Mahmoud Saeed, a powerful writer known throughout the Arab world who emigrated to Chicago in 1999, authored novels reflecting the harsh realities many people lived through mixed with poignant and heartfelt insights into their struggles, their hopes and their daily lives.
Mr. Saeed died on Jan. 27 at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago after a long illness. He was 89.
Born in 1935 in Mosul, Iraq, Mr. Saeed produced more than 20 novels and many short stories.
His literary debut was in 1956 with the short story “The Ominous Gun,” published in the Al-Fata newspaper in Iraq. He published his first novel in 1963. He won several literary awards in Iraq and Egypt.
“Mahmoud Saeed was an Iraqi writer of great gifts, who persevered in testifying to the truth despite the daunting and sometimes cruel circumstances of his own life,” said Kay Heikkinen, a now-retired University of Chicago lecturer in Arabic who translated Saeed’s early novel “Ben Barka Lane” (“Rue Ben Barka”).
“He was a prolific writer who was unfailingly generous with his translators, a gifted calligrapher and a keen observer of human nature and of politics — something that was already evident in his “Ben Barka Lane,” which is an absorbing account of the struggles of ordinary people in Morocco in the late 1960s, seen through the eyes of an exiled Iraqi who has come to Morocco as a teacher. His was a unique voice that will be sorely missed.”
Mr. Saeed left Iraq in 1985, emigrating to the United Arab Emirates, after being arrested and imprisoned six times. From 1963 to 2008, Iraqi authorities banned the publication of his novels.
After the 1991 Gulf War, Mr. Saeed returned to Iraq only to flee again to Dubai.
After moving to Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood, he became an American citizen. In 2008, Syracuse University Press published two of his short stories, “Bitter Morning” and “A Figure in Repose.” In 2010, he was one of several writers profiled in a New Yorker article about the contemporary Arab novel.
Mr. Saeed was an Arabic-language instructor and an author-in-residence at DePaul University, and he was a regular attendee at the monthly programs held by the Society of Midland Authors, of which he was a member. In 2014, the Guild Literary Complex named him one of “25 [Chicago] Writers to Watch.”
In 2016, he wrote a haunting op-ed in the New York Times about the destruction of historic Mosul at the hands of the Islamic State.
Besides “Ben Barka Lane” (Simon & Schuster), at least three of his other novels have been translated into English and published: “Saddam City,” “The World Through the Eyes of Angels” and “Two Lost Souls.”
“The World Through the Eyes of Angels,” set in Mosul, won the 2010 King Fahd Center Translation of Arabic Literature Award — an award for both the novel and the translation — and was published by Syracuse University Press in 2011. The novel was translated by Allen Salter in collaboration with Zahra Jishi and Rafah Abuinnab.
“Saddam City,” Mr. Saeed’s best-known and semi-autobiographical novel, was published by London-based Saqi Books in 2004. It tells a story during the terrorizing reign of Saddam Hussain of a Baghdad teacher who is arrested as he reaches his school. For 15 months, he witnesses scenes of torture and is brutally interrogated, shuffled from one prison to another and barred from getting in touch with his family.
Former Midland Authors President Robert Loerzel said, “Mahmoud’s novels ‘Saddam City’ and ‘The World Through the Eyes of Angels’ helped to open my eyes to the perspective of Iraq’s people and how they heroically survived the huge upheavals in their homeland. Mahmoud often attended Midland Authors programs, chatting amiably with Allen Salter, who’d translated some of his fiction. I sensed that Mahmoud was eager to find a literary community in his new city. He often talked about how challenging it was for Arabic authors to get their work published — in the original language as well as in translation. Reading his books makes you wonder how much other worthwhile fiction remains untranslated into English, still awaiting to be discovered by a wider audience.”
Mr. Saeed is survived by a son in Norway and a daughter in Dubai.
Services have been held.