The Sudanese-Egyptian-Austrian novelist Tariq Al-Tayeb remains at the forefront of Arab literary names, which have gained a lot of respect from critics and cultural institutions, especially since his name appeared prominent in the sky of literature after his emigration to Austria to study, then live and afterwards settle there.
This early travel led Al-Tayyib to search for a more tolerant language in terms of learning and acquiring knowledge, but his eagerness led him to master this language, even though he remained faithful to Arabic.
Surprisingly, the reader of his early works senses the magnitude of the influence of the Arab countries and their issues on him, for despite his stay in exile, he remained concerned with the Arab meeting and its stories and stories, with which he always works with him to practice a kind of charming nostalgia (nostalgia for the past) about the way of writing and playing With the strings of narration, the charm of storytelling, and sculpting figures closer to everyday life and its concerns.
On the occasion of the release of the new edition of his novel "Flight 797 to Vienna" by Jordan Airlines, Al-Jazeera Net had this dialogue with him:
You lived the period of youth and youth between Sudan and Egypt .. How did this affect your literary upbringing at the level of writing, especially since the reality in which the writer grows up influences the course of forming his writing, his worlds and his personalities?
I was born and raised in Cairo to a Sudanese father and a mother of Egyptian roots.
Sudan was present in my father with his portable heritage and dialect, and he was present in the relatively large Sudanese community residing in Egypt, especially in the neighborhood in which we lived and are still.
The world of Cairo in the 1960s has a lavish culture available at home, street, school, cinema and television, and in the spirit of scholars and writers of the giants of Egypt of that period.
All this I drew easily from him and entered into my training.
When I noticed the book, I found in front of me the library of the gluttonous reader of the father, who took great care of it and dealt with books as also valuable artworks, and I thought at my childhood that Abi Adib was because he printed his name on the collections of books bound in his library.
Another influential tributary was from our second-floor neighbor, and the professor at Al-Azhar University was Dr. Abdul Ghaffar Ibrahim Saleh, who was later dean of the Faculty of Law.
Take care of me and love me and bring me closer to the secrets of Arabia.
Then a supportive tributary, there was in "Al-Kuttab" - before school - to which I went to learn to read and write and some shorter chapters of the suras before joining primary school.
The novel "Flight 797 bound for Vienna" was recently published by Jordan Airlines (communication sites)
Earlier this year, you published the novel "Flight 797 to Vienna" by Dar Khutat in Jordan. What is the secret behind this title that makes the reader of the novel feel as if it is related to travel literature and diaries titles more than the novel, despite its eloquence at the level of the events of the narrative text?
The novel "Flight 797 bound for Vienna", the fourth edition published in Jordan, refers to a real flight number that still exists between Egypt and Vienna.
I relied on it to relate reality to fiction and to braid an intentional suspense.
But it is also okay if the title refers the reader to travel literature, the intention is that the context is smooth and the narration is interesting in following the fate of the difficult relationship between the two protagonists of the novel, Adam and Layla.
What are the boundaries of intersection and convergence within your novel between reality and imagination?
As every novel there is a realistic narrative, and there are fictional passages, as well as complex passages and passages that seem to have been copied from secret manuscripts, which are the writer's ploy, the deception of literature and his pleasure.
Re-separating them again in responding to this question will deny its artistry, value, and the effort expended to integrate reality with the imagined in it!
Some consider contemporary Arabic literature to be realistic literature, however, your novel withdraws from this cognitive projection to address the topic of love with all its aesthetics, joys, sorrows and existential dilemmas .. Why love today?
If literature were to be transformed into a purely realistic literature, meaning a subsequent transmission without anticipation and imagination, it would have lost its original meaning as a cognitive, aesthetic and motivating tributary.
And it will just be an account of a date.
Love is the fascinating path to knowledge, and the first step on the path to philosophy.
Love is that unknown variable that we know and do not know, that we are looking for, so we learn in the path of search more than we expected.
The novel is precisely distinguished on the level of balance between narration, description, interpretation and dreaming, so how anxious are you today as we witness the migration of literary races between them, especially as the novel has become the most embracing of these tributaries of knowledge from which the novel is nourished?
The novel is a world open to many other races, but the mistake would be to disturb the ingredients used.
The error is that harmonious diversity turns into a confusing fragmented multiplicity.
I also think that the novel has its architecture that depends on narration and dialogue. In narration, the course of the novel should be listened to until the end, and in dialogue, the tone of the unique voice of each speaker should be listened to as it happens in the art of theater.
Tariq al-Tayyib, how did his emigration during the eighties of the last century to Austria contribute to the formation of his cultural awareness, especially for a person coming from an Arab country like Egypt, who carries with it a great and ancient history?
I have two phases in my life: the phase of Egypt, which is exactly a quarter of a century, and then the Vienna phase, nearly forty years ago.
I carried with me a cultural legacy sufficient for resistance, survival and continuation, which is cemented by permanent recovery from a distance and by the physical presence of regular travel to Egypt.
Austria has added to my cultural history and consequently to my identity, whether by learning in the most prestigious universities or by practicing in them later, then to my inclusion in the crucible of Austrian literature as an origin and branch, in addition to the natural social life connection of marriage, kinship, friendships and neighborliness.
I have never had a clash between the two cultures, so I always say that I live (in) two cultures and not (between) two cultures.
What image do you paint of what we might call "Diaspora literature" or at least for Arabic literature written in German-speaking countries, and how is it distinguished from Arabic literature that writes from within the Arab world?
Diaspora literature differed from the old diasporic literature, as the old focused on the image of the contrast between East and West, and despite its importance, it did not provide us with solutions to bridge the rift.
Migration also differed from the emigration of the pioneers, because due to the decline in the moral value of our entire Arab countries in the West, we have become our country as individuals, and our successes need greater persistence and a mighty endurance without the support of our country of origin.
Modern diaspora literature - let us define it, for example, in the last half century since the early 1970s or perhaps after the defeat of June 1967 - this new literature was the result of a great dispersion in the economic and social structure and an unprecedented random displacement in the past to a wider area in the world.
Migration is no longer only for the educated, academic, or financially able, but this migration occurred due to painful wars such as the case of Iraq a few decades ago and then the case of Syria recently, it is an exodus of legions and large sectors that include entire families, including infants, children and the elderly, and the image of the Arab changed again in the West. After his image was shaken after the events of September 2001.
Therefore, the image of the diaspora literature has now become closer to describing the new suffering, forced displacement and the new humanitarian appeal, meaning that the horizon has expanded in terms of reception and reception.
I consider that the diaspora literature is a complementary literature to the literature of the interior (if we can accept this division in principle), but there is no distinction between the literature of the interior or the literature of the outside, as dealing with the matter is decisive without differentiation.
Translation is a cultural act that extends bridges between countries and civilizations, and you are one of the Arab writers, who have been fair to translation in recent years.
How did you receive the translations of your novels, and what can these translated works paint as a form of automatic education, which takes place between Arabic and German literature, for example?
Perhaps my presence here in Austria and my participation among my Austrian colleagues and colleagues gradually took place, and my translations go back to a relatively longer time, two decades ago, specifically since the late nineties, with texts translated into German, followed by translations into French and other languages, and I am fortunate that I have been translated in the form of books. To 8 languages, and to nearly 20 other languages within anthologies and literary periodicals.
Here in the West they follow us well and enter our contemporary texts before their antiquity within the academic and scholastic sphere, meaning they do not resort to the literature of the deceased only, and thus their literature, communication and superiority are activated.