عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Culture

King Salman Launches Non-Profit Foundation to Invest in Human Development

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman approves the adoption of the non-profit King Salman Foundation’s bylaws.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman approves the adoption of the non-profit King Salman Foundation’s bylaws.
TT
20
TT

King Salman Launches Non-Profit Foundation to Invest in Human Development

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman approves the adoption of the non-profit King Salman Foundation’s bylaws.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman approves the adoption of the non-profit King Salman Foundation’s bylaws.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, in a royal decree on Thursday, approved the adoption of the non-profit King Salman Foundation’s bylaws.

The Foundation reflects King Salman’s passion for culture, knowledge and history and it perpetuates achievements in the non-profit sector. The Foundation also supports sustainability in urban development.

The launch of the Foundation is derived from the King’s longstanding charitable and humanitarian initiatives.

“We will always continue, God willing, to invest in people, develop their culture and pride in their identity as a permanent approach because we seek to confront human challenges and sustain the prosperity of societies,” the King said in a statement on his X account.

“We look forward to making the foundation a lasting impact on the individual and society,” he added.

There are a number of King Salman Cultural Centers, including the King Salman Museum and King Salman Library at the Diriyah Gate Project and Saudi Society Museum at the King Salman Park Project.

The Foundation reflects King Salman’s passion for culture, knowledge and history. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Culture Minister Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan said the foundation continues King Salman's work to promote culture. He added on X that the foundation’s cultural centers would expand opportunities for creativity and knowledge.

Several cultural institutions and academic chairs named after King Salman reflect his long-standing support for cultural and historical values. These initiatives promote the Arabic language regionally and internationally and preserve Saudi history through various projects he has backed.

He has always supported Saudi cultural figures, encouraging their recognition and valuing their contributions. His personal library, filled with rare manuscripts and books, shows his passion for knowledge and preserving heritage.

The King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives (Darah) celebrated the launch of the Foundation, highlighting King Salman’s role in preserving national history.

During his 20 years as chairman, Darah saw significant growth, advancing the study of Saudi and Arab history, geography, and culture.

Most Viewed

 
Culture

Three Rivers, One Bridge: Mahfouz’s Last Dreams Revisited

By using black and white, Matar sought to bridge the temporal gap between her Cairo and Mahfouz’s Cairo. (Courtesy of Diana Matar)
By using black and white, Matar sought to bridge the temporal gap between her Cairo and Mahfouz’s Cairo. (Courtesy of Diana Matar)
TT
20
TT

Three Rivers, One Bridge: Mahfouz’s Last Dreams Revisited

By using black and white, Matar sought to bridge the temporal gap between her Cairo and Mahfouz’s Cairo. (Courtesy of Diana Matar)
By using black and white, Matar sought to bridge the temporal gap between her Cairo and Mahfouz’s Cairo. (Courtesy of Diana Matar)

With refreshing honesty, the Libyan British novelist Hisham Matar begins his translation of Naguib Mahfouz’s last dreams with a confession.

During their only meeting in the 1990s, Matar asked Mahfouz how he viewed writers who write in a language other than their mother tongue. The question reflected the concerns of a young writer born in America, raised partly in Cairo, and later sent to a British boarding school under a false identity to evade persecution by Gaddafi’s regime, which had disappeared his dissident father.

Naguib Mahfouz on the balcony of his café overlooking Tahrir Square in Cairo, 1988. (AFP)

Mahfouz’s reply was as concise and sharp as his prose: "You belong to the language you write in."

Yet Matar admits that, in later recollections of this exchange, he often caught himself embellishing Mahfouz’s words, adding an unspoken elaboration: "Every language is its own river, with its own terrain and ecology, its own banks and tides, its own source and destinations where it empties, and therefore, every writer who writes in that language must swim in its river."

In this sense, I Found Myself... The Last Dreams, published by Penguin's Viking last week, attempts to be a bridge between three rivers: the Arabic in which Mahfouz wrote his original text, the English into which Matar translated it, and the visual language of the American photographer Diana Matar; the translator’s wife whose images of Cairo are interspersed throughout the book.

No easy task. Mahfouz’s translations have often sparked debate—whether over inaccuracies, neglected context, or occasional editorial interference.

A touch of this affects Matar’s attempt without ruining it. For instance, in translating Dream 211, where Mahfouz finds himself facing Saad Zaghloul, leader of the 1919 revolution, alongside "Umm al-Masriyyin" (Mother of the Egyptians)—a title referring to Zaghloul’s wife, Safiya—Matar misinterprets the epithet as a symbolic allusion to Egypt itself, rendering it "Mother Egypt."

Beyond this, however, the first published translation by Pulitzer-winning Matar flows smoothly, matching the simplicity of his project’s origin story: it began one morning over coffee at the kitchen table, where he translated a few dreams for his wife, only to find himself having done dozens—eventually deciding to publish them as his first major translation.

The images complement the dreamlike atmosphere without attempting to directly translate any of them. (Courtesy of Diana Matar)

Perhaps the concise, economical language of Mahfouz’s final dreams made the task easier.

Between dreams, Diana Matar’s photographs of Cairo—Mahfouz’s city and muse—appear shrouded in shadows, dust, and fleeting impressions, sometimes ghostly in detail, complementing the dreamscapes without directly illustrating them. Here, she joins Mahfouz in her love for Cairo, which became her "muse" after accompanying her husband to that summer meeting with the Arab world’s sole Nobel laureate in literature. Relying on black-and-white imagery and abstraction where possible, Diana seems to bridge the temporal gap between her Cairo and Mahfouz’s.

Diana Matar took most of the book's photographs between the late 1990s and early 2000s. (Courtesy of Diana Matar)

In his introduction’s closing lines, Hisham Matar imagines Mahfouz flipping through the translation and remarking, in his trademark brevity: "Of course." But perhaps closer to the truth is that he would repeat his original verdict: "You belong to the language you write in."

Perhaps we must accept that translation—not just of this book, but in general—is a bridge, not a mirror. And that is enough.