Three writers on geography, memory and the duty to preserve place

At the 45th Sharjah International Book Fair, three authors from the United States, Iraq and the UAE gathered to discuss a question that matters to every writer: how does geography become memory, and what is an artist’s responsibility to a place undergoing radical change?

A sidr tree standing in the desert. Two rivers flowing through a childhood city. The ancestral landscapes of Nigeria reimagined across planets and imagined futures. At the 45th Sharjah International Book Fair, three writers from vastly different cultural traditions gathered to explore a question that lies at the heart of literature: how does the geography of a place become the geography of memory, and what obligation do writers carry to preserve the identities of places that are themselves constantly changing.

The panel, titled The Geography of Memory: Writing the Places That Made Us, brought together Nnedi Okorafor, the Nigerian-American author of speculative fiction and fantasy; Diaa Jubaili, an Iraqi novelist and short-story writer born in Basra in 1977; and Nasser Al Dhaheri, an Emirati writer and filmmaker. Their genres and cultural traditions diverged sharply, yet each spoke of place not as backdrop but as a living presence within the work itself.

Okorafor, a bestselling writer, described how her childhood journeys to Nigeria became the foundation for stories that moved far beyond realism. Her imagined futures, she explained, were rooted in ancestral memory. “I just followed the stories,” she said. “And I found that Nigeria was very much where the energy was.” As her fiction ranges across countries, cultures and even imaginary planets, her immersion in each world is total. “When I’m writing a place, when I’m writing a setting, I’m very much there,” she noted.

For Jubaili, storytelling emerged from war and childhood memory. Two rivers in his hometown of Basra acquired contrasting meanings: one representing longing and renewal, the other war, bloodshed and suffering. In one story, a military diver, known as a frogman during the 1980s war, becomes caught on a fisherman’s hook many years after disappearing into the river, and the reader is left to ask whether the war has ended. Personal memories of his first school, encounters with water and a café that held formative influence continue to shape his imagination. “I bring together the pen and the lens,” he reflected. “If the pen fails me, the lens comes to my aid; and if the lens abandons me, the pen flows with ink to capture these things.”

Al Dhaheri spoke of storytelling’s origins in childhood memories of “an oasis formed between the mountain, the palm trees and the desert,” his grandmother’s voice, and a sidr tree that served as a community gathering place. The death of that tree and the disappearance of the neighbourhood symbolised the UAE’s rapid urban transformation, which he has captured through film and photography. For Al Dhaheri, the responsibility to preserve place and memory falls particularly to creative artists. “Preserving a place and its memory may be more the domain of writers and creative artists than of historians or journalists,” he said.

What it means for Abu Dhabi

Across the region, a conversation is gaining momentum about how rapid development reshapes cultural identity and collective memory. The 45th Sharjah International Book Fair, held this year, welcomes over 50 Arab authors from 17 countries and has positioned storytelling and creative practice as essential to understanding how communities and nations preserve their identities during transformation. Abu Dhabi, like other emirates, faces similar questions about how to honour its heritage even as it develops.

Writers and artists are the custodians of place, memory and belonging at moments when all three are in flux. Their work ensures that the stories that made a place, and the people within it, remain alive even as geography itself transforms.

Source: WAM