SOURCE: Cohen, Dalya. “‘The Journey’ by Yusuf Idris.” Journal of Arabic Literature 15 (1984): 135-38.

[In the following essay, Cohen offers a psychoanalytical interpretation of “The Journey.”]

I. INTRODUCTION

“The Journey” is a short story which is included in Yūsuf Idrīs's tenth collection called House of Flesh (Cairo, 1971). The story is written in the form of a monologue and in the technique of the stream of consciousness.

It starts with a confession of love to a man. In the beginning it is not clear who the speaker is and the reader is tempted to think that it is a woman addressing her lover. Only later, as the monologue unfolds, the reader discovers that it is rather a son talking to his father. The son tells his father about a secret journey that they are going to undertake. He carefully dresses his father, then sneaks him into the elevator and right into his car. Thereafter they take off. The presence of the father in the car fills the son with ecstasy. He reveals all his feelings towards his father and lapses by flashing back into scenes from his childhood. Strangely enough, wherever they arrive people stare at them in terror and complain of a terrible smell. They point to the father and scream of a corpse. The son is so happy he smells nothing. Then, little by little, he becomes aware of the stench. At first he ignores it and attempts to continue the ride anyway, but later the stench gets so strong that he is unable to put up with it any longer. Exhausted he pulls up and abandons the car with his father on the road. Then he continues the journey by himself.

II. PSYCHOANALYSIS

This is a patient with a neurotic disturbance narrating a fantasy to his psychiatrist. In his fantasy there are two psychoanalytic cycles: 1) the existentialist cycle, relating to his existence, in which there are some normal patterns; 2) the sexual cycle, which is grossly abnormal. The first indication to its being abnormal is the fact that no woman at all is mentioned in the fantasy, not a mother, not a sister, not even a girlfriend. The patient talks about his brothers, but no mention is made of a female whatsoever,

What we have here is a description of a homosexual experience. A son committing incest with his father. The father is dead and may have been dead for some time. The son is not aware of this. He takes him to his car which functions as the bed, and has intercourse with him. Immediately afterwards he is filled with a strong sense of shame and guilt—that is when he starts smelling the terrible stench. He then runs away from the scene of crime, deserting his dead father buried in the car like in a grave.

If we follow the text we see that first there is an erotic description of the father by the son: his clothes, the way he dresses, his hair, his mustache. It sounds almost like a woman talking to her lover.

The son touches the father, dresses him, brushes his hair and all the time repeats the words: “Don't be afraid, don't be afraid. We are going on a secret journey. No one will ever know or will ever find out. I have taken all the precautionary measures …”.

Another erotic description follows when the son describes how he used to receive his father coming home from work. Together with his brothers (again, no mention of a female in the house) he would massage his father's toes, but he alone would work on the big toe. In psychoanalysis, the big toe is a recurrent symbol for the male sex organ.

Then we are told of how much he loved the physical touch with his father, being carried on his arms, faking sleep. This is considered a normal sensation with a child if he also has an emotional contact with his father, if he has love, care and understanding. In such a case the child will develop normally. But if the physical touch is the only touch between a son and a father, and the father is a dominant, omnipotent figure, strict, hard and uncompromising, then the child will have a neurotic disturbance in his development and will later try to find the love he missed in his father in another man—namely, display homosexual tendencies.

The father in this monologue is a very dominant, strict and uncompromising figure. The son says about him that he was the only person in the world that he used to fear. The father would often argue with his son and would make him give up his opinions and accept his own. He would not let him smoke. Smoking is an important symbol in psychoanalysis for sex.

Inevitably the oppressed son develops a rebellious spirit. He hates his father and at the same time still loves him. Such ambivalent feelings of love and hatred are common characteristics of a neurotic disturbance.

So the son takes all the precautionary measures and finally succeeds in getting his father into his car, namely, into his bed. Then follow passionate confessions of love and exclamations of tremendous pleasure. The son feels so high he can almost fly. In the car-bed, all the disagreements and arguments between the father and the son disappear and they become one, completely united. The car-bed is their island. People surround them like dinosaurs because they do not approve of such sexual intercourse—an incest. It is pathological and against the social code. They threaten them, they want to drown them, devour them. The policeman, like the stoplight, is a symbol of the social order. He is in charge of keeping the order, and he is suspicious. He sniffs the air with his nose and almost discovers the truth, but then the son succeeds in deceiving him.

All along the son fears the end. Apparently he has been there before. The beginning is the best part. The end is the worst. The sobering up after the sexual climax feeling shame, guilt and disgust is shattering. Suddenly, the fear of the consequences becomes the fear for his life. He panics and runs away, leaving his father behind. In his flight there is pain but also much relief. He is free now … until the next time.

III. INTERPRETATION

“The Journey” is a story of a strong social and political criticism. For example, Yūsuf Idrīs singles out the generation gap. The son belongs to the generation of the car and of freedom. The father belongs to the generation of the train and of slavery. The society is a patriarchal society, the mustache being the symbol of it.

Yūsuf Idrīs, himself at one time a physician and psychiatrist, shrewdly uses psychoanalytic motives for the purpose of exposing the malaise of the social political order of his time.

The story was written in June 1970—the third anniversary of The Six-Day War with Israel which ended in a terrible defeat. The main attack is on Nasser, who in spite of the calamity of the war which he brought on Egypt, remained in power.¹ Nasser is the father in the story, the omnipotent patriarch who has a complete domination over his son. The oppressed son is Egypt, or the Egyptian people. The message is that Nasser brings death to them—the stench of a decaying corpse. He wears a red tie—an indication of his strong affiliation with Communist Russia. The relationship between the father and son which knew some tender and affectionate moments, gradually developed a pathological character, an abnormal pattern. It takes the son a long time to realize that there is something wrong with his father, namely, to smell the stench. At first, he even denies there is a stench and it is only after the stench almost suffocates him that he realizes that he must get rid of its source or else die. There is simply no choice. The father must come to an end so that he can begin and as much as this end is painful it is inevitable. So he buries the father in the car and walks away, breathing the fresh air in a new sense of freedom.

That Yūsuf Idrīs was one of Nasser's opponents is well known. In the beginning he supported Nasser's rise to power, but like many others soon got disillusioned. The clash with Nasser came in 1954, when it became clear that the revolution had accomplished few of its promises. Yūsuf Idrīs was arrested and imprisoned. During his detention he joined the Communist Party only to resign later, when he realized that he could not accept the totalitarian side of communism. In 1969, a year before “The Journey” appeared, Idrīs wrote “The Schemers”, a play which was banned by the censor in Egypt for being highly critical of Nasser's regime. Nevertheless, Idrīs's short stories and “non-political” works continued to appear.

What gives “The Journey” its Arab coloring is the name Abdallah. Abdallah is the doorman who helps the son get his father into the car. It is the only name mentioned in the story therefore it is significant. Abdallah means “The Servant of God”. Why would Idrīs give the only name in his story to the doorman, and of all Arab common names choose this specific one with its religious connotation? The answer is probably to create Koranic allusions.

In the Koran, the theme of The Day of Judgment occupies a central place. On The Day of Judgment all the dead will be resurrected and then brought before the Almighty on trial. The righteous will be rewarded, the evil-doers will be punished. God's servants—the angels, assist him in conducting the trials.

In Idrīs's story, the father who is in fact dead, is resurrected. He is being dressed up, walked out of his lodging place and taken on a journey. The journey is the trial. At the end of it, the father is found guilty and sentenced to death—that is when he is being dumped in the car.

Surat Qāf in the Koran which deals with The Day of Judgment speaks of the following: “And the trumpet is blown, this is The Threatened Day. And every soul cometh along with it a driver and a witness,” Verses 20, 21. “And the day when they hear the cry in truth, that is the day of coming forth (from the graves). Lo, we it is who quicken and give death and unto us is the journeying.” Verses 42, 43.²

The words driver, witness and journeying³ are significant. In Idrīs's story, the son functions as his father's driver. He takes him on a journey. All along their way they encounter witnesses who raise an accusing finger against the father. This is Reckoning Day.

Thus, Idrīs's “The Journey” is maintained on four levels: the individual, the psychological, the socio-political and the religious. They are skillfully layered one beneath the other. As a result, Idrīs manages not only to explore the complex motivation that underlies human behavior, but also to reveal his shrewd understanding of his society and its changing values.

Notes

1. Nasser died abruptly in September 1970.

2. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, an explanatory translation by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall.

3. [It must be remembered, however, that the Koranic word which Pickthall translates as “journeying” is ‘al-maṣīr!—Editors].