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.

If you enjoyed reading this article or found it useful, please consider donating the cost of a cup of coffee to help maintain the site...
Author:
• Friday, November 24th, 2023

Sebastian Mathew was born and raised in Kerala, India, in the seaside town of Calicut. While Mathew’s father worked as a dentist, Mathew trained at Calicut Medical College and obtained a Master’s degree in Ophthalmology. Spending summer vacations at the ancestral family home gave Mathew a love for the Kerala countryside.

Raised in a house filled with a wide variety of books and with parents nurturing in their children the love of reading, and the family being gifted storytellers, it manifested itself in Mathew’s great interest in literature and amateur theatre. For years, he took part in editing a college magazine and published a light-hearted weekly wall magazine.

The Solitude Of Guilt, published in 2020, is Sebastian Mathew’s first novel. It was written while working in Kuwait for nearly fifteen years in a tertiary care eye hospital. In 2019, he moved to England, where he currently works and lives with his wife and two children. Mathew is an active blogger and a constant contributor on social media, posting short-verse and flash fiction.

The Solitude Of Guilt is a book to debate with psychoanalysts about whether our character is forged at birth or conditioned later on by our surroundings. Would the little Indian girl, Elizabeth, nicknamed Elikutty, have been any different if her father had not cosseted her, if her mother had not died at her birth and if her elder sisters had not held her responsible for her atrocious matricide? “you are a devil child,” they hissed at her.“You bit and tore our mother’s womb and killed her when you were born”.

Elikutty grows up with this feeling of guilt and alienation from her surroundings, except for her wealthy father, Chandi Mappilla, who, by wanting to be a father and a mother for his newborn girl, spoils and turns her into a selfish, uncompassionate tyrant who becomes a tormented soul. After all her odious deeds and ridden with guilt, Elikutty says at her death bed: “The burden of guilt threatens to burst my heart”.

After being haunted, over and over again by vivid, threatening dreams, Elikutty is advised by Thatha, her maid, to seek help from a gifted fortune teller. The palm reader tells her about the cause of her unbearable dreams: “They are the people you killed…Your mother and the boy you lusted for. Your mother cursed you as you clawed your way out, tearing her womb. The boy too, as he bore the blows which killed him.”

Before leaving, the maid asks the fortune teller: “Isn’t there something she can do? To lift this curse, to stop this haunting?” the woman answers: “ I don’t know for sure, but sometimes marrying and having a daughter might help. It shifts the curse to the daughter but will manifest only if she is responsible for a death”.

Following the fortune teller’s advice, Elikutty marries the weak-willed school teacher, Thoma, a puppet of a husband, in order to have a daughter who will carry her burden and relieve her of it. She tells Thoma: “I married you to have a daughter, a daughter who can help me with my troubles…It’s your seed I need”.

The Solitude Of Guilt provides us with an interesting issue about behaviour and mental processes as well as cognitive and decision-making of psychologically scarred beings. It is illustrated by how Elikutty’s daughter, Susan, is attracted to Gautam, who is in turn attracted to her. Gautam has a tortured life akin to Susan’s, hence the attraction. They get married, which leads them both to an insurmountable relationship and a failed marriage since two wounded, frail people are often unable to support each other. Susan and Gautam’s marriage also results in having an impaired, dysfunctional son, Rahul, who lives locked up in his world of thoughts and reflections, unable to connect with the people around him.

The Solitude Of Guilt is a moving, bleak story that spreads from the early twentieth century to the middle of the nineteen eighties. It is a character-built novel, masterfully written with vivid descriptions of place events and well-depicted, life-like characters presenting their view in each chapter. The story meanders between the past and present of three generations of different vulnerable people living in their own solitude, sunk by the weight of their guilt.