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Egypt Today, Egypt
May 1 2005
Fact or Fiction
Alaa El-Aswany thought he had it made when his Omaret Yacoubian
rocketed to the top of the Arab world's bestseller list. But as a
star-studded cast wrapped up the film adaptation of the
dentist-turned-novelist's book last month, residents of the real-life
building in which the story is set filed libel suits against the
author and production company, saying Omaret Yacoubian is a thinly
veiled roman à clef. Publisher, producer, screenwriter and author all
deny the charges.Who's right? That's the multi-million-pound question
As he flipped through the pages of Sawt El-Umma last December, Adel
Khela was drawn to a story in the independent Cairo weekly about a
new movie then in production. Its title, Omaret Yacoubian (The
Yacoubian Building), just happened to share the name of the storied
Downtown Cairo building that was home to a tailor shop his late
father, Malak Khela, had willed to Adel and Adel's brothers.
Omaret Yacoubian, the newspaper reported, wasn't just another
Egyptian movie: It was the biggest-budget production in the history
of the nation's film industry, featuring an all-star cast that was
working day and night to bring to life the the 2002 runaway
bestseller of the same name by dentist-turned-novelist Alaa
El-Aswany.
Feature
A Proper Burial
More than 200 years after they arrive in Egypt with Nelsons#...
Out of Focus
Egypt was once a top center for astronomical research, but a...
And who was El-Aswany? None other than his late father's one-time
neighbor and archenemy, as Adel sees it the same El-Aswany who Sawt
El-Umma reported had made a scheming tailor named Malak and his
brother Ebskheron central figures in his book. Stunned by what he
says were several similarities between the movie's Malak Khela and
his own father, Adel Khela rushed out to buy the novel.
That, he says, is when surprise turned to rage.
`Unfortunately, I realized that [the novel] has been out since 2002 I
got upset when I realized that I have stayed unaware of this insult
for three years. I found the novel attributed shameful deeds to
Malak,' says Khela, who with his brother Yasser still makes
custom-tailored shirts in his father's shop in the Yacoubian
Building.
`How could it be fiction? He [El-Aswany] mentioned my father's name,
his vocation, his place of work and his brother's name? Also, Khela's
physical description [in the novel] is almost identical to my
father's so he [El-Aswany] means him [Malak Khela],' Adel Khela says.
Ashraf Talaat
El-Aswany, the author
In Omaret Yacoubian, El-Aswany tackles a nest of thorny issues
including Islamist extremism, poverty, corruption and homosexuality
through the lens of people living in a real Downtown building. As
Sawt El-Umma noted in its report last December, the novel features an
opportunist shirtmaker named Malak Khela, who rents a room on the
building's roof and turns it into a workshop. Khela is more than a
struggling entrepreneur, though: El-Aswany's character is also deep
into currency and liquor smuggling.
An Egyptian-Armenian business leader named Nichan Yacoubian built the
real nine-story building on 958 square meters of prime real estate on
Talaat Harb Street in the 1930s. His son, Decran Yacoubian, who has
owned the facility since Yacoubian died in the 1940s, currently lives
in Europe, according to Fikry Abdel Malek, the landlord's agent since
1961 (more on him in a moment he's suing, too).
After learning of what they saw was their father's role in the book,
Adel Khela and his brothers filed a civil libel suit against
El-Aswany, claiming the author defamed their father in the book to
avenge what they allege was an old lawsuit the author lost to the
tailor. Their demands: LE 2 million in damages.
El-Aswany's dental clinic shared an apartment on the first floor of
the Yacoubian building with Khela until the author moved his clinic
to a new office in Garden City in the 1990s.
According to the brothers Khela, El-Aswany laid hold of the
apartment's entrance hall, which was then a public space for all
lodgers in the same unit, by putting up an allegedly `illegal' wood
partition. Ultimately, their father filed a suit against the dentist
and won it in a Court of First Instance ruling in the early 1990s,
according to legal documents in their possession.
Omar Mohsen
Khela, the plaintiff
El-Aswany dismisses the allegations, stressing that his work is
purely fictional except for the name of the building.
`It is a sham to talk about this; the issue is very primitive,' says
El-Aswany. `It is fiction. The bloc has 500 residents we are speaking
of four to five generations that resided in this building. Thus, we
have thousands of names and vocations that might have existed in the
bloc. When I was still working in the building, there was more than
one person named Malak, and there was even another Malak who used to
sew shirts in the same bloc.
`As a matter of principle, I am not required to make any
clarification because the novel is fictional,' he says. `There are
four types of literary works: journalistic pieces, documentaries,
autobiographies and fictional novels. For the first three types, the
author is held accountable for the characters he portrays; however,
in the case of fiction he is not, so I don't have to discuss whether
I meant their father or not.'
El-Aswany maintains that the similarity of names between his novel
and reality is coincidental. `Malak is a beautiful name. The
character is named Malak [angel in Arabic] and his deeds have nothing
to do with angels so it [the contradiction] is comic and I could not
miss this name as a novelist,' says El-Aswany.
The author admits he had a legal dispute with the late Khela, but
claims that he won on appeal.
Omar Mohsen
Abdel Malek, the landlord's agent
`Afterwards, their father and I stayed on good terms for five years
until he passed away,' says El-Aswany. Khela's sons refute
El-Aswany's account, however, insisting that they were on bad terms
until El-Aswany left the building.
Among the excerpts they take from the novel to substantiate their
claim is an anecdote the author recounts about a story in a leading
American newspaper praising Khela's talents. In the novel,
El-Aswany's Khela fakes the story and hangs it on the wall of his
office to deceive his clients.
The Khela brothers believe it is concrete evidence that El-Aswany
meant to defame their father, given the fact that a similar article
was published about their father in the New York Times and
republished in Egypt's Al-Mussawer magazine in the 1970s. The
clipping is framed and posted in Khela's office.
El-Aswany dismisses the claim as `nonsense,' denying that he ever saw
this clipping.
According to Mohamed El-Gamal, a former president of Majlis Al-Dawla
(the State Council, the nation's top administrative judicial court,
which is also required to offer comment on certain forms of
legislation), authors of fictional works are not exempt from
prosecution for libel. El-Gamal says novels fall under the category
of public media, to which libel and slander laws are applicable, as
they circulate among `an unlimited number of people.'
The same thing applies to movies, he adds.
`If the person's essential characteristics, such as his physical
look, his name, his vocation and the names of his relatives are
mentioned in a way that would make them identical to what exist in
reality, this would be a definite designation of the [real] person,'
explains El-Gamal.
`If the [plaintiffs'] claims are proven true in a sense that the
designation of their father is incontestable, this could mean that a
crime [of libel] had been committed against them,' he adds.
In the meantime, El-Aswany's litigants have filed another suit
against the movie's production team as well as Minister of Culture
Farouk Hosni, demanding the suspension of shooting and the revocation
of the movie's license.
Omaret, which stars Adel Imam, Nour El-Sherif and Youssra in lead
roles, is being shot on a $3 million budget. The film is being
produced by Good News, owned by media tycoon Emad Abeeb; Marwan Hamed
is directing from a script penned by Waheed Hamed, his renowned
screenwriter father.
While Khela insists he was not aware of the novel before reading
about the movie, El-Aswany believes the plaintiffs are driven by a
desire to blackmail the movie's team; otherwise, he says, they should
have filed suit right after the book was published in 2002.
`I think that when the movie's budget was disclosed, [the plaintiffs]
were tempted to go after some money because the novel has been out
for three years,' El-Aswany says in a confident tone. `Everyone has
been talking about this novel for three years and more than 180
[reviews and articles] on the work have been published. And yet you
live in the same building the novel talks about and you do not
consider reading it? You should do it at least out of curiosity,'
El-Aswany suggests.
The legal maneuverings don't end there, though: Fikry Abdel Malak,
the lawyer who has served as the building-owner's agent since 1961,
has levelled accusations against El-Aswany similar to those of the
Khela brothers in a suit he filed last month against both El-Aswany
and the publishing house reprinting the novel.
Abdel Malak is suing on his own and the owner's behalf for LE 2
million, the same sum Adel Khela and his brother are demanding.
In the novel, the building agent has the first name of his real
counterpart, but the character is an abusive, dishonest drunk. Abdel
Malek believes El-Aswany was referring to him deliberately.
`The only fictional element in the novel is the lodgers' attributes.
It is a libel made against these people [The author] indicated me by
mentioning my vocation as a lawyer and the building's agent. There is
nobody else in Egypt named Fikry, working as a lawyer and serving as
the building's agent,' says Abdel Malek.
Instead of filing an additional suit against the filmmakers, Abdel
Malek says he preferred to `send warnings' notifying the producer and
screenwriter that the novel allegedly defames real characters and
asking them to suspend shooting. Should his demands not be met, he
says, he will file suit against the movie after it comes out.
Abdel Malak has also written to the Ministry of Culture demanding
that the film be banned.
Screenwriter Waheed Hamed is as nonplussed by the suits as is
El-Aswany, calling the charges `invalid' and insisting no third party
has a legal right to demand shooting be suspended.
`You cannot judge a work before it is out. Secondly, they say the
work inflicts injury upon their father. It is not up to them to
decide whether this is the case or not it's the court that decides
for the court,' says Hamed, referring to the allegations made by
Khela's sons.
`The [film's] scenario has nothing to do with the novel. It takes the
spirit and the events of the novel. Finally, I have no one named
Malak Khela in the movie,' adds Hamed, explaining that Khela was one
of the names he changed in his script before the suit. `The
sceenwriter is absolutely free to change names, and I changed these.
They did not appeal to me and I found them hard to pronounce and
retain,' says Hamed, who explains he changed `Malak Khela' to `Malak
Akhnoukh Armenios' and `Abeskharon' (Malak's brother) to `Phanos.'
Those changes fall short of the plaintiffs' demands; they insist that
the name Malak and his vocation be wiped out of the movie. At press
time, most of the movie's scenes had already been shot, according to
Hamed, who is adamant about suing the plaintiffs for having defamed
him.
`They brought an unjust accusation against me and damaged my
reputation. How can you bring accusations against me before you see
my work?' Hamed growls.
But the plaintiffs haven't stopped with characters they say are based
on themselves: Both Abdel Malek and Khela's sons claim that Zaki
El-Desouki, one of El-Aswany's personages, was a real character who
lived in the building, sharing the same apartment as El-Aswany and
Khela.
El-Aswany tackles his adversaries with disarming sarcasm. `Where is
this real character named Zaki El-Dessouki? Where are his heirs? Why
did not they file a suit, too? Am I supposed to knock on everybody's
door when I write a novel to make it clear that I do not mean him? Or
do I have to choose names that nobody uses?' El-Aswany asks with
exasperation.
`I am loyal to literature and no matter what happens, my mission is
to make sure literature is convincing and I do not mean to harm
anybody,' he adds.
Not quite finished, lawyer Abdel Malek drops another bombshell: (he
claims) Hatem, a character portrayed in the novel as a homosexual
journalist, is also a real person who lived in the building. He adds
that he is still in touch with the real Hatem, but he feels
embarrassed to inform him of the `infamous deeds' the novelist
attributes to him.
Abdel Malek claims that the novel has ruined the reputation of the
seventy-year-old building.
`People started to approach the building and utter obscene words. It
is enough to say that some ask the concierge whether that is the
homosexuals' building or not,' says Abdel Malek, adding that his
reputation as a lawyer was damaged, too. `My work has been severely
affected by the novel. How can clients trust me if I am featured as a
drunk lawyer? I definitely lost clients and the reputation I earned.'
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs deny El-Aswany and Hamed's charges that
they are profiteers trying to make a quick profit through blackmail.
`If this allegation were true, I would not have sent a warning to the
movie's team. I would have waited until they show the movie so the
owner and I would be definitely entitled to reparations. This means
that I have no intention to blackmail the team for the sake of
earning money,' says Abdel Malek.
Adel Adeeb, chairman of the film's production company, declined to
comment on the matter, saying neither he nor the company's lawyer
could speak about lawsuits currently before the courts.
Gamal El-Ghitani, editor in chief of Akhbar Al-Adab (Literature
News), explains that novelists are free to use real names for
characters provided that they do not mention details that would be
indicative of real people. However, he still presumes the good faith
of the author and dismissed the suit as an `exceptional measure taken
against literature. Similarities between reality and literary works
are conceivable, but I am against suing or confiscating such works,'
he says.
El-Ghitani is a staunch defender of freedom of speech, saying
literature has lately been assaulted for a variety of reasons: `We
are living in an abnormal atmosphere where literature is targeted by
fundamentalist groups, the government itself and society, which has
been tightening its censoring grip over literature. Today, Egypt is
intolerant of the same things it used to accept in the 1920s.'
At least El-Aswany can take heart in the fact that he's in good
company: Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz's Al-Sarab (The Mirage, 1948)
featured, among other characters, a sexually impotent man who lived
in Abasseyya. A resident of the area was so certain the author was
referring to him that he hatched a plot to assassinate Mahfouz.
No one's threatening El-Aswany with that. Yet.
http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5051
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
May 1 2005
Fact or Fiction
Alaa El-Aswany thought he had it made when his Omaret Yacoubian
rocketed to the top of the Arab world's bestseller list. But as a
star-studded cast wrapped up the film adaptation of the
dentist-turned-novelist's book last month, residents of the real-life
building in which the story is set filed libel suits against the
author and production company, saying Omaret Yacoubian is a thinly
veiled roman à clef. Publisher, producer, screenwriter and author all
deny the charges.Who's right? That's the multi-million-pound question
As he flipped through the pages of Sawt El-Umma last December, Adel
Khela was drawn to a story in the independent Cairo weekly about a
new movie then in production. Its title, Omaret Yacoubian (The
Yacoubian Building), just happened to share the name of the storied
Downtown Cairo building that was home to a tailor shop his late
father, Malak Khela, had willed to Adel and Adel's brothers.
Omaret Yacoubian, the newspaper reported, wasn't just another
Egyptian movie: It was the biggest-budget production in the history
of the nation's film industry, featuring an all-star cast that was
working day and night to bring to life the the 2002 runaway
bestseller of the same name by dentist-turned-novelist Alaa
El-Aswany.
Feature
A Proper Burial
More than 200 years after they arrive in Egypt with Nelsons#...
Out of Focus
Egypt was once a top center for astronomical research, but a...
And who was El-Aswany? None other than his late father's one-time
neighbor and archenemy, as Adel sees it the same El-Aswany who Sawt
El-Umma reported had made a scheming tailor named Malak and his
brother Ebskheron central figures in his book. Stunned by what he
says were several similarities between the movie's Malak Khela and
his own father, Adel Khela rushed out to buy the novel.
That, he says, is when surprise turned to rage.
`Unfortunately, I realized that [the novel] has been out since 2002 I
got upset when I realized that I have stayed unaware of this insult
for three years. I found the novel attributed shameful deeds to
Malak,' says Khela, who with his brother Yasser still makes
custom-tailored shirts in his father's shop in the Yacoubian
Building.
`How could it be fiction? He [El-Aswany] mentioned my father's name,
his vocation, his place of work and his brother's name? Also, Khela's
physical description [in the novel] is almost identical to my
father's so he [El-Aswany] means him [Malak Khela],' Adel Khela says.
Ashraf Talaat
El-Aswany, the author
In Omaret Yacoubian, El-Aswany tackles a nest of thorny issues
including Islamist extremism, poverty, corruption and homosexuality
through the lens of people living in a real Downtown building. As
Sawt El-Umma noted in its report last December, the novel features an
opportunist shirtmaker named Malak Khela, who rents a room on the
building's roof and turns it into a workshop. Khela is more than a
struggling entrepreneur, though: El-Aswany's character is also deep
into currency and liquor smuggling.
An Egyptian-Armenian business leader named Nichan Yacoubian built the
real nine-story building on 958 square meters of prime real estate on
Talaat Harb Street in the 1930s. His son, Decran Yacoubian, who has
owned the facility since Yacoubian died in the 1940s, currently lives
in Europe, according to Fikry Abdel Malek, the landlord's agent since
1961 (more on him in a moment he's suing, too).
After learning of what they saw was their father's role in the book,
Adel Khela and his brothers filed a civil libel suit against
El-Aswany, claiming the author defamed their father in the book to
avenge what they allege was an old lawsuit the author lost to the
tailor. Their demands: LE 2 million in damages.
El-Aswany's dental clinic shared an apartment on the first floor of
the Yacoubian building with Khela until the author moved his clinic
to a new office in Garden City in the 1990s.
According to the brothers Khela, El-Aswany laid hold of the
apartment's entrance hall, which was then a public space for all
lodgers in the same unit, by putting up an allegedly `illegal' wood
partition. Ultimately, their father filed a suit against the dentist
and won it in a Court of First Instance ruling in the early 1990s,
according to legal documents in their possession.
Omar Mohsen
Khela, the plaintiff
El-Aswany dismisses the allegations, stressing that his work is
purely fictional except for the name of the building.
`It is a sham to talk about this; the issue is very primitive,' says
El-Aswany. `It is fiction. The bloc has 500 residents we are speaking
of four to five generations that resided in this building. Thus, we
have thousands of names and vocations that might have existed in the
bloc. When I was still working in the building, there was more than
one person named Malak, and there was even another Malak who used to
sew shirts in the same bloc.
`As a matter of principle, I am not required to make any
clarification because the novel is fictional,' he says. `There are
four types of literary works: journalistic pieces, documentaries,
autobiographies and fictional novels. For the first three types, the
author is held accountable for the characters he portrays; however,
in the case of fiction he is not, so I don't have to discuss whether
I meant their father or not.'
El-Aswany maintains that the similarity of names between his novel
and reality is coincidental. `Malak is a beautiful name. The
character is named Malak [angel in Arabic] and his deeds have nothing
to do with angels so it [the contradiction] is comic and I could not
miss this name as a novelist,' says El-Aswany.
The author admits he had a legal dispute with the late Khela, but
claims that he won on appeal.
Omar Mohsen
Abdel Malek, the landlord's agent
`Afterwards, their father and I stayed on good terms for five years
until he passed away,' says El-Aswany. Khela's sons refute
El-Aswany's account, however, insisting that they were on bad terms
until El-Aswany left the building.
Among the excerpts they take from the novel to substantiate their
claim is an anecdote the author recounts about a story in a leading
American newspaper praising Khela's talents. In the novel,
El-Aswany's Khela fakes the story and hangs it on the wall of his
office to deceive his clients.
The Khela brothers believe it is concrete evidence that El-Aswany
meant to defame their father, given the fact that a similar article
was published about their father in the New York Times and
republished in Egypt's Al-Mussawer magazine in the 1970s. The
clipping is framed and posted in Khela's office.
El-Aswany dismisses the claim as `nonsense,' denying that he ever saw
this clipping.
According to Mohamed El-Gamal, a former president of Majlis Al-Dawla
(the State Council, the nation's top administrative judicial court,
which is also required to offer comment on certain forms of
legislation), authors of fictional works are not exempt from
prosecution for libel. El-Gamal says novels fall under the category
of public media, to which libel and slander laws are applicable, as
they circulate among `an unlimited number of people.'
The same thing applies to movies, he adds.
`If the person's essential characteristics, such as his physical
look, his name, his vocation and the names of his relatives are
mentioned in a way that would make them identical to what exist in
reality, this would be a definite designation of the [real] person,'
explains El-Gamal.
`If the [plaintiffs'] claims are proven true in a sense that the
designation of their father is incontestable, this could mean that a
crime [of libel] had been committed against them,' he adds.
In the meantime, El-Aswany's litigants have filed another suit
against the movie's production team as well as Minister of Culture
Farouk Hosni, demanding the suspension of shooting and the revocation
of the movie's license.
Omaret, which stars Adel Imam, Nour El-Sherif and Youssra in lead
roles, is being shot on a $3 million budget. The film is being
produced by Good News, owned by media tycoon Emad Abeeb; Marwan Hamed
is directing from a script penned by Waheed Hamed, his renowned
screenwriter father.
While Khela insists he was not aware of the novel before reading
about the movie, El-Aswany believes the plaintiffs are driven by a
desire to blackmail the movie's team; otherwise, he says, they should
have filed suit right after the book was published in 2002.
`I think that when the movie's budget was disclosed, [the plaintiffs]
were tempted to go after some money because the novel has been out
for three years,' El-Aswany says in a confident tone. `Everyone has
been talking about this novel for three years and more than 180
[reviews and articles] on the work have been published. And yet you
live in the same building the novel talks about and you do not
consider reading it? You should do it at least out of curiosity,'
El-Aswany suggests.
The legal maneuverings don't end there, though: Fikry Abdel Malak,
the lawyer who has served as the building-owner's agent since 1961,
has levelled accusations against El-Aswany similar to those of the
Khela brothers in a suit he filed last month against both El-Aswany
and the publishing house reprinting the novel.
Abdel Malak is suing on his own and the owner's behalf for LE 2
million, the same sum Adel Khela and his brother are demanding.
In the novel, the building agent has the first name of his real
counterpart, but the character is an abusive, dishonest drunk. Abdel
Malek believes El-Aswany was referring to him deliberately.
`The only fictional element in the novel is the lodgers' attributes.
It is a libel made against these people [The author] indicated me by
mentioning my vocation as a lawyer and the building's agent. There is
nobody else in Egypt named Fikry, working as a lawyer and serving as
the building's agent,' says Abdel Malek.
Instead of filing an additional suit against the filmmakers, Abdel
Malek says he preferred to `send warnings' notifying the producer and
screenwriter that the novel allegedly defames real characters and
asking them to suspend shooting. Should his demands not be met, he
says, he will file suit against the movie after it comes out.
Abdel Malak has also written to the Ministry of Culture demanding
that the film be banned.
Screenwriter Waheed Hamed is as nonplussed by the suits as is
El-Aswany, calling the charges `invalid' and insisting no third party
has a legal right to demand shooting be suspended.
`You cannot judge a work before it is out. Secondly, they say the
work inflicts injury upon their father. It is not up to them to
decide whether this is the case or not it's the court that decides
for the court,' says Hamed, referring to the allegations made by
Khela's sons.
`The [film's] scenario has nothing to do with the novel. It takes the
spirit and the events of the novel. Finally, I have no one named
Malak Khela in the movie,' adds Hamed, explaining that Khela was one
of the names he changed in his script before the suit. `The
sceenwriter is absolutely free to change names, and I changed these.
They did not appeal to me and I found them hard to pronounce and
retain,' says Hamed, who explains he changed `Malak Khela' to `Malak
Akhnoukh Armenios' and `Abeskharon' (Malak's brother) to `Phanos.'
Those changes fall short of the plaintiffs' demands; they insist that
the name Malak and his vocation be wiped out of the movie. At press
time, most of the movie's scenes had already been shot, according to
Hamed, who is adamant about suing the plaintiffs for having defamed
him.
`They brought an unjust accusation against me and damaged my
reputation. How can you bring accusations against me before you see
my work?' Hamed growls.
But the plaintiffs haven't stopped with characters they say are based
on themselves: Both Abdel Malek and Khela's sons claim that Zaki
El-Desouki, one of El-Aswany's personages, was a real character who
lived in the building, sharing the same apartment as El-Aswany and
Khela.
El-Aswany tackles his adversaries with disarming sarcasm. `Where is
this real character named Zaki El-Dessouki? Where are his heirs? Why
did not they file a suit, too? Am I supposed to knock on everybody's
door when I write a novel to make it clear that I do not mean him? Or
do I have to choose names that nobody uses?' El-Aswany asks with
exasperation.
`I am loyal to literature and no matter what happens, my mission is
to make sure literature is convincing and I do not mean to harm
anybody,' he adds.
Not quite finished, lawyer Abdel Malek drops another bombshell: (he
claims) Hatem, a character portrayed in the novel as a homosexual
journalist, is also a real person who lived in the building. He adds
that he is still in touch with the real Hatem, but he feels
embarrassed to inform him of the `infamous deeds' the novelist
attributes to him.
Abdel Malek claims that the novel has ruined the reputation of the
seventy-year-old building.
`People started to approach the building and utter obscene words. It
is enough to say that some ask the concierge whether that is the
homosexuals' building or not,' says Abdel Malek, adding that his
reputation as a lawyer was damaged, too. `My work has been severely
affected by the novel. How can clients trust me if I am featured as a
drunk lawyer? I definitely lost clients and the reputation I earned.'
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs deny El-Aswany and Hamed's charges that
they are profiteers trying to make a quick profit through blackmail.
`If this allegation were true, I would not have sent a warning to the
movie's team. I would have waited until they show the movie so the
owner and I would be definitely entitled to reparations. This means
that I have no intention to blackmail the team for the sake of
earning money,' says Abdel Malek.
Adel Adeeb, chairman of the film's production company, declined to
comment on the matter, saying neither he nor the company's lawyer
could speak about lawsuits currently before the courts.
Gamal El-Ghitani, editor in chief of Akhbar Al-Adab (Literature
News), explains that novelists are free to use real names for
characters provided that they do not mention details that would be
indicative of real people. However, he still presumes the good faith
of the author and dismissed the suit as an `exceptional measure taken
against literature. Similarities between reality and literary works
are conceivable, but I am against suing or confiscating such works,'
he says.
El-Ghitani is a staunch defender of freedom of speech, saying
literature has lately been assaulted for a variety of reasons: `We
are living in an abnormal atmosphere where literature is targeted by
fundamentalist groups, the government itself and society, which has
been tightening its censoring grip over literature. Today, Egypt is
intolerant of the same things it used to accept in the 1920s.'
At least El-Aswany can take heart in the fact that he's in good
company: Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz's Al-Sarab (The Mirage, 1948)
featured, among other characters, a sexually impotent man who lived
in Abasseyya. A resident of the area was so certain the author was
referring to him that he hatched a plot to assassinate Mahfouz.
No one's threatening El-Aswany with that. Yet.
http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5051
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress