Gaib Tuma Farman
The materials on this website can be helpful not only for studying Gaib Tuma Farman's works, but also for spreading his works in a broader context. Today, his books are being re-published electronically and are planned to be re-published in paper format by Moscow and London publishers. In Russia, G. T. Farman worked mainly as a literary translator. If we consider Gaib Farman's translations alone, they are a huge cultural contribution that resulted from decades of relentless work.
Writer’s bio
Gaib Tuma Farman was born on September 17, 1927 in Baghdad, Iraq. Like many writers, Gaib's life journey, especially in his younger years, is reflected in his works. He often puts his characters in his native and favorite places. The personal nature of this can be easily seen from how lyrical descriptions of those places are. There are many direct autobiographical features in his works.
Early literary career
Gaib studied at the University of Baghdad, Philology Department. He graduated in 1954 and then worked in a school for a while. Around the same time, he began to take up literary work - he made sketches for stories, composed poems, and tried his hand at journalism. He worked for a newspaper and was good at it. That is why his autobiographical characters often work in this area.
Starting from his younger years, his reading experience was unusually rich, and his favorite writings included the most famous works of the world literature, not just because they were literature masterpieces, but also because they contained comprehensive and diverse philosophies. This is proved by his own novels that reflected his passion for reading, which has become the most important part of his life. This allows to say that Russian classical literature, especially works by Maxim Gorky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and later Nikolay Gogol played an important part in developing his worldview and his literary preferences.
In Gaib’s works where he referred to his younger years, he mentioned a number of famous European and American writers, whose works were not just fiction to read, but to master their generalized life experience, learn to understand the world around us on a large scale - these included Mark Twain, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Baudelaire, and others.
Egypt. Cairo. Cairo University
Gaib decided to continue his studies, dreamed of entering the Cairo University, and he succeeded. In 1950-51, when he lived in Egypt, Gaib briefly described his first impressions of Cairo at the end of his novel Five Voices. Staying at the hotel, a young man feels like a “tiny speck of dust” in the mad pace of a big city, and falls into despair.
Recalling this time in his novel Birth Pangs, Gaib mentions the Ad Doqi district, where he lived in "furnished apartments", al-Azhar square, mam Shafi'i district, which was very close to the cemetery and which he left for the aristocratic district of Heleopolis, where, as he said, he was probably the only resident starving. Gaib tried to make his living working as a journalist for newspapers. His political views were becoming more and more radical, and he was particularly concerned with issues of social justice and the need to develop democratic ideas. Together with other activists, he took part in a student strike.
Iraq during the "black regime"
In 1951 he had to go back to his homeland and re-engage in journalism. However, this did not last long. The fact was that it coincided with the period when some democratic changes were made after the war in Iraq, when the country's democratic forces, left-wing parties and organizations achieved significant success in parliamentary elections.
However, frightened by those events, the ruling feudal-monarchical elite brought Prime Minister Nuri Said into power, and Iraq entered the period of the “black regime” and terror again. In his political views, Gaib adhered to the national democratic party suffering severe repressions at the time. He also collaborated with the Al Akhali newspaper, the official representation of the party. All counterparts were disbanded, and newspapers were closed. Many progressive patriots, especially Communists, were put in concentration camps or denationalized and expelled from the country. "Purges" took place everywhere.
Iraq was under a foreign pressure for so long, so the British entered Iraq in 1914. The Iraqis experienced Turkish tyranny and therefore believed that the British came to save them. But Iraq became an oil well for the British, and the Iraqis - cheap labor force. The Iraqi revolt of 1920 was suppressed, the first Iraqi government was English with king Faisal as their appointee. The 1920-1940s saw a number of revolts, all of them did not lead to radical changes, with foreign troops still remaining in the country. The Baghdad Pact of 1955 was not a means of “helping” developing countries, but primarily a means of achieving military goals.
In 1954, Nuri Said was brought into power in Iraq to approve the Pact. His ruling began with a campaign of terror that affected all cities and social strata, including workers and students. Hundreds of them were locked up in prisons. Schools and institutes were reorganized into political police stations. Anyone involved in political and trade union activities was expelled from the country. And the government issued an order to denaturalize every "undesirable" Iraqi . Iraq became a huge prison. There were no trade unions, no parties or patriotic newspapers in the country. Being in such a terrible state, Iraq entered into the Baghdad Pact. It resulted in the 1955 revolt, which was suppressed. The leaders of that revolt died bravely, or they were put into prison or expelled. Then it was lull before the storm. This silence spoke and raised its voice from time to time, which was heard when the school teacher spat as he mentioned the name of Nuri Said, although this could lead to dismissal, imprisonment or exile.
Gaib did not evade this fate. He survived the Abu Ghraib imprisonment, which he did not like to recall. All he said was that he tried to find a way to read there, and he succeeded. In Birth Pangs, his character, Karim, who was an autobiographical character, said that he served his time in Al Karah prison in 1953. His other character, Said, without cherishing false hopes, decided to leave the country after the editorial office had been damaged. He went to Syria, where he intended to work as a school teacher.
Gaib decided to choose a similar way. Immediately after his release from prison, he traveled through the Syrian desert to Damascus. However, he did not manage to settle there. He went to Lebanon, lived in Beirut for a while, took a trip to some European cities for the first time, but very soon became convinced that living there was professionally unpromising for him and besides too expensive.
This is how a large and significant period of Gaib's life in his homeland, Iraq, finished, and later on he would repeatedly mention this in his works, recreating that time in its entirety and great detail. It is no coincidence that many of those events can no longer be perceived separately from those memories. Despite all the conventionality of their artistic embodiment, they cannot but be identified and perceived as reliable evidence.
Gaib's situation was unstable - he had no permanent home, job, or earnings. In addition, he had a reputation of an unreliable person, which deprived him of a decent job and creative activity. He continues to engage in literary activities, the beginning of which is usually associated with the first half of the 1950s. As a result, his first collection of stories In the End Things Will Mend was published (Hasid Arrah, Baghdad, 1954). By this time, his literary, social and political interests grew much broader.
His literary contacts were also developing significantly. In 1956, a collection Realistic Stories was published in Cairo, and the foreword written in collaboration with M. Amin al-Alim proclaimed the principles of the “new realism”. According to these principles, the proponents of this philosophy were not only critical of the modern society where people were oppressed, but also called for active anti-imperialist struggle and revolutionary actions.
The young writer was particularly worried about the situation and the reactionary regime in Iraq. He both read the press and worked hard on political materials and documents. In 1957, the Cairo publishing house Dar al-Fikr published his book Iraq During the Black Regime, which sparked a massive public outcry. The story of the national liberation movement of the Iraqi people against the British imperialists and national puppet governments turned out to be typical of many countries and attracted universal attention. Extraordinary journalism of the book brought its author the reputation of a social activist, which he really was. That is the reason why he attracted the attention of Soviet international affairs experts and journalists, and soon, in 1958, his book was translated into Russian. The high appreciation of this book also played a big role in the fact that Ghaib was later invited to work in the USSR.
By this time, he already developed into a person with strong beliefs and moral principles, which he followed throughout his life. However, he still faced the problem of choosing his own way.
At this stage, to some extent, the solution was an invitation to China. Gaib was offered a job as a head of a publication office and English-Arabic translator of the China magazine, published in various languages. Ghaib accepted the invitation, and as a result, he was one of the pioneers of the magazine’s Arabic version. This is how a new, but short, period of his life started.
In Beijing, he worked as a journalist, paid much attention and effort to managing the publication and editing China in Arabic.
In 1959, he went to Vietnam with other journalists from China and met Pham van Dong there. He stroke Gaib as a good and gentle man. Gaib also mentioned his meeting with Ho Chi Minh: "His residence was very beautiful, but he received us in a little house upstairs. He went down 18 steps to meet us, then hugged us and we went upstairs together. The Prime Minister's secretary accompanied us. We gave him our questions for Ho Chi Minh beforehand, and he brought us his written answers. Ho told us: “You will get the answers… But first I’d like to ask you." And he asked us about the situation in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and so on. He listened as if he didn't know anything about it. He gave us a warm welcome. We took some pictures to remember our visit.’’
While living in China, Gaib could not help getting acquainted with works by Lu Xin, a classic Chinese writer. The main topic of his stories, the fate of a “low ranker”, was close to Ghaib. He carefully studied Lu Xin's works and wrote a book about him.
The ”Chinese period“ of Gaib's life was two and a half years long, from 1957 to 1959, and his “short lyrical relationship”, as he said, was reflected in his Birth Pangs.
In 1956, Prime Minister Nuri Said was extremely brutal towards the democratic movement, and jailed hundreds of Iraqi freedom fighters. Escaping from persecution, one of the most popular Iraqi writers, who dedicatedly fought against the terror, Gaib Farman was forced to leave the country. Being abroad, he wrote and published a fiery journalistic book Iraq During the Black Regime. Since 1957, he lived in China, where he managed to strengthen the contact between the Chinese and Arab peoples. He wrote a book about Lu Xing and worked for a magazine.
The 14 July Revolution determined Gaib's future - he is willing to return to his homeland, hoping to be useful to his country.
As we all know, hopes for democratic changes in Iraq failed, the revolution turned into conformism, where only opportunists and merchants benefited. Birth Pangs of the 14 July Revolution and its depressing outcomes would be later described in his same-name novel - the monarchical regime was overthrown, but the revolution went nowhere - the only thing that reminded of it was the monument erected on Liberation Square – a stone wall banner rising above a crowd of vagabonds and merchants. Gaib was still blacklisted, and he again faced a dilemma about his future life. He wished to engage in serious literary work to implement his creative ideas. In 1959, a second collection of his stories, The Second Child (Maulud Ahar), was published, which secured his literary success.
Opinions of people who experienced emigration were always very different, but regardless of whether the emigration were associated with some tragic and dramatic events or not, emigration always means living far from your home, far from your native language, living in a strange land.
This is how we should see Gaib's decision to leave his homeland and emigrate. This was a political emigration from a non-free country, the reasons included political oppression, persecution, surveillance, arrests, imprisonment, material problems, and particularly for a creative person – the impossibility of self-expression.
For Gaib it was especially sad to realize that his return to the homeland was nothing but a dream, even a brief visit to Iraq, not to mention a permanent stay there, became impossible.
Gaib's first cooperation with the Soviet Union happened via the Union of Soviet Writers. At that time, the publishing policy for translating books into Arabic and the selection principle were primarily based on ideological reasons. As a result, there was a wrong idea of the literary process, but Gaib was in a good position in this regard. He mostly translated good works without compromising the decency that was always essential for him. As a result, Gaib achieved a high level of skill, which was first of all evident to his colleagues, who were able to assess the semantic correspondence of the translation with the original.
