Opening a Channel between the Danube and the Arabian sea

“Show me where the Danube kisses the sky.” This poetic song by Croatian pop-rock singer Josipa Lisac had few chances to make its way to Abu Dhabi. From the lush greenery of the Balkan Republic to the desertic shores of the Emirati capital, the distance is not only measured in kilometres (6000 in this case). It is also linguistic and cultural. And yet, one night in June, the sentimental melody resonated in the cosy atmosphere of District 10, a cultural café located in the embassies district, near Khalifa Park.

Even more uncanny, the song was not streamed on YouTube or played on a CD. Instead, it was interpreted by Fatima Alhashmi, a 33 years-old Emirati musician and opera singer, who brilliantly captured the spirit of the Croatian ballad. Alhashmi has a passion for arts and music that has made her cross multiple borders. She works for the ministry of culture, where she is busy building the first national symphony orchestra of the country. A talented pianist, she has performed in several European countries. “I am in deep love with western classical music”, she confessed. Last year, she was in Paris, for a joint-performance between Emirati and French musicians. “We celebrated Sheikh Zayed legacy, how he told us to educate ourselves about other cultures and to build bridges toward them”.

Croatia, an unexcepted destination for her, came her way when she joined Tandem Shaml, a programme that supports experimental collaborations between cultural leaders of the Arab region and Europe. Tandem is an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam), the Berlin-based organization MitOst and Culture Resource, a non-profit organization that supports artistic creativity in the Arab region. The programme is funded by several foundations, among them the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMADF). “That is how I got involved”, Fatima explained. “They reached out to me and suggested me to apply”.

Fatima was selected. In July 2018, she flew to Hammamet, Tunisia, to find a European partner. There were 9 participants from the Arab world and an equal number from Europe. The experience, she recalled, was very different from what she had expected. “I thought I would naturally connect with people working in the performing arts. I had made a preselection of potential partners. But I ended up collaborating with someone who was not on my list and whose main interest was literature. It was challenging, but also positive because it forced me to think outside the box”.

Miljenka Buljević, Fatima’s Tandem partner, runs a literary café in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Founded in 2003, Booksa is dedicated to the promotion of literature and contemporary forms of cultures. Since its opening, the café has invited more than 500 Croatian and foreign writers for book events, public discussions and literary festivals. A determined lady in her forties, Mika, as everybody calls her, has developed a strong interest in Arabic literature. She is willing to make it more accessible in Croatia. “Most of the time, we are reading Arab authors from French or English translations”, she regretted.

For the past two years, she has been trying to change the game through the festival of small literature. “It is an ironic name to point out languages that are not commonly translated in Croatian”, she clarified. “The last two editions were dedicated to Arabic literature. In 2017, we had authors from the Levant, in 2018, from the Maghreb, and this coming December, we will host writers from Egypt. With each edition, we published an anthology of short stories and poems composed by our guests. With direct translations to Croatian, of course”. Because she was interested in further collaborations with the Arab world, she applied to the Tandem Shaml programme.

While in Tunisia, Fatima and Mika spent extensive time brainstorming about how they could work together and make the best use of the 10 days that the programme would allow them to spend in each other country. “I was coming from a big, official institution and my main interest was music. She was running a non-profit organization whose main focus was literature. We had to find a common ground”, Fatima recalled. They realized that their countries didn’t have any established exchanges, even not diplomatic representations, and that they would have to build everything from scratch. “We were hoping to push for the creation of a cultural agreement between our countries”.

In January 2019, Mika Buljević flew to Abu Dhabi for the first time. She was very anxious, because she had never travelled to the region before. “In Croatia, all people know about the Gulf is that Dubai is a “shopping mecca”. They have barely heard about Abu Dhabi. I only knew about the few cultural things that you can find online”. She was thus greatly surprised when by chance, she came across the Women museum in Dubai. “This is such a great initiative. I learned a lot about women and culture in this country. It opened a new window in my representation of this place.” The following days, she met with the head of the literature department at the ministry of culture and with people who run publishing houses, libraries, book fairs and cultural venues.

When Fatima visited Zagreb, a few months later, in April, she followed a similar path, even if her focus was the musical scene. She had meetings with cultural operators and visited the ministry of culture. She was impressed by how much Croatia was investing in culture. “The National Theatre of Croatia is employing 500 people. In my country, we are still building our cultural infrastructure.” The highlight of her trip was her masterclass with the Croatian opera singer Dunja Vejzović. Overall, Fatima was amazed by the kindness of people, even if she was attracting some curiosity. “They were obviously not used to see an Arab woman. It is very different from Paris or London”.

Building connections between two different worlds that operate with different languages and distinctive cultural references has not been an easy process. “It was challenging to understand what the other person deals with, how her social milieu works and how to navigate it”, Mika admitted. “Take a simple thing like communicating. A lot of people use social networks in Abu Dhabi, which I don’t really do. When I found a message from Fatima on Instagram, I was very surprised: I didn’t even know that it was possible to do it”, she laughed. “The whole process pushed us out of our comfort zone. It was the biggest challenge but also the biggest benefit”.

Fatima and Mika were not able to achieve their ambitious project of building a cultural agreement between their countries. When the Tandem project was unfolding, the strategy of the Ministry of culture was under review and it was not good timing, Fatima explained. But the “bright side” of the story, for her, is that she created a connection between Booksa and District 10, a cultural café that opened 18 months ago in Abu Dhabi. This vibrant place has been hosting musical nights, poetry evenings, creative writing sessions and book club gatherings every week. When Mika and Fatima reached out to Abdullah Al-Mansour and Abdullah Al Jaberi, the cofounders, to organize a cultural event dedicated to Croatia, they agreed enthusiastically.

And so it happened, one stuffy night of June. Mika returned to Abu Dhabi, this time with the Croatian writer Ivana Bodrožić who came to present her multi-awarded novel, Hotel Tito. Partly autobiographic, Hotel Tito tells the story of a nine years old girl whose life is destroyed by the Balkans wars, in the nineties. She ends up growing up in a refugee camp. “It is written from a child’s perspective”, Bodrožić explained ahead of the event. “The language is very simple and the insights are universal. It is a story about growing up and finding your own identity and I think it is something that can be experienced in every corner of the world”.

Surrounded by books and a portrait of Umm Kulthum, the legendary Egyptian singer, an audience of mostly Emirati females carefully listened to Ivana Bodrožić when she spoke about war and how it makes you lose your basic standards of humanity. Nada, who ran the English book club at District 10, asked about the relation between suffering and writing. A woman from Syria burst into tears as she could relate to the actual experience of children in her country. And just before Fatima sang Josipa Lisac’s song, “Show me where the Danube kisses the sky”, Abdullah surprised Mika and Ivana with a Croatian dessert. “It is incredible to be here”, Ivana whispered. It was an untroubled moment of cultural dialogue and mutual understanding.

The Tandem exchange programme is coming to an end, with the final meeting happening in Berlin at the beginning of July. What will remain of this collaboration afterwards? Mika hopes that one day, she would be able to read the pioneering Emirati poetess Ousha, whose work is only accessible in Arabic, so she contemplates the idea of a translation. Fatima really enjoyed singing in Croatian and she would be delighted to repeat the experience with other foreign languages. “I would like to see this kind of cultural exchange happening more regularly in my country”.