Passing
of a Literary Giant
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
Those
of you who lived in Karachi in the early sixties
might recall several coffee houses in the Saddar
area which served as gathering places for the
city’s intellectuals, poets, authors, journalists
and literary critics, who regularly frequented
these haunts in the evening hours. Times were
peaceful, life moved at a leisurely pace and incidences
of terrorism, suicide bombing, religious and sectarian
strife were largely unknown.
Such gathering places for artists and thinkers
were not unique to Karachi and existed in most
large cities around the world. In Cairo, the Ali
Baba café served the same purpose and was
visited daily for many years by a shy, modest
man who arrived punctually at 7 AM to enjoy his
cup of coffee, read his newspaper and meet other
writers, the city’s intellectual elite.
The man, Naguib Mahfouz, the only Muslim and Arab
to ever receive a Nobel Prize in literature, died
on August 30, 2006, at the age of 94. Characterized
as the greatest Arab novelist of the 20th century,
his passing was mourned around the world.
Mahfouz had been in declining health for some
time, especially after suffering a head injury
last July. As a mark of respect with which his
nation held him, his funeral prayer service at
Rashdan mosque was led by Mohammad Sayed Tantawi,
the Grand Sheikh of the Al-Azhar University, powerful
seat of Islamic learning for more than a millennium,
and was attended by President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt’s
Grand Mufti, Ali Gomma, eulogized him as a singular
literary figure whose writings had found resonance
with many people around the world, not merely
Arabs and Muslims. President Mubarak in his tributes,
described him as “the cultural light that
brought Arab literature to the world. He projected
the values of enlightenment and tolerance that
reject extremism.”
Naguib Abdel Aziz al-Sabilgi Mahfouz was born
in 1911 in Cairo during the heyday of European
colonialism when Egypt was still controlled by
the British. Initially, planning to study medicine
at the University of Cairo, he subsequently changed
his mind and switched to philosophy and literature.
It proved to be a felicitous decision as he exquisitely
enriched Arabic literature over the course of
the following six decades. He authored more than
50 pieces, including 34 novels, a collection of
vignettes, and screen plays. Many of his books
have been translated into English and other languages.
He is quoted as remarking that his inspiration
came from the Qur’an, and to some degree
even from such literary Arabic classic as The
Arabian Nights. He freely admitted that he benefited
from the writings of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ibsen and
Shaw, besides many Arab authors.
Mahfouz rarely left Egypt during his long life
and even when he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize
in 1988, he sent his two daughters, Om-e-Kolthoum
and Fatima, to Sweden to receive it. His attachment
and closeness to his hometown are apparent in
his writings. The streets and alleyways of Cairo’s
teeming old quarters, with its narrow streets,
crowded cafes and elegant mosques provided the
backdrops and settings for his various literary
creations. He observed and recorded the trials
and travails of ordinary Egyptians, narrating
how their lives had been shaped by events over
the past half a century. His portrayal of life
in Cairo is often compared to Charles Dickens
depiction of London in the Victorian era or the
suffering of the working class in the nineteenth
century Paris captured by the novelist, Emily
Zola.
Mahfouz started his literary career by writing
short stories, some 80 of which were published
in various Arabic magazines. A collection of short
stories, The Whisper of Madness, was published
in 1932. He was strongly moved by the plight and
low status of women in Egypt and the Arab/Muslim
societies in general, and many of his characters
in short stories underscored this theme. He hated
the British colonial rule, and his first novel,
The Games of Fates, published in 1939, was inspired
by his opposition to the foreign occupation of
his country although its characters were drawn
from ancient Egyptian history to circumvent censorship
restrictions. While Arabic literature abounds
with transcendent poetry, the novel as a form
of literary expression had been unknown until
Mahfouz introduced this genre.
The most creative period of Mahfouz’s literary
career came in the 1940s and 1950s, when he focused
his writing on the life experiences of three successive
generations of a middleclass Muslim merchant family
living in Cairo from the World War I until Nasser’s
military revolution that overthrew the monarchy.
His three-volume, 1500-page book, Cairo Trilogy,
comprises Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar
Street. Each volume is named after a Cairo street
and encompasses the social changes and political
turmoil that affected that nation. The Cairo Trilogy,
considered his master piece, brought Mahfouz fame
and recognition outside the Arab world that finally
led to his winning of the Nobel Prize in literature.
The Nobel Prize Committee cited Mahfouz for creating
“work rich in nuance -- now clear-sightedly
realistic, now evocatively ambiguous -- he has
formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to
all mankind”.
In a recent TV interview conducted just after
his death, Dr. Roger Allen, professor of Arabic
language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania,
who translated several of Mahfouz’s books
in English and met him a number of times, was
asked what he was like as a person. He portrayed
him as a highly organized individual, so much
so that his friend believed that they could set
their clocks if they knew where he was. According
to Dr. Allen, Mahfouz was also a great humorist,
master of one liners, who in spite of his fame
and celebrity status, remained a modest man, ready
to listen to anyone who had anything to say.
As has been the fate of most writers and artists
in Third World countries, Mahfouz could not make
a living out of his writings and had to serve
in a government job during most of his working
life. He rose to become the director of the National
Film Agency. However, his employment did not prevent
him from forthrightly expressing his liberal,
progressive views. In time, he became a subject
of much controversy and acrimony, the religious
fundamentalists being especially critical of some
of his writings and his support of the peace treaty
with Israel signed by President Anwar Sadat in
1979 that enabled Egypt to regain the Sinai from
Israeli.
While advocating coexistence with Israel, Mahfouz
strongly supported the Palestinian struggle against
the occupation and identified with their sufferings.
He donated part of the money he received from
his Nobel Award to Palestinian charities. While
condemning the US invasion of Iraq, he opposed
the religious extremism and severely criticized
the establishment of theocracies that were out
of touch with reality and took narrow, outdated
view of the world. He disapproved of book burning
on moral grounds and also because he believed
that such actions only generated greater publicity
for their contents.
Angered by his tolerant and progressive political
and religious views, some religious extremists,
stabbed him in the neck in October 1994, while
he was traveling to his favorite coffeehouse to
a weekly meeting with a group of literary critics
and writers. He was severely injured, but his
life was saved since he lived very close to a
hospital. Yet, he suffered permanent neurological
damage which left him unable to use his fingers
and to write. He had not worried about the vicious
threats he had received from militants for many
years and is reported to have said in an interview
“I don’t look to the left or the right.
And so what if they get me? I have lived my life
and done what I wanted to do”. Several months
after the attack, thirteen religious radicals
were apprehended and convicted. Later he made
light of the incident, remarking, “It is
not worth the trouble to attack an old man like
me.”
Mahfouz regained some use of his fingers in time
and was able to resume some writing, but could
write no longer than 30 minutes at a stretch.
His last contribution to Arabic literature was
a collection of short stories, The Seventh Heaven,
published just six months before his death. Naguib
Mahfouz’s later life and activities were
highly circumscribed by his physical fragility
and the fear for his security. He was not able
to roam the streets of Cairo at will and at all
times as he did most of his life. He commented
in an interview in 2002, as quoted by the New
York Times, “I no longer fear death and
no longer fret that it would come before I have
the chance to finish my work.” The calling
came just four years later.
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