Interviewer: Giuseppina Grillo
“Diversity is often mistaken by bringing individuals from different backgrounds and putting them to work together in certain boundaries, frames or policies. However the source of people diversity is actually the diversity of ideas, personalities and tastes, and with this diversity organizational alchemy is created...”
Mahmoud Mansi
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE
Author of Holy Star (a bi-lingual play)
Human Capital Consultant, UAE
Founder of HR Revolution Middle East Magazine
THE INTERVIEW
1- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: Mahmoud, HR is the field you have been working in since 2009. What exactly does it deal with? And how do you connect this to writing?
Mahmoud Mansi: HR in organizations stands for human resources, which is the function responsible for all the employees including their recruitment, development, happiness, salaries, promotions, performance, etc. For me HR also stands for human rights, where the HR function is responsible for the “employee rights” and the rights of the “human” side in them. I am quite lucky that I am gifted the talent of HR and the talent of fiction writing, where I always try to focus on the “human” in my stories, give voice to my characters, and on other the hand in my work in HR I utilize my innovative side.
2- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: Can you give our readers a brief about your play “Holy Star”?
Mahmoud Mansi: The Holy Star is a cultural/ philosophical play where characters from different cultural backgrounds in an abstract realm. These characters are the Pharaoh, Hercules, Alexander the Great, the Alien, Satan and a Sufi Dervish. It is called Holy Star because stars refer to our dreams and promised lands, each was pursuing a different dream, yet they all found themselves in the same “dream” where everyone is actually an intruder to the other.
3- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: What were the driving reasons for writing this (play)?
Mahmoud Mansi: I have written the very first edition of this play in 2010, which was my first time to ever write a play. It was in English. When I first wrote it I was influenced by philosophy, culture and technology. I was inspired by the human ego and the greatness in inventing, building and proving his/her existence. On the other hand, I was also inspired by the greed of human beings and how their ego let them see no other greatness except theirs’.
I have originally written the play to reflect the conflict of dialogue and communication between different inventors and different cultures.
4- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: What does this book mean to you?
Mahmoud Mansi: This book is very special for different reasons;
Firstly, because it is my first play to write.
Secondly, because it took me 5 years to slowly and carefully develop the first draft of the play which was written in 2010.
Thirdly, during my writing journey I have discovered a lot about what drives us as human beings towards achievement, towards owning an achievement and towards either sharing or hiding our own ideas.
Fourthly, the book is special as in many of the conversations included in the book I quoted parts of the Holy Quran and blended in within the context. This is a classical style of writing in Arabian literature which gives further reflections and depth to the text because the reader relates the quote mentioned in the story context to the original verse in the Quran context, which can deliver several messages to the reader at the same time.
Last but not least, with this book I have made my first book signing in Italy, which occurred during the Rome International Careers Festival.
5- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: In this play, is the Pharaoh the symbol of the attachment to the materialistic world and Hercules to the utopian one, whereas Alexander is both?
Mahmoud Mansi: The Pharaoh was always keen about science, architecture, etc… yet Hercules was the philosopher and artist. They both contradicted and complimented each other at the same time. Alexander the Great, according to history and myth, he belongs to both cultures. When Alexander visited Egypt the monks of the temple told him that he was the son of an Egyptian god, and Alexander believed in that as well. Also, Alexander the Great is a symbol of my home city; Alexandria, which is the city he named after him. Alexandria itself is multi-cultural, part influence by ancient Egypt, part influences by Romans, and part influenced by the Greek, and then influenced by many other cultures; French and Italian, and recently by “The Alien”; our generation.
6- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: The Alien venerates Freedom. What does it mean to you?
Mahmoud Mansi: As the Alien character symbolizes our generation, which is a generation that is creating and witnessing new technology, new art, new beliefs perhaps, and it is a revolutionary generation. So indeed freedom is the right word I would say, because freedom in thinking makes us go to places of knowledge that we did not expect. Yet our generation did not reach yet the freedom it aspires to, and it still did not unleash its full potential and talent.
Freedom to me is freedom to think, freedom to feel, and freedom to not be judged by society for either what you feel or what you think. Freedom of thought, is when you are able to innovate and invent, it is when you are able to liberate yourself with philosophy and liberate others. Freedom is to literally be able to think, feel and communicate with yourself and with others without feeling insecure, and that people have the liberty to understand your difference, not only accept it.
7- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: How important English is for you and how did you learn it?
Mahmoud Mansi: English is important because it helps me communicate with other cultures, although communication is not all about language but it’s about universal ideas as well. English in this book helped me to deliver my universal ideas to people from different cultures, which is actually the purpose of the play.
Aside from what I have learnt in school regarding to English, I have invested many of my time in reading with “observation”. Meaning, when I read any book I noticed what are the terminologies used, when to put the commas, how dialogues are created, and then I started creating my own, in my own way. I have done the same to self-learn playwriting. I have also read the dictionary, which was very entertaining and interesting!
8- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: Did you translate this play from Arabic to English yourself?
Mahmoud Mansi: In writing, each language impact our minds and creativity in a different way. I have wanted to make the best out of this play that’s why I have written it in both English & Arabic, back and forth.
So answering your question, yes. But I don’t prefer the term translation because I feel that I have re-written it in Arabic, and then I adjusted the English version. So I don’t really know if the original script is considered the English one or the Arabic one, in this case they are both fully original to me.
9- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: In my opinion, this book is a sort of autobiography, an interior reflection. Is my intuition right?
Mahmoud Mansi: This is a very smart observation. I haven’t actually thought about that before, but now it makes sense! While writing I lived the characters and I have seen myself in the words of each character in the play. As a writer I feel that I have several characters inside of me, and this impacts me in my real life as well, not only on paper. Perhaps this book was about the conflicts the characters inside of me have, and how they struggled to communicate, and how they were all trapped in the same place, failing to find a way out.
10- Giuseppina Grillo – HR Revolution: Going back to HR and your profession as a consultant, how would you relate the context of this book to organizations?
Mahmoud Mansi: The book discusses dialogue and conflicts between different cultures. One of today’s organizations goals is creating a culture of diversity. Diversity is often mistaken by bringing individuals from different backgrounds and putting them to work together in certain boundaries, frames or policies. However the source of people diversity is actually the diversity of ideas, personalities and tastes, and with this diversity organizational alchemy is created.
If I as an organization am able to bring people on the table who actually own different points of view and can generate contradicting ideas, while having the intellectual capability of properly pitching their leadership thoughts and making the most out of each, the outcome of such roundtable would be as poetic, deep and as lasting as any original piece of art, philosophy or literature.
THANK YOU
