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 Doha Saleh was a finalist for the 2024 prize with her story “Mercy Killing!” (!قتلٌ رحيم). 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 works you particularly admire.
Doha Saleh: I love Anton Chekhov’s stories. This is perhaps because he was the first writer whose short stories I read, and they became a part of me for some reason. I find myself always alluding to them, both when I talk and write.
If you were to start a literary prize, what would it be for, how would it be judged, and what would people win?
Doha Saleh: I think I’d create a prize for unfinished works, that authors failed to complete and set aside, dreading to open their files or re-read what they wrote.
The criteria used by the prize jury members would have to be based on things like language, style, coherence and originality, of course. But the most important factor would be the size of the obstacle hindering the writer from finishing their work, so how difficult it would be to predict its continuation or ending for example.
The prize would be divided into two parts: the authors of outstanding works would first receive an incomplete medallion and a grant for a three-month literary residency to complete their work; the writer would then receive the missing bit of the medallion and prize money upon completion.
Tell us about an opening sentence you find particularly compelling, in any work of fiction.
Doha Saleh: ‘They shoot the white girl first’ is the beginning of Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise, published in 1998. This scene combines brutality and simplicity in one, in a style that leaves the reader feeling as if they had witnessed the incident.
What author, living or dead, would you like to be able to have on Whatsapp?
Doha Saleh: The Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto.
What advice on writing—that you were told, or perhaps read somewhere—do you find most useless, stupid, or ridiculous?
Doha Saleh: To write every day in some form. It’s difficult to do this in our present age, as each day is split between work and household chores; this is a daily nightmare, and I can’t find the space to write. It was perhaps great advice for previous generations whose time was not occupied by all these diversions.
What advice on writing—that you were told, or perhaps read somewhere—have you found most useful and nourishing?
Doha Saleh: That I should read dialogue between characters aloud, because language sounds different in our ears than when we read in silence; I sometimes realise that such a character wouldn’t say such a thing in real life, and/or that the conversation seems fabricated, that no one speaks like that in daily exchanges.
When did you start writing? Do you remember anything about the first piece you ever wrote, or the place that you wrote it?
Doha Saleh: I started writing in middle school. I was fourteen or perhaps thirteen and wrote in the small space between the dining room sideboard and cupboard. I was hiding in this place and started writing my first work, which was to become a novel in which I recounted the tale of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth with a heroine instead of its hero.
Tell us about one of the main places where you write. Is it at a desk, on a couch, in a bed? At a coffeeshop? Secretly, while at work?
Doha Saleh: I write anywhere. I’m not committed to a specific place; it need only be quiet for me to pull out a blank sheet of paper or my laptop, and start writing.
What is one poem you have memorised that you sometimes recite to yourself?
Doha Saleh: ‘Thirsty Nighttime Hallucinations’ by Muhammad Afifi Matar.
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?
Doha Saleh: Perhaps the actress Tara Emad, who it would be charming to see trying to catch one of the mice.
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?
Doha Saleh: It would have a little garden, a bakery serving a new treat every day, and different monthly themes. It would also have a coffee corner for very simple drinks only, both hot and iced. And chaises longues to stretch out!
Where do you find new stories that you enjoy reading? Do you find them in magazines, online, from particular publishers? How do you discover new writing?
Doha Saleh: I frequently go to libraries, I follow several international reviews, subscribe to a number of Arabic and international newsletters that inform me of what’s new, and I periodically visit the pages of publishing houses.
What is your favorite under-appreciated short-story collection?
Doha Saleh: My favorite short-story collection is The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, which is a well-known volume of course, but I don’t think it has got sufficient renown in the Arab world.
Did you have a favorite book, story, or poem as a child or teen? What has its impact on you been?
Doha Saleh: The novel Alice in Wonderland; I discover something new every time I re-read it. It is one of the most inspiring works, so I go back to it every time I hit a reading block.
Doha Salah is an Egyptian postmodern writer and translator. She graduated from the Faculty of Dar Al-Ulum, Cairo University, where she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Literature. Doha works in copywriting, translation, and article writing, and enjoys reading children’s stories and learning Japanese in her free time. Her published works include the short stories Vanilla, published by Kayan Publishing in 2012; and Dear Mr. G, published by Dar Aktub in 2013, as well as several novels, including Turtles Don’t Feel Lonely (2022) and A Shortcut to Paradise (2021) published by Noon Publishing. She has received several literary awards, including the Akhbar Al-Adab Award (2015), and was shortlisted for the Rashed bin Hamad Al Sharqi Creative Award (2019) and the Sawiris Cultural Award (2021).