How the mind can starveYemen’s intellectuals are deprived [Archives:2005/830/Culture]

Ismail Al-Ghabiri
Is it possible for the writer who practices writing as a profession, 'the profession of bad omen' as Al-Tawheidi calls it, to stop reading and still write with deep meaning and dimensions?

Is it possible for the journalist to quit reading and go on with high standards? Is it possible for the intellectual in general to go on as an intellectual, without reading?

No. Without continuous reading, it is not possible for all these sorts of men to go on their work creatively, considering that every type of writing is a creative work.

But how can one keep on reading if the price of the book is more expensive than anything else?

I tried recently to explore these ideas of the profession with writing colleagues in the Arab world.

The answers I found are ones of regret.

Here are some.

– “I reduced the number of the foreign books, I decreased taking taxis; I hesitate so much before buying a book.”

– “The severe social crisis reached me as the other people of the middle class.

What I was specifying as culture expenses: books, plays, conferences, and other cultural phases is being kept for the sake of the main affairs of life.

I refused even to travel unless I got an invitation covering all the expenses.

I became an admirer of the cheap clothes for me and for my children.

Of the cultural activities, I select for them what causes no more burdens.”

– “We exert more difficult efforts in order to secure the simplest requirements of the professional life.

I work during the day and night because one's work is no longer beneficial, I have accordingly no time to read. There were many things I used to do but now I am compelled for financial reasons to sacrifice them today.”

These are some models of the writers I know.

The intellect is in a tight corner, being between his desire for knowledge and the reality of deprivation.

They are good models representing the life of the intellect in most of the Arab countries.

On wonders if there is not a political intention to make the intellect as poor as possible.

Then the intellect becomes disabled and marginalized and that's why we understand the screams coming out of the feelings and suffering from the real situation that marginalize the intellect gradually.

Not only that, the intellect is looked at as a mischievous person and a resource of chaos and an instigator for fishing in dirty water.

Therefore, he is deprived of the distinctions that are given to others of the technocratic people who interact with the political figure more than the intellect.

From this point rises the great separation the intellectual lives in.

Observing the cultural movement in and out of his own country is one of his duties.

The separation is too steep when he discovers the gap between his capabilities and his desires and the comparison between what his writings cost and what he himself cost.

There are many writers who criticized countries, political leaders, capitalists, and destroyed states on papers, yet they can't afford the cost of bread that helps them keep on writing.

Some of them cannot find the price of the bus in order to transport between house and job.

One may think that this is a touch of exaggeration, but it is the fact that is lived by a variety of writers.

Is that separation the fate of the intellectual and he has to spend his lifetime in it?

If we tried to find the outlines that may lead to limit the separation and the consistent suffering, we will find that the intellectual faces deprivation in all aspects of life.

Here is an answer of one journalists: “In the past, Gandhi was asked why he traveled in second-class seats in the plane.

He answered 'because there is a third class.'”

Yes, the intellect and journalist in Yemen spends a life of deprivation and poverty.

Where is the care?
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[archive-e:830-v:13-y:2005-d:2005-04-04-p:culture]