In the mid-sixties I found myself in charge of Illustrated Publications, a company that had been set up by a group, among them Lebanese who had been in publishing in Egypt and had transferred their activities to Lebanon. They had brought with them the rights to publish Superman in Arabic. Mrs. Nadia Nasha'at was head of the company. Printing and distribution in the Arab World had started. For personal reasons, soon after, Mrs. Nasha'at decided to leave Lebanon.
I was then translating books into Arabic on a freelance basis for that company and I was asked by the Board of Directors to take over the management.
I was not eager to do so as my children were at an age which required my attention but I accepted after receiving the latitude to use my time as I saw fit, without neglecting my commitments to my husband and children.
However, comics had never been a part of our culture as children. At home we had been taught Arabic well and read a lot but never comics. Being faced with this position I decided to use Superman magazine as a means to offer to the young readers a simple but correct Arabic, in readable lettering, and to introduce into the weekly issues of the magazine pages of cultural information involving them in a useful mail interchange of knowledge and Pen Friendships. This circle got wider as we added more titles to Superman and Batman: Tarzan, Bonanza, etc.
But my love affair with Little Lulu went back to my childhood when I came upon an American magazine in which there was an ad showing Little Lulu holding a Kleenex box. Later in life, as a young woman I was for a few summers director of a summer camp where I took Little Lulu as my nickname. So my young campers drew Little Lulu, holding a Kleenex in white pebbles, in front of my director's tent.
So it was natural that I should seek the rights from the US publishers to start an Arabic version of Little Lulu. I met with some objections from those who thought it would not sell. But we proved them all wrong. I had convinced my small team of excellent associates that it would do well. My incentive was that the antics of children and their schemes on adults were the same all over the world. And once we started we found a great deal of enjoyment and comradeship: from choosing the equivalent Arabic names: Little Lulu became, naturally, Lulu as Saghira, Tubby was Tabboush, Anna was Hana, Alvin was Irfan, etc., as well as later,all along as we planned games and cultural pages and Pen correspondence which flourished. A young company executive who heard Henry was doing this project was delighted. He called to remind me of how much they used to enjoy the correspondence which came from As-Sadiqua' (friend) Lulu. And I have been told by many fathers that they would hide the new issues to read before they gave them to their children.
Thank you Lulu for bringing so much joy to so many and for brightening our lives during a very sad period in our lives in Lebanon.
And my sincere thanks to Henry Matthews who has been an unfailing in recording the history and development of the comics in Arabic and whose commitment to Lulu As-Saghira maybe exceeds mine, if that is at all possible.
Leila Shaheen da Cruz
Beirut, Lebanon, February 2014
I was then translating books into Arabic on a freelance basis for that company and I was asked by the Board of Directors to take over the management.
I was not eager to do so as my children were at an age which required my attention but I accepted after receiving the latitude to use my time as I saw fit, without neglecting my commitments to my husband and children.
However, comics had never been a part of our culture as children. At home we had been taught Arabic well and read a lot but never comics. Being faced with this position I decided to use Superman magazine as a means to offer to the young readers a simple but correct Arabic, in readable lettering, and to introduce into the weekly issues of the magazine pages of cultural information involving them in a useful mail interchange of knowledge and Pen Friendships. This circle got wider as we added more titles to Superman and Batman: Tarzan, Bonanza, etc.
But my love affair with Little Lulu went back to my childhood when I came upon an American magazine in which there was an ad showing Little Lulu holding a Kleenex box. Later in life, as a young woman I was for a few summers director of a summer camp where I took Little Lulu as my nickname. So my young campers drew Little Lulu, holding a Kleenex in white pebbles, in front of my director's tent.
So it was natural that I should seek the rights from the US publishers to start an Arabic version of Little Lulu. I met with some objections from those who thought it would not sell. But we proved them all wrong. I had convinced my small team of excellent associates that it would do well. My incentive was that the antics of children and their schemes on adults were the same all over the world. And once we started we found a great deal of enjoyment and comradeship: from choosing the equivalent Arabic names: Little Lulu became, naturally, Lulu as Saghira, Tubby was Tabboush, Anna was Hana, Alvin was Irfan, etc., as well as later,all along as we planned games and cultural pages and Pen correspondence which flourished. A young company executive who heard Henry was doing this project was delighted. He called to remind me of how much they used to enjoy the correspondence which came from As-Sadiqua' (friend) Lulu. And I have been told by many fathers that they would hide the new issues to read before they gave them to their children.
Thank you Lulu for bringing so much joy to so many and for brightening our lives during a very sad period in our lives in Lebanon.
And my sincere thanks to Henry Matthews who has been an unfailing in recording the history and development of the comics in Arabic and whose commitment to Lulu As-Saghira maybe exceeds mine, if that is at all possible.
Leila Shaheen da Cruz
Beirut, Lebanon, February 2014