From the halls of the Cultural Complex, the pulsating heart of Abu Dhabi's intellectual and cultural activity since the 80s, came the launch of the first women's literary salon in the capital in 1995, when its founder, Asma Sadiq Al-Mutawa, thought to create an organizational framework for her sessions with her friends who loved reading. And now, as the salon celebrates 30 years since its founding, its members still possess the same passion and belief in the importance of reading and knowledge in creating an aware society. About the beginnings, Asma Al-Mutawa told "Al-Ittihad": "We are a group of women who believed that reading is the key to the mind, and for 30 years until now, we have the same love for knowledge, the feeling of responsibility towards writing, reading, the novel, and society as a whole, and we consider the novel to be the child of the salon, as we believe that it is not just printed words, but a soul that moves and interacts with the reader, and if the text did not raise questions in the mind of the recipient, this means that he did not read it well." She added: "The beginning of our meetings was at the Cultural Complex, which at that time hosted lovers of culture and arts in the capital, and from the beginning we chose for the number of members of the salon to be 24 members, and throughout that period we maintained that this number remains constant, and the cohesion between the members of the salon, and their insistence on continuity and excellence, is what made the idea grow, continue and flourish, and become it has lights, initiatives and distinctive ideas".
