Tarek Eltayeb and Immigration from Egypt to Vienna

Yesterday, translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid discussed his work on Cities Without Palms by Sudanese writer Tarek Eltayeb. We're publishing an excerpt from Cities in our forthcoming anthology.
Although Eltayeb is little-known in the U.S., he is a major author in other parts of the world. He has lived in Austria since 1984, and much of his work deals with the experience of being an immigrant in that country (and, appropriately, much of Eltayeb's work is available in German). Besides being a novelist, Eltayeb is a a well-regarded poet and short story author.
Cities Without Palms deals with a theme common to Eltayeb's work: migration from the Arabic world to the European:

In a desperate attempt to save his mother and two sisters from famine and disease, a young man leaves his native village in Sudan and sets out alone to seek work in the city. This is the beginning of Hamza's long journey. Hunger and destitution lead him ever farther from his home: first from Sudan to Egypt, where the lack of work forces him to join a band of smugglers, and finally from Egypt to Europe?Italy, France, Holland?where he experiences first-hand the harsh world of migrant laborers and the bitter realities of life as an illegal immigrant.

Renate Malina: How can you maintain your language level living in a foreign country?
Tarek Eltayeb: By continuous reading. I'm reading all the time-periodicals, books, every recent publication I can get. But I have noticed that my language is changing. I have lost much of my dialect; therefore it would not be so easy for me to write a play because of the right melody of the language that you actually need to be hearing. My language tends to the standard language now, something I also observe with my Arab friends. We speak almost the same language using words of different dialects mixed with standard Arabic. The Arab reader accepts this without feeling estranged. I try to write simple sentences, avoiding complicated constructions or choosing beautiful words. What matters to me is to be understandable.