“I remember some of my peers who would say that they would sacrifice their eyesight if it meant being a Taha Hussain,'' he adds.

Taher went on to write both fiction and non-fiction. While four of his 15 books are non-fiction, Taher prefers to write fiction for one simple reason.

He looks around to see if his peers, sitting on the table next to him signing each other's books, are listening and then leans over and whispers his secret with a smile: “Sometimes fiction is actually more real than non-fiction,'' he says.

He is known for his humility, so his publisher hid his nomination for the IPAF award from him because if he knew, he would ask to be withdrawn from the completion.

Fiction remains the least popular genre in much of the Middle East.

Whether that's because people are too consumed with their day-to-day survival that they don't have time to read fiction or because non-fiction is more intriguing is hard to say but Taher is still fascinated by the genre.

“There are three factors that explain why fiction is not as popular as we would like: high illiteracy rate, the education system doesn't encourage reading for pleasure and the media plays little attention to cultural issues,'' Taher says.

The one genre that has received a wide variety of attention is historical fiction, which is a fictitious story based on true events and sometimes true characters.

“Writing historical fiction has really increased. At times of crisis like we are in today, people are searching within themselves for an explanation, real or unreal, that will help them make sense of the past,'' he says.

In many fiction novels, writers often put themselves in the place of one of the characters where they express their opinions and views, but this is not Taher's technique.

“That's bad writing he says. A good author has to remove himself equally from all the characters.

"The plot and the story as a whole is usually the expression of the author,'' he says.

Taher's novel Sunset Oasis revolves around a true event in 1897 when a man by the name of Mahmoud Azmi destroyed a temple for no known reason.

This mystery prompted Taher to search deeper and fictionally recreate some of the characters centred around this event.

Although his book is not available in the UAE yet, Taher is hopeful that this award will help speed up the process.

A part of the prize by the IPAF is to translate the books into at least English and French.

The prize money of Dh180,000 will serve as an incentive for Taher to sit somewhere quiet and start writing his next novel.

Although he wants to keep that a secret, he says, “All I will say is that it's about the Balkans in the Middle Ages.''

Growing up, Taher dreamed of his books bringing positive change to Egypt and even to the whole world.

Although that has changed by what he calls a realistic perspective, Taher says, “I would be pleased if each book changes one person for the better.''