Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
One morning, after a series of days spent writing a story for children, Asmaa went to one of the libraries in the Gaza Strip, offering to buy it for a sum of money that her aunt considered “large.” The girl’s smile did not leave her face the entire way. How could it not? Today, she will make her way in writing by selling her first literary product, for which she devoted her effort, time, and the juice of her dreams and passion.
The girl arrived and began her speech with some confusion. She wanted to tell the whole world that these papers were in her hands, a “story” that she had written. “I am the writer who often dreams of having her name on many, many covers that go around the world,” but what the owner said The library, as if the dream table was turned over on top of it: “I will take this story from you for a shekel. I see this shelf, all the stories on it are sold to me for a shekel.”
The girl returned, asking herself about the cultural state that the Gaza Strip had reached. She took her tear-filled eyes to a spacious place where she could think of a solution, and she came up with an idea.
A special application that enables her to sell her stories and novels at a price worthy of the time and effort she put into them. “I am an Arab” was its name. In it, she began publishing texts that gradually increased in number of readers, and so on until she began promoting literary and fictional works through it.
Asmaa’s passion for stories began when her father - during his trips to the Arab Republic of Egypt - would bring her stories and novels, after he felt the strength of her talent and her love for acquiring books, “to the point that I would leave my books during school exams and go to read stories, and this often made her angry.” My mother a lot,” says the 32-year-old.
Many times, Asmaa broke her agreements with her mother, and began reading foreign books. One time, she even left one of her notebooks outside the drawer, only to return and find her mother amazed at the strength of the meanings she had written in it. Here, she began to encourage her to write, and motivate her to take advantage of her free time. In which.
Not only her mother, but also her teachers at school and her classmates, used to ask her to write thoughts, messages, and even congratulations to other friends, she said.
After Asmaa finished her high school studies, she began studying information technology (IT) at the Islamic University in 2006 AD, and here she stopped writing for a while. The specialization was difficult and it was necessary to devote herself full-time. After graduating from the university in 2010 AD, she entered the labor market to implement several projects.
But all opportunities did not meet the “ambition”, until the year 2014 came, and the Israeli occupation planes began bombing Gaza during a war that lasted 51 days. Asmaa was trying to regain her ability to write, so she wrote a lot about scenes of children’s fear, and some of the stories of the martyrs of her family, and she was She publishes her texts on social media, which receive interaction and sharing.
After the war, I took all the texts to one of the publishing and printing houses in Gaza, so that they might take from them what I had written with tears of loss at that time. I was surprised by the financial outlook of their owner, and by very many conditions, all aimed at making profit only. “This made me reject the offer completely” and actually think about my own project.
At the end of 2014, the young woman began implementing the “I am Arab” project, which aimed to preserve Arab culture and consolidate the roots of the Palestinian issue. It primarily targeted Arab communities in foreign countries, through stories for children and others that talked about heritage, history, and Palestine.
She adds: “What distinguishes my project is that it covers the lack of Arab production in the field of children’s stories and cartoons. Indeed, we succeeded and reached thousands of subscribers, with a much better financial return than the jobs I was working in. Through the project, we obtained many awards and grants, including the Mobaderoon Grant.” 2 and the Excellence and Creativity Award and others.”
She is extremely happy about what she has achieved: “The I am Arab project has brought about a qualitative leap, and has taken me to an important stage in which I have contracted with the International Empowerment Foundation for a similar project, in which I will write a series of children’s stories documenting the stories of noble women in Arab and Islamic history, and that foundation will work on marketing and producing These stories are in more than one language, and now I have started a second series of stories, which is 7 stories, and this project will be launched soon.”
Note: This material is a training output for the “The Art of Writing Journalistic Stories” course implemented by the Press House Foundation/June 2020.
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