Sarah's Poetry Art: Writers Workshop

My 3 minutes write up during the Writers Workshop at the 29th Sharjah International Book Fair with Lisa Dempster, Zohra Saed, Sahar Muradi and Rupert Bumfrey

Lisa Dempster › Vegan Sharjah

I didn’t really partake in foodie tourism on my visit to Sharjah. While in the UK earlier in the year I became tired of taking pictures of my food but kept at it because I was thinking I would need it for the blog. This time I just said no. I also didn’t seek out any specifically vegan-friendly restaurants. It was kind of liberating.

My hotel provided an excellent (if samey, after ten days!) buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which took care of my hunger and thirst. I would primarily hang in the salad area and load up with fresh raw veggies, bean salads, okra salads, hummus (the babaganoush was way too smokey for me), olives, pickles and pita bread. There was usually a hot option also, whether a simple hash brown for breakfast or veggie curry for dinner. (Though visits to the hot food section became infrequent once chicken was discovered in a veggie rice dish. Our waiter assured my friend Sahar that it was ‘just a little bit of chicken’. Oh phew, then.) One night there was dhal – that was a good night. Breakfast was the best, as I had a big salad plate as mentioned above PLUS foul medames (aka my new favourite foodstuff) PLUS stewed figs, dates and apricots. YUM!

I became so enamoured with foul for breakfast that my driver and friend Mohannad took me to a little restaurant that serves a really amazing, tasty, blow-your-mind, way-better-than-the-hotel traditional version – and I couldn’t help but take a pic (above). It was served with chopped tomatoes, tahini and about half a cup of olive oil – seriously. It was EPIC, so tasty, and soon after eating I had to retire back to the hotel for a small lie-down. It kept me full till dinner, and with the felafel only cost like AUD$3. (Funnily enough that is the only felafel I ate my entire trip.)

Mohannad also took me to a Syrian restaurant where I almost blew my load over a chickpea fatteh dish served with warm puffy bread. On another day I was drooling over tadiq in an Iranian restaurant – ‘bottom of the pan rice’ (as mentioned by David Lebovitz here). I will be teaching myself to make foul and fatteh and tadiq very soon.

Starbucks and Caribou were pretty much the best place to get coffee. Le sigh.

In my admittedly limited experience veganism isn’t really hard to manage in UAE. Although meat is often at the centre of a meal, sides are usually vegetarian. Because there isn’t a heavy reliance on dairy, the mezze style of serving up meals means that there’s usually at least one, often many more, vegan options! When Sahar and Zohra and I went to have dinner at our new Emirati friend’s house, we told them we were veg and the meal was naturally vegan, and amazing (chickpea soup, and puffy doughy donut type things, and a sweetish semolina dish – YUM.)

My favourite food moment and indeed one of the best moments of the trip as a whole was discovering Chettagong, an unassuming little drive-in juice bar serving up the incredible drinks. I will go so far as to say, the best juice I have ever tasted. After that first day, my standing order was a large cocktail hold the milk:

Looks unassuming but this is mind-blowing juice. MIND. BLOWING. The fruit is so fresh and juicy, with mango as the main ingredient (say no more?) and bits of strawberry, banana and who knows what else. Creamy, refreshing and delicious. I can taste it now. Magic.

What do these bananas remind you of?

Lisa Dempster › #SHJIBF roundup

I was really sad to miss the last few days of Sharjah International Book Fair, especially as the final few days had a lot of stuff in the program that interested me. (Oh well, I did have something fun to take my mind off things.)

On my final day at the Fair I had a meeting with SHJIBF Director Ahmed Al Amri, who was still energetic after nine days of festival and satisfied with how his event had gone. The Book Fair is interesting because it’s a kind of melting pot of festivals – part trade fair, part consumer book fair, part cultural program – which makes it pretty unique. I would say it’s a tough job bringing all those elements together but it seemed to be a huge success: 100,000 people visited on the final weekend (!!), loads of books were sold, and there were almost 800 publishers in attendance and 200,000 titles for sale. Nice.

Ahmed was already looking forward to 2011 when I spoke to him – the 30th year of the Book Fair. He promised it would be bigger and better, with an even stronger cultural program, an expanded cooking demo program, and even more international guests. He pointed out that with festivals you need to keep gradually building on success, something that definitely resonated with me. (Eight years ago the EWFwas a one-day zine fair, in 2011 it will be an eleven-day festival!) I can’t wait to see what they come up with next year (hopefully in person, but if not, then through #shjibf!).

Highlights of the fair for me were the: Emerging Writers’ Workshop; dynamic social media stream; amazing translated events; finding excellent translations of Arabic works; diverse cultural programming; intelligent discussions; seeing such a passion for books; and the people I met.

Lowlights were: events not starting on time or being cancelled at the last minute; the English language program wasn’t comprehensive so I missed a few events I would have liked to see; there were no really great chillout/relaxing areas (though there were a few cafes); and the English language books were mostly educational and kids books.

The balance is on the whole amazing – it was a superb festival and I had a fun and educational and enriching (erk) time. I will definitely be watching to see how the Book Fair develops in the future. I have no doubt it will go on to great successes.

M Quigley has written a good article about the fair for those interested in the nuts and bolts – Fair trade: Sharjah International Book Fair.

Thank you so much to the Sharjah International Book Fair and the Sharjah Department of Culture and Information for inviting me to Sharjah and showing me such amazing hospitality while I was there. I loved it, not just the Book Fair but exploring the cultural sights of Sharjah also. Thanks also to Rupert B for being the man on the ground that made so much happen!

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Tags books, sharjah, shjibf

Sharjah International Book Festival 2010 - a set on Flickr

Sharjah International Book Festival 2010 - a set on Flickr

* username: rupertbu

Poetic East...: That book fair it was..

Where I met books

From east and from west,

Books with faces,

Books with emotions

Books that tell tales

Book that laughs aloud

That book fair it was

Meeting people

Meeting thoughts

Meeting hands

Meeting eyes

Some smiling

Some searching

That book fair it was

Thoughts lost in thoughts

Minds lost in minds

Searching nothing but books

Turning pages, noting books

Asking favorites, asking prices

Carrying in hands, purse or trolleys

That book fair it was

Releasing books, releasing thoughts

Infecting thoughts, moving thoughts

Reflecting thought, evolving thoughts

Spreading thoughts, encouraging thoughts

Sitting thought moving thoughts

Thoughts on shelves, thoughts in hands

Thoughts by seeing, reading and writing

That book fair it was..

Thought, created, wrote and bounded words

Year to year, architect*, wrote the words

Wishing his people to read and write

Something likes of Him, from Him

Encouraged His nation and other alike

His was ‘For Love of the written Word’

He created a fair of all the fairs

That book fair it was.

* H.H. Sheikh Dr Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi –

(Cultural Architect)

#shjibf's Twitter Photos | Hashalbum

#shjibf's Twitter Photos | Hashalbum

81 photos currently posted, to post your own without any awkward insstructions, just post in twitter with hashtag #shjibf included in tweet!

في حب الكلمة المقروءة : الدورة التاسعة والعشرون - جسد الثقافة

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بحضور ورعاية صاحب السمو الشيخ الدكتور سلطان بن محمد القاسمي عضو المجلس الأعلى حاكم الشارقة تنطلق في العاشرة من صباح يوم غدٍ فعاليات الدورة التاسعة والعشرين لمعرض الشارقة الدولي للكتاب في إكسبو الشارقة وذلك بحضور ممثلي مؤسسات ثقافية إماراتية مختلفة تشارك معظمها في المعرض بأجنحة خاصة مثل دائرة الثقافة والإعلام في الشارقة، ووزارة الثقافة والشباب وتنمية المجتمع، وهيئة أبو ظبي للثقافة والتراث، وغيرها، بالإضافة إلى ضيوف المعرض من كتاب وشعراء سيشاركون في فعاليات المعرض المتنوعة، وبمشاركة 788 دار نشر، ويصل عدد العناوين إلى 200 ألف عنوان في هذه الدورة .

تأتي الدورة التاسعة والعشرون لتستكمل مسيرة ما يقارب ثلاثة عقود من معرض الشارقة الدولي للكتاب الذي أصبح خلال تلك المسيرة الطويلة واحدا من أهم المعارض الخليجية والعربية لجهة المشاركة الواسعة من قبل دور النشر العربية والأجنبية التي بلغت في الدورة الماضية ما يزيد على 600 دار منها 178 دار نشر أجنبية، وقد عرض خلال الدورة الماضية ما يقارب 110 آلاف عنوان ما يؤكد على التطور الكبير الذي يشهده المعرض، وعلى حرص الناشرين على المشاركة فيه، خاصة وأنه من أكثر المعارض ربحية بالنسبة للناشر في ظل توجه الدوائر الحكومية والمؤسسات في الشارقة إلى تغذية عناوين مكتباتها من خلال المعرض .

من جهة أخرى لا يخفى على المتابع أن الندوات الفكرية للمعرض باتت تستقطب في السنوات الأخيرة أعداداً متزايدة من الحضور نظرا لأهمية المواضيع المطروحة فيها، بالإضافة إلى المقاهي الثقافية التي تم اعتمادها في الدورة الماضية، والتي شكلت منبرا للحوار حول قضايا أدبية عديدة مثل القصة القصيرة في الإمارات، وأهمية الكتابة للطفل، وآفاق قصيدة النثر، وغيرها من القضايا التي ما زالت تشهد جدلا كبيرا في الأوساط الثقافية .

أما التوجه نحو النشر الإلكتروني فهو الآخر بدأ يأخذ حيزاً مهماً في المعرض حيث أصبح الكتاب الإلكتروني يشكل جزءاً من توجه بعض الدور المشاركة، خاصة وأن الاتحاد العربي للنشر الإلكتروني يشارك بجناح خاص في المعرض ويتواصل مع الدور المشاركة من أجل تفعيل حضور الكتاب الإلكتروني الذي يعد إحدى وسائل المعرفة الحديثة في زمن التقانة وثورة الاتصالات .