On Feb. 10, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and Dartmouth Dialogues co-hosted Egyptian journalist and author Ahmed Naji for an event titled “The Power of Literature and Free Expression in the Middle East.” In 2016, Naji was imprisoned in Egypt for “violating public decency” in his 2014 novel “Using Life” — which tells the story of young people in Cairo creating a series of documentary films and depicts LGBTQ+ people and explicit scenes.
The event was moderated by Middle Eastern studies professor Tarek El-Ariss. Eighty-two Upper Valley community members attended the event in Haldeman Hall, while another 33 people watched an online webinar, according to Dickey Center communications manager Lars Blackmore.
“We were very pleased to see such a great student turnout and participation at the event,” Dickey Center senior policy director Elizabeth Shackelford wrote in an email statement. “I think it demonstrates that students are eager to hear from people who are paying a price for freedoms we often take for granted here.”
Naji began the event by explaining that his career as a journalist in Egypt began when he was around 17 or 18 years old. Approximately 20 years later, he wrote “Using Life” and published it as a PDF document on his personal blog, out of fear that it would be censored if it was physically published.
“This new technology [the Internet] was beyond the government and the authority of censorship and hard to grab,” Naji said.
Because of his internet access, Naji said his blog became a place to “experiment with language.”
Naji said that his motivation for writing the book “was not political.” However, in 2016, after a reader complained about the novel’s inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and sex scenes, Naji was put on trial in the Cairo Appeal Court for “violating public modesty.” During the trial, he argued his book was a work of literature — in response to the prosecution’s claim that the it was “not creative work” — and invited experts such as former Egyptian culture minister Gaber Asfour, head of the Egyptian Writers Union Mohamed Salmawy and internationally acclaimed novelist Sonallah Ibrahim to testify in his defense, he continued.
Despite the support of other writers, Naji was sentenced to two years in prison for “prostitution,” he said. While in prison, he realized writing contained “power” after witnessing other inmates cry while reading an Arabic novel about “a very popular Islamic romance.”
“I’m here because I am the writer,” he said, reflecting on his sentiments at the time. “And this [witnessing other inmates cry while reading] is a sacred situation — there is power.”
Transitioning to the present, Naji said he believed all governments now have a “censorship machine involved” to control the creation of literature.
“The current Arabic literature is in crisis especially because of the involvement of workers, especially Emerit Saudis, in literature and publishing,” Naji said.
Dartmouth Libraries financial analyst Adam Ali said in an interview after the event that book banning has been a “big topic” in the past several years.
“The service of a library, whether it’s a public one or one [in a] college or any kind of educational apparatus, is ultimately to provide information and, in turn, fight against censorship,” Ali said.
During the event’s audience Q&A segment, one attendee asked Naji about how he believed artificial intelligence would impact writers. Naji responded that he does not “have any problems” with AI, having used it in his own work. He added that the “problem” is not the technology itself but the “people who own the technology.”
“I think we should push the conversation towards the people who run AI, not the regulation, [people who use it] and AI itself,” Naji said.
Another audience member asked about the future of free expression in “Arabic literature” given its “culture of [government] surveillance.” Naji said he believed it was “backwards” that publishing companies in the Middle East publish “the same horrible history novels.”
Because of publishing practices in the Middle East, Naji chose to continue his writing in English, adding that he feels he does not “have any connection” to Egypt and has not lived there for over 10 years.
A third audience member asked Naji about his opinions on the sentencing of Kevin Engel ’27 and Roan Wade ’25, two pro-Palestinian campus activists who were found guilty of misdemeanor tresspass last month.
“I believe that… the university should actually stand in protecting the integrity of physical decision, and so I’m sorry [to hear that],” Naji said.
Attendee Oumiekhari Fatty-Hydara ’27 said the event reminded her that “things like literature, music, outfits and other forms of self-expression” are a “privilege.”
“Literature, especially, has always been used as a tool to challenge societal norms and speak a truth when others try to silence you,” she added.
Jackson Sandrich ’28 said the event “revert[ed]” his “preconceived notion of Egypt” as “westernized and modernized.”
“[The event] is sort of a reminder that [democracy] is not exactly the practice there, and that it’s still got some ways to come,” he said
El-Ariss said in an interview after the event that he hoped students took away an awareness of “the power of literature [and] the power of words.”
“Words are … how we communicate, either by writing or talking,” he said. “ … [Literature] is how we reach each other, we move each other, we establish a nation with one another, and this is what the role of the university is — to encourage people to develop these modes of expression.”
