Transmission and Transit in Contemporary Arabic Literature: Naql and Its Limits

Abstract

Abstract In this essay, I use the concept of naql to connect textual transmission and physical movement in two contemporary Arabic fictional works that are structured around questions of the circulation of narratives and bodies: Khālid al-Khamīsī’s Tāksī, a fictional collection of tales about Cairo taxi drivers, and Aḥmad Saʿdāwī’s Frānkishtāyn fī Baghdād, which depicts a monster roaming the streets of Baghdad. I begin with a discussion of naql as both transmission and movement, reading a tension between fixity and change that complicates notions of authenticity and authority in realms such as language, time, and mobility. I then argue that Tāksī uses the mobility of the taxi and the types of transmissions that it receives and produces to reposition cultural and political knowledge gleaned from cabdrivers who move through the gridlocked streets of Cairo. In Saʿdāwī’s novel, the monster’s movements and actions begin as a response to violence but fail to cohere as an alternative to structural corruption, revealing the limits of naql as political critique. I conclude by considering how this reading of naql is reflected in the global circulation of these texts.