252. God Dies by the Nile by Nawal El Saadawi

God Dies by the Nile* (Zed Books, FP: 1976; 175) by Nawal El Saadawi is a compendium of political, cultural, social, and religious oppression of a people by a demagogue through a supposed ruling class whom he gets to do what he wants. In this book, Nawal El Saadawi, whose subject of interest revolves around [religious] oppression in a patriarchal society, discusses how a people blinded by religion could become delusional in their depravity and even deemed it the will of God.

In this story, set in the village of Kafr El Teen, the Mayor is God, his word is law, and his passions reign supreme. And when this lascivious Mayor set his eyes on the children of an old woman, Zakeya, there was nothing anyone could do but to submit, even if it had to take the Sheikh to turn the words of Allah around to deceive the masses and an unfortunate and helpless woman. Everyone was blinded to the Mayor's deeds and all worked to not only protect him but also praise him to the hilt so that in grovelling before him, their daily bread would be assured. After a girl - Nefissa - in his household got pregnant, delivered and deserted the town and the baby entirely, the Mayor descended on the girl's younger sister. And for a man who felt incomplete and who would do anything to show his invisible superiority to anyone in the village and in his family, there was no settling for a negative responses or giving up.

This book documents the impotence of the people in dealing with this one individual who considered himself the purveyor of their daily bread but who also made their lives horrible and made them do things against their will. He set people up, falsely accused them, had them jailed or killed in the realisation of his needs. And even though the people were unhappy about this glaring abuse, they were crippled and incapacitated by the fear of the repercussions that would ripple through the village should any attempt be made; for he had the capacity to increase taxes, take away farm lands, and even to ostracise recalcitrant offenders. Consequently, no one tried.

There is a lot packed within this novella. However, there are too many characters for this thin book that hardly any character was completely developed. There was a sense of detachment and no emotional affinity towards the characters even though a very despicable and grief-laden story was being told. In addition to this, most of them were extremely wicked. They worked against their own people, turning their heads away from whatever was prevailing, if they were not contributing to it. Even Zakeya's nephew who had come from a war he had described as useless to witness the wickedness being heaved upon his family could do and think of nothing other than marriage. In the end, he was framed up for theft and whisked away without resistance, for being the obstacle between Zeinab and the Mayor. 

Also the men were like automatons, they only did what they were asked to do. For instance, Nefissa's father beat him upon the advice of the village barber - Haj Ismail - who had come to convince him to allow his daughter to work at the Mayor's house; this was after he had hold the Haj Ismail that his daughter was not in agreement with that decision and Haj Ismail had in turn asked him who was the head of the house. This was repeated again with Fatheya's father - again for a similar action: refusal to marry the Mayor.

As a final cap of the 'male-bashing' literature, men were accused for the nude pictures of women on posters and advertising boards in Cairo when Zakeya made the journey to visit the mosque she had been directed to.

In addition, there was a lot of depravity in this story and this emboldened Nawal's relations with her male characters. Mostly, these were threads that could have been trimmed to improve the punch of the story if not for her affinity for the portraying men in such light. There was a man who had a personal sex life with an Ox; another with dead bodies; the Sheikh himself was raped by his uncle when he was young and he in turn married a child; and the Mayor was sexually abusive. The story of the man who slept with dead bodies was superfluous to the story. It just hanged in the story and linked to nothing. Same could be said for Kafrawi's sex life with the Ox. In fact, this bestial encounter was so descriptive that the reader is likely to be deceived that it was in reference to a lady. As if these depravities were not enough, the woman - the Sheikh's young wife - who had adopted Nefissa's daughter was beaten to death with the baby when she stood against a mob - made up entirely of men - who had accused the baby of being the cause of their recent problems; the problems being the social dissonance the Mayor had caused with his actions.

The story was also predictive in a way. Every chapter begins with a confusing description or narrative but it ultimately came down to a man who was doing evil, or a woman who was being abused. There were also some repetitive descriptions and phrases [too close to each other]. For instance, the way the sun set, the way a father beat the daughter and others, were so similar that the reader might wrongly think that he or she was repeating a page already read. For instance:

 His fingers let go of his whiskers, and he gave a sudden gasp like a drowning man when he comes to the surface. [49]

then on the next page 

She gave a sudden gasp of relief like a drowning woman who unexpectedly finds herself a the surface [50]

However, Nawal El Saadawi managed to send her message through, in the midst of these structural deficiencies. One could not help but frown upon such issues as Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage that were forcefully brought to the fore.

Religion played a strong role in this story. For instance the question of who is 'God' in the novel is important for the overall appreciation of the story. First, God could be a metaphor for the Mayor, who took upon himself certain key characteristics of God: infallibility, purveyor of human provisions, the law maker, and incontestability. Thus, his death - which occurred at the stroke of a hoe - is what the title encapsulates. However, the Mayor could be the personification of Islam (or Allah), which the author vituperatively spoke about. Thus, in this interpretation, the abuse of the people will be the direct outcome of Islam in practice. There are several places that this was directly or indirectly suggested. For instance, in his quest to get Zeinab into his household the Mayor and his coterie of friends deceived Zakeya through a Sheikh in a Mosque in Cairo. Here, prayers [a certain number] and recitations [a certain number] were used to deceive Zakeya into believing that she was being healed by Allah and that for it to be complete Allah had requested that she sent her daughter Zeinab to the home of the Mayor. In another situation, when Zakeya was imprisoned for the murder of the Mayor and she realised all that had occurred she suddenly had an epiphanic moment:

But every now and then the men around her could see her mutter, like someone talking to herself. She kept repeating in a low voice, 'I know who it is. Now I know him.' ... She stared into the dark with open eyes but her lips were always tightly closed. But one of the prisoners heard her mutter in a low voice, 'I know who it is.' And the woman asked her curiously, 'who is it my dear?'

And Zakeya answered, 'I know it's Allah, my child.'

'Where is He?' sighed her companion. 'If He were here, we could pray Him to have mercy on women like us.'

'He's over there, my child. I buried him there on the bank of the Nile.' 

This alternative explanation leads to the total repudiation of Allah as the overseer of life and the provider of compassion as shown subtly in the response: 'if He were here, we could pray Him to have mercy on women like us.' There is a sense of disbelief and mistrust in that statement.

Could the current Egyptian crisis therefore be, not necessarily a repudiation of religion, a repudiation of all the numerous Gods (Mayors) who had stifled the people? Could it be a spontaneous outburst of withheld emotions? However, this must be answered as cautiously as possible since Egypt is not a religious state and therefore an extrapolation of Kafr El Teen to Egypt cannot be linearly made. Also note that when Zakeya left her village to Cairo, she was amazed by the unbridled life the people lived to the extent that she became dizzy. 

The book is not Nawal's finest, though I had problems with Searching, her only other book I have read. The problem with Searching was her description of men. Not the prose. In this book it is both. It is important that anyone who intends to read Nawal El Saadawi understands that she is not charitable with her male characters. They are as bad as they could possibly be and most of the time caricatured. This book is therefore cautiously recommended. If not for the buzz that surrounds this book, I would have suggested a skip, but it is important for one to read to come to a personal conclusion.

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*A selection of the Book and Discussion Club for the month of July. Follow discussions on the book on twitter by clicking on the #wpghbookclub.

About the author: Read the author's profile here

140. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

Title: Palace Walk

Author: Naguib Mahfouz

Translators: William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny

Original Language: Arabic

Genre: Fiction/Socio-political

Publishers: Anchor Books

Pages: 498

Year of First Publication: 1956

Country: Egypt

Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad is the head of the al-Sayyid household on Palace Walk. Ahmad, as he is commonly referred to, is not a man like others. He believes in strict moral uprightness, unwavering respect and obedience and greatly abhors any attempt to challenge his position as the head of the household either from his sons, daughters, or wife. Consequently, he is strict, stern, firm and irascible. And even in a culture where nothing is held in highest esteem than self-preservation and morality of women, he is considered by his friends as extreme. But Ahmad is a man of dual personality: with his friends he is jovial and friendly. He laughs heartily and is known to be a great orator. And when he is with his concubine, the rest of the facade wears off like a rain-beaten make-up. With his family Ahmad is in control. He rules his household with all the strictness he could muster. Amina's relationship with Ahmad is a subservient one where she has to agree with whatever he says and has to think over dialogues several times before approaching him as Ahmad considers women's brain as not fully formed. And unless he is drunk he hardly holds conversation with Amina and suffers no man to mention his daughters' names on his lips (not even the old Shayk who comes once in a while to bless him) or see them before marriage proposals. 

Ahmad's strict behaviour is a cover-up for his weakness; he is afraid that submitting to this weakness would lead to the destruction of his household. For instance, it is due to his insecurity that made him forbid his wife and two girls - Aisha and Khadija - from going out so that after twenty-five years of marriage Amina has not left the confines of the house unless accompanied by him and only to visit her family; she looks at the minarets with awe and wonders how her neighbourhood and Cairo looks like. It is Ahmad's first wife's extramarital affair with a grocer, which led to divorce that occasioned his decision to 'incarcerate' Amina. However, since Haniya, his first wife, harboured great hatred towards Ahmad but never divulged it, it is uncertain if this 'point-of-view' reason is the whole truth. The boys - Yasin, son of Haniya; Fahmy, the law student; and seven-year old Kamal - are not left out of Ahmad's dreadfulness. In fact, so fearful are they of Ahmad, who wants them to be men like he is, that they would use their mother as the conduit to relay their requests to him.

Another sign of his weakness is that Ahmad hides behind anger and shouting to avoid showing his real emotion of love towards his children so that even when he has the best of intentions regarding a decision to deny something to someone he would not expose this reason to the person but would shout his decision with annoyance. Mahfouz writes

Ahmad did not forbid his son what he allowed himself merely out of egoism or authoritarianism, but because he was concerned about him. [284]

Ahmad's strictness and inflexibility was challenged when the widow of Mr. Shawkat, a long-standing family friend, approached him to inform him that she had already chosen Aisha, the youngest daughter, for her son to marry. This was after Ahmad had decreed that Aisha would not marry before Khadija did; and this decision, though harsh on Aisha, was made with the love of his first daughter in mind, of whom he was afraid that all suitors might not choose. For Khadija was not as beautiful as Aisha and every suitor the family had received had approached Aisha. Yet when Mrs Shawkat approached him with the demand and asked him to think about it, Ahmad relaxed and Aisha married. This is to be contrasted with a previous incident that had threatened to shatter the family when on his annual out-of-town business, Yasin had encouraged her (step)mother to visit the al-Husayn's shrine in a nearby mosque. On their way back - she had gone there with the youngest son, Kamal - Amina had been knocked down by a car, fracturing her shoulder. After recuperation, Ahmad had sent Amina out of his home, bringing her back only when almost everyone in the household silently revolted against him and Mrs Shawkat intervened.

The narrative style Mahfouz adopted to describe Ahmad and his behaviour highlighted the contradictions of his words and his deeds and the inequality that exists between the sexes. Amina's behaviour and thinking, perhaps affected by decades of domination, were puerile. She would quickly blame herself for everything than think evil of Ahmad. 

The first part of the story is about the social dynamics of the al-Sayyid family: the rejected engagement of a neighbour's daughter for Fahmy, Yasin's and Ahmad's nights out filled with drinking and sex, quarreling over household chores (before both daughters were married; Mrs Shawkat again married Khadija to his first son), poetry reading, Kamal's infantile conversations at coffee periods, Yasin's marriage and divorce and more. When Yasin, who was having an affair with a flute player Zanuba, saw his father singing and playing the tambourine with the musician Zubayda to whom Zanuba is a foster daughter, he was shocked. Yasin was so dumbstruck by this discovery that when he recovered he deemed himself a man and came to love and appreciate his father the more. It is ironical that upon Ahmad's philandering and his strict adherence to certain traditional principles, he would not take on another wife. This being the result of a bitter experience when his father lost a greater part of his wealth through divorce settlement and the remainder was shared among the remaining four wives upon his death, leaving him - Ahmad - with pittance. Thus, regardless of his generosity - which, together with his resolve to live in peace with his friends and neighbours appealed him to his friends - al-Sayyid was determined to protect his wealth for his children and to continue to provide the comfort that keeps his family together.

The family's bond remained intact until the arrival and camping of British soldiers at their doorstep, this marking the second part of the story. After about 300 pages the tone of the story changed from the domestic life of the al-Sayyids' household to the effects of the Egyptian demonstrations on the household in particular and on the life of Egyptians as a whole. The story was set during the period when the Ottoman Empire was defeated and Egypt became a de facto British protectorate; specifically it is set around the period when the Saad Zaghlul was exiled in Malta in 1919 and students and activists started organising demonstrations on streets. It was during this period of occupation that Ahmad's power on his family was tested. For the first time in his life Ahmad stayed home on the day of the occupation with his family and held conversations with them during breakfast. It remained so until he was told that the soldiers were there to quell demonstrations not to interfere with his usual duties.

The second event occurred when after Fahmy - who had become a member of the organisers of the demonstrations - saved his family: father, Yasin, and Kamal, from a near-death situation at a Friday prayers in a mosque because Yasin had been pointed out by a Shayk as a traitor for consorting with the soldiers. There Fahmy's involvement, which until then was a secret to every member of his household, was revealed by another member who informed the mob that Yasin cannot be a traitor because he personally works with Fahmy on one of the committees. Incensed by this, Ahmad forced Fahmy to give up his involvement by swearing an oath with the Holy Koran, but Fahmy would not; this being the first time he has gone against his father's will. The third event was when, upon returning from one of his a nightly rendezvous with a neighbour's widow, Ahmad was approached by a soldier and led to a place where people who had been rounded up from their night-outs were carrying soil to fill a hole which had been dug by the revolutionists. There he accepted his weakness but was afraid to reveal it; as he thinks of the danger Fahmy has got himself into

Should I reveal my lack of power to her? Should I seek help from her weakness after my power has failed? Certainly not. ... Let her remain ignorant of the whole affair. [448/9]

Even little Kamal who had been warned not to play with the soldiers anymore - as the young boy had developed a liking for the soldiers, singing for them and all - refused to obey this directive from his siblings and mother. Fahmy also lost Maryam when her dignity and morality became questionable after Kamal saw and reported her for consorting with the British soldiers. Thus as the revolution progresses Ahmad's household also underwent its own mini revolutions.

The family of al-Sayyid Ahmad is or could be a metaphor for the pre-revolutionary Egypt where the people respect the government of the day only out of fear and the power it wielded so that when those fears were challenged the leadership began to crumble. Palace Walk is the rallying point for the Egyptian resistance and the British reaction to that resistance. Today, one might associate it with Tahrir Square. 

This book should be read in its cultural context because any move to supplant one's societal values, mores, and laws onto it would greatly diminish its enjoyment. In fact, it is in this mode of read that one would appreciate what Mahfouz is putting across. This is an enjoyable story but one that is difficult to review. Mahfouz did an excellent work and every piece of the story is a relish to read. He showed his understanding of human behaviour through keen observation expressed in precise metaphors and similes. However, whilst reading this story, I kept for a different translation.

Palace Walk, the first of the Cairo Trilogy, was read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge, the Chunkster Challenge and the Africa Literature Reading Challenge.

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Read more about the author here

80. Searching by Nawal El Saadawi

Title: Searching

Author: Nawal El Saadawi

Translator: Shirley Eber

Original Language: Arabic

Genre: Novella/Women Issues/Politics

Publisher: Zed Books

Pages: 114

Published: 1968 (English, 1991)

Country: Egypt

For the Africa Reading Challenge

Searching, by Nawal El Saadawi, is a story about a woman in search of her vision and purpose in life - for that something she was created to discover - and for his boyfriend who had suddenly disappeared in a politically corrupt, myopic, shambolic and patriarchal state. Fouada is a trained Chemist. She works on nothing at the Ministry of Biochemistry. And this sinecure work is depressing her, pushing her off her vision. Fouada thinks that 'she could not live and die without the world changing at all' but the Ministry is doing nothing to help her contribute or discover something new in terms of laboratory research. Fouada meets Farid 'every Tuesday, at eight in the evening in that small restaurant when the weather was warm, or at his house on cold winter nights' except that this Tuesday Farid did not appear nor would he ever appear. Devastated by his absence and the silence of the telephone and, consequently, the absence of any apologies or reasons, Fouada becomes depressed.

Through her depression, the story of Fouada's life - her fears, her past and her visions are told: her hatred, her love, and her ambivalence towards her father, her vision to add something to the world, and her fears of what might have happened to Farid and even to her state of mind. Through this simple story, Nawal El Saadawi, portrayed the plight of women (and men) in Egypt and the lack of vision of the state. For instance, Fouada was described as hardworking even when she was doing nothing at her workplace. To worsen the situation, Saati - the landlord of an apartment she later hired to establish her own laboratory - told her he would hire her to work with him. There, there would be less to do.

As Fouada searched 'for Farid amongst the people she encountered' in buses on the streets, her frustrations and depression built up. She realised that she knew nothing about Farid - none of his relatives, his parents, the work he did and many more. The only connection between the two is the phone, his apartment and the restaurant. Every phone reminded her of Farid. The five-digit number was virtually sitting on her fingertips ready to be punched. Every thought she thought was linked with or was said by Farid. Things reached a crescendo when the restaurant was broken down by the municipality because the owner lost money and left the place. In its place was to be built a wall with the municipal's name on it. Thus, one of the connections between Fouada and Farid was broken to be replaced by the 'state'. Was Farid real? Was he a person she had met and known? Was he a phantom? As her search for him turned up nothing, she became disillusioned and isolated, bordering on mental breakdown. She questioned her mentality and the reality of Farid: 'maybe he was an illusion, a dream?' Finally, Fouada's source of encouragement, of financial support - her mother - also died.

As is characteristic of the Arab Women writers I have read, men were not spared in this short piece. Fouada's loathing for her father was palpable. I almost stopped reading, when I thought the pedantic and trite use of male characters was going too far; though the prose was excellent. Besides, though not the caricatured features of men but the inherent lordly nature they pose was seemingly real and not necessarily trite even in the twenty-first century. About Fouada's father, Nawal writes:

Her father was dead and she had perhaps been a little happy when he died, although not for any particular reason; her father had been nothing particular in her life. He was simply a father, but she was happy, because she felt that her mother was happy. Some days later, she heard her say that he hadn't been much use. She was totally convinced of her words. Of what use had her father been.

She continues

Her father flooded the bathroom when he took a bath, soaked the living-room when he left the bathroom, threw his dirty clothes everywhere, raised his gruff voice from time to time, coughed and spat a lot, and blew his nose loudly. His handkerchief was very large and always filthy. Her mother put it in boiling water and said to her: 'That's to get rid of germs.' ... That day, the teacher had asked the class: 'where are these things (germs) to be found, girls?' ... 'Do you know where germs are found, Fouada?' Fouada got to her feet, head above the other girls, and said in a loud, confident voice, 'Yes, miss. Germs are found in my father's handkerchief.' (Page 14)

And in this vein all the men, except Farid whose representation is more symbolic of the subtle fights against the government than a real character, were described. Both the Director at the Ministry and Saati - her landlord - were portly with grave descriptions. When Fouada saw the Director emerging from the car, she first saw

the pointed, black tip of a man's shoe, attached to a short thin grey-clad leg, then a large, white, conical head with a small, smooth patch in the centre, reflecting the sunlight like a mirror; square, grey shoulders emerged next, followed by the second, short, thin leg ... This body, emerging limb by limb, reminded her of a birth she had seen when she was a child. ... She saw the body laboriously climb the stairs. On each step, it paused, as if to catch its breath, and jerked its neck back. The large head swayed as if it would fall ... (Page 8/9)

Seeing Saati through the pin-hole in the door, Fouada saw his

Portly body was leaning against the window supported by legs that were thin, like those of a large bird. His eyes - now like a frog's, she thought - darted behind the thick glasses. It seemed to her that before her was a strange type of unknown terrestrial reptile - that might be dangerous. (Page 82)

At a subliminal we could reduce all the characters into symbols. The caricatured men are the overlords, the dictators and their laws that coil around the young and stifle progress. Couldn't young Fouada and Farid themselves represent the youth whose energy and vibrancy do not permit them to sit and partake in the rot of the society? Or the rusty old Ministry itself a representation of a nation that is fast losing its grandeur to corruption and laziness? Could this be the interpretation of Saadawi's novella?

At only 114 pages, this novella packs  a lot within its pages. Recommended for all.

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Brief Bio: Nawal El Saadawi - Egyptian novelist, doctor and militant writer on Arab women's problems and their struggle for liberation - was born in the village of Kafr Tahla. Refusing to accept the limitations imposed by both religious and colonial oppression on most women of rural origin, she qualified as a doctor in 1955 from University of Cairo and rose to become Director of Public Health. Since she began to write, her books have concentrated on women. In 1972, her first work of non-fiction, Women and Sex, evoked the antagonism of highly placed political and theological authorities, dismissing her. Later, in 1980 as a culmination of the long war she had fought for Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom - an activity that had closed all avenues of official jobs to her - she was imprisoned under the Sadat regime. She has since devoted her time to being a writer, journalist and worldwide speaker on women's issues. (More here)

ImageNations Rating: 5.5 out of 6.0

58. Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat

Title: Distant View of a Minaret

Author: Alifa Rifaat

Translator: Denys Johnson-Davies

Genre: Fiction/Short Stories/Anthology

Publishers: Heinemann (African Writers Series)

Pages: 116

Year of First Publication: 1983 (in translation); 1987 (this edition)

Country: Egypt

For the Africa Reading Challenge

Alifa Rifaat is a voice for women. A common theme that runs through this collection of fifteen short stories is the mistreatment of women by men, fellow women and the society. Dealing with these issues, death, frustrations and changes have been used as the vehicle through which the story is told. As a Muslim, Alifa Rifaat, speak not against the dictates of the Quran, as the call to prayer was a phrase that was used in almost all the stories. What Alifa seeks to do is to address the human interpretation of this sacred book, what have been added in patriarchal societies that benefit only individuals with dangling 'appendages'. What society has taken as the import of what this holy book says and how this seemed to be skewed against women and sometimes perpetrated by women.

The stories discuss topics that would otherwise be regarded as taboo subjects in some Muslim countries. For instance the title story, The Distant View of a Minaret, tells of a sex-starved married woman. In this story, as in many others, death is treated as part of life, as an occurrence so that when it happens the people involved are scarcely seen to be mourning the loss but would rather be found preparing the body for burial. Even while writing about such privations, Alifa's characters are keen observers noticing a 'spider's web' in the ceiling and 'toenails [that] needed cutting' when they are by their husband's side. It is such a wonder that in ones period of extreme privations that acute observations are made, for haven't most powerful poems been written by authors who had been incarcerated during the period of the write? Privations are profoundly stated when the woman

No longer ... feel any desire to complete the act with herself as she used to do in the first year of marriage. (Page 2)

Yet, she does not leave behind her religion, her prayer to Allah. According to her

Her five daily prayers were like punctuation marks that divided up and gave meaning to her life. (Page 3)

But how would a woman who has been sex-starved since the beginning of her marriage feel when the husband dies?

Bahiyya's Eyes is a deeply moving monologue that narrates several problems pertaining to women such as the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), men lording over women and the choosing of husbands. It is a lamentful narrative from an old woman to her daughter about all that have happened to her including what she went through when she was caught having moulded male and female figures with their private parts intact

...they took hold of me and forced my legs and cut away the mulberry with a razor. They left me with a wound in my body and another wound deep inside me, a feeling that a wrong has been done to me, a wrong that could never be undone. (Page 9)

and how they didn't allow him to marry the man who loved her. So that when she married their chosen man and she wasn't happy with the marriage she began asking questions:

I wasn't all that happy with him, perhaps because of the bilharzia that was eating away at his strength, or perhaps the reason was what those women did to me with the razor when I was a young girl. (Page 10/11)

We see that though Alifa's characters married young, are not educated and are oppressed, in their intimate moments they are individuals who philosophizes like any other person. Who ask questions because they are smart. This trait of her characters runs parallel with Alifa's life when her desire to attend the university was opposed by her parents and instead forced into an arranged marriage. As a result this intellectual speaks only Arabic and leaving Egypt only to attend the hajj.

In Alifa's world, even the muteness of the telephone could signify death and loss as is told in Telephone Call. 

And here I am sitting for hours alone in my flat, knowing there is no one to ring, that there is no question of pleading or submitting to any terms, for there is no way of communicating from the grave. (Page 13)

And with this the widow remembers and waits for her husband to communicate with her, which is the significance of the 'forty days after death'. Note that this forty days is also celebrated by Akans of Ghana.

In Thursday Lunch, and unhappy married woman and her mother celebrates the death of the latter's husband, while the former broods over her sex-depleted marriage. In An Incident in Ghobashi Household the husband had travelled to another country to work and the daughter gets herself pregnant, the wife collaborates with the daughter to hide the pregnancy so that in the end it would be

better, when he returns, ... to find himself a legitimate son than an illegitimate grandson... (Page 27)

Again, Badriyya and her Husband revisits the issue of cheating husbands. There are times when some men want the wives of their friends or neighbours and would do everything to get these women and this is the story of Mansoura. In latter story and My World of the Unknown, Alifa delves into the spiritual. In this story, a woman falls in love with a djinn who visits her in the form of a snake. Another story that deals with forced marriages is The Long Night of Winter. However, there are some loves which cannot be extinguished no matter how long it takes. Such is the case in The Kite when two lovers, prevented from marrying while young, found themselves many years later to be single, love rekindled and they married. 

I quote this to give a taste of the beauty, the use of images that are scattered throughout Alifa's collection. 

In an instant between sleep and wakefulness, an instant outside the bounds of time, that gave the sensation of being eternal, the sounds of night, like slippery fishes passing through the mesh of a net, registered themselves on Zennouba's hearing, filtering gradually into her awakening consciousness: the machine-like croaking of frogs, and the barking of dogs in the fields answered the dogs of the village on the other bank in a nerve-ending exchange of information in some code language. (Page 55, The Long Night of Winter)

Hers is a collection that speaks to the marrow, with the capacity to freeze ones attention and open one's eyes to life and how issues of women are neglected by culture and society. I would recommend Alifa's collection unreservedly to anyone who wants to read from the perspectives of women in this region. What makes Alifa's works significant and unique is that she discusses all these without rejecting her belief, as most writers or 'revolutionaries' are apt to do. She is first a Muslim and then a writer, and this is what makes her work worth reading and her words worth listening to. It is devoid of prejudices and narrow-mindedness. Her writings are bold in their own way and clearly she tells what she wants to say without mincing words.

Brief Bio: Fatma Abdullah Rifaat, 1930-1996, was born in Cairo to a well-to-do architect and his wife. Raised in the countryside, Rifaat was a precocious child who demonstrated early her gift for writing. By the age of nine, she had written poetry describing "the despair in our village," and for which she was punished. Rifaat attended the British Institute in Cairo from 1946 to 1949. Despite her wishes to continue her education, her father forced her to marry a mining engineer; this unconsummated marriage lasted eight months. In July 1952 Rifaat married a cousin, Hussein Rifaat, who was a police officer and with whom she had three children. Traveling with her husband for his work, Rifaat had the opportunity to observe Egyptian life in all its diversity.

Rifaat began writing again and published a short story in 1955 as Alifa Rifaat, a pseudonym she used until 1960, when her husband demanded she stop writing altogether. For more than a decade, she complied with his wishes, during which time she avidly studied literature, science, astronomy, and history. After a bout of illness in 1973, her husband permitted her to resume her writing. Beginning in 1974, she published a number of short stories in a literary journal, followed by a collection of short stories, Eve Returns with Adam to Paradise (1975), and a novel, The Jewel of Pharo (1978). She continued to publish short stories through the 1980s following the death of her husband. In 1984 Rifaat won the Excellence Award from the Modern Literature Assembly. She has contributed nearly one hundred short stories to Arabic and English magazines, and her work has been produced for television. Her novel Girls of Baurdin was published in 1995. Distant View of a Minaret, published in 1983, is her best known work in English. (Source)

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Distant View of a Minaret

Bahiyya's Eyes

Telephone Call

Thursday Lunch

An Incident in the Ghobashi Household

Badriyya and Her Husband

Me and My Sister

Mansoura

The Long Night of Winter

My World of Unknown

At the Time of the Jasmine

The Flat in Nakshabandi Street

The Kite

Just Another Day

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Know Your Laureate of African Origin Part III - Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz

Last week, on the 7th October 2010, lovers of African Literature kept their fingers crossed waiting for the Nobel committee to announce their choice of the laureate for 2010. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose latest novel, The Wizard of the Crow, caused the Arap Moi government to go in search of its main character, and when upon finding that it is a creation of the author caused him (the government of Kenya) to publicly burn a thousand copies of his book, was tipped to win the award. The odds were in his favour. And knowing the penchant for the Nobel's committee to always 'dodge' mainstream predictions, I waited with skepticism. Yet, I prayed silently to a god unknown for this great man, who has forsaken all financial enticements to write in his native Gikuyu to win the award. And the Nobel committee never disappointed, they only disappointed me. But for Ngugi to have been an odds favourite to win speaks volumes of the man's contribution to literature and the development of his mother tongue at the expense of financial gain. And so Mario Llosa Vargas won and I have not as yet heard of a single complaint or drama, as was talked about when Herta Muller won last year. Had Ngugi won, he would have been the sixth Nobelist strictly from Africa. Strictly because Albert Camus is linked to Algeria, sometimes.

We continue with the weekly highlight of African Nobelists in Literature. Two years after Soyinka's Nobel award, another African from the North, Egypt, won in 1988. 

Naguib Mahfouz, (11 December 1911 - 30 August 2006) started writing at the of 17, publishing his first novel five years later in 1933. Naguib wrote prolifically, writing ten more books, before the Egyptian revolution in 1952 where he took a short leave of writing. Even then, in 1953 he published one novel and in 1957 published what has been referred to as the Cairo Trilogy - Between-the-Palace, Palace of Longing and Sugarhouse. These books which marked the second phase of his writing career was marked with political innuendos using symbolisms and allegory. 

As an Egyptian writer, Naguib Mahfouz is considered, along with Tawfiq, el-Hakim, as the first of contemporary writers of Arabic Literature to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, 350 short stories, dozens movie scripts and five plays over a career spanning over 70 years. At the time of his death, and four years on, he is the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Some of his works:

• Old Egypt (1932)
• Whisper of Madness (1938)
• Mockery of the Fates (1939)
• Rhadopis of Nubia (1943)
• The Struggle of Thebes (1944)
• Modern Cairo (1945)
• Khan El-Kahlili (1945)
• Midaq Alley (1947)
• The Mirage (1948)
• The Beginning and The End (1950)
• Cairo Trilogy (1956-57)
• Palace Walk (1956)
• Palace of Desire (1957)
• Sugar Street (1957)
• Children of Gebelawi (1959)
• The Thief and the Dogs (1961)
• Quail and Autumn (1962)
• God's World (1962)
• The Search (1964)
• Zaabalawi (1963)
• The Search (1964)
• The Beggar (1965)
• Adrift on the Nile (1966)
• Miramar (1967)
• The Pub of the Black Cat (1969)
• A story without a beginning or an ending (1971)
• The Honeymoon (1971)
• Mirrors (1972)
• Lover under the rain (1973)
• The Crime (1973)
• al-Karnak (1974)
• Respected Sir (1975)
• The Harafish (1977)
• Love above the Pyramid Plateau (1979)
• The Devil Preaches (1979)
• Love and the Veil (1980)
• Arabian Nights and Days (1981)
• Wedding Song (1981)
• One hour remains (1982)
• The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (1983)
• Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985)
• The Day the Leader was Killed (1985)
• The Hunger (Al-Go'a) (1986)
• Speaking the morning and evening (1986)
• Fountain and Tomb (1988)
• Echoes of an Autobiography (1994)
• Dreams of the Rehabilitation Period (2004)
• The Seventh Heaven (2005)

Read about him here and there.