The Flash Fiction Questionnaire: With Finalist Azza Abdulnawar

For our forthcoming bilingual publication — which will feature the fifteen short stories shortlisted for the 2024 Arabic Flash Fiction Prize, co-produced by ArabLit and Komet Kashakeel — we made up our own sort of Proust questionnaire for the authors. In it, we’ve asked each of them the same 15 questions you’ll find below.

Excerpts from their answers will appear in the print collection, and they will also run in fuller versions online at ArabLit.

Egyptian writer Azza Abdulnawar was a finalist for the 2024 prize with his story “The Days of Nasi’” (أيام النسىء), and indeed one third place with this story. This project is funded by the British Council’s Beyond Literature Borders programme corun by Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions.

Tell us about a short-story author whose work you particularly admire

Azza Abdulnawar: I have read only a little by Ibrahim al-Koni, but I am crazy about him—his language, settings, characters. I would love to be their author!

If you were to start a literary prize, what would it be for, how would it be judged, and what would people win?

Azza Abdulnawar: It would be a prize for biographical writing, because it does not receive artistic or critical appreciation or recognition. The prize would be a lifelong pension. Writers deserve a small chance to do what they are good at. As for the criteria for winning, it would primarily be the honesty of the writing. Being a professional is not required as much as honesty and simplicity. It would be a competition that offers an opportunity to any creative who is chock-full of feelings everyone experiences, but only this writer is capable of putting them into words.

Tell us about an opening sentence you find particularly compelling, in any work of fiction.

Azza Abdulnawar: I often imagine how Tareq Imam wrote the opening of his novel The Cairo Maquette: Uriga remembers that he was a child when he killed his father in this manner: He pointed his index finger, imagining it a gun, at his father’s forehead and said, “Boom!”

I imagine that he cut a lot of pages and deleted many Word files and that in the end, he cut out that opening from the middle of a text and began with that.

Editor’s note: Although Azza shared the quote in Arabic, we have used an excerpt translated by Omar Ibrahim, published on arablit.org.

What author, living or dead,  would you like to be able to have on WhatsApp?  

Azza Abdulnawar: There is no writer comparable to Naguib Mahfouz. I often wonder if I could be like him one day. If I was living during his lifetime, I would certainly try to be trained by him. I dream of writing simply and strongly, every word in its place, not accepting variations or synonymity, just as Nagib does.

What advice on writing—that you were told, or perhaps read somewhere—do you find most useless, stupid, or ridiculous?

Azza Abdulnawar: To wait for inspiration! Stupid and false advice—the milk of writing is summoned, we do not wait for it to burst forth, because in this way it might dry up, or harden, or otherwise harm the udder.

What advice on writing—that you were told or perhaps read somewhere—have you found most useful and nourishing?

Azza Abdulnawar: Live your life as a writer, look at life with a writer’s gaze: eat, sleep, work, drive or ride your means of transport with the spirit of a writer who derives meaning from every movement and rotation that occurs around them.

When did you start writing? Do you remember anything about the first piece you ever wrote, or the place that you wrote it?

Azza Abdulnawar: The first text I wrote was in fourth grade, a poetic attempt at the mother. I was at school and suddenly decided that I could be a writer. I tore out a page and wrote:

My mother is the most beautiful thing, an angel from heaven

My mother is a vast ocean that gives me generously

She sacrificed her youth for me to give me sustenance

Mother, your love is beautiful … (I don’t remember the last line)

As for my first real writing, I was a university student and I also started with poetic attempts, then prose poems, until I arrived at the genre of the short story.

Tell us about one of the main places where you write. Is it at a desk, on a couch, in bed? At a coffee shop? Secretly, while at work?

Azza Abdulnawar: I write secretly, away from my children. I steal some time and hide away anywhere. Sometimes I pretend to sleep and jot down a few sentences or words from under the blanket, or sometimes in front of the stove while cooking. Even if it requires hiding in the bathroom for a few minutes, I note down the idea and write more later, when the kids are sleeping or occupied with a new game.

What is one poem you have memorized that you sometimes recite to yourself?

Azza Abdulnawar: Since 2011 and the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Ahmed Fouad Negm’s poems have nestled themselves into many scenes, to a point where I used to rock the children to sleep with the poem “O Egypt, o nation, o beautiful one.”

If this short story of yours was adapted into a film, who would you like to act in it? Do you have any advice for the director, videographer, or costume designer?

Azza Abdulnawar: I would give the lead role to the actor Hanan Metaweh because I feel that she resembles me somewhat in her choice of words and clothes, and even in her facial features.

All I can imagine is that the filming would take place in a poor, austere village… I don’t know why! It probably requires psychological analysis.

If you were asked to design a bookshop near your home, what would you make sure it had? Comfortable chairs? A hidden nook for reading? Coffee and tea? Something else?

Azza Abdulnawar: The shop would definitely offer all kinds of coffee, and nothing else. Its decor would change according to the seasons, it would have a particular design for Ramadan, and another for New Year’s, another for Halloween, Easter, Sham Ennessim, and so on. It would have a special corner for kids, offer discounts to mothers, and a nursery to give them time to write, read, and drink their coffees slowly.

If you were going to write using a pen name or pseudonym, what would it be?

Azza Abdulnawar: Umm Kulthum… My father chose that name for me before I was born, but at the last minute he gave me my grandmother’s name. The name is also reminiscent of the Star of the Orient, her authentic Arab splendor, and a strength whose source I do not know.

What is your favorite under-appreciated short-story collection?

Azza Abdulnawar: Naguib Mahfouz’s Whispers of the Stars did not receive as much attention as his other writings, perhaps because it was published only later, but I felt that he had attained in it the secret that made him write without thinking, just like breathing, as if it were a supernatural ability like communicating with ghosts.

If you could change one thing about how publishing works, what would it be?

Azza Abdulnawar: The publishing industry in the Arab world should receive government support. It should become a profitable profession so that writers can devote themselves to writing.

Azza Abdulnawar is a proofreader and content writer with a BA in Islamic Studies from al-Azhar University.