Writers and critics: The late Ezzat Omar shed light on the aesthetics of Emirati literature

Muhammad Abdel Samie (Sharjah)
Yesterday evening, the Arab Cultural Club in Sharjah organized a memorial evening for the late critic Ezzat Omar, who passed away a few weeks ago, after an intense lifetime of literary and critical giving in which he enriched the Emirati and Arab literary scene with several valuable publications.
Dr. Omar Abdel Aziz, Chairman of the Club’s Board of Directors, and Nawaf Younis, Editorial Director of Sharjah Cultural Magazine, spoke at the evening. It was moderated by Maria Mohieddin, and witnessed interventions from a number of writers on its literary history.
The evening witnessed the presentation of a documentary presentation about the life of the late deceased, who was born in the city of Manbij in Syria and graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Aleppo in 1977. He is a member of the Emirates Writers and Writers Union, and a newspaper editor in the Sharjah Cultural Magazine. He worked on many literary arbitration committees over several decades. He won the Sharjah Exhibition Award for the best book about the Emirates in 2019. He has written more than twenty books, most of which are about the Emirati narrative.
Critical taste
Dr. Omar Abdel Aziz said, in his testimony about the deceased, that he had a strong aesthetic critical taste, knowledge of a number of modernist concepts, and a deep understanding of history, which gave him the ability to explore the depths of texts and propose concepts of his own. He formed a tributary of criticism and a facet of convergence. Arab culture in the Emirates.
As for Nawaf Younis, he said, “The true intellectual is the one who influences his surroundings and is influenced by him, and this is the case of the late Izzat Omar. I met him in 1990 in the cultural section of Al-Khaleej newspaper, and Al-Khaleej published his first novel, “A Cage Looking for Birds,” in episodes. We continued communication in the Writers Union, with a critical vision that kept pace with literary creativity in the Emirates. As for the final stage of our shared life, it was in the Sharjah Cultural Magazine, where he was an editor with us, enriching the cultural and intellectual aspect, with his beautiful critical pen.”
An authentic intellectual
The writer Mohsen Suleiman spoke on behalf of the Emirates Writers Union, conveying the condolences of the head of the union, the writer Sultan Al Amimi, and praising the great critical services that Izzat Omar provided to Emirati literature, as he revealed, through his numerous books and studies, many of the phenomena of this literature, and presented and encouraged many of his writers in stages. Many parts of their literary career.
As for the writer Hussein Darwish, he said: “We worked together in Hayat Al-Nas magazine, and he also wrote in Al-Hayat newspaper. He was an authentic intellectual with a literary and cultural stance through which he sought to serve culture and literature.”
Critic Saleh Huwaidi said: The deceased was loyal, checked on his friends, and was a cognitive critic. He did not like floating concepts, and he had intellectual questions for which he was searching for answers.
As critic Islam Bushkir said, Izzat Omar’s experience is an integrated experience on the cultural and critical level, as he believed in the right of young writers to take their chance, and he was keen to guide them, and he believed in his idea, his vision, and what he wrote about, and he had free choices that made him write about authentic literary experiences. No one wrote about it.