At the book exhibition in Sharjah, they joined the Italian shrines

Tourists visiting Italy are often shown the place where the muse of the Italian genius Dante Alighieri supposedly lived. Some two fleeting meetings, one of which happened in early childhood, gave rise to incredible love and poetic lines for all time.

Beatrice died at the age of 24, being a married lady, and the unfortunate Dante, who created in his imagination what was not really there, experienced her departure as a terrible grief. According to Boccaccio, the inconsolable poet lost weight and fell into melancholy. In a small performance, which Italian artists periodically play out at the fair, Beatrice is not at all the same image as Dante was. His muse is an ordinary and overly talkative person. Dante himself in a laurel wreath and a mournful mask resembles a monster. He wears his beloved on his own hump, so that his legs do not hold.

On the eve of the closing of the fair, and it worked for almost two weeks, an inexperienced European visitor could stumble upon closed doors. Nor were the usual columns of yellow school buses that lined up at the entrance every morning.

The children here, I must say, are courageous. They have to get up at five in the morning to be in time for school. For each child, a bus arrives at the entrance, which then travels around the city until it collects all classmates. But when the guys are brought to the fair at 10 am to participate in master classes, you will not see any traces of lack of sleep and fatigue. Children cut something, draw, read, dance, do everything that the book exhibition offers them.

The temporary lull is explained by the fact that time is freed up for Friday prayers, care for the cleanliness of the body and clothing. You can read the Quran and not rush anywhere. Mosques are closed for tourists. Even one of the largest museums in Sharjah, and there are 814 of them, the Museum of Islamic Civilization, works on a reduced schedule. Friday is considered the sacred day of the week.

In the UAE, four and a half business days. However, at the book fair, the schedule was slightly adjusted, freeing up the first half of the day and thoroughly saturating the evening. One of the planned events is a performance with Dante and Beatrice.

Why there are so many children at the fair, and why whole families come to it, may be due to the fact that it is patronized by the Emir of Sharjah, Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi. And he is not only a politician who has been heading the state for 50 years, but a scientist, playwright and poet. He often dedicates his poems to his grandmother and mother, who raised him.

In the UAE, much attention is paid not only to school education, but also to pre-school education, which most often takes place in the family. Opening the current fair, His Highness spoke about the importance of involving children in cultural life, the value of the institution of the family. Children are the gold reserve of the nation.

The Italian troops who arrived at the fair are working hard on this. Every day, master classes are organized for children, a small theater is created by common efforts, masks and dolls are made from paper and cardboard, dance classes are held to Italian music.

Pinocchio is generally proclaimed an ambassador of Italian culture. He periodically goes to the visitors of the exhibition and communicates with them. An Italian juggler manipulates glass balls in a fantastic way. And when not only children try to repeat his movements, but girls in abaya, strong men in snow-white clothes, not everyone succeeds. And it looks only for a European as an exotic.

An Italian chef conducts cooking sessions of national dishes, and this is one of the most popular genres at the fair. Hosts of food blogs and shows come to Sharjah from all over the world. This year experts from India and Indonesia also told about the secrets of national cuisine in a special kitchen corner.

There are many rare books at the fair. A whole section in the center of the huge pavilion is devoted to treasures brought from the library of the Catholic University of Milan. Among them are the ancient Koran, manuscripts of the 15th-16th centuries, devoted to questions of philosophy, geography and history. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, published in the 15th century, is also presented.

Among the Italian guests is the writer Alessandro Baricco, known not only for his books, but also for the film adaptations of his novels – “Silk” with Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley, “The Legend of the Pianist” with Tim Roth. His works have been staged in Russian theaters more than once.

At the Maly Theater, actress Irina Leonova made her debut as a director, staging the play “1900th. The Legend of the Pianist, where pianist Boris Berezovsky played the role of the silent musician. And his monologue was written for the Italian actor Eugenio Allegri and director Gabriel Vaches in 1994.

As Barikko himself says, this is a cross between a theatrical production and a story to be read aloud. In 1998, this text was filmed by Giuseppe Tornatore with the participation of British actor Tim Roth, and in 2005, the cartoon Novecento: The Pianist was filmed in France.

The future pianist in the novel was found in a lemon box. Almost like Cheburashka. In Sharjah, Barikko compared the arrival of cinema in his life to winning the lottery, although he had to face some problems. For the sake of the commercial success of the future picture, it was necessary to invent a love line, but the author wrote about his love for music.

Alessandro Baricco is not only a novelist, but an essayist, pianist and music critic and football lover. At some point he left Italy and moved to Paris.

Five of his works have been translated into Arabic. At a meeting with readers, Barikko talked about the global changes that have swept the world, its fatal transition to digital, the dominance of video games. He has an essay on iPhones and social networks, the benefits and negative consequences of the advent of the Internet. According to the writer, globalization is a challenge and a risk. He and his friends organized the Narrative School in Turin, where the listener can learn how to write novels and develop scripts for video games. For the writer, his novels are salvation in the modern world, an opportunity to plunge into silence and find harmony. Barikko compared writing with the profession of an astronaut and going into space.