Bonus Interview: Selma Dabbagh and Mouna Ouafik

Can you tell me how you came to be involved with the We Wrote in Symbols?

Selma: It was a proposal that I pitched to Saqi Books, which was essentially to combine the voices from the Classical Arab periods (pre-Islamic to the fall of Andalusia in 1492) with contemporary writings by women. It is not a sociological study, but a selection of literary responses to love and lust. I wanted to showcase women’s writing from the region to an English language audience in a way that was daring, varied and celebratory. 

Mouna: The English translator and writer Alice Guthrie suggested me to the book’s editor, Selma Dabbagh, who contacted me about my poems, and her interaction and coordination was professional and sophisticated. I felt very appreciated as a writer and poet, which made me very proud and happy. It's very, very humbling and I couldn't be more honored to have been a part of this fantastic project: We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers. All thanks to the great editor and writer Selma Dabbagh for her extraordinary effort in compiling the poems, narrative texts and novel sections in this elegant and luxurious form.

I’m interested in the reaction to the book, particularly from Arab women. Have you found that women knew this amount of literature existed and they’re pleased to see it being more widely celebrated in the West, or are they surprised at the breadth of writing?

Selma: The response from readers of Arab heritage has been overwhelmingly positive. Many were surprised by the classical writings by Arab women, which had been made available through the anthologies and translations of Abdullah al Udhari and Wessam elMeligi, but We Wrote In Symbols brought this legacy to a broader audience. A lot of women told me they felt liberated by the collection. 

Mouna: Speaking for myself, I discovered many female poets and writers whom I had not read before. This work is very important and great. It is a true jewel. Saqi [the publisher] knew how to value it and put it in a dress of bright red satin. Many thanks to Saqi Books for the wonderful production and the distinctive cover of the book.

Selma, your introduction of the book is excellent, really managing to provide a lot of information without weighing the reader down with facts and dates. The research must have taken some time. Is this an area you were interested in before you came to be involved in the project and something you’d previously researched, or did it all stem from We Wrote in Symbols? 

Selma: The topic has always interested me since I first read the collection by Al Udhari, which had stunned me at the time and then I had attended a series of workshops organised by Dame Marina Warner at Birkbeck and in Oxford, on Classical Arabic literature which further stirred my interest. It was hard to write the introduction though in terms of trying to span such huge periods of time, geographies, religions and languages. I did not want to fall into the trap of making gross generalisations, while trying to make connections between the pieces, and lure the reader into reading on. It is not a strictly academic introduction, but an effort to introduce the variety and range of writings stemming from the region over the eras. 

And in terms of curating the selection, how did you decide the order of the works?

Selma: In terms of selection there were two main criteria, (1) the work had to be strong in terms of the writing and (2) the pieces had to be ‘on topic,’ i.e. about love and lust. We also wanted the voices to suggest the narrators’ surmounting circumstances, rather than being victimised by them. In terms of the ordering of the pieces, we initially thought of doing them in chronological order, but it was dry and one of the points with the collection was to show how the past was not less ‘liberated,’ than the present necessarily, so we started gathering the pieces around themes, feelings. I also played around with some archetypal Tarot symbols, e.g. the lovers’ meeting, the virgin, the wise woman, so that there is a kind of evolution from naïvety to experience. We also chose to remove the dates, which some readers find disconcerting, but we did this so readers could read the pieces without preconceptions and to subvert presumptions.

Do you have a favourite piece from the collection? 

Mouna: All the poems are my favourites, they are all inspirational in some way! Every text has an atmosphere, climate and impact. It's a complete, different and wonderful package. These are not just poems, they are the fruit of women's Arab poetry. We Wrote in Symbols constitutes a real and tangible support for the text of the Arab poetesses. Their voices can be heard and their differences recognised! I especially want to highlight the poems by lisa luxx, Joyce Mansour, Naomi Shihab Nye, Yasmine Seale, Nayla Elamin and the Andalusian poet Wallada bint al-Mustakfi.

Selma: I love all of them for different reasons. It is really a bedtime book, something to dip in and out of in a way that you can find something to suit your mood. I love the playfulness of Rasha Abbas’s ‘Simon the Matador’, the slow, detailed observation in Adania Shibli’s ‘Without Rhyme’, the twinkling daring of Mouna Abbas’s poetry, the absurdity of the affair in Rita al- Khayat’s novel extract, the agony of rebuttal in Ahdaf Soueif’s stoned encounter, the hilarity and mischievousness of Hanan al Shaykh. Of the classical pieces, the one that always cuts me to the core is  Ulayya bint al Mahdi’s ‘Epigram’ translated by Yasmine Seale. 

Can we talk a little about sex and religion? As you mention in the introduction, a lot of ideas of sexual heteronormativity were imposed on the Arab world by the west. Now, of course, a lot of people in the Western world think that religion is responsible for repressing women’s sexuality, yet a lot of the works in this collection feature sex and religion in the same breath. Why do you think these two things are so often linked, as opposed to say sex and food?

Selma: All societies have taboos and sadly most of those taboos centre around women’s sexuality. Culture and religion are not fixed, but are malleable and change over time and these taboos change with them. I did find, as I mentioned in the introduction, that some of the language of celebrating sexual and loving unions in the poems was connected to glorying in God in a way that may appear blasphemous to say a puritanical ear, but that connection is also found in some hip hop music and artistes who see no disconnect. Sex and food is an interesting one, there is not much juxtapositioning in the pieces in the collection, but there is definitely a confluence of sex and wine, even in the classical pieces, which some readers found surprising. 

And other than We Wrote in Symbols, where else would you direct people who want to explore the interlinking nature of sex and religion?

Selma: I provided a brief reading list at the back of the anthology to serve as a starting point for further reading. I gained a lot from reading Abdelwahab Bouhdiba’s Sexuality in Islam (1975) which was so revolutionary, yet so warm, rich and respectful in its approach. Many have been inspired by him since, but his is a good starting point. 

What was the overall feeling around sex in your community when you were younger? 

Selma: I’m not sure that I have a community! I am of mixed Palestinian - English parentage and grew up mainly in the Gulf as a teenager. Kuwait in the 1980s was about as restrictive as you could imagine. I knew women / teenagers who ended up in police stations for walking on the beach with men / boys, but to be honest, my feeling when I left was that it made people more aware of sex rather than less aware, to have it so forbidden. There was a lot of puritanism too in my family. Sex positive is not a term I would apply to anyone that I knew well until maybe into my forties? I can still be fairly prudish, which is part of the reason why I wanted to produce the anthology. I felt it is so critical to not be chilled when writing on (or living out) these aspects of our lives with confidence. It is so empowering to have a vocabulary to navigate them in the way that suits us and those we love. Many relationships fall apart because of external barriers to dialogue and understanding. I hope this anthology assists others as it assisted me when compiling it to get past these restrictions.

Have you spoken about the book at festivals in the UK? How do you find it? British people are, I think, somewhat uptight about talking about these things. Does it take a while for the room to warm up? Have you spoken about the book at events outside the UK?

Selma: It’s so interesting. I actually spoke about We Wrote In Symbols in Karachi recently at the Literary Festival and the response was muted, but not negative. Audience members privately voiced their appreciation of it. English audiences have been appreciative and fun. Some of the older members of the audience have come up and confided all kinds of things to me. It’s kind of lovely actually to be able to speak to strangers on that level. I was trying to create an atmosphere somewhere between a harem and a bookclub in the anthology and I think that works; women confide in me in that way. I also had some men in Pakistan praising me for writing about the subject, saying that things needed to change, that they didn’t like the misogyny they felt they had grown up with, that they thought there were positive aspects of Islam in this respect that had been misinterpreted. I also had a great event in Dubai with Noor Naga and the Emirates Festival of Literature. 

Mouna: A month ago, I participated at StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, Scotland. I performed From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin (my forthcoming collection) but during the festival I signed copies of We Wrote in Symbols. The reactions were wonderful. Many writers and audiences were enthusiastic about the book and bought it, and Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh took some copies of the book to sell it. The book was a source of curiosity, interest and discovery. I am happy to have been a part of this inspiring and wonderful project.

Is there any particular feedback you’ve had from audience members that has stayed with you?

Selma: One audience member in the UK told me she had bought her mother a vibrator before she died as she was so worried that her mother (who was of Pakistani heritage) had never experienced sexual pleasure in her life. It was such a loving gesture, but apparently the mother was appalled.

Mouna, you are currently working on an autobiographical collection which examines your relationship with religion, family, sex and love. When did you begin working on this? Did the writing in We Wrote in Symbols inspire you in any way?

Mouna: For eight years I have been working on a vast autobiographical collection of poems entitled From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin. I kept reworking it; adding and subtracting poems. It’s a different kind of autobiography, about my own relationship with God, Islam, Satan, Eve, Adam, Darwin, my mother, sex and love. Each poem can be read as a letter to Darwin from a female chimpanzee - myself. I was undecided and stuck on my ability to face the world and publish it until I found the opportunity to perform these poems on stage. There I could laugh about my pain and expose my vulnerability, the performance was not a provocation but an effort at sincerity. I found the assurance in the audacity and determination to continue doing what I have to do: achieve the problematic second part of my performance; finish and publish in Arabic From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin.

It's a poetry of the intimate taken to the extreme: a culmination of affects, thoughts, troubles, but also of the flesh, bodily fluids, the thickness of reality. After many books, translations, prizes, literary festivals, controversies, acclamations and excommunications, I still believe that the intensity and sincerity of such a commitment to poetry means that my poems – so intimate, so contemporary, so feminine, so Moroccan – can touch everyone. The writing in We Wrote in Symbols certainly inspired me and gives me the courage to publish From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin!!

And Selma, are there any ideas from the book that you’d like to explore further in your future work?

Selma: I had this idea of collecting writing by men on sex where they write in the female voice and women on sex where they write from a male narrator’s perspective. There was a tradition at one stage of having older women tell sexy tales in the classical period that I wanted to explore. There are also contemporary women writing about sex from the male perspective (e.g Najwa Barakat). I am not sure when I will get around to it though.

Any other upcoming work that you’d like to speak about?

Selma: I’m working on a novel set in Jerusalem in 1936. It is almost completed and I love being inside the world I have created. It is hard writing on Palestine at the moment as everything is so horrific, that it is good to step back in time, to a juncture where, I feel, that had a couple of people behaved differently, everything would be different. 

Mouna: Firstly, I want to publish From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin in Arabic. I am still searching for a brave Arab publisher who will accept to publish it and believe in its poems. 

When I performed some poems from the collection I was working with two artists; the musician Zouheir Atbane and the director Henri jules Julien. All the poems have been already translated into French by Henri jules Julien and the poems in Part 1 have been translated into English by Robin Moger.

We develop the second part of the performance and adjust the two parts to create the show. Part 2 has the same poetic tone as Part 1, but a completely different theme with a strong erotic or even sexual charge. Hence the contrasting scenic principle with Part 1. But it's so that I can continue the same act of sincerity. In the initial stand-up, I speak unfiltered, in the first person, to reveal myself existentially. In Part 2, dressed as an "oriental creature", I take on a role that is a way of going further, more intimately, in exposing my life. Creating a character is a paradoxical way of revealing myself more deeply. Creating the costume and the folding screen is a crucial stage: a workshop would be invaluable. Julien’s direction of the play in Part 2 is fundamental. I'm not a professional performer and I'm not trained as an actress. Working on Part 1 revealed the eloquence I can achieve by performing my own words, which is different from what the best actress would generate. Part 2 is therefore more complex because, in order to be more myself, I'm actually 'playing' a character. This metatheatre (mise en abyme) where the stage figure offers a more intense point of view on the woman who is present will be at the heart of the work on acting. We use a basic set of lighting and sound systems.

Stand-up comedy felt like the obvious choice. It allows me to address the audience directly and unfiltered and to touch them almost physically. Many of the poem’s lines become punchlines. Each poem is like a garment that I take off when I perform it. The show is a kind of existential striptease. In this sense, stand up means to engage the body, to reveal oneself sincerely: without posturing, without provocation, but without prudishness. A ceremony of trust that comes up against certain limits in Morocco, where not every one of my poems can be said and heard. So I envisaged the performance From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin in two parts: one part with a selection of poems that play with the limits of what is acceptable in Morocco, and a second part that delves into the nights of my being and my life and that cannot be presented just anywhere.

On stage, the first part is ‘classic’ stand-up: a toned-up, funny woman in trainers, jeans and a pink Scooby-Doo T-shirt talks about herself but in verse, in a crude but clownish way, with a punk energy but a palpable vulnerability. The final short poem of this first part is played out with a buffoonish violence that preludes the performer's metamorphosis for the second part. In the space of a few seconds, behind a folding screen that looks as if it has stepped out of a mythical Orient, the poet transforms herself: she dresses in pearls and gilt and draws the audience into the flamboyant, torrid meanderings of a contemporary woman from here – or from there, depending on where you stand. The poems are performed in Arabic with the translation (English, French or Dutch) projected on screen.

What is your writing practise like? Is it disciplined - same time every day type setup - or more ad-hoc?

Mouna: I am a poet. I am an Arabic poet. I am a woman. I am Moroccan. Ever since I left my teens, all I've done is live to write poetry and feed my poetry with my life. I have never strayed from this existential commitment to myself. The price, particularly the social price, is certainly high. For example, I have never accepted a job in order to devote myself totally to my life/poetry. The guiding principles of my work as a poet, photographer, and recently as a performer, come directly from this choice. This means that I have to be totally sincere in my poems, in which I describe the life of a young woman in 21st-century Morocco who puts the love of life, of people and things, above everything else. Just as I can be in love with a chair, a monkey, a man or a woman, and my poems document these loves, I sometimes come up against the taboos of my society: my first collection of poems was censored and banned. But I don't see myself as a political poet. I don't see myself as part of the ‘feminist’ or ‘decolonial’ movements imported into Morocco. My total commitment to life naturally makes me a feminist poet. And my total commitment to poems in Arabic makes me a decolonised poet.

And yeah! My writing practice has been disciplined since I began working on From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin.

Selma: Mine is much more ad hoc I'm afraid. I have been juggling various writing projects; plays, TV and film work, blogs for the London Review of Books, book reviews for the Electronic Intifada, with my legal not-for-profit Palestine related day job. The day job is part-time, but such is the nature of life, that paid work has to take precedence over unpaid work, so my writing is squeezed into weekends and holidays at the moment. I go away for at least a couple of weeks each year to work on longer projects, e.g. my novel, but it means that my production of books is far slower than I would like it to be. 

Finally, who inspires you?

Mouna: As a child, playing at my neighbours' house with their daughter, I was fascinated by a 40-year-old woman, a neglected and beautiful ghost, who wrote letters. One day I stole one: it was a letter from a prostitute to her ‘dog’, as she called her body. I secretly wrote her back and have been writing ever since, guided by honesty about my life. So I guess that was an inspiration. But as the years went by, life hurt me and my texts, mirrors without cheating, ended up hurting those who don't accept having several faces: my second book was banned and I was prosecuted. Convinced that those who read upside down cannot understand those who see upside down, I continued with the most important and most difficult exercise: the encounter between writing and life, with poetry using me as a raw base paste.

Selma: All of the women whose work is included in the anthology, past and present. They were a joy to work with during lockdown. I felt like I had found my tribe. 

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Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer of fiction whose debut novel Out of It (Bloomsbury) was a Guardian Book of the Year. Dabbagh’s BBC R4 play The Brick was nominated for the Imison Award, and her writing has been published in Granta, the LRB and Wasafiri, and translated into several languages.

Mouna Ouafik is a Moroccan poet and writer. She has published three collections of poetry – Brown Vanilla, Red Neon, Sharp edge of a half-broken plate – and two collections of short stories: Mint, wax and death and Lo3ab.com. She is currently completing a vast autobiographical collection entitled From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin, examining her relationship with religion, family, sex and love.