Erbil, Iraq – The girls Sila and Bija travel to Brazil, where they go to Rio de Janeiro and learn everything about the Confederations Cup and the participating teams. This is the plotline of the children’s book Sila & Bija in Rio, created by the marketing manager at the Sabis University in Erbil, Iraq, Hisham Abushakra. The publication is a guide of the tournament held last June in Brazil, and was distributed this year at schools in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
“This is a time when Brazil is in the spotlight, with the Confederations Cup, the World Cup [in 21014] and the Olympic Games [2016],” Abushakra told ANBA on explaining his project. He used the same characters as in his first children’s book, released in 2012.
Written in English and Arabic, the publication shows Rio, provides details about the tournament’s other host cities, the participating teams and their countries of origin. Everything is accompanied by drawings made by the illustrator Noura Abou Chacra. In the end, the reader can paint a character’s clothes with the colours of the winning team which, everyone knows now, was Brazil’s. The book is a personal project of Abushakra’s, and he recommends it to children aged eight to 11.
Abushakra plans on releasing a similar work for the World Cup. “Provided that I have backing, I plan on doing it in the Olympics as well,” he said. He paid for his first two children’s books with his own money, and now he is looking for third-party financial support.
The first book, written in Arabic only, narrates the girls’ encounter with a tiger while picking grapes, and sold nearly 1,500 copies, according to him. The second book was only distributed at schools, to give the children a taste of the Confederations Cup. Soccer is a great passion in the Middle East, and one of the reasons for Brazil’s wide popularity in the region.
The ANBA envoy met Abushakra at the Erbil International Fair, which ended this Thursday (26th). The university for which he works had a booth at the fair. It is a private institution founded in 1886, in Lebanon. Now, according to the writer, the organization manages schools and universities in 15 different countries around the world. In Kurdistan alone, it has ten schools, plus the university in Erbil.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
