Sahar Tawfiq - writings from Cairo

biography and work: Short biography

I'm a native and resident of Cairo. I have a degree in Arabic language and literature from al-Azhar University, Cairo, and a career as teacher and supervisor in the Egyptian school system (1975-2002) before turning to writing and translating fulltime.

I've also taught in the Saudi school system in the 1990s.

I've published two novels and many short stories in Arabic. A collection of my stories in English, "Points of the Compass," selected and translated by Marilyn Booth, won the University of Arkansas Press Arabic Translation Award in 1995. I'm also write children's stories.

short stories: IN SEARCH OF A MAZE

That evening, just like every evening, the thin, pale man with the strange fingers came and sat down on the same stone bench. His eyes stared at the same spot, their grey pupils circling and shifting within a small sphere, contemplating one and the same thing. He sat in solitude: hermitlike, distracted.

biography and work: My Early Work

First story published in Sabah ElKhair, Egyptian weekly magazine, 1971

reviews: Review by Mahmoud El-Wardani

Ta'm Al-Zaytoun (The Taste of Olives), Sahar Tawfiq, Cairo: Supreme Council for Culture, 2000. pp136

Towards the end of the 1970s, Sahar Tawfiq published a collection of stories, An Tanhadir Al-Shams (That the Sun May Descend) that was well-received, but she seems to have remained strangely dormant since. This new novel, introduced by critic Mohamed Badawi, finally breaks that silence.

biography and work: Awards and Grants

1) Fulbright Visiting Specialists Program: Direct Access to the Muslem World (14 March-29 April 2006).
2) Award of Arkansas University Press for Arab Literature in Translation for: Points of The Compass : Short Stories, Translated by Marilyn Booth
3) Ministry of Culture Grant (leave of absence from position in Ministry of Education to allow time for writing), 1996-2000.
4) A Leave of Absence Grant to spend 3 weeks time for writing in Le Châteaux de Lavigny, Switzerland, 2001.

biography and work: Publications

I'm the author of:
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1. Bait el Anes, short stories, El Dar, Cairo, 2006.

2. Rehlet es-Samman (The Journey of The Seagull), Novel, Merit, Cairo, 2005.

3. Ta'am ez-Zaiton (The Taste of Olives) Novel, High Council of Culture, Cairo, 2000, republished: Egyptian Public Association of Books, 2003.

4. Points of the Compass: Short Stories, by Sahar Tawfiq, translated by Marilyn Booth, University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, USA, 1995. (Award of The University of Arkansas Press for Arab Literature in Translation, 1994).

5. Ann Tanhadera ash-Shams: Short Stories, Fosoul Collection, Cairo, 1984.

biography and work: Coming Soon

1. Mogaz Tarikh al Arman: Translation of George A. Bournoutian’s A Concise History of the Armenian People (From Ancient Times to the Present)
2. Shahirat an-Nisa’ (May Her Likes be Multiplied), Translation for a book by Marilyn Booth.
3. Madaito Shawtan Baidan (A Long Way Gone), Translation for Ishmael Beah’s Book.

biography and work: My personal information

Name: Sahar Tawfiq

Full name: Sahar Muhammad Hasan Tawfiq

Field: Writer: stories, novels, stories for children; Translator English-Arabic

short stories: A Pair of Blue-Gum Trees in Giza

The story by Sahar Tawfiq

When we fell in love, we left the crowded city, and on that distant site along the small canal we built four walls.

That was in a year now distant, when the trees stood higher than the houses, before the buildings towered and blocked the eye of the sun, and before the trees turned to dwarves and grew strangely clumped beside the roads.
Two blue-gum trees sat at the entrance to the house, young and small as we were. On our first day of life there, I looked from the window in the morning to the empty expanse beyond it and I saw them: small, young, short. Like us, those two trees were living their first days there.

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