Ra'ouf Mus'ad

Ra’ouf Mus'ad (sometimes known as Raouf Moussad-Basta) is a playwright, journalist and novelist who was born in Sudan to Egyptian Coptic parents. He moved to Egypt as a teenager and lived in various countries, both in the Middle East and in Europe, during the past 30 years. He has now settled in Amsterdam with his Dutch wife and their children and has taken Dutch nationality.

Biography

I was born in Port Sudan, Sudan on March 20th in 1937 from Egyptian parents. There were five children, two boys and a girl, than me, and than my youngest sister Suraya.

My father went to Sudan to work as a Protestant priest. Though lately I discovered that the family and ancestors of my father where Coptic Orthodox, even have the title Komous, which means Orthodox priest! When I asked my father for an explanation he did not give me a satisfactory reason, but when after some years I got to know my father’s family, who were poor fellaheen (farmers), I guessed the reasons: the American missionary in Upper Egypt promised the poor Coptic children free education as long as they would change their Church! Most probably my father was an ambitious young man who wanted to change his life. So this is how my parents went to The Sudan in the early thirties.

I did primary school in Wad Madani, a city on the Blue Nile (which I wrote about in my first novel Bedat El Na’amah - The Ostrich Egg- ). I went with my brothers to Asyut in Upper Egypt for my secondary studies and we lived on the campus of the American college. It is the same college where my father had studied his Theology courses to prepare him for priesthood.

I stayed five years in Asyut from 1948 until 1953. Every year I returned back to Sudan to spend three months of summer vacation. I would take a train to Aswan at the Egyptian border, then take a ship which would take two nights, then a Sudanese train for about thirty six hours to Khartoum and another train to Wad Madani. Those trips were the best long voyages I ever had and remember from my early youth. We, the students from Sudan, would move together as a group and the younger would enjoy the protection of the elders. Those trips I wrote about them in nostalgia in my first book. Many years later, after my family had left Sudan for good and settled in Egypt in 1953, I went back by my self, taking the old route to Sudan two times although by than I could afford plane tickets.

I could divide my life in certain periods: The Sudanese-Egyptian Period, which finished in1935. Then the Egyptian Period from 1935 till 1970 when I was at University and got into political engagements and underground communist organisations which led into prison in December 1960. That's were I started writing. In 1964 I was released and I started working. In this period I traveled back to Sudan twice. In 1970 I left Egypt to study theatre in Poland. This I call the Diaspora Period: for twelve years I moved between Europe and the Middle East, were I worked in Iraq and Lebanon. In 1982 I went back to Egypt for a short while. In 1988 I went to live in Amsterdam, where I live nowadays with my wife and children.

About my Books Most of my books follow my movements around the world. I began serious writing in prison secretly between 1962-'64, when I stayed in Al Kharga Oasis prison where papers and pens were forbidden. That's also where I discovered theater when I acted in a play on the prison stage as a female in Noa’man Ashour's play. There I wrote a play about Lumumba, after his assassination by Mobutu. I wrote on paper that was smuggled into prison. It was the very thin paper that we used to roll cigarettes with. My writings would be smuggled out of prison to the outside world. After I was released I went to Aswan with two friends I knew from prison, to write about the building of the High Dam. I wrote a play about the work.

When the defeat of 1967 was a shock to every Egyptian I wrote a play which was censored later. I went to Poland to study Polish Literature and language and Theatre. My studies concentrated on theatre and I got a special stage at Grotowski's Poor Theatre, which let me think that this is the theatre I would like to do in Arabic Countries, but also made me feel frustrated because I knew this would be an impossible mission. after I finished my studies in Poland I went to work in Iraq at 1975 to work at “Cinema and Theater Establishment “ for three years and I wrote two plays . After Iraq I went to Lebanon, I worked as journalist and translator till June 1982, when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon to crush The PLO and I returned back to Egypt. All my time in Lebanon I did not wrote any thing worth considering it literature. Returning back to Egypt after twelve years of continuous absence and witnessed part of the civil war in Lebanon and the invasion, i think I felt ready to write a novel. I was forty five years and I did not fulfill any of my youth dreams (except the traveling) and my disappointment in socialism as I saw it all over socialist countries (Europe, Russia and Africa). So I decided to write about this sort of un-fulfilling dreams of my generation through my personal history, a fictional biography. This is how The Ostrich Egg came to life in 1994. It took me twelve years to write it, because at that time I was moving between Egypt and Holland where my first baby girl, Yara, was born and slowly I took the decision to settle - at least most of the year - in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I finished The Ostrich Egg and wrote all my other novels and different books. The city of Amsterdam and being with my family provides me with time and energy and a tranquil atmosphere. Also my wife supports me so I can stay at home and write. Being far from my natural environment was difficult in the beginning, but after some time it becomes a blessing, because I keep to my self and thus I can concentrate on writing.

Bibliography

• إنسان السد العالي / The People of the High Dam (with Sunallah Ibrahim and Kamal al-Qalash), Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-Arabi, 1967
• يا ليل يا عين / O Night, O Eyes, Cairo: Ministry of Culture, 1970
• لومومبا والنفق مسرحيتان / Lumumba and The Tunnel – Two Plays, Cairo: al-Hay’a al-'aama lil-ta’lif wa-l-nashr, 1970
• صباح الخير يا وطن: شهادة من بيروت المحاصرة / Good Morning Homeland: A Testament from Beirut Under Siege, Cairo: Matbu'at al-Qahira, 1983
• بيضة النعامة / Ostrich Egg, London: Riad el-Rais Books, 1994 Five prints - last one "Elain Publishing -2011"
• مزاج التماسيح / Crocodile Mood, Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 2000" About Muslims -Coptic conflicts in Egypt ( out of print)
• في انتظار المخلص: رحلة إلى الأرض المحرمة / Waiting for the Saviour: A Journey to the Holy Land, Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 2000

A number of his mature works are either out of print, awaiting reprint or yet to be published at all. Below are those for which details are available.

• غواية الوصال / The Temptation of Being TogetherPublished -Cairo 1997 ( out of print )
• صانعة المطر / The RainmakerPublished -Cairo 1999 ( out of print)
• السودان: ستون عاما من الحنين / Sudan: Sixty Years of Longing Published in " Al- Quds Al- Arbi News paper October 2002
• سجون أبي / My Father’s Prisons. (With his daughter Yara)- not finished

إيثاكا /Iethaka .. based on the arresting of a group of Homosexuals in Egypt in a case known internationally as " Queen Boat " Cairo 2007 - Out of print

  His novel Ostrich Egg has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Swedish and Dutch:

• Spanish: El Huevo del Avestruz, Raúf M. Basta. Translated by Salvador Peña Martín. Guadarrama: Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo. (Memorias del Mediterráneo) 1997
• French: L'Oeuf de l'autruche, Raouf Moussad-Basta. Translated by Yves Gonzalez-Quijano. Arles: Actes Sud. (Mémoires de la Méditerranée) 1997
• Italian: L'uovo di struzzo : memorie erotiche, Ra'uf Mus'ad Basta. Translated by Wasim Dahmash and Angelo Arioli. Rome: Jouvence. (Memorie del Mediterraneo) 1998
• Dutch: Het struisvogelei, translated by Dieuwke Poppinga and Richard van Leeuwen, published by De Geus
• Swedish:

He wrote also tow adaptions of plays for the theater from tow novels " El Lagnah by Sonnallah Ibrahiem and "the strange events " by Palestinian writer Emil Habiby and other plays for children.