Abena Ntoso: Welcome to Backlit, a space for groundbreaking conversations with emerging authors. I'm your host, Abena Ntoso. In each episode, I converse with a contemporary writer and thinker whose work inspires deep and authentic conversation around social issues. Our discussion is not just about the book, or even just about the writer’s life and work; our discussion is a shared space where minds meet to be inspired by one another, explore issues together, and ultimately to generate new ideas and perspectives. 

Today’s thought partner is Egyptian novelist, poet, and short story writer Mohamed Kheir. Mohamed is the author of over 10 award-winning books, including two poetry collections, three short story collections, and three novels. Mohamed’s latest novels, Slipping and Sleep Phase, have been translated to English by Robin Moger and have garnered international acclaim. Alongside his literary work and a career in journalism, Mohamed also writes lyrics for young singers from Egypt and Lebanon. 

Mohamed, thank you so much for joining me in conversation today

Mohamed Kheir: Thank you, Abena, for having me today. Thank you.

Abena Ntoso: I am so excited to speak with you and brainstorm together, because you are one of those incredibly talented authors whose work blends multiple genres, multiple perspectives, multiple time periods, and multiple cultures. I remember the very first time I encountered your work, and I knew it would be a fascinating read.

I'd love to have you start off by reading the opening paragraph of Sleep Phase, which starts out with the main character, Warif, who has just been released from prison, trying to acclimate himself to a changed Cairo, and the story shifts between the past, present, and future as wife encounters drastic shifts in reality.

Abena Ntoso: (from Chapter 1: Warif)

It took him a while to realize that this was Talaat Harb Street. He wandered in under cover of red maple and broad-leaved walnut trees; high-crowned poplars were dressed in a single line like an honor guard, hiding the street's khedival facades from view. More than once he was startled by squirrels, darting through his legs as they scampered with their walnuts to the chestnut and pine woods, which occupied the site of the old stone pedestal and flag-pole. Then the intersection, formerly a babel of car horns and the sputter-bang of motorbikes short-cutting through lines of cars that yielded to the commands of rural conscripts, traffic signals made flesh. Where all that had once been, there were now only green tracks, grass flattened by feet that moved quietly between the trees and carpets of leaves that announced autumn's onset, the chatter of the sparrows and parakeets hopping between treetops, and a breeze freighted with a faint dampness, as though the morning's dew had been held suspended until this afternoon, through which Warif was walking in search of an address and marveling. It wasn't that the names of the streets and squares had changed, he told himself; they hadn't: it was that the streets and squares themselves were different and now seemed estranged from those names.

Mohamed Kheir: Thank you.

Abena Ntoso: So, your novel is both realistic and fantastical and there are many surrealist elements. And as the story goes on, it becomes even more complex and surreal. So, what inspires your imagination and creativity? And are you inspired by any visual artists, or musicians, or films?

Mohamed Kheir: You know, it's difficult to pinpoint one or two sources of inspiration.If you spent a single day in Cairo, you would find an authenticity to inspire thousands of writers. In any case, my imagination stems from the empirical possibilities created by reality itself. If we extend every possibility in our cities to its logical conclusion, we may arrive to wild outcomes, just as Warif in the novel, when his ironic suggestion turned it into a strange reality.

Mohamed Kheir: my, strange reality. My background in visual art is not extensive. But speaking of surrealism, I have long admired the work of Salvador Dali, his art, not his personality, but I have visited his museum in Berlin, so the great work were not there in the museum. I keep asking about his great work, but they keep telling me it's not here, it's in this museum, it's in this museum.

So I also, of course, I love music, especially since I write songs, and I am, generally, influenced by Eastern music. As for cinema, I am a great admirer of it.

Abena Ntoso: I love that you bring in these other forms of art, the… the inspiration from visual art, and… and from music, and… and I… I feel like there's a visual, spectacular element to the book as I'm reading the story, I can picture, I can visualize the action, the story, the place, and it even feels like there's a music to it.

Mohamed Kheir: That's important for me to make a reader imagine. The story, it talks about rebuilding the city. So, even if you live in Cairo, you have to then imagine if the… City completely became different.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes, yes. In fact, when I was reading it. I… it made me want to travel to Cairo. It made me want to visit, so that I could experience some of these things that you were describing. It was… it was beautiful. In fact… and there were some descriptions of food in the book, also, that made me very hungry, so I'm gonna look for an Egyptian restaurant.

Mohamed Kheir: We have very delicious food in Egypt, so I invite you to…

Abena Ntoso: Thank you, thank you. 

And, you know, so speaking of visual art, one of the things that actually caught my attention when I first saw the book was the cover. And so I was… I was in a local bookshop in Houston, here in Texas, and the book was on the shelf, and the cover caught my attention. It's… it's a beautiful, beautiful cover by Hossam Dirar, and the cover caught my attention, just beautiful, abstract, incredibly colorful, the lettering, and then when I read the back, I said, okay, I… I have to read this book. So, how did you choose Hossam Digar's work for the cover design, and how did you know that his artwork and the cover design would capture the story perfectly?

Mohamed Kheir: Okay, in fact, it was my American publisher, Toulouse Press, that chose Hossam Dirar. About one of his paintings was used as the cover of my previous novel, Slipping. Perhaps because he's an Egyptian artist, he's a wonderful artist, I admire his work. And by coincidence, he was born in the same year as I was, and he graduated from the same university, Halangar University, in the same year also. That's… that's…

So he studied fine arts while I studied literature. I admired… I admired his painting and found it a powerful exploration of the main character in my previous novel, Alier. The same happened again with the Sleep Phase. The rich, interwoven colors reflected both the inner and the outer wallets of the main character, whereas a distinctive blend of beauty and confusion.

Well, also, I love that I… I'm happy to hear that from you, you, the cover who, convinced you to buy the book. I think Hassam will have you hearing this too. And also, he's, he's a wonderful writer, even my Greek publisher they want to use the same cover. That's how they loved it. You know? Even I loved it. But they loved it this much, they wanted the same… the same cover with a Greek edition.

Abena Ntoso: Yeah, it's… it's beautiful. The cover is a work of art, and I cannot imagine a cover that better captures the essence of the story and the vitality in the city, and the challenges of all of the shifting and contemporary versus past, just… Beautiful.

Mohamed Kheir: And he has, you know, strange thing that even the color is very colorful. It can reflect the very sadness in the novel. The novel is sad but you can see the novel has a very, very colorful cover. That's genius, yeah.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes, yes. And we were just speaking about Cairo a moment ago, and your vivid descriptions of the neighborhood streets and culture of Cairo evoke scenes that are simultaneously historical, contemporary, and futuristic. So, how does Cairo and Egyptian culture in general inspire your literary work and your life?

Mohamed Kheir: You know, I'm very much a city writer. Also, I have lived almost my entire life in Cairo. I spent my early childhood in Iraq, El Iraq, in Bagdad, in Iraq. Where my father was a political refugee there in Iraq. Perhaps that made me rediscover Cairo at some point through fresh ice, rather than growing up in the naturally like its native.

It's a vast city that deeply influences its inhabitants and the Arab world in general. The meaning of the word Cairo in Arabic is conqueror. And it's indeed so, but it's also a beloved city, very beloved city.

All my novels and most of my short fiction are set in contemporary Cairo. That may seem natural, but it's not. Due to political circumstances and the sensitivities surrounding literary awards in the Arab world, many writers resort to historical fiction or entirely imagined cities.

I am a devoted son of Egyptian culture. I have published several poetry collection in Egyptian, colloquial Arabic, and have written lyrics for many songs in the same dialect in Egyptian.

Abena Ntoso: That's really interesting. I didn't know very much about Arabic literature, especially fiction, when I read your book, and so it's very interesting to hear you say that there are many fiction writers who write in Arabic, fiction that is historical or, fantastical with… with worldbuilding and… and made-up cities. It's… it's very interesting to hear that, and I think there are a lot of people who read English, who would be very interested in reading translations of Arabic literature.

Mohamed Kheir: I hope, I hope so. Of course, the big names in Arabic literature, it's, like, very known in the west. Sometimes it's Naguib Mahfouz, of course, the Egyptian writer, who won the Nobel Prize in 1988. He's the greatest in Egypt Arabic literature. Also in the poetry, Mahmoud Darwish, also Levtah Singh. There is Alaa al Aswany in the modern literature, also talking about Egyptians mainly. But Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian, of course. But I hope, I hope, I hope we see, we can see a more translation from Arabic, from the Arabic world.

This year, you know, Sleep Phase was in the… The National American Book Foundation, you know, was in the long list. So that was very happy for me, because it was the first novel from Egypt in this list. I mean, just translation. So I hope, I hope, there will be more interest from the Western publishers in Arabic literature.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes, I hope so, too. I hope so, too.

So we're talking about literature in translation. Can you describe the process of having your novel translated into English? What was the experience like for you, and what did you learn through the literary translation process that you didn't know before?

Mohamed Kheir: Okay, my translator is a wonderful British, Robin Moger. Strangely, we have never met in person. Also, I later discovered a remarkable coincidence. He had a friend who lived in the apartment next to mine, and he used to visit him before we even knew each other, in Cairo. When he began translating my stories. He had already left Egypt. Robin, he translated several of my short stories, then my novel, Slipping, for which he won, his translation won the Saif Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation into English. During that time, we communicated closely and developed much well understanding, so that we didn't need the same level of constant communication during the translation of Sleep Phase. Okay, we already understand each other. So I have, of course, reviewed the excellent translation. I already know that complete translation, complete, complete translation is impossible now. Languages never fully align, you know? No matter how hard we try, even when the text is my own, and I am overseeing the translation, still it's always a fascinating process to observe the translator's effort to bring the two languages as close as possible by receiving their text.

Abena Ntoso: I find literary translation especially interesting, because you're not just translating for the idea, but you're also translating for the language, for the sound, for the rhythm, and… and so those things, you don't want to lose the texture and rhythm of the words when you translate, so it's very… it's even more difficult to find the right words, because you're not just communicating ideas, you're also communicating the beauty of the language.

Mohamed Kheir: You are not a literary translator if you lost the music of, you know, the music of language. Of course. Also, you'll also find this small difference between… Works, and between culture. I, I will give you an example. In, Slipping, the previous one, there is a character called Sayeda. So, in the first draft, Ruben translated it to “lady,” because it means lady. Sayeda in Arabic, it means “lady.” But in the text, it was the name of the character. Some… people called Sayeda woman, okay? But also, usually, the people who called Sayeda. They are poor people. So they choose this name. In high-class, people it's very rare to find the name Sayeda.

However, it's, you know, it's, it's, it reflects this sense of a rich lady, okay, you know? It's a, like, rich lady, but, usually, the poor people who choose the name. And all this discussion in one word, you know?

Abena Ntoso: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting to hear you speak about the… the cultural knowledge behind the word choice also, because that's a third thing. So now you're trying to translate for understanding, for comprehension, then you're trying to translate for the sound and the music of the language, and then you're also trying to translate to as best as you can, communicate The other connotations of… of the word, you know, this fact that, as you mentioned, you know, it's a name that tends to be chosen by a particular social class, that part won't come through when you translate to English, and so how… how do you do that? You know, how do you… how do you capture that aspect that someone who reads and writes in Arabic will get that. But if we read it and write it, or we read it in English, we're not going to… to get that part of it. Yeah.

Mohamed Kheir: Yeah, that's difficult and fun, also, I think.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes. It feels like a puzzle, like, when you're trying to figure it out. It's like, okay, I have all these pieces that I have to figure out how it's gonna go together to make the perfect… yeah, yeah. Very interesting.

Another thing that you capture really well in your storytelling is this idea of time shifts and scene shifts that give the story this surreal and dreamlike quality. And you have this way of telling us about moments in ways that feel very much like 1984, almost, like George Orwell's 1984. And so we can't help but wonder about the ways in which our current media landscape—between mass media, social media—the way it contributes to a sense of disorientation and distrust in the world. So, how does Warif’s struggle to uncover truth explore some of our own contemporary struggles with our chaotic world?

Mohamed Kheir: You know, the mass of information, or, or the source of information, and it's regular flow, often not based on facts at all, eventually leads in the novel to the creation of future plans for news that has not yet happened. If, in the real world, entirely or partially false news can be published and still gain credibility among millions. What prevents such news from being prepared in advance, and even supported by creating events that match the news? In other words, reversing the process so that the news precedes the event, rather than the other way around. Strangely, when a real piece of news did occur, when Wagdi, Warif's friend disappeared, Warif found no trace of him in the news. It was simply not part of the programming when he lost his friend, and it's a… it's a real news, but it wasn't. It's not programmed to, you know, to be in the news.

So it's, it's a world we live in, and it's, it's, it's get, it's getting more difficult with all this AI and trick videos, and, you know, it's, it's… We have to find where is the real fact.

Abena Ntoso: Yeah. There's a lot of fake news out there, and the challenges that Warif has as he is trying to figure out what this new world is, and what has changed, and what is real, you know, I think it's a challenge that we more and more often are feeling ourselves when we watch the news, because it is very, you know, I, for the most part, always was able to count on the news telling me what was actually happening. But now there's a lot of spin, a lot of, you know, like you said, AI, and so, you know, especially with social media, it's very difficult to know what is… what you can rely on, and yeah, yeah.

Mohamed Kheir: I don't know if you watch this series TV show, Saxon? Did you… Saxon? I don't know if you're…

Abena Ntoso: No.

Mohamed Kheir: telling the news, probably. So… and there is a very big, news company, you know, but they, like, they don't, have real, interest in the real news, you know, they just, all the time, they do, you know, the fake news, and, just to, everyone wants and, you know, and gain, watchers and audience.

So, in one of the episodes, they tried to buy, a very serious, news company, okay? News, TV.

A very serious one, and one of the partners in the last minute, he said no, we will not buy it, we will not make it like us. And they asked him why, and she said because even we, we need to know the real news, some days. You know, if we bought this very serious news agency, and make it fake news like us, no one, even us will know the real news. 

That’s crazy. But the problem is, now everybody points to everybody and say it's… you are fake news, you are fake news. So we don't know what the truth is. That’s the problem.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes. Yep, that… that's what made me think of 1984, when I was… when I was reading the book, is that the creation and… and doctoring of the news, you know, creating the news. Yeah, yeah. And so… so just to stay on this for a minute, so then, what do we do? I know you have some experience as a journalist. And, you know, you are an imaginative thinker as a fiction writer and poet, so how do we figure out in our lives and in our world what is real and what is not, and how do we live in a world like that? What does it take to live in a world like that?

Mohamed Kheir: Yes, I have a long career in journalism. But I am not anymore, you know? And that maybe tells you something, because the journalism itself—good journalism—now doesn't make money. That's why it's only the social media that make money, and the social media, has no interest in the real. You know, every group of people lives their own… with their own facts. So.. and the social media gain money from this. Nobody care about the real, what's the real? So, that, of course, kills the real journalism. Not because no one can tell the truth, but the truth doesn't sell anymore. You know? It doesn’t make money. That's really the real problem.

You know, the world has lost even the, you know, principle. Nobody, nobody cares, you know? Nobody cares. The people who care, they have no power to make influence.

But we have, you know, the humanity always, going on, you know, always, and we hope it will continue, like, it will win some way. Keep writing, and keep searching for the truth, because this is the trip of humanity.

Abena Ntoso: It makes me also think about the possibility, as we're thinking about journalism versus fiction, maybe part of a possible way of looking at this is, if we can build more of a love for fiction, and a respect for fiction, then that might make it possible for people to, yes, enjoy made-up news and made-up stories, but to be very clear that that is fiction, and we enjoy fiction in our lives, but when it comes to reporting and journalism, that, we are very clear on, is for nonfiction, is for the things that are actually happening. So your thoughts made me think about that.

Mohamed Kheir: Maybe, but the problem is, okay, I love, I love that people already love stories. Okay, and, if people don't love stories, we were not getting work as a writer, you know. So, no, the problem, yes, the stories, the news, as the stories, is spread more than anything else.

Yeah, so, but the real news,it's not much the kind of the stories of the fiction. It's a very different thing. Most of the time the truth is, it's not, it's not fun, it's not, you know… unlike the stories. 

You know, also the most interest of fiction is that it's also the fiction tell about the world, you know? We have to… even if the news is fake, you know, that's the problem. That's the most thing. That's why, in the very dictator country, we knew about it from their stories, from their novels and short stories and poetry.

You know, that's how we knew about it. Okay, so, we know about, the, the life in, Russia, you know, and 100 years ago, from, you know, Chekov, this to basically, more than 100. So, in the dictatorship countries, we know what really happened from the novel, from the story. But, the problem now… In the liberal world even the… we used to get the real, line the very specific line between the fiction and the news. Now it's very, you know, mixing. You don't know what’s true. And everything happened, even if it's true, people say maybe it's not true, maybe it's a blame, it's a… you know, nobody knows. And we have to think, because if we lost the liberal world, what will be left? What will we go to that’s really left? But I'm happy with this conversation… having this conversation with you.

Abena Ntoso: Yes. That's an interesting, idea, and the blurring of the lines between fiction and nonfiction, and then even also poetry and fiction and nonfiction, you know, as we blur those lines, there's… there are good things about it, and then not-so-good things about it.. or good things about it, and then challenges, right? And the good thing is, yes, it's engaging, and it's… it's fun, and it makes you… really think, it captures your mind, but then, as we're discussing, the challenge is that then people are using reality to create fake things, and then saying that, well, this is… this is reality, maybe, right? And then we get confused, so… Yeah, this is interesting, I love this.

Abena Ntoso: Another thing that shows up in the book is this idea of destruction and reconstruction, and there's a chapter in particular which explores ways in which the past seems to reappear in the present. So, how does the juxtaposition of destruction versus reconstruction and past versus present lead to new perspectives in our relationship with time.

Mohamed Kheir: Okay. Cairo, actually, Cairo, like many parts of Egypt in recent years is undergoing a broad phase of demolition and reconstruction under what is called development. This has sometimes meant the complete removal of entire neighborhoods and the replacement with modern buildings. This is, of course, deeply impactful in a historic city like Cairo, which is over a thousand years old. I addressed this previously in my novel Slipping, where the Egyptian Bahar, the character Bahar, documents semi-magical places for fear they may disappear soon. And in Sleep Phase this transformation actually occurs combined by demographic shift as the city becomes more cosmopolitan. So in a way that resembles colonial times, this brings about a perspective that combines development and cleaning the city, cleaning the city in a European style, ultimately, creating a tourist image of the city where most of the original inhabitants live in a… separate districts. This blending of old and new, foreign and local, disrupts the scenes of present time, making movement between streets and neighborhoods… likes, movement through time, especially as the news itself becomes detached from its temporal constraints.

Abena Ntoso: Interesting. And it's something that I've seen happening in other cities as well, and it sounds like in Cairo, it's happening, very consistently, like, this replacement of the historical sites and architectural styles in the city being replaced and rebuilt so that the city looks completely different. And I love that you capture something that's happening in real life, and turn it into something that is surreal and fantastical in the story, so that we get this sense of how jarring and how strange it is to feel and see this happening in real life, and we get that translated into story, so that… and I think here, you know, the fact that this is a fiction story helps us to understand better what it feels like to see this happening in the city in real life. Because it does feel very surreal when you walk into a city that you have known for a long time and see the landscape and the environment completely different.

Mohamed Kheir: Yes, that's true. And of course, in the real life, it's not like in the novel. In the novel, I imagined this mission is completely done, and that the city is completely became different, very different, and it's really, really, really beautiful, because I wouldn't discuss if it's beautiful or not beautiful. It's not about that. It's about, it's your city or not your city, even if it's better, even if it's more beautiful.

Now there is a lot of point of view in Cairo, in our government, about making Cairo like Dubai, or like, I don't know, Europe, or like that. Of course, I’m against this, because Cairo is Cairo.

A lot of historical streets, a lot of ancient buildings. It's a very rich and historical city, and even if you want to develop the city, it's not about making it like another very modern city, you know?

So in the novel, Warif… he imagined this, and actually, he suggests this in one of his posts on Facebook, and he get arrested because of this post, and get in jail, and I rook nearly, he… when he came to the streets after several years, he found that they actually did what he was talking about, okay? So, but, you know, nobody said it's him, it's his… And now he has to live in the, what he, you know, dreams about it some days, even if in a joke. That's why, also, he's sometimes thinking, what if all this not happened in real? What if I was just, got insane, got crazy in the jail, and just imagine all of this?  He lost, then, this reality inside his mind and out his… out of his mind.

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes, and I remember as I got maybe halfway or two-thirds through the book, I stopped for a minute, and I looked at my daughter, I said, I'm not sure if this is now… if he really did see these things? He really did… Was he really in jail or not? You know, was he… was he imagining this? And then you start to question his sanity, is he going insane? And I love that, because iit really does feel that way sometimes when you're living in this world.

Mohamed Kheir: Maybe all this in my head, maybe. Also, maybe, yes.

Abena Ntoso: There's been a lot of… of research about consciousness these days, and what is human consciousness? And I think this idea of this reality that we live in, is this a reality that we've created in our minds? You know, because how one person experiences it is different from another person that experiences it, but then there are things that we can say, no, this is true, this is real, this is not in your mind, so where is that line? You know, again, we're talking about lines between fiction and nonfiction, what is real, what is not real, what have you fabricated? What is in only your consciousness versus what is shared among us, not just because it is the powerful or dominant story, but because it is the truth, right? And that whole idea of truth is, like, again, now we're at 1984 with George Orwell, and what is truth, you know? Yeah.

Mohamed Kheir: Yeah, yes, but now we made… we, you know, now we… everybody. In 1984, the government was making this separate, parallel truth, okay, to control people. Now, everybody or every group of people, they live in their own truth, you know, and the media help for this with the algorithm, and the bubbles you live in, so… it's crazy. It’s very crazy.

It's like what Einstein… Einstein said, it's… there is no one platform in the universal, it's not one. It's where… it's where you stand, I feel, you know? Depends on where you, where you stand, where you swear, you know? Different times, different truths, different… And that's… has its good, its good ways, also. 

Abena Ntoso: Yes, yes. This idea of relativity, even in our sense of reality and the physical world, and this idea of subjectivity versus objectivity. Yeah.

So a lot of your work is a combination of imagination and taking what you're observing in the contemporary world. How does this process and journey of writing the novel, how has it transformed your life and your work?

Mohamed Kheir: I like to say that I wrote Sleep Phase while walking. Okay, I write it right while I was working, that's literally true.

The novel's connection to the construction and the demolition of the city, as well as to real and imagined streets led me to prefer working every day, usually in the evening due to Cairo’s heat. Contemplating the street while imagining them at the same time, and making sure my memory wasn't deceiving me. It's also my third novel, and it took less time to write than my previous ones, perhaps because I was so immersed in it, or simply because I have become more experienced.

Abena Ntoso: That's fascinating. I love hearing that you wrote the novel while walking, and that makes sense now when I read it, because there are so many moments when Warif is walking, and he's noticing what has changed around him, and noticing the… the landscape. The neighborhood, and the attention to detail in… in the environment is… beautiful, it's wonderful. So, now it's… it makes so much sense to hear that you were writing a lot of it while you were walking.

Mohamed Kheir: And I was seeing the, yeah, the Cairo Street, and also imagined the Europe street when I was there sometimes, to make this, mixing between them, you know, to imagine how they replace the city. So, and, also they, not only replaced the cities, they also replace the people.They import the people to manage the city and the new companies or something.

So yes, I wrote it while I was walking, while I walked in the street. It was not easy, because Cairo Street is very, you know, a lot of people walking. I love it. I love it.

Abena Ntoso: Beautiful, beautiful. This has been wonderful. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to share some of your writing process, your thoughts and insights behind it, and to brainstorm with me. I really appreciate this time.

Mohamed Kheir: I appreciate it too, and thank you for having me. You made me talk more than I expected, so you are good at this.

Abena Ntoso: Aww! Well, thank you, thank you! I enjoy it! 

We’ve been talking today with author Mohamed Kheir. You’ve been listening to Backlit, and I am your host, Abena Ntoso. Mohamed’s most recent book, Sleep Phase, is available for purchase using the link in the episode details. Today’s episode was produced in my home studio in Houston, Texas, in conjunction with Bricolage Lit, and features the song “Campfire” by Midnight Daydream in the intro and outro. For more information on Backlit, please visit abenantoso.com/podcast/backlit. Thank you for listening, and until next time, be well, read books, and let’s generate some new ideas together!