Qatar Forum for Authors holds seminar on role of place in literary works

Doha - The Qatar Forum for Authors organized a literary seminar on Wednesday to explore the significance of place in literary works. Led by writer Badriya Hamad Al Marikhi, the seminar delved into how the built environment can become an identity and living memory in novels and short stories.

Forum Director Iman Al Kaabi emphasized that the forum is dedicated to enhancing the cultural scene, fostering intellectual growth, and engaging writers and intellectuals through regular cultural programs and seminars. This particular seminar was based on Al Marikhi's book on the aesthetics of place in Qatari novels, published by the Ministry of Culture.

Al Kaabi highlighted the seminar as one of the forum's most significant cultural initiatives, aimed at supporting literary research and enriching the literary landscape in Qatar. She expressed her commitment to continuing cultural seminars and programs to invigorate intellectual and creative activity in the country.

Al Marikhi challenged the notion that place in literature is merely a set of coordinates. She described place as a space shaped by physical structures and intertwined with people, relationships, circumstances, and scenes. Even if a place disappears physically, literature preserves its memory and provides a new location for it to exist.

She explained that human memory recalls a place not just abstractly or geographically but through all its sensory experiences, such as sound, smell, touch, and sight. In literary texts, place can transcend its traditional role as a backdrop and become a protagonist, actively shaping the narrative and influencing characters.

Al Marikhi examined the concept of Al Fereej, a social world in Qatari and Gulf collective consciousness, beyond just being a collection of structures. She stressed that it is a hierarchy tied to memory, starting from the home and expanding into a community that shapes national identity and cultural forces.

When a novel pays attention to place, Al Marikhi stated, it becomes a living archive, preserving architectural features, human relationships, social customs, sounds, settings, and historical transformations. In this way, narrative fiction becomes a repository of national and human memory.