São Paulo – The main character in the story is the director of Cultural Heritage at the International Fantasy Rescue Society (SIRF). Due to the war in Baghdad, which started in 2003, she gets in touch with Sinbad, Ali Baba, Aladdin, calling out for help to prevent dreams from being abandoned in the middle of the war. Sinbad the sailor goes by sea, Aladdin flies his carpet through air, and storytellers provide aid by land. With the sponsorship of Ali Baba, they manage to rescue 15,222 characters of the One Thousand and One Nights.
In short, this is the plot of children’s book “Operation Rescue in Baghdad,” written by Brazilian journalist Luciana Savaget, and published in 2004 by the Nova Fronteira publishing house. The book was translated from Spanish into Arabic, last year, by the Tamer Institute, a Palestinian non-governmental organization, and the Ministry of Education of the Arab country purchased 100,000 copies. They were distributed among children at the Palestinian refugee camps, and Luciana travelled to the country last November to discuss the work.
“When the war began, I was desperate. I used to think: the people are not realizing that not only a city will be destroyed, but also the setting for the One Thousand and One Nights. Aladdin was born in the same neighbourhood as Saddam Hussein, Sinbad used to sail the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,” says the writer. She tells that she started sending emails and talking to people about the matter. So she decided to write the book, consisting of letters exchanged with Arab characters such as Sinbad, Ali Baba, and Aladdin. One detail: Sinbad had already retired, but decided to make an exception and take part in the operation. He, however, is already an elder, therefore letters are the only way of communicating with him.
The book is the first in a series of three. The second one, entitled “Operation Rescue in Jordan – the Secret of the Desert,” was released in 2007 and is the result of a trip that Luciana made to the Arab world – Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Palestine – to give lectures about the book “Operation Rescue in Baghdad.” The author, as the director of the SIRF, tells stories about her trip, such as one night spent in the desert alongside Bedouins, as she narrates the quest for the lamp of Aladdin, which fell into the hands of dream demolishers. She finds the lamp, but not the genie.
And the genie is exactly the subject of the third book in the series, which will be released before the end of the year. In it, the director of Cultural Heritages of the SIRF goes to Palestine because she believes that the genie is spreading evil around, and contributes to the lack of an understanding between Palestinians and the Jewish in order to end the conflict. According to Luciana, there are s still no forecasts regarding translation into Arabic of the second and third books in the series. The problem, according to her, is finding professionals who will do the direct translation from Portuguese into Arabic. The fact that the Operation Baghdad book has a version in Spanish has made translation into Arabic easier.
Luciana
The writer Luciana, aged 50, is the author of 29 books. The first one that she wrote, entitled Flor sem Nome (Flower With No Name), was published in 1988. The journalist explains that her early works were more inclined towards pure fiction, and that starting with “Operation Rescue in Baghdad” she started mixing fantasy and reality, which is the case with the children’s series about Arab countries.
Even though she is not a descendant of Arabs, Luciana feels a close connection to the Middle East. She has a collection of Muslim female garments, such as the chador, which she makes a point of showing to Brazilian children in lectures about her books. The intention is to show, with this and other elements, that Islamism is a religion like any other, and should not be linked to terrorism.
Luciana was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro and, in addition to being a writer, she works as a journalist at cable news channel TV Globo News, owned by the Globo TV network. At the channel, she is the editor of the "Arquivo N" show. Aside from children’s books, Luciana, who is a Catholic, also wrote adult books, including one based on journalistic research at Catholic Churches about Our Lady.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
