EVERY DREAM
HAS ITS PRICE
Diwan Bookstores. The successful entrepreneur Nadia Wassef has been listed several times on the Forbes list of the 200 most influential women in the Middle East. In her book, she talks about Cairo’s first modern bookstore which she founded.
and published articles and books on women’s rights and wrote about violence against women. Completely unplanned. At the beginning of the 2000s, Egypt was caught up in a mood of political awakening. There was much interest in culture, international exchange and consumerism.“ It was a difficult time in our lives privately, our father had just died after a long illness. We felt empty and disillusioned inside. At a dinner with friends, my sister Hind and I spontaneously decided to open a bookshop.” Together with their friend and business partner Nihal Schawky, they wanted to create a space that bridged East and West. Without a concrete business plan and only their own savings to start with, T they founded a modern bookshop in Cairo in 2002. “It URSULA SCHEIDL shouldn’t be just any bookshop. We wanted to reflect culture not as opposites or boundaries, but as parts of a It’s a sunny late summer day in London. Nadia Wassef is bigger whole. And when you start thinking about books, very happy because “the weather is usually terrible here. especially with Egypt’s rich cultural tradition, there’s I took Egypt’s perfect weather for granted and I miss it,” music, films and documentaries that can easily be inshe tells us in this Zoom interview. “It was wonderful tegrated with a Western context. It was very growing up in Egypt. I was perfectly exciting. Everything we offer has to mean happy without fast food and Netflix. I something, not just financially. It has to add loved ABBA. The world was a friendlier something to the conversation you have with place before social media,” laughs the your readers as we discuss society and how Cairo native, born in 1974. As a little girl, we can move forward together,” Wassef still she wanted to be a ballet dancer because enthuses euphorically about the beginnings “the women in Arab films moved with of Diwan Bookstores. In just under 20 years, so much strength and beauty.” However, Diwan Bookstores has developed into a sucas she got to know the world around her, cessful franchise concept. she became aware of the exploitation and There were plenty of challenges, the path was less pleasant aspects of this profession. She not always easy, as Wassef reveals in her deattended public schools, studied English but book “Every Day Destiny Turns a Page”, and French, studied social anthropology, an adventurous and impressive story of the comparative literature and creative writfounding of Diwan, its staff and visitors, the ing in Cairo and London. “I know I’m hurdles of business life, censorship, Egypt’s privileged, I stand by that, but you have Debut. With her book “Jeden Tag blättert Schicksal eine Seite um” Nadia Wassef history and female self-empowerment in to make the best of it,” she is convinced, das has written a declaration of love for books the cultural circles of Cairo. “The most dif“that’s what I also tell my two daughters.” and bookshops. The German first edition Before becoming a bookseller, she cam- was published by Goldmann in September. ficult thing, not only in Egypt but everywhere in the world, is bureaucracy. It’s very paigned against female genital mutilation 320 pages, 20 Euros. WELCOME VIENNA
32
Dany Eid Photgraphy
E X T
