'Dubai: Literacy is not a luxury but a necessity' / BookBrunch reports
11th March 2011
"Literacy is not a luxury, it's an essential skill," declared Isobel Abulhoul, founder and Director of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, which was formally opened yesterday (8 March) with a ceremony at the Al Mamzar Theatre, properly named the Dubai Cultural and Scientific Association, in the presence of His Highness Sheikh Majid Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
"Every single person here today can assist in the fight against illiteracy," Abulhoul continued, speaking with passion about the moment "I passed through that magic door into the world of imagination that is contained between the covers of a book. I no longer saw the black squiggles on the page; the book was The Secret Garden and the author was creating an unfolding story, just for me, in my mind's eye. I believe we need to help as many people as possible through that magic door into the world of books and enjoyment. I hope that our Festival will bring that about for many, many people over the next few days... At the heart of our Festival is the goal of improving literacy through celebration."
So said a woman who fell in love with an Emirati, married him and came to a very different Dubai some 40 years ago and, unable to find the books and educational toys she needed for her own young children, opened a bookshop. Magrudy's is now one of the region's most successful bookshop chains, its founder honoured beyond Dubai for her contribution to the region's culture.
A strong and vibrant education thread runs alongside the main five-day Festival, the first event of which was a gala evening with Michael Palin and Wole Soyinka. The evening characterised the Festival, now in its third year, with its mix of entertainment and erudition, Palin talking engagingly about his life-long passion for geography and his mind-expanding travels; the Nobel Laureate reading, in his treacle-toned voice, from "Twelve Canticles of the Zealot" and speaking of "the spiral of stupidity" under which the people of many countries in Africa and beyond had been forced to live. Once all dignity was lost, revolutions, such as we were seeing across the Arab world, inexorably followed, declared Soyinka.
There was a touch of Cecil B De Mille about the opening proceedings, so much more elaborate than in the first couple of years, when the formalities were rounded off by parades of camels and marching bands, together with schoolchildren dressed as characters from literature. Performers from the Youth Theatre and Arts Dubai offered a balletic realisation of "The Pearl Diver's Song", a reminder of how the Emirate's wealth was created - by divers able to hold their breath underwater for up to five minutes as they searched for pearls. One of two specially commissioned poems followed: Dha'en Shaheen read his "The Knight of the Tribe" in Arabic (it was then read in English by Paul Blezard) and Roger McGough his poignant homage to the book, "Take Comfort". Then a film offered insights into the extraordinary realisation of War Horse for the stage - the inventiveness of the puppeteers, the physical stamina of those working them and the vision of Director Tom Morris. It turns out he'd long wanted to incorporate puppetry into a National Theatre production and had been casting around for the right idea when his mother suggested a then little-known novel by Michael Morpurgo. Following his mother's advice, he read it and immediately saw the possibilities.
The short film really struck a chord with the audience, and Morpurgo himself upped the emotional ante when he talked about how he'd come to write the book. "I'm not a person who's big on imagination" he explained modestly, adding that he needed a fact or two, some history, to get him launched. In the Devon village where he farmed, he'd got chatting to an old man, who'd been part of the Devon Yeomanry. "I was with the horses," the veteran told the author, "and I talked to my horse, told him everything. About my fears, about my family..." The next morning, Morpurgo phoned London's Imperial War Museum to ask how many horses had been sent to the battlefields: around a million, he was told, and only around 65,000 came home. The equine figures were not so different from the human ones - except that horses had no choice as to whether or not they went. So was born the War Horse, a farm animal despatched to France to do his bit for King and Country.
Morpurgo recalled how the book made little impact on publication, though it was shortlisted for the Whitbread. His publisher sent a stretch limo to convey him and his wife to the awards ceremony. To his chagrin, the laurels went elsewhere - and the Morpurgos left the ceremony to discover the limo had been stood down. "We went home on the Tube." So, much is owed to Tom Morris' mother. War Horse is now also a hit in New York, and Spielberg's screen version is due later this year.
The ceremony also included the debut performance by the Emirates Choir, who sang Howard Shore's "Into the West" from Lord of the Rings and an arrangement of the Beatles' "Paperback Writer". It concluded with more than 200 schoolchildren from across Dubai - actors and musicians - on stage performing "The Mystery", a piece written for the occasion by Yousef Khan. At the end of it, Seaghan Abreo declared the Emirates Airline Literary Festival 2011 officially open.
The Festival, said HE Mohamed Al Murr, Vice-Chairman Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, would "shine a light on Dubai" and would "enrich our culture and pave the road to more prosperity". And, citing Alaa Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building, he noted that novels frequently foretold of revolution.
This article first appeared on BookBrunch by Liz Thomson on 9th March 2011.
