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  • Cairo: Fact or Fiction

    Egypt Today, Egypt
    May 1 2005


    Fact or Fiction


    Alaa El-Aswany thought he had it made when his Omaret Yacoubian
    rocketed to the top of the Arab world's bestseller list. But as a
    star-studded cast wrapped up the film adaptation of the
    dentist-turned-novelist's book last month, residents of the real-life
    building in which the story is set filed libel suits against the
    author and production company, saying Omaret Yacoubian is a thinly
    veiled roman à clef. Publisher, producer, screenwriter and author all
    deny the charges.Who's right? That's the multi-million-pound question

    As he flipped through the pages of Sawt El-Umma last December, Adel
    Khela was drawn to a story in the independent Cairo weekly about a
    new movie then in production. Its title, Omaret Yacoubian (The
    Yacoubian Building), just happened to share the name of the storied
    Downtown Cairo building that was home to a tailor shop his late
    father, Malak Khela, had willed to Adel and Adel's brothers.

    Omaret Yacoubian, the newspaper reported, wasn't just another
    Egyptian movie: It was the biggest-budget production in the history
    of the nation's film industry, featuring an all-star cast that was
    working day and night to bring to life the the 2002 runaway
    bestseller of the same name by dentist-turned-novelist Alaa
    El-Aswany.

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    And who was El-Aswany? None other than his late father's one-time
    neighbor and archenemy, as Adel sees it the same El-Aswany who Sawt
    El-Umma reported had made a scheming tailor named Malak and his
    brother Ebskheron central figures in his book. Stunned by what he
    says were several similarities between the movie's Malak Khela and
    his own father, Adel Khela rushed out to buy the novel.

    That, he says, is when surprise turned to rage.

    `Unfortunately, I realized that [the novel] has been out since 2002 I
    got upset when I realized that I have stayed unaware of this insult
    for three years. I found the novel attributed shameful deeds to
    Malak,' says Khela, who with his brother Yasser still makes
    custom-tailored shirts in his father's shop in the Yacoubian
    Building.

    `How could it be fiction? He [El-Aswany] mentioned my father's name,
    his vocation, his place of work and his brother's name? Also, Khela's
    physical description [in the novel] is almost identical to my
    father's so he [El-Aswany] means him [Malak Khela],' Adel Khela says.


    Ashraf Talaat
    El-Aswany, the author

    In Omaret Yacoubian, El-Aswany tackles a nest of thorny issues
    including Islamist extremism, poverty, corruption and homosexuality
    through the lens of people living in a real Downtown building. As
    Sawt El-Umma noted in its report last December, the novel features an
    opportunist shirtmaker named Malak Khela, who rents a room on the
    building's roof and turns it into a workshop. Khela is more than a
    struggling entrepreneur, though: El-Aswany's character is also deep
    into currency and liquor smuggling.

    An Egyptian-Armenian business leader named Nichan Yacoubian built the
    real nine-story building on 958 square meters of prime real estate on
    Talaat Harb Street in the 1930s. His son, Decran Yacoubian, who has
    owned the facility since Yacoubian died in the 1940s, currently lives
    in Europe, according to Fikry Abdel Malek, the landlord's agent since
    1961 (more on him in a moment he's suing, too).

    After learning of what they saw was their father's role in the book,
    Adel Khela and his brothers filed a civil libel suit against
    El-Aswany, claiming the author defamed their father in the book to
    avenge what they allege was an old lawsuit the author lost to the
    tailor. Their demands: LE 2 million in damages.

    El-Aswany's dental clinic shared an apartment on the first floor of
    the Yacoubian building with Khela until the author moved his clinic
    to a new office in Garden City in the 1990s.

    According to the brothers Khela, El-Aswany laid hold of the
    apartment's entrance hall, which was then a public space for all
    lodgers in the same unit, by putting up an allegedly `illegal' wood
    partition. Ultimately, their father filed a suit against the dentist
    and won it in a Court of First Instance ruling in the early 1990s,
    according to legal documents in their possession.


    Omar Mohsen
    Khela, the plaintiff

    El-Aswany dismisses the allegations, stressing that his work is
    purely fictional except for the name of the building.

    `It is a sham to talk about this; the issue is very primitive,' says
    El-Aswany. `It is fiction. The bloc has 500 residents we are speaking
    of four to five generations that resided in this building. Thus, we
    have thousands of names and vocations that might have existed in the
    bloc. When I was still working in the building, there was more than
    one person named Malak, and there was even another Malak who used to
    sew shirts in the same bloc.

    `As a matter of principle, I am not required to make any
    clarification because the novel is fictional,' he says. `There are
    four types of literary works: journalistic pieces, documentaries,
    autobiographies and fictional novels. For the first three types, the
    author is held accountable for the characters he portrays; however,
    in the case of fiction he is not, so I don't have to discuss whether
    I meant their father or not.'

    El-Aswany maintains that the similarity of names between his novel
    and reality is coincidental. `Malak is a beautiful name. The
    character is named Malak [angel in Arabic] and his deeds have nothing
    to do with angels so it [the contradiction] is comic and I could not
    miss this name as a novelist,' says El-Aswany.

    The author admits he had a legal dispute with the late Khela, but
    claims that he won on appeal.


    Omar Mohsen
    Abdel Malek, the landlord's agent

    `Afterwards, their father and I stayed on good terms for five years
    until he passed away,' says El-Aswany. Khela's sons refute
    El-Aswany's account, however, insisting that they were on bad terms
    until El-Aswany left the building.

    Among the excerpts they take from the novel to substantiate their
    claim is an anecdote the author recounts about a story in a leading
    American newspaper praising Khela's talents. In the novel,
    El-Aswany's Khela fakes the story and hangs it on the wall of his
    office to deceive his clients.

    The Khela brothers believe it is concrete evidence that El-Aswany
    meant to defame their father, given the fact that a similar article
    was published about their father in the New York Times and
    republished in Egypt's Al-Mussawer magazine in the 1970s. The
    clipping is framed and posted in Khela's office.

    El-Aswany dismisses the claim as `nonsense,' denying that he ever saw
    this clipping.

    According to Mohamed El-Gamal, a former president of Majlis Al-Dawla
    (the State Council, the nation's top administrative judicial court,
    which is also required to offer comment on certain forms of
    legislation), authors of fictional works are not exempt from
    prosecution for libel. El-Gamal says novels fall under the category
    of public media, to which libel and slander laws are applicable, as
    they circulate among `an unlimited number of people.'

    The same thing applies to movies, he adds.

    `If the person's essential characteristics, such as his physical
    look, his name, his vocation and the names of his relatives are
    mentioned in a way that would make them identical to what exist in
    reality, this would be a definite designation of the [real] person,'
    explains El-Gamal.

    `If the [plaintiffs'] claims are proven true in a sense that the
    designation of their father is incontestable, this could mean that a
    crime [of libel] had been committed against them,' he adds.

    In the meantime, El-Aswany's litigants have filed another suit
    against the movie's production team as well as Minister of Culture
    Farouk Hosni, demanding the suspension of shooting and the revocation
    of the movie's license.

    Omaret, which stars Adel Imam, Nour El-Sherif and Youssra in lead
    roles, is being shot on a $3 million budget. The film is being
    produced by Good News, owned by media tycoon Emad Abeeb; Marwan Hamed
    is directing from a script penned by Waheed Hamed, his renowned
    screenwriter father.

    While Khela insists he was not aware of the novel before reading
    about the movie, El-Aswany believes the plaintiffs are driven by a
    desire to blackmail the movie's team; otherwise, he says, they should
    have filed suit right after the book was published in 2002.

    `I think that when the movie's budget was disclosed, [the plaintiffs]
    were tempted to go after some money because the novel has been out
    for three years,' El-Aswany says in a confident tone. `Everyone has
    been talking about this novel for three years and more than 180
    [reviews and articles] on the work have been published. And yet you
    live in the same building the novel talks about and you do not
    consider reading it? You should do it at least out of curiosity,'
    El-Aswany suggests.

    The legal maneuverings don't end there, though: Fikry Abdel Malak,
    the lawyer who has served as the building-owner's agent since 1961,
    has levelled accusations against El-Aswany similar to those of the
    Khela brothers in a suit he filed last month against both El-Aswany
    and the publishing house reprinting the novel.

    Abdel Malak is suing on his own and the owner's behalf for LE 2
    million, the same sum Adel Khela and his brother are demanding.

    In the novel, the building agent has the first name of his real
    counterpart, but the character is an abusive, dishonest drunk. Abdel
    Malek believes El-Aswany was referring to him deliberately.

    `The only fictional element in the novel is the lodgers' attributes.
    It is a libel made against these people [The author] indicated me by
    mentioning my vocation as a lawyer and the building's agent. There is
    nobody else in Egypt named Fikry, working as a lawyer and serving as
    the building's agent,' says Abdel Malek.

    Instead of filing an additional suit against the filmmakers, Abdel
    Malek says he preferred to `send warnings' notifying the producer and
    screenwriter that the novel allegedly defames real characters and
    asking them to suspend shooting. Should his demands not be met, he
    says, he will file suit against the movie after it comes out.

    Abdel Malak has also written to the Ministry of Culture demanding
    that the film be banned.

    Screenwriter Waheed Hamed is as nonplussed by the suits as is
    El-Aswany, calling the charges `invalid' and insisting no third party
    has a legal right to demand shooting be suspended.

    `You cannot judge a work before it is out. Secondly, they say the
    work inflicts injury upon their father. It is not up to them to
    decide whether this is the case or not it's the court that decides
    for the court,' says Hamed, referring to the allegations made by
    Khela's sons.

    `The [film's] scenario has nothing to do with the novel. It takes the
    spirit and the events of the novel. Finally, I have no one named
    Malak Khela in the movie,' adds Hamed, explaining that Khela was one
    of the names he changed in his script before the suit. `The
    sceenwriter is absolutely free to change names, and I changed these.
    They did not appeal to me and I found them hard to pronounce and
    retain,' says Hamed, who explains he changed `Malak Khela' to `Malak
    Akhnoukh Armenios' and `Abeskharon' (Malak's brother) to `Phanos.'

    Those changes fall short of the plaintiffs' demands; they insist that
    the name Malak and his vocation be wiped out of the movie. At press
    time, most of the movie's scenes had already been shot, according to
    Hamed, who is adamant about suing the plaintiffs for having defamed
    him.

    `They brought an unjust accusation against me and damaged my
    reputation. How can you bring accusations against me before you see
    my work?' Hamed growls.

    But the plaintiffs haven't stopped with characters they say are based
    on themselves: Both Abdel Malek and Khela's sons claim that Zaki
    El-Desouki, one of El-Aswany's personages, was a real character who
    lived in the building, sharing the same apartment as El-Aswany and
    Khela.

    El-Aswany tackles his adversaries with disarming sarcasm. `Where is
    this real character named Zaki El-Dessouki? Where are his heirs? Why
    did not they file a suit, too? Am I supposed to knock on everybody's
    door when I write a novel to make it clear that I do not mean him? Or
    do I have to choose names that nobody uses?' El-Aswany asks with
    exasperation.

    `I am loyal to literature and no matter what happens, my mission is
    to make sure literature is convincing and I do not mean to harm
    anybody,' he adds.

    Not quite finished, lawyer Abdel Malek drops another bombshell: (he
    claims) Hatem, a character portrayed in the novel as a homosexual
    journalist, is also a real person who lived in the building. He adds
    that he is still in touch with the real Hatem, but he feels
    embarrassed to inform him of the `infamous deeds' the novelist
    attributes to him.

    Abdel Malek claims that the novel has ruined the reputation of the
    seventy-year-old building.

    `People started to approach the building and utter obscene words. It
    is enough to say that some ask the concierge whether that is the
    homosexuals' building or not,' says Abdel Malek, adding that his
    reputation as a lawyer was damaged, too. `My work has been severely
    affected by the novel. How can clients trust me if I am featured as a
    drunk lawyer? I definitely lost clients and the reputation I earned.'

    Meanwhile, the plaintiffs deny El-Aswany and Hamed's charges that
    they are profiteers trying to make a quick profit through blackmail.

    `If this allegation were true, I would not have sent a warning to the
    movie's team. I would have waited until they show the movie so the
    owner and I would be definitely entitled to reparations. This means
    that I have no intention to blackmail the team for the sake of
    earning money,' says Abdel Malek.

    Adel Adeeb, chairman of the film's production company, declined to
    comment on the matter, saying neither he nor the company's lawyer
    could speak about lawsuits currently before the courts.

    Gamal El-Ghitani, editor in chief of Akhbar Al-Adab (Literature
    News), explains that novelists are free to use real names for
    characters provided that they do not mention details that would be
    indicative of real people. However, he still presumes the good faith
    of the author and dismissed the suit as an `exceptional measure taken
    against literature. Similarities between reality and literary works
    are conceivable, but I am against suing or confiscating such works,'
    he says.

    El-Ghitani is a staunch defender of freedom of speech, saying
    literature has lately been assaulted for a variety of reasons: `We
    are living in an abnormal atmosphere where literature is targeted by
    fundamentalist groups, the government itself and society, which has
    been tightening its censoring grip over literature. Today, Egypt is
    intolerant of the same things it used to accept in the 1920s.'

    At least El-Aswany can take heart in the fact that he's in good
    company: Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz's Al-Sarab (The Mirage, 1948)
    featured, among other characters, a sexually impotent man who lived
    in Abasseyya. A resident of the area was so certain the author was
    referring to him that he hatched a plot to assassinate Mahfouz.

    No one's threatening El-Aswany with that. Yet.

    http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5051

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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