Ali Salem, also transliterated Ali Salim (Arabic: على سالم, IPA:[ˈʕæliˈsæːlem]; 24 February 1936 – 22 September 2015), was an Egyptian playwright, author, and political commentator[1] known for controversially endorsing cooperation with Israel.[2] The Los Angeles Times once described him as "a big, loud man known for his satiric wit".[2]
Career
From the premiere of his first play in 1965, he wrote 25 plays and fifteen books.[3] One of the best known, The School of Troublemakers, debuted in 1971 and featured a rowdy class of children transformed by a kind teacher.[2] His plays The Phantom of Heliopolis, The Comedy of Oedipus, The Man Who Fooled the Angels, and The Buffet have also become "classics of the Egyptian theater".[3] Salem's plays often include allegorical critiques of Egyptian politics with a strong vein of humor and satire.[3]
In 1994, he wrote a book entitled My Drive to Israel about a trip he took to the country to satisfy his curiosity about it following the signing of the Oslo Accords.[4][5] He later claimed that the trip was not "a love trip, but a serious attempt to get rid of hate. Hatred prevents us from knowing reality as it is".[2] He spent 23 nights in Israel and concluded that "real co-operation" between the two nations should be possible.[4] Though the book sold more than 60,000 copies, a bestseller by Egyptian standards, it provoked controversy, and Salem was subsequently ostracized from the Egyptian intellectual community and expelled from its Writer's Syndicate as a result of his "propaganda."[2] He did not have a play or movie script produced in Egypt after the book's publication,[4][6] though he continued to contribute columns to foreign media such as the London-based Al Hayat.[2] Salem's memoir was later adapted by Ari Roth into the play Ali Salem Drives to Israel, which had its world premiere in the US in 2005.[7][8]
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