A light shines over the Gulf

By Nehad Selaiha

When Dr Al-Qasimi walked in and went around shaking hands with everybody (an enormous lot of hand-shaking) I was struck by his gentle, unassuming modesty, his cordiality and sophisticated sense of humour. He had something to say to everybody, and though garbed in the traditional dress of all the Gulf sheikhs, he had the ease and composure of a citizen of the world. He had the kind of urbanity born out of long and intense exposure to and assimilation of cross-cultural influences and an enlightened understanding of the best in his own national culture. Years of knocking around Cairo's cultural and political hubs as a student of horticulture at Cairo University, and hobnobbing with talented comrades, including actors Adel Imam and Salah El-Sa'dani, followed by years at the University of Exeter reading for a PhD in history among the enchanting fishing villages of Devon, and years of apprenticeship in politics have combined to produce a progressive and enlightened ruler intent on leading Sharjah into the 21st century, despite the extremely conservative nature of society in the Gulf. Not only has he chosen to marry a PhD in her own right and encourages his daughters to study ballet, classical music and painting, but he also invests intensely in the cultural infrastructure of his country, in environmental conversation and development education, archaeological excavations, the preservation of historical sites and buildings, the arts and the empowerment of women. No wonder his beloved city has been chosen cultural capital of the Arab world for 1998.

A group of quaint ancient houses, built of sea rock and coral in the old Arab style, with the various living quarters ranged at ground level round open courtyards, were restored at his personal initiative and expense and transformed into museums and cultural centres for music and literature. However hot and humid it may be outside, the cosy little café in Sahat Al-Adab (the literary court) -- with its shady arcades, wooden benches, white-washed walls and the aroma of Arabian coffee and minted tea -- feels cool, breezy and informally hospitable. The tops of graceful palm trees fringe the walls on outside and correspond with the greenery in the corners of the courtyard, while the distant swish and faint humming of the waves conjure a lulling vision of the wharves and forests of masts across the road and the many white sandy beaches, dotted with palm trees and bordered with expanses of luscious grass. In a room in this enchanting spot I watched a beautiful actress from Dubai (the festival hosts productions from all the seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates) giving a moving performance in a two-hander by Murray Schisgal called The Typists. But was it just her performance or partly the spell of the place that won her the award of Best Actress jointly with others? A pity that not more of the festival's productions took advantage of the beauty of this site, or of the adjoining, and equally charming, House of Music. The Typists was an exception; all the other productions opted for traditional spaces with picture-frame stages; and so, for ten days, we were constantly shuttled between the Africa Hall, which housed the small matinée performances, and the main Sharjah Cultural Centre, a recent and quite imposing Islamic building, which hosted the big productions.

I kept longing for the old-world charm of Sahat Al-Adab, but my schedule as head of the festival's jury (another unprecedented thing in the history of this bi-annual theatrical event and, hopefully, another breakthrough for the Gulf women), and as one of the main speakers in the seminar on the avant-garde movement in Arab theatre, left me little leisure. I did not make it to Sahat Al-Adab another time, but the location chosen for the sessions of the seminar was more than enough compensation. It was another graceful, two-storey, historical building, of stunning beauty, spotted, renovated, and created into Al-Sharjah's Art Museum by Dr Al-Qasimi who donated to it his private art collection of priceless paintings as a gift to his people. It was a fascinating, thrillingly sensuous experience crossing the long marbled corridor that stretches from one end of the building to the other on the second floor with the changing sky peeping at you and pouring its light through the lattice windows on both sides and the delicate webbed roof. Bordering the corridor on either side were the open exhibition rooms with treasures of beauty.

Officially, Dr Al-Qasimi is a statesman -- a ruler of long experience. Unofficially, he is an arts connoisseur, a passionate historian (he is already working on a second PhD on the history of trade in the Gulf at Durham University), novelist and playwright. Unlike Vaclav Havel who climbed to political power on the steps of drama, Al-Qasimi chose to embrace fiction and drama at the apex of his political career and to join the motley ranks of the thespian tribe and jump onto their colourful and vicacious bandwagon.

The festival opened his first dramatic oeuvres, a historical play of epic proportions and a cast of fifty (all male) about the sack of Baghdad in 1258, the slaughter of the Abassid Caliph Al-Musta'sim, the decimation of its population, nearly 800,000 at the hands of the Mongol conqueror Hulegu, the grandson of the fearful Genghis Khan. In his foreword to the play, printed in the programme, Al-Qasimi makes no bones about the clear didactic purpose and message of this, his first venture into the realm of drama. He entered drama through the gates of history, he admits; The Return of Hulegu is intended as a lesson and a warning to the Arabs. It is all fact: no fictional embellishments or concessions to the requirements of traditional drama such as psychological depth in characterisation. "Reading the history of the Arab nation," he simply admits, "I have found that the events that preceded the fall of the Abbasid Dynasty are very similar to what is taking place now in the Arab world -- as if history is repeating itself. Hence this play: a reading of a painful present from a historical perspective. All the names, characters, places and events in this play are factual; and every word and sentence is intended to reflect, with absolute clarity, what is happening to our nation right now."

You may not like this kind of direct, documentary, didactic handling of history. But no one who saw it at the opening, in Qasim Mohamed's stirring, fast-moving production, could deny its forceful impact, ruthless austerity, and overpowering sense of urgency. It had a grim tragic frugality with no frills or softening effects -- like a fierce avalanche of grotesquely absurd choices and brutal massacres that left no room for reflection and held no ray of hope for humanity -- Arab or otherwise. It was not, frankly, the kind of play I would choose to see more than once. It is all very well to document in drama the ruthless march of history and the rise and fall of nations; but the arbitrary ousting of women, their forced absence and exile from the historical pageant, made the artistic vision presented on stage somewhat lacking -- less real and authentic and, personally, left an acid taste in my feminist mouth. History is not made up of just men warring, conquering, and massacring each other, and killing children and women and raping them in the process. It is essentially made of women guarding the fort of life against the ravages of demented, power-crazy males and dictators.

When Dr Al-Qasimi dismissed the eager media men with their incessantly flashing cameras and obtrusive microphones and led his guests into a beautiful conference room on the second floor to have an informal, friendly tête-à-tête with them before lunch, I thought I would get the chance to talk to him about his play, his projects, and the future of the festival. But, predictably, the males (I was a dismally sad minority) monopolised the conversation. It was hugely entertaining all the same. Dr Samir Sarhan, the head of the Egyptian State Publishing House and a playwright, and the Kuwaiti director Fuad El-Shatti, set about interviewing both the author and the Iraqi director of The Return of Hulegu about the nature of their collaboration over the play. Soon enough, the discussion slithered into the difficult and irritatingly irresolvable question of who takes priority: the writer or the director. Al-Qasimi diplomatically declared that the performer always comes first. A lot of what was said afterwards was platitudinous and commonplace; but what was really touching and refreshing was Al-Qasimi's attitude and genial eagerness. He was just like any other new playwright anxious to talk about his play and listen to what the 'big critical guns' have to say about it. The ruler had melted into the background or tacitly been left downstairs. The man sitting with us was simply a dramatist, and a faltering novice at that, in need of reassurance.

At the dinner table, his avid appetite for intelligent conversation did not abate. It was as vigorous as ever and its chosen target this time was Dr Fawzi Fahmi, the head of the Egyptian Academy of Arts. The result was that for Dr Fahmi it was all talk and no food. The waiters kept removing one full untouched dish after another (there were about ten courses) until, finally, to my immense relief, I saw him dipping into a small bowl of 'Umm Ali'. Funny that Fahmi should have travelled all the way from Egypt to feast solely on this typically Egyptian sweet dish at the prince's banquet! By 10 o'clock, when the evening performance ended, he was ravenous; but deciding what to eat took him over an hour. Sharjah is a gourmet's paradise with an infinite variety of international cuisine. By the time he made up his mind, choosing to go Persian, it was already too late; he had to settle for room service.

Choosing the winners of the festival's 12 awards was a much easier task: the competing productions numbered 13, representing 12 companies from the various states of the United Arab Emirates. By far the most moving and impressive was Distress, a one-woman show written and performed by a brilliant young actress called Sabreen Al-Rumeithi. It featured a lonely woman of forty reviewing her life, wrecked by patriarchal authority, and venomously railing against all forms of female coercion. Equally powerful was The Water Flask which focused on the inhuman treatment of divorced women in Gulf societies and the corrosive stigma that attaches to them however highly educated and intelligent they may be. The oppression of women, their longing for freedom and self-fulfillment, and their enforced, debilitating dependence on men and marriage for survival were also at the heart of The Net, The Long Journey, The Typists, and The Cry of Metha. The Gulf males too had a lot to say and joined the women in the ferocious critical thrust which made this festival more than a simple artistic event. The political, cultural and socio-economic fabric of the Arab world and its conservative societies was honestly scrutinised and ruthlessly anatomised in such plays as No and The Other Face of the Clown which, with Distress, shared the award for best production.

Of the festival's 12 awards, six went to women, plus two credits. I had not thought when I boarded the plane at Cairo airport on my first trip to the Gulf that I would be meeting so many brave and wonderful creative women or so many progressive and enlightened men. I left Sharjah hoping that next time I see it our friendship will have grown deeper, the projected theatre institute will have opened, the women will have shed many of their grievances and found scope to realise their enormous creative potential. I also hope that at the next reception at the ruler's headquarters the list of guests would include more than one representative of the female species. Funny that Dr Al-Qasimi and I overlapped at Exeter University without ever physically crossing paths.