Word: arabism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Playing matches abroad is not a new phenomenon - England's top teams have long engaged in pre-season warmups and other friendly games in the U.S., Asia and the Arab world, to whet the appetites of global fans and boost their own kitty. Current champions Manchester United netted a cool $2 million for playing a friendly game in Saudi Arabia just last month. But the new proposal involves competitive games on which a team's fortunes could rest, as compared to the strolling exhibition matches that have been offered abroad until...
...Aswany acknowledges a literary debt to Mahfouz, in more ways than one. During a crisis of confidence in his 20s, he ran into Mahfouz at a hotel in Alexandria and received a three-hour pep talk from the master. Rejecting the Arab vogue for postmodernism, Al Aswany has stayed true to the Mahfouz tradition of social realism. And like Mahfouz, he has a gift for writing literary page turners that are endlessly discussed by café intellectuals while also being accessible to Egyptians who normally have more time for Al-Ahly, their favorite football team. "He is read everywhere," says...
...Yacoubian Building, which sold some half a million copies and was adapted into a box-office hit starring Arab cinema's top actors, is a brilliant depiction of the troubles plaguing contemporary Egypt. The saga of the inhabitants of a downtown Cairo apartment building, it examines the historical, social and political vicissitudes that Al Aswany believes have left the country in a state of physical and moral ruin. One character, Zaki Bey, is the scion of an aristocratic clan, an Egyptian Romeo who uses his Yacoubian Building office for lecherous assignations, oblivious to the crumbling edifice around...
...Aswany belongs to a young generation of Arab writers more concerned with domestic liberties than with fighting Egypt's old battles against colonialism or nursing the wounds of a humiliating defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. A longtime political columnist for the opposition newspaper Al-Arabi, he joined the nonviolent Kifaya! (Enough!) movement in 2004. He has been harassed by security police, and Islamic radicals have publicly denounced him. But despite the outward pessimism in Yacoubian and Chicago, Al Aswany strives to be optimistic about his country's future. He believes some progress has been made...
...among the French-trained Chadian warriors who defeated Gaddafi's army in 1987. He then chased Libya's proxy Arab militias - known as Janjaweed - into Darfur, sparking that region's descent into bloodshed. But Déby soon fell out with Habré, who tortured and executed thousands of opponents, real and suspected. Déby is a Zaghawa - part of a tribe of black Saharans equally at home in Darfur, Chad and the oases of the Libyan Sahara. Armed by Sudan and Libya, he stormed across the Chadian savanna from rear bases in Darfur and seized power...