‘Reading is a Lifestyle’: By Flash Fiction Finalist Emad Saad

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

Syrian writer Emad Saad was a finalist for the 2024 prize with his story “Bird with a Broken Wing” (طائر بجناح مكسور). This project is funded by the British Council’s Beyond Literature Borders programme corun by Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions.

Emad Saad returned his flash-fiction questionnaire with a title, which we share here.

Reading is a Lifestyle

by Emad Saad

Translated by Elena Pare

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

Emad Saad: When I was fifteen, by chance, a small book landed in my hands. Its size did not exceed that of the palm of my hand, and it was destined to make me fall in love with reading forever. This book held between its two covers the well-known story ‘The Overcoat’ by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.

A bit later, upon being awarded my middle school diploma, I received a valuable present from a history teacher who was living in our house: Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms.

From then on, reading literary works became my daily need, that accompanied my school and university curriculum readings, and gradually turned into a lifestyle.

Though my family’s financial circumstances did not allow the purchase of books, I managed every now and then to buy a novel with my meager daily income. But the bulk of my reading material at the time came from the lending library in the cultural center of Homs.

My library of two books at its inception would gradually grow; by the time I graduated in civil engineering, I had a small home library of approximately one hundred literary works, a number that would increase to three thousand before the war devoured three quarters of them.

Novels were my obsession for many years, but the great writers’ short-story collections sometimes pierced through this monopoly, also shaping my literary taste as they presented me with amazing discoveries. In secondary school, I became familiar with the oeuvre of the Syrian writer Said Houraniyya who had brought his creative activity to an end, having published, as is well-known, three short-story collections before he stopped writing. At university, my heart was captivated by two of the short-story masters: Anton Chekov whose complete short-story collections I would avidly read and repeatedly reread; and the classic Yousef Idris who is, in my opinion, one of the best short-story writers in the Arab world; the beauty of his oeuvre matches that of any canonical author in the world. These two favorite writers of mine opened an enchanted door in my consciousness through which I perceived reality differently. As for the great Naguib Mahfouz, I read his short stories as well as his novels and deeply believe that the former are just as excellent as the latter.

I’d later get to know Hasib Kayali’s story-world; his folksy atmospheres and warm sarcasm would enthrall me. Zakaria Tamer’s complete works offered me a different, though every bit as rewarding, creative experience to earlier ones. Haidar Haidar’s language likewise delighted me. And Hemingway’s stories and iceberg theory were another landmark experience for me.

In recent years, Mohamed Makhzangi’s fictional world has pleasantly surprised me. I believe that this elegant writer’s works have not received the attention that they deserve, not in Syria at least. My encounter with Ibrahim Samuel’s writing was an important and stirring moment in the new millennium; his short-story collection The House with the Low Roof has also been underappreciated.

I cannot with such haste pay my dues to all the writers whose literary works have influenced me, so I will be content with the rough sketch I have just now outlined. It excludes hundreds of stories that I’ve read in Syrian and Arabic literary magazines such as Marefa, al-Adab al-Ajnabiya, al-Adab, al-Tareeq, Nizwa, al-Naqid, and so on.

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

Emad Saad: Writing wasn’t my life project, rather that decision came later. As a result of the war and displacement, I found myself far from my home and my library. As the war continued to spread and become more brutal, I had a near certain hunch that my library, like many other important things in my life, would not survive. (However, I still consider this material and spiritual loss much less costly than what other people, who lost their loved ones in the war, endured.)

So, I chose to respond to the irrationality of war by writing, and to add my own book to others’ libraries. I started writing a novel around an idea that seemed promising to me. I was writing intermittently because I’d returned to work to secure our livelihood, which was becoming more difficult day by day. Then, after two years, I abandoned it again and put the novel aside because I thought it was bad and it didn’t correspond to my artistic demands and ambitions. I turned to writing short stories and felt that this is what I should have done from the beginning, so I resigned from my job to devote myself to completing my postponed literary works. This decision expedited my undergoing urgent heart surgery, so I often intone to myself excerpts of Mahmoud Darwish’s Mural:

…

I am I, nothing but

One of the people of this night. I dream

Of mounting my horse, up, up…

To follow the spring up the hill,

So hold out, my horse!

I completed in this period a collection of stories of varying lengths including “Bird with a Broken Wing” with which I participated in ArabLit’s Story Prize. How delighted I was with the jury’s good feedback! I also submitted a short—no longer than three hundred words—literary text entitled “Coffeehouse 2014” to Markaz Zoura for the Maroun Aboud prize. It won second place and was published in Kul al-Arab; this is my only published text. Encouraged by my friends, I decided to send my short-story collection The Limping Saint to a publishing house, and I’m still awaiting the reading committee’s decision.

I’ve turned to work on a new novel and I’m making good headway with it.

This is me, an aspiring writer at 60.

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

Emad Saad: If I were to publish under a pseudonym, I’d choose the name Mustafa Saeed in Tayeb Salih’s honor.

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

Emad Saad:I write on my laptop at home.

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

Emad Saad:My insufficient writing expertise disqualifies me from giving advice to anyone; moreover, I believe that creative writing cannot be learnt from handbooks. The only thing to do is to sit at a table, make writing a daily task, and persist at it however difficult the circumstances. A person must perpetually polish their skill by reading in all domains to develop their knowledge. Talent in any field requires a person to take care of it conscientiously without which it will waste away and die.

As they say, routine maketh the writer!

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

Emad Saad: If I were to create a literary prize, I’d grant it to first works, to encourage promising new talents. It would be judged according to the aesthetic and artistic foundations of the narrative, based on the originality of its subject and the innovative ways it grapples with it. I’d put special emphasis on experimental writing. I would award the winners small material prizes and finance the publication, marketing, and distribution of the winning books.

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

Emad Saad: In the Arab world, if books do not become a daily necessity for citizens of all ages—like bread—the problems of publishing will remain unresolved.

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

Emad Saad: I’ve always had the fanciful idea of having a long conversation with Tolstoy about his great novels: War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Hadji Murat.

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

Emad Saad: I know the beginnings of a few litearary works that many critics have repeatedly discussed and analyzed in their studies, such as A Hundred Years of Solitude, The Trial, or The Metamorphosis. But I have chosen here the opening lines of two of the most important Arabic novels: ‘The distance between the eye and its target is not the only span of one’s vision, nor is it the longest or happiest stretch,” from Sail and Storm by Hanna Mina; and “April, the month of dust and lies,” from Adrift on the Nile by Naguib Mahfouz. Both these beginnings dictate the writer’s perspective and narrative style throughout each novel.

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?

Emad Saad: I’d want Khaled Taja to perform in a short film adaptation of my story if the talented actor were still alive. Out of all living Syrian actors, I’d choose Fayez Kazak. I think that he would add a lot to the short story with his performance. Lots of information and many scenes upon which the story is built are indirectly conveyed. The director would have to pay attention to these and make them explicit. I’d like the film to start with the following shot: in a ruined and empty street, a man in his fifties treads heavily on crutches, laboriously dragging a suitcase. The camera gradually zooms in to meet this character with a prosthetic leg, who is on his way to seek refuge.

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?

Emad Saad: If I had the financial means to set up a bookshop I’d split it into two wings, the library at its heart: one would be an isolated reading corner, where writers read their texts to their readers, and the other would consist of a small café-cum-meeting-place for library patrons to get to know one another and exchange their opinions and experiences.

Let’s give our imagination the greatest scope possible so that we may escape this disheartening reality.

Emad Saad is from Homs, Syria. He is a retired civil engineer who writes short stories and novels.