Alexandre Rocha, special envoy*
Cairo – The vice president of foreign relations of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (CCAB), Helmi Mohammed Ibraim Nasr, met with the secretary general of the League of Arab States, Amr Mussa, yesterday (24). Mussa himself asked for the meeting.
At the occasion, Nasr suggested that in cultural agreements signed by the Arab countries, a clause always be included considering promotion of exchange of university professors. The CCAB director himself is retired from the University of São Paulo (USP).
"We spoke for almost 40 minutes. He is very happy with the trip he took to Brazil (at the beginning of the month). I proposed the exchange of university professors between the Arab countries and Brazil and he considered the idea excellent," said the professor. The question should be discussed during the summit between Arab and South American countries, in May.
According to Nasr, there are 158 universities in Brazil and only USP has had Arabic as a structured course for a long time. "In Brazil, nothing is known about the Arab culture, there are too few sources, there are too few professors," he said.
Profile
Professor Nasr is Egyptian and has been living in Brazil since 1960. He is currently 82 years old and, despite being retired, is still the chair in the post-graduate course of the USP Arab studies course. He spent 10 years preparing an Arabic-Portuguese dictionary, with over 70,000 words. It is going to be released in May, during the summit.
Apart from the dictionary, the Egyptian professor has also translated the Koran to Portuguese, at the request of the Islamic League, in Mecca. The book, which is over 600 pages long, took four years to be translated, 20 years for revision and approval but has, however, not been published yet.
*Translated by Mark Ament
