‘The Interpreter’ is the English version of Arabic novel ‘Al Tarjuman’, authored by Ashraf Aboul Yazid, an eminent writer and poet of Egypt
“I began to feel like the grains of sand slipping through my fingers, leaving their rough mark behind.”
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
I am nearly driven mad as I sit alone, reflecting on the state of these working herds within the state institutions.
These Kuwaitis are asleep in the honey, only concerned with their salary, work and overtime allowances, bonuses, official duties, and their entitlement to vacations. Yet, they never ask about their role, their duty, or their obligations, as if they own the institution rather than working in it, as though these entitlements are a tax paid to them by the state simply because they are Kuwaiti, with no expectation of any work in return.
As for the Egyptians, their situation is even worse; every time I loosen the reins for one of them and he catches the scent of my need, he becomes crafty, turning into a professional swindler, like a three-card trick player in Bab El-Louq.
The rest of the herds in the institution are just numbers to me.
The Egyptians here might not know that I am more Egyptian than they are. I understand their moves, and I can probably predict what each one is thinking and planning. It’s enough to live in Egypt for a year to know its people, and I lived through university years, traveled to Egypt more than a hundred times, and met everyone there, from ministers to watchmen.
I tried replacing them. I told myself that the Lebanese were more skilled. The most famous dictionaries and encyclopedias came from them. The most famous translations were contributed by them. So, I contacted my lifelong friend, “Jean Halaq,” who reassured me that it would be an easy task.
“Jean” was away for a week and returned with names of five or six translators, all supposedly qualified, but the least of them was asking for a monthly salary of five thousand dollars, along with a furnished apartment, a car, and flight tickets. I said, “Jean, this amount is more than what a director of the institution earns.”
Maybe I should have settled for the Egyptians. They earn a quarter of that amount, or half at best. I convince myself, and they are convinced by their wages!
A few days later, “Jean Halaq” called me, laughing:
“Remember the guy who asked for five thousand dollars, and you didn’t agree? He went to your place. A private media institution gave him seven thousand, not to mention annual tickets for him and his family.”
Good for him, “Jean.” We have no share in the good. What do you want me to do? Should I invent laws to give appropriate salaries? The matter is in the hands of the civil authority. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t give a single penny to the Kuwaitis. I am the director of the institution, but I do not have the authority to fire them or deduct from their salaries, even if they didn’t work a minute!
But my real tragedy was with the translator.
I remember when “Fawaz Al-Abdallah” called me, recommending him for the job and begging me to meet him. I was suspicious it might be the same person who wrote for her. I asked the source, “Mustafa Sanad,” who confirmed to me that the writer was the Coptic man living in Alexandria, “Daniel Kheirat,” and that the recommended name was impeccable.
I thought maybe she had read this translator’s work, or someone had recommended him to her. When I asked the archive department to create a file on him, I was surprised to find I knew little about him, despite his prolific output. How had his name never come across my path, considering I have been a patron of Kuwaiti culture for half a century?
They know me… anyone whose name I’ve never come across in the field of culture, I consider nonexistent, perhaps not even born yet!
The translator came and surprised me again with his precision, competence, and vast knowledge. I closed my eyes to all his flaws and his ignorance — perhaps even contempt — for many of my friends, until he stabbed me in the back when I learned of his love story with my friend “Fawaz,” as if she had used me, in collusion with him, as a bridge to bring them closer together.
He gets married, and I end up the fool.
I could no longer stand him, and I wished “Jean Halaq” had found me a replacement for two thousand dollars. Then the translator would go, and I would hire the Lebanese on a contract-for-contract basis. “Fawaz” could go look for a screen idol in the alleys of her guarded district. After learning about the love story, I calmed down after a few days. I tolerated him, because his colleagues were far less qualified, and I had often exposed their ignorance in meetings.
Before the translator arrived, I was at a conference in Doha when something strange happened. They asked me — in a friendly manner — for the names of the staff at the institution and their qualifications. When I inquired about the purpose, they said they wanted to guide their structural setup based on ours because they were establishing an international Arab body focused on translation. They wanted to know the qualifications that helped the Arab Translation Institute thrive, to seek similar talents.
I couldn’t grasp the matter, and it seemed like some kind of trick. I returned to Kuwait, furious, because the Gulf institutions were looking to bypass us while we were scrutinizing every penny.
I resolved to restore the youth of the institution, and began my search. I don’t know whether it was bad luck or good, but “Fawaz Al-Abdallah” suggested “Mohsen Helmy” at the same time, as if fate had mapped it all out. I was hopeful because I wanted to restore the glories of the great founders of Kuwaiti cultural entities, those who established Al-Arabi magazine, set up the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters, and brought forth the Music and Theater Institutes, and to revive the Arab Translation Institute by returning to its roots and correcting its course to achieve the goals it was created for.
The translator came, and he would stay up late at his house every night, bringing me something new every morning. Ministers came and went as I presented to each one the plans and memorandums prepared by the translator.
We began contacting Arab and international institutions working in the field of translation to establish the roots of cooperation. We signed numerous agreements for understanding and partnership with them. We bought libraries and manuscripts, whether in paper, digital form, or microfilm. The result in the first year of his arrival was an achievement that equaled ten years before his arrival.
Suddenly, the translator began adhering strictly to official hours, whereas in the first year, he would spend long hours in his office outside of working hours. When I asked him about the reason for reducing his time at the institution, his excuse was that he was helping his daughter at home with studying and cooking. I began to feel that it was like grains of sand slipping through my fingers, leaving their rough mark behind, although he had not slacked off on anything I had asked him to do. Yet, I felt at peace when he was in his office next to mine, just as I felt joy when “Mounsef” was in front of me, telling me his brilliant jokes.
The difference between the two was vast. “Mounsef” is clear, direct, like transparent glass. His cheerfulness makes you forget his short stature because you watch the laughter rise from him, and you look at the sky without noticing the small figure in front of you. As for the translator, he became more melancholic, as if he feared we would envy him.
Then he made everyone turn against me; “Mohyi Saber” got angry with me because of him, and Mustafa Sanad would not stop wailing in my office because of him. He broke poor Shaden’s heart after exposing the story of the fake prize, embarrassing me in front of her. Even “Mounsef,” who no one complained about, came to tell me that “Mohsen Helmy” calls him “the king’s joker,” and this description had become attached to him everywhere he went. Even “Hamad Al-Mudhifi” started calling him “the jester Anwar,” instead of “Mounsef Anwar”!
One day, I decided to ask him directly to back off from the “Fawaz” matter:
“Listen, translator, you are new to Kuwait, and you will always remain new. Many things will remain hidden from you, even if you lived among us for a hundred years. Here, the foreigner remains a foreigner, and the immigrant remains an immigrant. Even the stateless, if they acquire citizenship, will still be known as the stateless person who was given citizenship.
In the past, people like me and the generation I learned from owed gratitude to every person we learned from. We looked at the Palestinians, Egyptians, and others who served this country with longing, love, respect, and admiration. But since 1990, a rift has formed. I, the Arab nationalist who was imprisoned in Iraq in my youth because of my Arabism, tell you that I have changed.
This institution chose, from the very beginning, to be Arab because it was born in the midst of that movement. But the current, new, and future generations have rejected Arabism and Arabs. Even the idea that Egyptians and Palestinians taught them, they now hate hearing it. They wish they had continued learning English, or Hindi, or even Persian and Turkish; perhaps they would have been better off.
You know that your country stood by Kuwait in 1990 and after. Do you know what most Kuwaitis said? ‘The Egyptians took the payment. They fought for us, but with our money.’
I know you didn’t take anything, and neither did the millions who were in Egypt or on the frontlines during the war, but that’s politics. Today, they look at you the way they look at the Indian: just another foreigner. So, when you think about marrying a woman with a name in society, you will face a campaign you won’t be able to fight. People’s words will trap you in the house. You came to work, so dedicate yourself to it, or return to your country.”
I wasn’t being harsh on him as much as I was revealing a truth he might have been blind to or would ignore if he knew it. “Fawaz” is a woman who has been parched of men since her husband disappeared twenty years ago, and because she cannot ask a Kuwaiti to marry her, given her circumstances as a woman with a missing husband, they don’t know whether he is dead or still a prisoner, she found her solution in a man, an Egyptian, who was just getting by. She thinks that if “Daniel Kheirat” dies, and his writings to her stop, “Mohsen Helmy” will continue the mission.
I knew everything from “Mustafa Sanad.” He told me how, on the night he happened to be at “Daniel Kheirat’s” house, he saw the spark of love that “Fawaz” ignited in the translator’s heart, and how “Mohsen Helmy,” likewise, seized the opportunity and clung to her train, not the train that left from Sidi Gaber to Cairo, but the one that took her from Cairo to Kuwait.
Then what was meant to happen, happened—something greater than me, him, “Fawaz,” and everyone.
I was visiting the office of the Director General of the National Committee for Prisoners and Missing Persons. There was cooperation between the institution and the committee, where we placed the slogan “Do not forget our prisoners” on our publications, as well as on the mural we set up at the venue of our annual conference. We would also sometimes broadcast documentary films provided by the committee about Martyrs’ Day and Missing Persons’ Day, airing them internally during events. In his office was a Swiss man, “Frank,” whom I knew. We had worked with him two years ago to review some French and German translations. With him in the office was a guest, whom I learned had come from Iraq with an important message.
The Director’s face was beaming, and he told me I was a good omen, for the guest had handed them an envelope containing photos of IDs and passports of Kuwaiti nationals who were alive but had disappeared in one of the cities of Iraq. For a moment, my heart skipped a beat; the matter was grave. Then, a crazy thought crossed my mind, and I waited for the guest to leave so I could ask the Director:
“This is good news. In this case, what do you do? … And if you allow me to take a look at these photos, just out of curiosity and the joy of this discovery.”
The man replied with goodwill, extending the envelope:
“Let it be, Dr. Salman, this envelope and its contents are a secret between you and me. We receive many such papers, but first, we need to scrutinize them, verify, and then try to bring the person back safely before informing their family.
We have an agreement with some medical centers to place them there. Once we are sure of their well-being, both physically and mentally, we contact their families and make their story public. We don’t want to jump the gun, as it’s dangerous for them, for the people who have connected us with them, and for their families if any step in these arrangements is compromised.”
It was as if I was looking for my own face in the mirror and saw it, my smile widening. Among the papers, I found a photo of a passport belonging to “Bader Khaled Al-Sultan.” It was the same face I knew, the young man who had married “Fawaz Al-Abdullah” over twenty years ago.
I returned the papers to my friend, the Director, wishing I could fly back to the institution. I reached my office half an hour later and asked if the translator was in his office. I learned that he had arrived early, as usual. I wanted to go to him and see the impact of the news on his face, but I decided to call him on his internal office line:
“Look, translator, if you had listened to my advice, things wouldn’t have come to this. But every palm tree is shaken by the wind. Fawaz’s husband, the one who was missing in Iraq, has turned out to be alive. He’ll be in Kuwait in a few days, and now your relationship with his wife has become illicit. I don’t think your life can continue smoothly in Kuwait after this.
She doesn’t know, and perhaps if you tell her, it will shock her, and she might not handle it—perhaps it could even destroy her. I advise you to be a man and withdraw. Today, not tomorrow… Why aren’t you responding? Of course, you have no words to reply with!
“Hello, hello…” (Continues)
Click here for Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25,
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About the Author
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is a renowned Egyptian poet, journalist, novelist, travelogue writer and translator. He is author of around three dozen books and Editor-in-Chief of Silk Road Literature Series.