Naguib Mahfouz

Start Free Trial

Conversation with Mahfouz

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

In the following essay, Cole explores the cultural influences on Mahfouz's writing and his growing popularity as an author.
SOURCE: “Conversation with Mahfouz,” in Africa Report, Vol. 35, No. 2, May–June, 1990, pp. 65–66.

Teenagers playing dominoes and backgammon filled the cafés as I rushed down Misr' Adimah's tired, dusty streets toward the public telephone station. The smell of garlic, fresh molokhia, and parsley hung in the air.

It was a little after 5 pm, my appointed time to contact Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. A fellah, a bundle under his arm, was using the one working telephone. Anxiety filled me. I had one day left in Egypt to see Mahfouz. Now I felt like a character in one of his novels.

Cairo had changed since my last visit seven years ago. It now has a metro system and commuter boats plying the Nile, helping the beleaguered buses and trolleys move the city's teeming masses. (Officially Cairo's population is 12–13 million; many say, however, that it's more like 15–20 million.) I heard talk of a “New Egypt.” Development was apparent downtown and in the wealthy modern suburbs—new office buildings, stores, hotels, public works, and restaurants had sprung up.

Things, though, seemed little changed in Cairo's older quarters—Misr' Adimah (Old Cairo), Shubra, El-Khalifa, Saida Zenab. They're still poor and densely populated; housing is bad; much of the youth is idle for lack of work; and due to inflation, the poor seem poorer. The old city seemed to echo the theme in many of Mahfouz's novels, that in Egyptian society the ambitious inevitably rise to the top, while the underclass is permanently anchored to the bottom, no matter what currents move around them.

Naguib Mahfouz is an Egyptian hero—the first Arab to win a Nobel prize for literature, the opener of international doors for all Arab writers. After winning the 1988 Nobel prize, President Hosni Mubarak awarded Mahfouz Egypt's highest decoration, the Order of the Nile, while Mahfouz, who is also a columnist for Al-Ahram, finally got his own office at the famed Cairo daily.

The office was formerly occupied by the late Tawfik al-Hakim, Egypt's great playwright. To achieve literary status in the Arab world, one had to be a superb stylist or write poetry. There was a hesitancy to accept the novel—still seen as a new and unproven genre in Arab literature—and novelists into the ranks of the greats. Thus, when Mahfouz inherited al-Hakim's office, it seemed symbolic—that the Nobel winner and his forte, the novel, had been accepted into the bosom of Arab literature.

Mahfouz's works are part of university students' curricula throughout the Arab world. With all this status, however, Mahfouz is not a distant superstar. Egyptians speak of him like a beloved uncle or grandfather. Such feelings are understandable, for his works are imbued with enduring human values and universal concerns.

Approaching 80, Mahfouz is the grand, yet humble, chronicler of Egyptian life. His 38 novels and 12 volumes of short stories—26 of which were also adapted to film—encompass all of 20th century Egypt. Born of two civilizations, the pharaonic and the Islamic, and a son of the Third World, as he wrote in his Nobel prize lecture, Mahfouz seems a personification of Egypt itself. He has left Egypt only twice—once to Yemen, once to Yugoslavia—and only, as he says, “because of obligations.”

Despite his ill health (which prevented him from traveling to Sweden to accept the Nobel prize), poor hearing and eyesight, and a hectic schedule, he still makes time to enjoy communicating ideas to the press.

Mahfouz sits, scanning the papers on the second floor of the Aly Baba café in Tahrir Square. This is part of his daily program—up at 5 am, a cup of Nescafé, a light breakfast, and out of the house at 6 am to follow a fixed route to Aly Baba's, where he reads, meets friends, and conducts interviews before heading off for business, then lunch.

He has reduced his writing routine to one hour a day. “Because my eyes are weak, I must enlarge what I read. Now,” he says, laughing, “I must write only short stories.”

He speaks of Cairo's daily life and Egypt's problems by “direct writing”—his weekly column in Al-Ahram, entitled “Point of View.” Through his literary art, he will now “look at remembrance and the future. It is a philosophy suitable to an old man,” he says smiling.

Looking out the window at the bustling crowds, his face becomes more somber as he compares what he sees from the café now and what he saw in the past. “People are more serious and more sad now. Everything in life is difficult, especially for the intelligentsia. We all feel unsafe because of Egypt's economic troubles. It seems perhaps that all the rest of the nations are better off than we.

“The crisis,” he says, “began during the last period of Sadat.”

Apolitical, interested in people, not policies, Mahfouz treats politics in his literature as yet another evil plaguing man. His writing shows Nasser's land reform and nationalization plans throwing the lives of many Egyptians into chaos. That he should note that Egypt's current economic woes began during Sadat's era is not a criticism of Sadat—many of Mahfouz's books were banned in Arab countries because of his outspoken support for Sadat's peace treaty with Israel—but rather an observation of the effects of political and economic currents on individual lives.

By winning the Nobel prize, Mahfouz assured Arab prose and culture a future in Western nations. Modern Arab authors are finally receiving attention, while Arab literature, says Mahfouz, “will change the stereotype of the Arab in the West.”

Soon there will be 40 foreign-language editions of various Mahfouz titles licensed by his representative, the American University in Cairo Press. In the U.S., Doubleday has committed itself to publish several of his works. Last February, Doubleday released Palace Walk, the long-awaited English translation of Bayn al-Qasrayn, the first volume of “The Cairo Trilogy,” which Mahfouz considers to be his most important work. It will release the other two volumes in 1991 and 1992.

There is an ironic twist, however, to Mahfouz's new popularity in the U.S., which underscores the state of literature in Egypt. A best-seller or literary masterpiece can sell hundreds of thousands of copies in the U.S. But in Egypt, which has a population of 55 million, the maximum printing of a fine piece of literature, according to Mahfouz, is 10,000 copies. “My translated books have higher printings in the U.S. than in Egypt.”

Popular culture, he says, now enjoys a favorable position in Egypt because of the “power of TV and records.” Even the most remote Egyptian villages are getting color TVs and radios; mass communication and new technology have had a tremendous effect on Egypt.

“Literature, high culture,” says Mahfouz, “is in a crisis everywhere because of the victory of TV worldwide.” In Egypt, literature's troubles are compounded by the economic crisis.

Although the Arabic novel now flourishes in Egypt and in other Arab nations, writers lack a wide reading public in Egypt. With inflation causing a scramble to make ends meet, many Egyptians have neither the time nor the inclination to read novels. For others, the price of a novel, inexpensive by Western standards, makes it a major purchase.

Still, to the visitor, Cairo appears to be enjoying some signs of the beginnings of a cultural and “high-cultural” renaissance. The city lost its cultural heart, the famed Opera House, to fire in 1971; Egypt did not have the money to rebuild it. After a state visit by Mubarak to Japan in 1983, Japan donated $30 million for a new cultural center. In October 1988, the impressive new complex, the Cultural Education Center-Egypt Opera House, opened in Gezira. Ballet, opera, plays, and art exhibits once again have a home in Cairo. Tickets for foreign productions such as “Showboat” cost a maximum of $10, while tickets for local troupes never exceed $4. These low prices still represent a major outing to many Egyptian families.

In Cairo's Garden City, the Ministry of Culture spent $600,000 to open the Film Palace last November. (In the last 60 years, Egypt has produced 1,500 feature films, while Egyptian filmmakers currently shoot 42 movies per year, which attract audiences of up to 100 million throughout the Arab world.) The Palace offers three mini-theaters: two for features, one for documentaries. Two of the three double as film classrooms. Admission is free.

Unfortunately, it seems not as much can be done for literature, which is at the mercy of economics. Prose will enjoy a greater readership, says Mahfouz, “once we have achieved a higher standard of living than now.” As for the battle with TV, Mahfouz believes that any effective media network must understand that its responsibilities toward original works of literature do not include replacing them.

Mahfouz's hope of a higher standard of living may be realized. There is a ray of optimism in the often fatalistic certainties of Egyptian society. Egypt doesn't lack for resources, human and natural, but suffering from poor capital and a preponderant bureaucracy, it hasn't fully utilized them. With the private sector finally opening up in a more positive way (i.e. more Egyptian, rather than foreign, investment in domestic business projects) and Egyptian professionals returning home after migrating elsewhere in “brain drains,” there is hope for a “New Egypt.”

Cairo seemed to teeter on collapse seven years ago. Badly overpopulated, it was sadly neglected. Now it appears to be on the road to rejuvenation—new electrical, water, and telephone lines have been installed citywide, there is better health care, the transport system has been bolstered, and there are plans (pending money) to restore and preserve the city's historic districts.

Egypt is no longer an orphan in the Arab community; ambassadorial relations have been restored with most Arab nations in the last three years, while Egypt has been cited by The Economist magazine as one of the few Arab countries it can point to as an “emerging democracy.”

“We now enjoy a kind of freedom and democracy we haven't had in more than 35 years,” Mahfouz says. “There is now more goodness in policy. It is good, but we still want better.”

Get Ahead with eNotes

Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.

Get 48 Hours Free Access
Previous

The Human Comedy in Cairo

Next

A review of The Beginning and the End, The Thief and the Dogs, and Wedding Song

Loading...