Tag-Archive for ◊ Naguib Mahfouz ◊

Author:
• Friday, December 15th, 2023

Naguib Mahfouz Abdel Aziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha was born in 1911 to a humble-middle-class Muslim Egyptian family in Gamaliya, a popular commercial quarter of Old Cairo, Egypt. He was named after Naguib Pasha Mahfouz, the physician who successfully delivered him after some difficulties at birth. In 1924, Mahfouz’s family moved to Al-Abassiya, a middle-class area of Cairo. These two districts provided the backdrop for Mahfouz’s famous Cairo Trilogy.

Mahfouz graduated from Cairo University in 1934 with a BA in philosophy, following in his father’s footsteps by working as a civil servant until he retired in 1972. He was writing on the side then, even after his novels became successful. He began writing at the age of seventeen, but his first novel was not published until 1939.

Mahfouz was a prolific writer. He wrote many novels, short stories, various plays and screenplays, and more than two hundred articles. Most of his work has been translated into different languages, and many of his novels have been made into films. Mahfouz received numerous prizes and awards during his lifetime.

The publication of The Cairo Trilogy in 1957 made him well-known in the Arab world. Thirty-one years later, in 1988, when Mahfouz was the first Arab writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jacqueline Onassis registered the rights for the American publisher Doubleday on fourteen of Mahfouz’s books and arranged for the first translation into English of The Cairo Trilogy and some of his other books. Since then, Mahfouz has often been referred to in the Western world as the Balzac of Egypt or the Egyptian Tolstoi. Mahfouz died in Cairo in 2006.

The Journey of Ibn Fattouma, published in Arabic in 1983 and English in 1992, is similar to the Middle Eastern folktales of One Thousand And One Nights. Qindil Muhamed Al-Innabi is the protagonist and narrator of the tale. His beautiful mother, Fattouma Al-Azhari, was seventeen years old when his father, an eighty-year-old man, fell in love with her and married her. Qindil is given the name ‘Ibn Fattouma’ (son of Fattouma) by his half-brothers, implying that they are “washing their hands of any possible relationship with them and casting doubts upon Fattouma.”

The story starts with Qindil as a young Muslim man whose father died when he was an infant. He lives comfortably with his widowed mother, Fattouma, in an imaginary country called Dar Al Islam. Qindil is attracted to a humble young woman, Halima, whom he saw walking in his neighbourhood with her blind father. He decides to marry her, but after their engagement, the sultan’s third chamberlain wants Halima for himself, and since nobody can oppose such a powerful man, the chamberlain marries her.

Inconsolable and disappointed at his loss of Halima and at his mother accepting to marry his teacher, Sheik Maghagha al-Gibeili, plus his disenchantment with the failings of his own country, Dar Al Islam, Qindil is encouraged by his teacher to travel and discover the outside world in search of Perfection and Justice and write about the different places he visits. Qindil adopts the 16th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s notorious saying: “Travel broadens the mind”. He decides to go on a quest to the faraway Eden, an unknown utopian land named Gebel, where it was said no one has ever returned.

On his journey to Gebel (Mountain), Qindil’s caravan stops in five dissimilar countries, recounted in each chapter. The first one is Mashriq (Sunrise), where its citizens worship the moon and go around shamelessly naked, marriage is inexistent, and copulation is freely practised in the open. His second stop is in the autocratic, bellicose country, Haira (Bewilderment), which declares war against Mashriq, whose king is worshipped like God.

The third country is Halba (Arena), a secular democratic country that magnifies freedom above anything else. Public demonstrations are unopposed, and people from different religions live in peace with each other. His fourth abode is in Aman (Security), a communist-like place where everything is under scrutiny and close control and where spying is encouraged. Before reaching Gebel, the last country is a calm place with reflective, peaceful people called Ghuroub (Sunset).

Through this allegorical journey from primitive to modern, civilized societies, Mahfouz illustrates the different populations, cultures, and governments. It also reveals human attraction to endless wars under the banner of justice and freedom, masking the real reason, which is the desire of greed, domination and theft of national resources. Mahfouz constantly compares these countries with his own, Dar Al Islam.

Qindil’s journey is an escape, a quest for socio-political idealistic goals, which are challenging to attain, a pursuit for justice, perfection and utopia to reach God. Mahfouz presents a lifetime journey akin to a Sufi with a philosophical vision, struggling between the alarming reality and the impossible, unreachable dream. The tale is reminiscent of the seventeenth-century epic Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes, where Don Quixote chases after an inaccessible dream in search of chimerical standards.

The original version of The Journey Of Ibn Fattouma in Arabic is ingeniously written with exquisitely chosen words and evocative images of the period, transporting the reader into a magical, fairytale-like world while at the same time alluding to the unbearable harsh reality of the world we live in today.

After a strenuous journey, Qindil reaches his target, the gates of Dar al-Gebel; he decides to climb its narrow, steep path, not knowing if he will be capable of reaching it and if he can ever return to his own country one day, as was intended. Will Qindil arrive safely at his destination and discover this utopian world he has been so eager to see and learn from? Will he be able to be the first to write about it? Will he be able to survive the journey back home? We will never know since Mahfouz leaves the end of his story open for the reader’s own assessment and interpretation.

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Author:
• Sunday, May 07th, 2023

Dear Ladies,

Here is the list of books we will be reading in The Book Club in the coming months. Please be sure to order your books well in advance to avoid any surprises.

29th September 2023
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri / Longues distances (French edition).

27th October 2023
Bloom by Kevin Panetta / La saveur du printemps de Kevin Panetta (French edition).

24th November 2023
The Solitude Of Guilt by Sebastian Mathew.

15th December 2023
The Journey of Ibn Fattouma Naguib Mahfouz / Le voyage d’Ibn Fattouma (French edition).

I wish you good reading.
Chouhrette
https://www.1stbookreview.com