Pathfinder Press titles that have been translated into Arabic are getting around in the Arab-speaking world and beyond.
At the Amman International Book Fair in Jordan, from Sept. 24 to Oct. 3, with over 400,000 visitors, four Pathfinder titles were displayed in the booth of Jordanian publisher Dar Fada’at — Lenin’s Final Fight by V.I. Lenin, By Any Means Necessary by Malcolm X, An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism by George Novack and Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible by Mary-Alice Waters.
Also at the Amman event, Kanaan Publishing House from Damascus displayed Pathfinder’s Nelson Mandela Speaks; 50 Years of Covert Operations in the US by Larry Seigle, Farrell Dobbs and Steve Clark; Feminism and the Marxist Movement by Mary-Alice Waters; Reform or Revolution? by Rosa Luxemburg; and Black Music, White Business by Frank Kofsky.
Arabic translations of Pathfinder titles were also on sale at the just-concluded 18th Erbil International Book Fair in the Kurdish Region in northern Iraq Oct. 21-31. More than 400 publishers from 18 countries participated in that annual cultural festival, under the theme of “I am Kurdistani.”
Maher Haramy, who has translated many of these titles, had four books produced by his own new publishing house, Keena, in Erbil. These included two books by Thomas Sankara, We are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions and Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle; Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia by Fidel Castro; and Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke.
Dreke’s book “is inspiring for people who fight for freedom. It shows that no matter how weak you may seem compared to your oppressor or colonizer, you can still dream of achieving your freedom,” Haramy told the Militant.
“Your struggle can inspire others who share the same dream, just as the Cuban Revolution inspired other peoples to fight for their freedom and independence, like the people of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau,” Haramy said. “What happened there can happen anywhere in the world.”
Not a lot of Arabic speakers have access to much accurate information about Cuba, or Colombia or other countries outside our region, Haramy said. “But we were also occupied and conquered, so we can learn from these struggles.”
Another publisher at the Erbil book fair, Al-Takween, based in Damascus, displayed two Pathfinder titles in Arabic: Art and Revolution: Writings on Literature, Politics, and Culture by Leon Trotsky and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity by Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, George Novack and Mary-Alice Waters.
“Novack, like Engels, traces everything back to the development of humanity, which took millions of years,” says Haramy who translated that last book. “It helps us see in our part of the world that we can’t just say, ‘We haven’t had any results from our struggles for 30 years. There is no point.’ You have to be patient; we are talking about history.”
Haramy rejects the notion that Marxism is Eurocentric. “Marx’s books were not just about Germany or England because industrialization happened there first. We need that perspective to fight too,” he said. “We are facing the ruling capitalist classes everywhere. There have been sectarian and ethnic struggles that have sort of hidden the class struggle, but it is still there.”
We also talked to Haramy on the phone in the United Arab Emirates, where he will be at a book fair in Sharjah Nov. 4-15. “This is a very big, significant book fair,” Haramy said. “All the important publishers and booksellers across the Middle East and North Africa are there. So it’s a good place to find out what people are interested in, what they would like to read.”
Pathfinder Press currently sells 20 titles in Arabic on revolutionary working-class politics on its website, with five more being shipped from Keena, according to Holly Harkness, director of Pathfinder’s distribution center in Atlanta. Next up from Keena Publishers, Haramy said, is a new Arabic translation of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes. Order online from the Arabic books section on the Pathfinder Press website.