THE CULTURAL DESERT
Dubai has nearly everything else, so why not a literary festival too?

Finlay Macdonald attends an extraordinary gathering of writers in an extraordinary place.

Of all the things I expected at a literary festival in Dubai – and, really, I didn’t know what to expect – the last was to find myself lost in the old gold souk with Frank McCourt, Jung Chang and Louis de Bernieres. Along with several other writers and journalists we’d jumped on a tour bus for a look at the “old Dubai” – the remnants of the original town built along the banks of an inlet off the Arabian Gulf known as the Creek. The gold and spice souks are crowded and confusing, and it’s only when we emerge at one end of a long alley that we realise the guide is nowhere to be seen.
Jung Chang, as you might expect of the author of Wild Swans and Mao: the Unknown Story, is a determined and independent woman. She’s all for hiving off around the next corner in the hope of linking up with the missing guide in another direction. McCourt, the affable and wry author of Angela’s Ashes, seems willing to follow her. But I opt to stick with the sensible English novelist Rachel Billington and wait in clear view for our guide to spot us, which he duly does.
Alas, in the confusion de Bernieres and several others are left behind when we board water taxis to cross the Creek. No one even notices until the lost party turns up, stressed and sweaty after a map-reading scramble to catch up with us in this strange and now darkening city.

Quite justifiably de Bernieres tears a strip off the guide, but I can’t help thinking that a party of successful writers would test even the most professional tour leader. These are curious people by nature, followers of their various muses rather than set itineraries.
As the veteran science fiction writer Brian Aldiss puts it a day later, “People find writers mysterious because writers find themselves mysterious.”

(Pic left - author lineup at Festival)

Hence the enduring fascination with literary festivals, I suppose – and this one in particular, due to its surprising location and stellar cast. The very first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai has reached around the globe to bring writers and media together for four days in the marble-lined, five star, megamall-next-door setting of the newly developed Festival City – one of the many towns-within-a-town this oasis of cash has spawned since it started hauling itself from the desert sand roughly 20 years ago.

Apart from the slightly surreal surrounds, the festival is marked by a Middle East meets West dynamic you’d hope for at such a geographic and cultural crossroads. There are many sessions in Arabic – with simultaneous translation via headset to rival the UN – and thus a good deal more practical discussion of censorship and political oppression than one might hear at your average, polite bookish gathering.
This becomes almost immediately apparent at the opening session, a panel discussion about the impact of prizes on literary careers. Of the panelists, who include McCourt, Billington, Chimamanda Adichie (author of Half of a Yellow Sun), it is the Moroccan poet Mohammed Bennis who rises above the good-natured banter about publishing deals and overnight celebrity. The baubles of success, he asserts, are incidental to the passion for truth.
Truth, incidentally, has been an early casualty at the festival. After what turned out to be a stunt by Penguin in London, who claimed one of their books had been “banned” from being launched in Dubai, Canadian author Margaret Atwood pulled out of her scheduled appearance. The book in question, The Gulf Between Us by Geraldine Bedell, is an expat melodrama set in an imaginary emirate not unlike the one whose hospitality we’re currently enjoying. It also features a sheik who may be gay.
Censorship is an affront all writers enjoy decrying, of course, but the reality is rather less dramatic than the press release. The book and its author simply weren’t invited. They were never banned, and Atwood is forced to concede she’d gone off half-cocked. By then it seems the flights have been cancelled, but for her sins she agrees to be beamed in by video-link from Toronto at some ungodly hour for a session on censorship followed by one on her own writing.
Again, however, it is the Arab writers who are most interesting on the topic of literary suppression – their personal experiences generally being more vivid than the invented ones of book publicists.

One such is Rajaa al-Sanea, the young Saudi author of Banat Al Riyadh (Girls of Riyadh), a bestseller about the real lives of women inside a strict Muslim society.
Banned (genuinely) from publishing in Saudi Arabia, she had to release the book first in Lebanon, where it became a hit, and then infiltrated back to her homeland via the Internet. In the face of various black market editions taking off, the Saudi authorities relented and the book was approved – though not before al-Sanea had endured death threats.

That evening we all dine at the restaurant atop Dubai’s World Trade Centre, once the tallest building in the city, now famous mainly for that fact. The cuisine is Bedouin, cooked by award winning chefs, lamb every which way with plenty of hummus and tabouleh. Across the table from me is Britain’s great culinary apostle of Middle Eastern food, Claudia Roden; to my left the veteran foreign correspondent and author of several books, Kate Adie. We discuss desert food and how 24-hour rolling news has killed real reporting. Below us Dubai sparkles in the Arabian night.
Literary festivals are smorgasbords – to indulge in everything is to invite indigestion, the idea is to sample what takes your fancy and leave room for wine and cheese. And what took my fancy in Dubai was the eccentric. Having met fantasy author Terry Brooks (pic left) – (according to some estimates, second only to J K Rowling in sales – I’m intrigued as to how such a down-to-earth Mid-Westerner (now residing in that most sensible of cities, Seattle) had channeled his inner elf to such commercial advantage.
His session, appropriately enough titled “Why I Write About Elves”, is the insight I was after – though having already listened to him on a tour bus explain the subtle differences between the various species of elf I’m surprised by his deep immersion in a world of his own making. He also looks a little like an elf, which may or may not be relevant.

From the imaginary to the unimaginable – a riveting hour with Jung Chang in which she seamlessly weaves together her own story and the story of Mao’s psychopathic powerlust. Along the way she is also very funny; as a privileged child of the revolution in China, where beneath the proletarian façade lay inequalities as glaring as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, her first impression of England was of a classless society. She extracts from her purse various mementos of her days as a Party girl – red arm bands, a copy of Mao’s little red book. If and when the face of Mao is gone from banknotes and the gates of Tianenmen Square, she says, then she might feel China has faced up to its past.
Chang is a big draw here, but by my reckoning the longest book signing queue belongs to children’s author Lauren Child. The expats are out in force, kids in tow, to hear the creator of Clarice Bean describe how her career as a graphic artist and illustrator led her to children’s writing.

Of all the guests at the signing table, she looks like the one who could most use Margaret Atwood’s artificial autograph singing machine (known as “LongPen”, it replicates her own signature as she signs her name via video link from a remote location). Atwood’s invention is sadly not on display in Dubai, despite it being the perfect opportunity to utilise it.

This is but q small part of Finlay's account of his fascinating experience. To read the full story link here. This story first appeared, somewhat abridged, in the Sunday Star Times yesterday.