Books-a-Million

Dear Diary,

I just returned from a wonderful place, as wonderful as being a kid in a candy store. I even had to stop myself from skipping down the aisles in glee. Not that there was any room to skip, as people were pushing and shoving all over the place and carts with boxes of books were barreling over everything in sight. All these sights and more are to be had at the Sana’a Book Expo 2006!

I have been awaiting this day for months, the day when I could finally go and see all these Arab literary and academic treasures for myself. It was quite a cultural experience, with stalls from several corners of the Arab World filling the convention hall.

I have learned that I can’t understand Egyptian very well at all. For some reason the Egyptian vendors all assumed that I understood Egyptian, and when I apologized in fu97a (MSA) to tell them that I could not understand Egyptian, they either assumed I was an ignorant foreigner and switched to English, or blithely continued on in fu97a. Whatever happened to the educated, as one might assume of a book publisher, speaking fu97a? My shami (Levantine dialect), however, is better than it has ever been. It was so refreshing to speak in Jordanian to one Jordanian gentleman, that before I realized it, I was flirting with him. A little. It’s not my fault if he’s good-looking, single, well educated, Christian, and has a US work visa. OK, not that I care so much about religion, but it would make him more marriageable as far as all the other parties (the extended families) are concerned. (This country is really getting to me with all its obsession with marriage- way more than half the girls my age are already married!) He gave me a business card for the publishing company and wrote his e-mail address on it, which is one of the Arab equivalents of asking me for my number. So, should I register for an extra e-mail account so that he can’t track me from it and be penpals?

When I heard that this was going to be an international expo, I envisioned that there would be publishers from all over the Arab world. Well, what I found was that most of the stalls were from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. I saw one from Sudan, one from Qatar, a handful of Saudi, two Kuwaiti, three Omani, and two Emirati. There were no other African nations present. But the biggest shock of all- Where, o where, pray tell, were all the Lebanese? I only saw THREE Lebanese companies, and they weren’t the famous ones that I had been looking forward to visiting. Dar al-‘Alm l-l-Malayin, whose fabulous books I have purchased in other Arab countries, was nowhere in sight. Neither was Libraire du Liban, and how I do covet some of their dictionaries... I was rather hoping as well, against all hope, that the publisher of Banat ar-Riyadh (It has a Lebanese publisher although it is a Saudi novel) would be there. No, no Banat ar-Riyadh (Girls of Riyadh) for me. No Harry Potter either, even though I went to every single Egyptian stall. (Grrrrrr…..) The official Arab publisher of Harry Potter is Egyptian. The official Saudi government publishing booth had a great display, but of course, in typical Saudi fashion, all the books that I wanted (one of their academic journals for economics) were for DISPLAY ONLY. So said the sign (in Arabic) in large black letters.

Most of the books available were religious books, or university textbooks. Or guides to computer software and programming. Literature for adults (oh, there were kiddie books aplenty) was severely lacking from the selected titles, which really makes me wonder if reading literature is not as common as it once was. Most of the literature that I saw was English lit at the English bookstores, except for the bookstore next to the entrance chock full of Naguib Mahfouz, may he rest in peace. I was going to get the first book of the Cairo Trilogy, and then I remembered that if I got one, I would want to get them all. Anyway, I don’t have that much room in my suitcase, and I would not be able to understand the dialogue in colloquial Cairene. I’m afraid my reading level also does not cover comparitive or exaggerative literary devices, ie figurative language. There were also stalls solely with educational software titles, and some stalls that were mostly kids VCDs (bootleg!) with some educational software to attempt to justify it as educational. However, I seriously must protest that anyone would try to consider Noir and Vampire Hunter D (violent anime with other adult subject matter that should give it an R rating) as children’s cartoons. Everything else for sale on the shelf next to it was definitely for children, so I pray that certain scenes were edited out altogether and the Arabic subtitles bowdlerized.

At one point I was approached by a group of ladies and asked in English if I had possibly seen any books on Semantics, as they had been looking everywhere for some to no avail. I still don’t know what Semantics is, and I didn’t understand when she switched to Arabic. I think it has something to do with logic, but I couldn’t remember the word for logic at the time, so I couldn’t ask her.

So what did I buy? Basic Microeconomics and Basic Macroeconomics! It’s the only way I’ll ever learn the terms in Arabic. The amazing thing is that I can understand all the new phrases from the context, which is an infinitely more natural way to learn and retain them than from a business glossary. I have never seen an actual economics textbook in Arabic until today (unless maybe somebody were to have taken me to Dammam? Oh well, guess I just saved you the trip), and I was amazed to see all genres available, even Econometrics! I held off on the Econometrics, since I really don’t need to try and do Arabic and calculus at the same time. Even if I used to grade Econometrics homework. No, thank you.