By Rana Khaled
“Religion is what the individual believes in, what dominates his thinking and being, and what guides him to do what he does in this life. Religion is what people live for and what they are ready to sacrifice their souls for,” this is how young writer Ahmed Ibrahim defined religion in his latest novel “The Fourth Religion”. The book raised violent waves of attacks and criticism, to the extent that its writer was called “infidel” and an “atheist”.
A few days ago, Ibrahim launched the first creative bookstore of its kind in Fayoum governorate. In addition to providing all the book releases of all Egypt’s publishing houses, the store also provides a place dedicated to reading and discussing books, as well as workshops and training sessions for teaching children writing, drawing, music and many other activities.
Ibrahim studied psychology at Helwan University’s Faculty of Arts, and he currently lectures around the world in the fields of business administration and human resources. In 2012, he published his first collection of short stories titled “Lam Ta3od” (“She’s never been back”), which did not distribute well because of problems with the publishing house. After less than three years, he published his first novel “The Fourth Religion”, which exposed him to a fierce war of words on its crucial and shocking idea.
In an interview with Daily News Egypt, Ibrahim talked on his beginnings, how he dealt with the attacks directed at his last novel and gave us exclusive information about his new upcoming projects.
How and when did you start writing? And does it have anything to do with your childhood?
I wrote my first story when I was almost 6 or 7 years old. The story was talking about a black duck that suffers from discrimination from her friends who have white feathers. I think it was an old animation show, and I turned it into a story. However, the beginnings of the real writing talent goes back to secondary school, as I wrote a small short story called “Nedaa'” (“A Call”) that I included in my short story collection “Lam Ta3od” that was published.
How did the idea of your first short story collection “Lam Ta3od” (“She’s never been back”) come to your mind? And why did you choose this name in particular?
“Lam Ta3od” is a very special experience, as it blends all the memories and thoughts of my life journey over the past years. I wrote its short stories over very long periods of time, to the extent that you’ll find a time gap that exceeds one and a half years between each two stories. I started writing them when I joined my high school in 2000, and I didn’t have any intentions to publish it until 2012 when I realised that I have something valuable that deserves to be read and understood by more people. The stories express general feelings of loss, repentance and grief for all the beautiful things that have gone away from our lives forever.
What were your main goals behind publishing such a collection? And how could you blend feelings of alienation, freedom, love, frustration, farewell and many others in it?
In my opinion, this blend of feelings I presented in my collection is what actually distinguishes the generation of the ‘80s. You’ll find them lost and confused, living with a wasted identity that’s aiming to reach certain address or shelter, but in vain! They live with nostalgia and dreams of the past that dominate their minds forever.
As a novice writer, did you find any difficulties when you decided to publish your first short story collection?
Of course! I faced a lot of difficulties; one of them was the wrong selection of the publishing house, as I didn’t have any previous experience or relationships with people in this field. I paid for the expenses of publishing my first collection, but unfortunately the collection was printed out without revising the linguistic mistakes or putting the text in the adequate format. As a result of these fatal mistakes, it was very hard to distribute the copies over the past three years, as the [publishing] house didn’t provide any publicity or distribution plans for the book.
What are the main issues your first novel “The Fourth Religion” tackles? And how did you deal with the waves of criticism people raised because of its title?
The novel discusses the tendency of humans to blindly follow those with absolute power and how they can destroy ethics, conscience, morals or even religions, in their way to reach their goals and make use of that power as much as possible. This can only happen through imposing a group of standards and rules and making them sacred more than the religion itself. Of course, many people criticised and even attacked me after publishing the novel with this shocking name, but I never replied to their comments until the novel was widely distributed and read by large numbers of readers who could eventually understand the main concept of the novel and the reason of choosing such title for it. People called me atheist, agnostic and obsessed with fame, but all these attacks stopped when people read the novel and understood the reasons of choosing such name very well.
Why are you more oriented to inject your philosophical thoughts in your literary works?
Because I studied psychology, I always consider it as a science that got out from the womb of both philosophy and literature. Thus, for me, the short story or the novel is a group of philosophical thoughts and questions that enlighten and shed lights on some aspects of people’s spirits and minds to put your hand on different feelings and conclusions.
Do you have any future plans or projects?
I have an idea for a new novel but it isn’t complete yet. The novel tackles many psychological and philosophical issues too but it’s completely different from my previous novel. I’ll just need some time, pens and white sheets to start putting those points altogether and get out the final outcome.
