Ahdaf Soueif

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Speaker 30:21

Uh

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is the novelist and commentator Adif Suaf. An early traveller, she grew up mainly in Cairo, but was a frequent and usually unhappy visitor to Britain. Her adult life has been divided between the two cultures. She was the first Muslim woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was in Tahrir Square last year witnessing the Arab Spring first hand and commentating on the Revolution.

Presenter1:00

If she had to locate her Englishness, she says it would be in literature, in the English novels and poems I grew up with. But she adds that when she returns to Egypt, she feels as though she's been holding her breath until she got there. So, Adif, when you arrive back in Cairo now, when your feet touch Egyptian soil, what do you feel?

Ahdaf Soueif1:21

Um, well, my feet have been touching Egyptian soil so often in the last year and a half that really I've um I've even stopped registering the changes. I wake up in the morning and I'm not quite sure where I am until I'm completely uh

Presenter1:35

Alert

Presenter1:36

I'd like to take you back then to well, very specifically, to january the twenty eighth of of last year. And you were at that time in Cairo. You were walking through the streets of Cairo. W was there almost tangibly a moment when you thought

Presenter1:50

Yeah. Oh, something important's happening here.

Ahdaf Soueif1:53

Um well, I I think I thought that we all thought that actually on the twenty fifth and I wasn't even in Egypt, I was in Jaipur at the literary festival, I raced back and I got back on the twenty seventh in the evening, but everything was quiet, it was like the country was

Ahdaf Soueif2:10

Drawing a breath.

Ahdaf Soueif2:12

And the next day, on the twenty eighth,

Ahdaf Soueif2:14

That's when it all completely broke wide open and

Ahdaf Soueif2:20

There was a moment when we

Ahdaf Soueif2:22

We're

Ahdaf Soueif2:24

at the mouth of Tahrir and um ahead of us in Tahrir there was the smoke and the gunfire.

Ahdaf Soueif2:31

and just thousands and thousands of people and every once in a while there would be a surge of a few metres forward as your friends who were being killed at the front um gained you those three meters and your job as the masses was to sort of move forward and hold the three meters. And that was, I suppose, when it really, really did sink in that this was a battle for the country and that we were all part of it and I was there.

Presenter3:00

Your friends that were being killed at the front, you just said there. I mean, a momentous occasion, and I'm wondering.

Ahdaf Soueif3:02

I mean I'm a man.

Presenter3:05

about it must surely have been a strange cocktail of a sense that this is hugely important and we must push this boundary and yet I'm afraid maybe for myself and certainly for I mean, you were there with your your son was there, I gather and also your nieces were there at the time?

Ahdaf Soueif3:21

My whole family is uh is very involved and has been. I did feel fear for my uh son and my nieces.

Ahdaf Soueif3:31

But you you sort of actually it's an odd thing to say, but you do

Ahdaf Soueif3:35

Step away from that.

Ahdaf Soueif3:37

Because things happen to people. I mean, we have t about sort of 1200 young people who have been killed and we have about 16,000 who have been subject to court martial and, you know, 8,000 who have had amputations and lost eyes and so on. And so it becomes so enormous that really what fear is it that would be adequate? And so fear becomes not an option.

Presenter4:07

We'll have some music. Adaf, what are we going to hear first of all today? Tell us a bit about your choice.

Ahdaf Soueif4:12

Well, since we're talking about the revolution, I thought that we would have a track from Iskinderilla. Now they're a group of young people, they are all amateurs.

Ahdaf Soueif4:21

and they came together, I think, a couple of years before the Revolution. I've loved their music, and I remember sitting in a very small theatre. They were almost illegal, really, because they sang protest songs. And I remember sitting in a small theatre and thinking,

Ahdaf Soueif4:36

Now this music really needs to be outside in the street, and will the day ever come when I will hear it outside in the street? And the day did come, and when the revolution happened they were out there in Tahrir and in

Ahdaf Soueif4:49

all the places where there were sit ins, where there were massacres,

Ahdaf Soueif4:52

And this track is called Ragayen, We're Coming Back.

Speaker 34:57

Mas, Mashi, Milan Masrahil, Ratrahi.

Speaker 35:03

A dying

Speaker 35:05

A gay nya fire.

Speaker 35:08

Yeah.

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Cloud battery

Speaker 35:20

Yeah.

Speaker 35:22

Yeah.

Presenter5:29

Escanderella and Ragain. Adefa, I wonder you once uh said that you believe that optimism is a duty. How optimistic do you feel about Egypt's future right now?

Ahdaf Soueif5:40

I still believe that optimism is a duty. I think that the fight that we have on our hands is bigger and will take longer than we had perhaps thought.

Ahdaf Soueif5:53

But then maybe if you know just quite hard a time you're letting yourself in for, then you you don't start. You know, maybe you do need that sort of slightly wide eyed optimism to begin with. I definitely believe that

Ahdaf Soueif6:09

The country is not going to sit back and is it's just not going to give up until it feels that it is on the path to really a country that is run in the interests of the vast majority of Egyptian.

Presenter6:22

Uh

Ahdaf Soueif6:22

Excellent.

Presenter6:23

What I'm wondering, of course, is that in the situation that you were in you were were not just a protester, you were also being you know, you're having microphones shoved in front of you and being asked to comment and to somehow sum up the significance and to try to communicate to the rest of the world not just the atmosphere but the context of what was happening. How how difficult was that?

Ahdaf Soueif6:42

Um do you know, at first it almost felt a little bit unfair that you were not being allowed to simply live the moment and participate in it. And then

Ahdaf Soueif6:53

it kind of just clicks that each one of us has a job. For example, in those eighteen days of uh of Tahir Square, there were people who were picking up the rubbish, there were plumbers who were inventing ways of setting up bathrooms, there were doctors who were treating the wounded.

Ahdaf Soueif7:10

And everyone had to do what they could do. And my job

Ahdaf Soueif7:15

was this business of interpreting and contextualizing and articulating and representing. But in The Revolution you you can't but be a participant. I mean there's no position other than that and you wouldn't want a position other than that. And I think even the book that I kind of had to produce out of The Revolution

Ahdaf Soueif7:38

is very much

Ahdaf Soueif7:40

a revolutionary act, I think. It is something written

Ahdaf Soueif7:44

With the intention to actually push forward the aims of the revolution rather than to comment on them.

Presenter7:52

Let's have some more music then. Let's go to your second choice of the morning. What are we going to hear? Why have you chosen this?

Ahdaf Soueif7:58

Well, the music that accompanied my very young ears was really my father's music that he played at home, and he had this really esoteric taste, and he particularly went for the songs of a

Ahdaf Soueif8:11

a giant um Egyptian composer, Abdel Wahib. And so this is a track from um Abdel Wahib, Emtaz Zamen, When Will Time Permit, my pretty one, and I sit with you on the banks of the Nile.

Speaker 38:25

In the middle.

Speaker 38:36

Uh

Speaker 38:42

Uh

Speaker 38:55

Um

Speaker 38:56

Uh

Presenter8:56

Abdel Wahab and Mta il Zaman. Um you've written a lot about your relationship with with Cairo, and you've said that you you dream in Arabic but you write in English. Why do you think that happens?

Ahdaf Soueif9:08

Um I dream in both actually. Um I think it's it's been really a fluke. I write in English because of the accident of uh where I first learned to read. We came to England in um fifty five.

Ahdaf Soueif9:24

I was four years old and my mother was doing a PhD in English literature and my father and I accompanied her.

Ahdaf Soueif9:31

And I lost my Arabic, and being that age, and it's being very much in my mother's interests that I should learn to read, and so that she could sort of put me at her side with a book and I'd be quiet

Ahdaf Soueif9:43

I learned to read very quickly and I learned in English and then

Ahdaf Soueif9:46

I was surrounded really by her library as I was growing up and it was it was a brilliant library with sort of all of English and all of world literature and translation.

Ahdaf Soueif9:57

And it was just easier to carry on reading it, really, than to branch out into Arabic. So I read Arabic literature much later.

Ahdaf Soueif10:05

and therefore I think that my literary language

Ahdaf Soueif10:09

was formed.

Ahdaf Soueif10:10

Um in English. Whereas of course I I regained my Arabic when we went back to Egypt when I was um seven.

Ahdaf Soueif10:17

And uh A Arabic became very much the language that I lived in.

Presenter10:20

When you write, you you you do make it sound as if the pyramids and the sort of surrounding area were sort of your playground, you know, measuring yourself against the pyramids and that sort of thing.

Ahdaf Soueif10:20

Uh

Ahdaf Soueif10:28

Absolutely. Yeah, no, it was just it was just a very familiar, familiar place. I mean, I I remember watching my son many, many years later, playing on the

Ahdaf Soueif10:38

on the steps of the Albert Memorial actually, um, in Kensington, and just thinking, you know, this week he's playing on the steps of the Albert Memorial and next week he's playing next to the pyramids.

Presenter10:49

Tell me a bit more about that early home life then in Cairo. What sort of house did you live in? Where was it in the city and so on?

Ahdaf Soueif10:55

Well, we went back from England when my mother had finished her PhD, so we went back.

Ahdaf Soueif11:00

and my parents got an apartment in Zemelek, which is the island in the middle of the river.

Ahdaf Soueif11:05

But my grandparents lived

Ahdaf Soueif11:08

In the heart of the old part of town, which was very traditional, bustly, you know, the heart of the commercial district. And my

Ahdaf Soueif11:17

Life was really spent between between those those two places.

Presenter11:22

Looking for a moment at your parents' early married life before you came along, they I mean they were intellectuals, they were very well educated, but your mother particularly wasn't able to to gain a place at the university in the English department where she wanted to work because she herself was not English. Is that right?

Ahdaf Soueif11:39

Oh, yes, that's right. Well, it was um pre nineteen fifty two. The English department at Cairo University was staffed by British people and you couldn't teach in the English department and she found a job as a primary school teacher.

Ahdaf Soueif11:55

and my father was at the same time he had also graduated from the Department of Philosophy.

Ahdaf Soueif12:00

Um and they were young and romantic and uh dissident. My father had already spent a year in jail for being a leftist and so, yeah, it was romantic and

Ahdaf Soueif12:10

and interesting.

Presenter12:11

Let's have some more music then. Your third disc, what are we gonna hear?

Ahdaf Soueif12:15

Um well, this is the second stint in England. The first one, when I was uh five till I was seven or eight, was perfectly happy. But um when you're thirteen, you know, that's the time for your friends and your own activities.

Ahdaf Soueif12:31

So yeah, I just completely uh missed my life. I missed my school and my friends and

Ahdaf Soueif12:37

the larger family and my dad actually, to do him credit, he he bought me a tiny little tape recorder called a Phonotrix and so I would record things from the television onto it and then have them to play in a horrible crackly quality. But again, it was it was tremendously important. And of course the song that started a whole new area of consciousness going in every one of us and that I couldn't stop playing was The Beatles and She Loves You.

Speaker 313:14

She loves you, yeah

Speaker 313:20

You'll think you've lost your love. Well I saw her yesterday, ayy It's you she's thinking of And she told me what to say, ay She said she loves you And you know that can't be

Presenter13:38

The Beatles and She Loves You. You you were moving a bit to that. Where were you dancing to that when it was actually playing back in the sixties?

Ahdaf Soueif13:44

Carl only at home and

Presenter13:45

I'm afraid. Were you just in your bedroom?

Ahdaf Soueif13:47

But I didn't have any friends.

Presenter13:48

You're breaking my heart. You've made good use of the advice write about what you know, Adaf, and I'm thinking in particular about a short story that you wrote a while back entitled Nineteen Sixty Four, and it's about a a fourteen-year-old girl who who comes to Britain with her post-doctoral parents and doesn't have a great time of it. Yes, could you possibly have been writing about yourself? I wonder I mean you had a very similar experience.

Ahdaf Soueif14:12

Yes. I mean at that point at school in a comprehensive in Putney it was very, very much like that. For a start what was weird was to be in an all-girl environment and I was completely unused to that. And then to sort of be aware that there were undercurrents and divisions that you kind of didn't quite understand but you knew they were there and you knew that you kept bumping into them. I used to play football at uh my school in Cairo and I used to stand in goal and I was not bad.

Ahdaf Soueif14:39

So to be on a hockey field with uh in the rain and freezing and with sticks swiping at your legs and I was hopeless.

Ahdaf Soueif14:49

And then, yeah, the questions: do you go to school on a camel? How many wives does your father have? And so, really.

Ahdaf Soueif14:56

I had a big rebellion and I just said I wasn't going to school anymore.

Ahdaf Soueif15:00

And that, of course, was totally, totally unthinkable. And I just uh held my ground and I forced them, really, to not extend their sabbatical beyond one year and to go home.

Presenter15:14

Let's have some music out of what we're going to hear now, the the fourth of your choices.

Ahdaf Soueif15:17

Um well this is

Ahdaf Soueif15:19

Actually also an English part of of my life. I was studying for my own PhD.

Ahdaf Soueif15:26

at Lancaster University and I

Ahdaf Soueif15:29

had a little cottage out in

Ahdaf Soueif15:32

the countryside and uh

Ahdaf Soueif15:34

For a long stretch I was actually really, really unhappy and really isolated.

Ahdaf Soueif15:39

and I discovered Mozart's bassoon concerto, and there was something about that sort of swell of music in it that was so romantic and so hopeful.

Ahdaf Soueif15:52

And I think I must have just, um

Ahdaf Soueif15:55

I played this record constantly for about a year and it uh it saw me through.

Presenter16:54

Part of Mozart's bassoon concerto in B-flat major, performed by Stepan Dornowski with the Vienna Mozart Academy, conducted by Johannes Wildna.

Presenter17:02

The piece of music that got you through when you were having a tough time again back in England. I mean, so much of this toing and froing gives us such a sense of this life lived in two places. When you were studying, your mother came across, because at that time you were married by then and your marriage was breaking down. It sounds like you and your mother had a very sort of quite an equal relationship, really, quite an equal adult relationship. Would that be fair?

Ahdaf Soueif17:26

Yes, I think that uh there came a point. I think it comes to a lot of mother-daughter relationships. I think

Ahdaf Soueif17:33

that I was very lucky that it came quite early.

Ahdaf Soueif17:36

In my early twenties, um, I think that uh a reciprocal thing happened where she suddenly saw me as an adult.

Ahdaf Soueif17:48

But I think it took

Ahdaf Soueif17:50

Having her with me in the north of England at that very critical point in my life to actually then just sort of.

Ahdaf Soueif17:59

S see see it and see.

Presenter18:01

see her full on. And and that's the point at which there is a profundity in realizing that this mother, my mother, is a person who happens to be a mother. That's it, isn't it? Exactly. Exactly. Do they see you as a person who also happens to be a mother?

Ahdaf Soueif18:12

Exactly. Exactly.

Ahdaf Soueif18:16

Clip A C

Ahdaf Soueif18:19

Um, I think they do actually. I think they do. In fact, I think that if we have a a tug at all, it is that that I kind of want to be more their mother and less the person I am and they push me into being um into being me more.

Presenter18:34

Your mother, she she did go on to become a professor uh of English, we should say. She actually translated your your best selling booker nominated uh novel, The Map of Love, into Arabic. What was that like? I mean, did you was it collaborative or did you just hand her it and let her get on with it?

Presenter18:50

Yeah.

Ahdaf Soueif18:50

it became collaborative. She uh proposed it, or rather, as my mother would, she said, This is what I'm doing. I was very happy actually, I because she had translated one of my short stories before and I had been

Ahdaf Soueif19:04

So

Ahdaf Soueif19:06

taken aback that

Ahdaf Soueif19:08

It had come out in Arabic as I would have written it in Arabic had I known how.

Ahdaf Soueif19:12

Really, it just blew me away. And so when she said I'm going to do the Map of Love, I was happy. But then when we came to it,

Ahdaf Soueif19:19

And um

Ahdaf Soueif19:21

She would show me bits that she'd done and I would object to a word or a phrase.

Ahdaf Soueif19:26

and she would argue and we'd end up with a little fight and it got to um whose book is this anyway? And uh I remember one evening in particular sitting around with

Ahdaf Soueif19:39

With her and with my sister, and it just kind of one question came up, and we.

Ahdaf Soueif19:45

talked about it and worried at it, a question of translation, and we must have been hours just kind of sitting around the dining room table, my mum, my sister and I.

Ahdaf Soueif19:54

working things out.

Presenter19:56

Let's have some music. We're on we're on the fifth.

Presenter19:59

What are we gonna hear?

Ahdaf Soueif20:00

Um well, I thought we would just go back a tiny bit to the summer of'sixty six.'

Ahdaf Soueif20:06

Because

Ahdaf Soueif20:08

Having forced my parents to come back from England and having dropped back into my old and beloved life.

Ahdaf Soueif20:16

Um there was the summer of'sixty six was the last summer really of that life. I was sixteen and this was in the summer Abdel Halim Hafiz, who was like the big heart throb singer of everybody. With hindsight, of course, the following summer

Ahdaf Soueif20:33

was'sixty seven. It was the summer when all of life was put on hold because of the war,'sixty seven, and when it came back it was altered radically. And so summer of'sixty six

Ahdaf Soueif20:45

Beach at Alexandria, and Abdel Hayim Hanfer's singing So.

Ahdaf Soueif20:50

Oh, it's a worm.

Speaker 220:54

O mercy fill belts aw.

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Ul khatwa binyu bin habi bi bara

Speaker 221:09

Mishwa Baiduanafi However you

Presenter21:19

Abdel Halim and Sawah. Um, your friends always said that they knew you were driit out of Suaf uh did you always know you were driit?

Presenter21:28

Yeah.

Ahdaf Soueif21:28

Um

Ahdaf Soueif21:29

No.

Ahdaf Soueif21:31

I had daydreams. Like one of my daydreams was seeing a book with my name on it in a

Ahdaf Soueif21:37

Shop window.

Ahdaf Soueif21:39

But I also, you know, saw myself doing a flamenco on stage, you know, so it was all sort of what was more likely than another. You didn't know. I mean, there was a moment which I'm very conscious of where I thought, well, if you think

Ahdaf Soueif21:55

that what you want to do is write, then why aren't you writing now? You've now finished the Ph D, you're now not doing anything this afternoon, you're now etcetera. And I sat down and started to write.

Presenter22:05

I I've read you say, and I think this might be annoying to a lot of writers, and indeed aspiring writers, that once it started it was all really quite easy getting published. That's true, is it?

Ahdaf Soueif22:13

Yeah.

Ahdaf Soueif22:16

Um i it was it was very true in my case, but I think again that was a complete fluke. What happened?

Ahdaf Soueif22:22

What happened was that I was in London, and a friend of my mother's.

Ahdaf Soueif22:28

told me that a writer, Jonathan Rabin, wanted to learn Arabic because he was going to the Arab world to write a book. So she said, Here's his number, here's his address, go and teach him some Arabic.

Ahdaf Soueif22:40

And so I did, and this was the point when I had started to write my stories, and so one day when I went to give him his Arabic lesson, I took with me two of the stories that I had just written, and I showed them to him.

Ahdaf Soueif22:53

And he read them and he got up and he made two phone calls. One phone call was to his agent, Gillen Aitken, saying you should have a look at this, and Gillen then became my agent for the next fifteen years. And the other phone call was to Susannah Clapp, who is a very

Ahdaf Soueif23:09

very dear friend and who was both a reader for Jonathan Cape and was involved with Carl Miller in setting up the London Review of Books and took my first story and gave it the cover of the London Review of Books and

Ahdaf Soueif23:25

Liz Calder, who was at Jonathan Cape, contacted me and we signed a contract for the first book of short stories.

Ahdaf Soueif23:32

But that is magic. That is not really something that either was earned or expected or one had any right to. It was being in the right place and with the right person at the right time.

Presenter23:45

It was nineteen ninety nine then when you published The Map of Love and it was nominated for um the Booker shortlist.

Presenter23:52

How did that feel?

Ahdaf Soueif23:53

Oh, that felt incredible.

Ahdaf Soueif23:56

Because the book when it first appeared

Ahdaf Soueif23:59

It got some hostile reviews actually. And so I was not following reviews, I was not following sort of literary news of any kind.

Ahdaf Soueif24:07

It was completely amazing. I mean, I and friends were, you know, in tears.

Ahdaf Soueif24:14

It was great.

Presenter24:15

Let's have some more music then. Tell me what we're going to hear next.

Ahdaf Soueif24:20

Okay, I think the next track really is a track from uh

Ahdaf Soueif24:25

What feels like years spent in cars driving my kids around, either driving them

Ahdaf Soueif24:32

to and from school, or driving them to activities or to friends' houses, or occasionally packing them into the car and driving off to France. And I asked them what would be the track that that most represented that time for them, and they said, um, well, you always played Hotel California, so let's uh let's do that.

Speaker 324:51

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Speaker 324:55

Such a lovely place, such a lovely place, such a lovely face.

Speaker 325:03

Ready a room at the Hotel California

Speaker 325:09

In the time of year, in the time of year.

Presenter25:18

The Eagles and Hotel California to remind you out of Sueff of all those hours and endless weeks spent driving your young sons around as they sat in the back of the car. And their father, the man who was to go on to become uh your husband, it it was

Presenter25:32

It was through writing that you met him as a poet, Ian Hamilton. Tell me a bit about that.

Ahdaf Soueif25:36

Uh yes. Well actually um Jonathan Rabin, whom I just mentioned as uh

Ahdaf Soueif25:42

the connection for my first story getting published. Um it was it was the party for his book, the one that I had taught him some Arabic for. It was so it was the launch of that book. And at that launch I met Ian.

Presenter25:55

The life that you lived as as a as a married woman with Ian then, it seemed that you almost sort of lived between two places. And it it that seems like a very difficult choice, I mean, for both of you in a way. How how did that work, or did it work?

Ahdaf Soueif26:11

Well, it was organic.

Ahdaf Soueif26:13

At the very beginning the the decision was that we would live half the year here and half the year there. But of course that didn't work out. And Ian would come to Egypt and he would be very happy for about two weeks and then he would be very restless and unhappy.

Ahdaf Soueif26:29

It became very clear that uh it wasn't going to work and that um it was easier.

Ahdaf Soueif26:35

for me to be in England than it was for him to be.

Presenter26:39

in Egypt.

Ahdaf Soueif26:39

Yeah.

Presenter26:40

And it was very important to you, understandably, was it, to to to make sure that your sons understood Egypt, and that that was as much part of their life.

Ahdaf Soueif26:49

It was very important to me that my sons should be Egyptian as much as they were British. They had have

Ahdaf Soueif26:56

you know, a very strong and big and loving family in Egypt that they had to be part of.

Presenter27:02

Edward Side was one of your well, they're sort of called first readers, aren't they? Those people that you present a manuscript to before you present it to anybody else, along with that, your husband, Ian Hamilton, also one of your first readers. I mean, those people must be crucial in the journey of somebody's creativity. I mean, it's a huge act of trust, surely, to place your manuscript in somebody's hands and say, I I really honestly want to know what you think and what you think might change what I've just done.

Ahdaf Soueif27:27

Um, yeah, absolutely, totally. But they are different relationships. I mean, I would say that there were three people, my mother and Ian and Edward Said, they were three people who were

Presenter27:34

They

Ahdaf Soueif27:36

who were there, but each one really had had a different function.

Ahdaf Soueif27:40

With Ian it was really

Ahdaf Soueif27:43

I thought he was the finest.

Ahdaf Soueif27:46

Person writing in English, alive.

Ahdaf Soueif27:49

And he was also an amazing editor. If he read something and thought it was good, or if he read a joke and laughed, you knew you'd done it, you knew you were you were there. My mother was was was almost for license and for authenticity, so it was almost a a a permission thing as well as a

Ahdaf Soueif28:08

you know, making her happy thing. And um and Edward was political. Edward was was very much once litmus test for

Ahdaf Soueif28:18

Am I morally on the right track?

Presenter28:21

My ethics.

Presenter28:22

Solid. So, how much more difficult is it writing now then with all those three significant in their own ways? Those three people dead? That must be very difficult for you.

Ahdaf Soueif28:34

I have not written a novel since the map of love.

Presenter28:38

And you're not writing are you writing now?

Ahdaf Soueif28:41

Um I started a novel about four years ago.

Ahdaf Soueif28:44

And actually, I did manage to clear a bit of space one summer, and I got about 40 pages of it done.

Ahdaf Soueif28:51

Um but to write a novel I have to give myself over to it completely.

Ahdaf Soueif28:58

And the work that I have been doing, whether on the Palestinian issue or with the Egyptian Revolution, have meant that I can't clear that space from which the novel would come. And so it's put to one side.

Presenter29:14

Let's take a break for some music. Addif um we're on your seventh choice of the day. Tell me what you're going to hear.

Ahdaf Soueif29:21

Well, I've just mentioned Palestine as a big

Ahdaf Soueif29:25

consumer of my time and my heart. And so I'm going to choose a classic of Arabic music. It's Feyruz. And this is the song that she sang for Jerusalem and that really was the soundtrack that was

Ahdaf Soueif29:44

Running through me.

Ahdaf Soueif29:46

The first time I went there at the end of two thousand.

Speaker 329:48

Li ashli kiyamadinatasala pusali.

Speaker 330:00

Li ashli kiya bahiyatal masakin.

Speaker 330:06

Yazah rat al-mada in

Speaker 330:10

You could soon

Speaker 330:13

Yeah, good soul.

Presenter30:21

That was Feyrouz and Zaharat al-Madayin. Your lifetime so far, Adeff, spans this almost unbelievable amount of political and cultural upheaval for Egypt. The end of British rule, the birth of the Republic, that happened when you were around about two years old. The Six-Day War, you were aged seventeen when that happened. The assassination of Anwar Sadat, you were in your early thirties and now, as you've just described so articulately, last spring and the uprising in Egypt. How personally do these things feel themselves to be woven through your life?

Ahdaf Soueif30:57

Totally. I mean

Ahdaf Soueif30:59

Apart from odd moments I can

Ahdaf Soueif31:02

hardly understand when people, you know, nicely and kindly want to know how you personally are doing as opposed to you publicly are doing. You know, there isn't, really.

Ahdaf Soueif31:11

uh me personally, separate from what what's happening. In the logic Yeah.

Presenter31:18

Check.

Ahdaf Soueif31:18

Uh

Presenter31:18

Your mother died in 2007. She didn't then live long enough to see the uprising in Tahrir Square.

Presenter31:25

Can you

Ahdaf Soueif31:26

Yeah.

Presenter31:26

Imagine what she might have

Ahdaf Soueif31:26

made of it.

Ahdaf Soueif31:28

Yes, I think she would have been absolutely delighted, and the number of people who

Ahdaf Soueif31:34

In the days of Tahrir, she would say to me, Imagine if your mother had been alive, imagine if she had been here.

Ahdaf Soueif31:41

And I constantly was wanting to to go home and tell her, you know, talk to her about it, describe to her, ask her.

Ahdaf Soueif31:48

And my father is delighted, overjoyed. He's eighty-eight.

Ahdaf Soueif31:58

It feels like he's lost 10 years since the revolution happened. He is I mean he watched it unfold and he is full of hope.

Presenter32:08

You have to um imagine yourself off on this island, which is where I'm going to send you now, of course. As of how do you think you'll get on?

Ahdaf Soueif32:15

It's very hard to say because sometimes

Ahdaf Soueif32:18

I feel that what I really want is to be on my own.

Ahdaf Soueif32:21

But really, mostly I'm not good at being on my own. What I like is to be.

Ahdaf Soueif32:27

on my own, in a corner, but knowing that the people I love are really nearby and being able to hear them. They're there, on tap, on call, if I want them. That is my optimum situation.

Presenter32:38

So the island's not going to be ideal then, really?

Ahdaf Soueif32:41

I think the island is going to be pretty dreadful actually.

Presenter32:44

On that note, uh let's listen to your final disc of the day. What are we going to hear?

Ahdaf Soueif32:48

Well, I can't end without having something from Um Kosum. Um Kosum, the great Egyptian diva.

Ahdaf Soueif32:56

As a child you really dislike it, and it represents sort of oldness and stodginess and stuff that goes on forever and boringness.

Ahdaf Soueif33:05

And then one day, probably in your late teens, you turn around and you find yourself humming something, you find yourself recognizing a tune and you realize that she has provided the soundtrack for your life.

Ahdaf Soueif33:20

and that you really love that music. This is a track.

Ahdaf Soueif33:24

called Sirat al-Hob, the story of love.

Speaker 333:36

Ya Malhumi Nadal

Speaker 333:41

Marad the Sharping Gawain

Presenter33:42

Uh

Presenter33:42

Go ahead.

Speaker 333:54

Yeah, my unshallow

Presenter33:59

Um kulthum and Sirat al-Hab. Um I'm going to now, of course, give you uh the books, Adif, and so I will give you well, it it can be the Bible or the Koran, which would you prefer?

Ahdaf Soueif34:10

Oh, I think it would have to be the Qur'an, really, if I can't have both.

Presenter34:13

Okay, no, you can't have both. So it's the Koran and the complete works of Shakespeare?

Presenter34:17

And another book. What's it going to be?

Ahdaf Soueif34:20

Well, I think that I think that it will have to be um

Ahdaf Soueif34:26

Aeons Keepers of the Flame.

Ahdaf Soueif34:28

When he was writing it, he would read me the chapters as they were finished, and

Ahdaf Soueif34:33

I thought it was amazing, but I also thought that I wasn't really taking it all in, and that one day I would go back to it and read it, and I've never done that, and so that would be an opportunity to do that.

Presenter34:43

Right, that's your book then.

Ahdaf Soueif34:45

And a luxury too, real life.

Presenter34:48

Uh

Ahdaf Soueif34:48

Good luck.

Presenter34:48

Uh

Ahdaf Soueif34:48

Yeah.

Ahdaf Soueif34:49

Well, I think my luxury will really have to be.

Ahdaf Soueif34:53

Um, a whole lot of blank paper. Well, lines paper really.

Ahdaf Soueif34:58

And lots of really, really smooth coloured biros.

Ahdaf Soueif35:04

I only work things out when I write them down and I think that

Ahdaf Soueif35:10

the the one way to make the island bearable will be to use it, to um to use the time, which is the real luxury that I don't ever have enough of. And so to actually treat it as a luxury, to have all the time

Ahdaf Soueif35:24

to sit down and and work things out and write them down.

Presenter35:27

Okay, we shall give you those as your luxury. And if you had to choose just one of the eight discs that you've played here today, which one would you choose to save?

Presenter35:37

I've

Ahdaf Soueif35:37

It's between

Presenter35:38

Yeah.

Ahdaf Soueif35:38

Omkulthoom, who's the past, and Eskanderella, who's the future.

Presenter35:43

I'm gonna force you.

Ahdaf Soueif35:46

Then I have to choose the future.

Presenter35:48

Uh

Ahdaf Soueif35:48

True.

Presenter35:48

Yeah.

Ahdaf Soueif35:48

Uh

Presenter35:48

I'll have to choose a Scanderella. Okay, that's yours, the first track that we heard today. At FCWev, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Presenter35:57

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Presenter36:33

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:36

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk/radio4.