Cairo Trilogy Research Articles

The Shadow of Hegel in The Cairo Trilogy

This article shows that a Hegelian spirit pervades The Cairo Trilogy by examining two landmarks: time as a continuous dialectical flow from the contradictions and internal conflicts of one cycle towards a new one, and the relationships between men and women. Maḥfūẓ seems to echo Hegel's idea that the effect of time and history on society is different from, and even sometimes contrary to, the sum of their effects on individuals. But Maḥfūẓ does not follow Hegel in depriving women of a role equal to men's in changing the social norms. Thus he seems to understand the master–slave dialectic in a Marxian way more consistent than Hegel's own use of it. Hegel and conservative Islam view women as distinguished from and inferior to men by nature, while Maḥfūẓ represents a modern open-minded non-discriminating attitude. The Cairo Trilogy begins with the dominance of the Patriarch (al-Sayyid) but ends heralding the dawn of women's emancipation.

‘Life Would be a Meaningless Game and a Bad Joke’ Without Freedom: Naguib Mahfouz as an Oppositional Writer

Mahfouz is generally known as a master ‘storyteller’ of Cairo. However, he can also be read as a great resistance writer, if we depend on Edward Said’s idea of the oppositional intellectual as a humanist writer who uncompromisingly unmasks the workings of power in society. I argue that a remarkable humanism works at the heart of Mahfouz’s adversarial project by reading The Cairo Trilogy as a counter-hegemonic piece, rather than only as a familial tale that mirrors early twentieth-century Egypt. Since Mahfouz remains obsessed with the presence of power in human life, his central struggle is to demystify the hegemonies related to race, gender, class, religion and success in order to de-effectuate them from a deeply humane perspective and assert his intellectual freedom through the process. We need the Saidian framework to comprehend the well-established analyses of Mahfouz’s works in a new light and realize that his writing is no mere rumination on Egypt’s sociopolitical situation. Rather, it is his primary means of obstructing power through revealing its ways in his society.

Hotel Bosphorus by Esmahan Aykol

fiction Fadhil al-Azzawi. The Traveler and the Innkeeper. William M. Hutchins, tr. Cairo. The American University in Cairo Press (Oxford University Press, distr.). 2011. isbn 9789774164620 Fadhil al-Azzawi (b. 1940), an Iraqi author of several novels and poetry collections, has lived in Germany since 1977. The Traveler and the Innkeeper , written in 1976 and published in Arabic in Germany in 1989, is now elegantly rendered into English by well-known translator William M. Hutchins, who has previously translated al-Azzawi’s novels as well as several works of Arabic fiction, including Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy. Originally published in Arabic as Madina min Ramad (Ash city), this novel of is the grim story of an Iraqi secret police inspector in 1960s Baghdad , when the Baathists were rising to power and employed the state apparatus to subdue their opponents, especially the Communists. Inspector Qasim Husayn is in charge of interrogating Jalil Mahmud, his childhood friend, who is a journalist arrested for suspected links to subversives. Torture being part of the interrogation techniques, Qasim considers himself to be protecting society from anarchy. But no measure of torture succeeds in making Jalil confess to anything but his innocence. In the meantime, Qasim falls in love with Huda Abdul-Qadir, Jalil’s wife, whom he visited occasionally to reassure her of her husband’s condition . She originally initiated this affair but gradually abandons it. This increases Qasim’s disillusionment with life, especially when he is temporarily suspended from his job after his inability to make Jalil confess and his superiors learned of his love affair. While portraying the evils of the dictatorial police state, whose prisons al-Azzawi personally experienced in 1963 as a university student, he shows that both the torturing interrogator and his victim destroy each other. His lyrical descriptions of Baghdad localities and streets as well as his narrative of a love affair do not diminish the foreboding atmosphere of the novel, which opposes repression while it attempts to understand the foibles of human beings. Issa J. Boullata Montréal Esmahan Aykol. Hotel Bosphorus. Ruth Whitehouse, tr. London. Bitter Lemon. 2011. isbn 9781904738688 Kati Hirschel is the owner of the only bookshop in Istanbul dedicated to selling crime fiction. Middle-aged, energetic, and self-assured, Hirschel serves as the narrator and protagonist of Esmahan Aykol’s debut novel, Hotel Bosphorus. By maneuvering her way into the role of detective in a murder investigation, Hirschel is given the opportunity to escape the frustrations of quotidian life. As is so Sergio Chejfec’s landscape of memory. Fiction, page 59 Toon Tellegen’s poetic somersaults. Verse, page 74 Judith Schalansky’s love of maps. Miscellaneous, page 78 review world literature in January–February 2012 | 55 wltreviews often the case, the adventure begins with a telephone call, as Kati hears from her old college roommate, Petra Vogel, a B-grade German movie star who is traveling to Istanbul to shoot a film. Petra and Kati meet to catch up in Petra’s decadent hotel suite, where Kati learns about a family tragedy Petra has endured since the two lost touch. When Kurt Müller, the director of Petra’s film, is murdered in his hotel room, Kati takes it upon herself to solve the murder and remove her troubled friend from the list of suspects. First published in Turkish in 2001, Aykol’s novel explores European stereotypes and prejudices. Aykol puts particular emphasis on the relationship between Germans and Turks, and feelings of cultural superiority. Kati, having lived for extended periods of time in both Germany and Turkey , serves as a moderator of sorts, agreeing when a German henchman comments, “The class differences here are very marked. We Germans are much more like each other.” But she also pokes fun at Germans, noting, “In Istanbul, the only place I ever see such a dowdy lot of people is at the airport when boarding a plane to Berlin.” Though heavy-handed at times, Aykol’s cultural commentaries are perhaps the most successful elements of her novel. The story has all the trappings of an exciting murder mystery, as Kati encounters celebrities, detectives , and gang leaders, but it fails to deliver much suspense...

The Contest between Secular and Islamist Movements in Egypt 1936–1945 Study in Naguib Mahfouz's Sugar Street

35 *Farid Al_Salim earned his PhD in History in 2007 from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville,AR. In 2008,he joined the History Department at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas and he he became member of the Security Studies faculty. Dr Al Salim research interest centered on social and economic history of the Middle East with main focus on Greater Syria and Egypt. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIV, No.4, Summer 2011 The Contest between Secular and Islamist Movements in Egypt 1936-1945 Study in Naguib Mahfouz’s Sugar Street Farid Al-Salim* Sugar Street is set in Cairo; and the action takes place from the 1930’s to after the end of World War II. It is one of the most famous novels concerning that period in the Middle East, and is considered to be a major work of Egyptian literature. Sugar Street is the third and final book in the Cairo Trilogy, which traces the life of a middle-class Egyptian family from 1919 to just after the end of the Second World War. The preceding books are Palace Walk and Palace of Desire. All of these books are named after streets in the old section of Cairo: in Sugar Street, the home of the head of the family is located on Sugar Street, which is the closest street to a bridge over the Nile River linking the old and new parts of Cairo In Sugar Street, Naguib Mahfouz has three objectives. He is telling a story, voicing a call to revolution and showing a situation. The first level of the novel is that it is the story of an Egyptian family. The life of the Abd alJawad family is full of intermarriages, disputes, tragedies and hopes. This is, however, only the most superficial aspect of the novel. 36 1 Matti Moosa. The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Image of Modern Egypt. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 255-256 2 Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Modern Arabic Drama in Egypt. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 47 Naguib Mahfouz presents his views on everything from religion and politics to marriage, life and death in such a manner that the state censors at the time of publication, 1952, would not be able to accuse of being antigovernment . He says things that are not necessarily easy for people to hear, regardless of whether these things are right or wrong. This was a political risk for Mr. Mahfouz. He almost lost his life at the hand of a Muslim fanatic in 1994. In Sugar Street, the author described the rapid social changes in Egypt during the late 1930 and the World War II period-- tremendous upheavals in family structure, in women’s roles, in politics, and in the lives of the characters. Mahfouz shows us Egyptian colonial society in all its complexity. The characters get out more – the center of gravity shifts to new homes, new neighborhoods, universities, newspaper offices, and the public space in general. All of this brilliantly shows the significant social changes that occurred in Egypt over this period. Sugar Street is a call to the Egyptian people to unite, resolve their internal differences and fight against the foreign and domestic enemies of Egypt. These enemies include foreign powers which controlled or attempted to control Egypt such as the British, the Germans, the French and the Italians. By domestic enemies, Mahfouz means Muslim Brotherhood who wanted to turn Egypt again into an Islamic state, some of the nationalist groups which wanted power in order to oppress the Egyptian people, and the monarchy and aristocracy which wanted to maintain power.1 ( I ) Historical Background Throughout the period extending between 1516 and 1798, the Ottoman empire adopted a policy of total impenetrability to European influence in its heartland territories like Egypt and Syria, which resulted not only in the isolation of these regions but also in their cultural, scientific and intellectual deterioration.2 The emergence of secularism in the Middle East dates back to the first major post-Renaissance European military intervention in the region known as Napoleon’s campaign on Egypt and which took place in 1798. The Egyptians in particular came...

Den ofrånkomliga nationalismen

The necessary nationalismThis article deals with the role of fictional narratives, especially the modern novel, in the formation of national identities. Naguib Mafouz’s Cairo trilogy is referred to as an example of how literature may both serve as the mirror image of national identities and as an agency in their formation. The sense of community attachment to a modern state is ”thinner” than to a family or traditional village and/or tribe, though no less vital. Drawing on Norbert Elias’s concept of ”survival unit,” Benedict Anderson’s ”imagined communities” and recent studies in the field of comparative literature by Gregory Jusdanis and Azade Seyhan, this article argues for the necessity of the nation – in spite of its unfavourable chauvinistic reputation. This contention is discussed in relation to recent literary developments in Turkey and recent debates on nationhood in a Swedish context.

Homage to a Father: Family Tradition and Revolution(s) in Palace Walk

Western readings of Palace Walk, the first volume of Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, tend to interpret the novel mainly along the lines of typical opposition between patriarchy/occupation and feminism/revolution forces. Even though this analogy might be convincing to a western mind, it is based on cultural assumptions which are inconsistent with textual and contextual evidence. Taking into consideration the contextual background of the Nasser era against which the work was conceived, the paper proposes an alternative reading that observes the correspondence between family and national loyalties, an inherent feature of the Egyptian middle class society which Palace Walk depicts. The Egyptian middle class was responsible for the two most important revolutions in the history of the nation: The 1919 revolution led by Sa'd Zaghloul, and the 1952 revolution led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In this novel, the paper argues, Mahfouz compares the leaders of these two incidents of national struggle, with the purpose of proposing a fictional rendering of the contradiction between the personality of Nasser as the leader and the quality of his political system. In one character, Al Sayyid Ahmed Abdel Jawad, Mahfouz embodies most of the potential vulnerability of that contradiction. The ambivalence and complex sentiments held towards the father figure, who is simultaneously feared and idolized, best reflects the duality of the people's reaction towards Nasser as a ruler. The paper concludes that while the character of the father in Palace Walk echoes the contradictory quality of Nasser’s regime, it represents Egypt’s revolution of 1919 as a model to which Mahfouz aspired and wished Nasser to emulate. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2010 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

Injurious imperialism: Reflecting on my father

Despite persistent employment, the terms masculinity and postcolonialism elude robust understanding at this period in time. This article explores how postcolonial masculinity is formed, forged and experienced. It is theoretically and politically critical to move towards an understanding that does not treat masculinity and the postcolonial as categories already understood: these categories function as filters through which we fix the societies we inhabit, and through which we understand societies that are “other”. Concentrating on power, secrets, humiliation and the haunting of history, this article explores how postcoloniality impacts persistently on emotional and public complexes. Alongside an exploration of some aspects of my father, three novels by Egyptian male authors – Cairo Trilogy, The Yacoubian Building and Chicago – will be used to consider some troublesome aspects of masculinity.

Some Thoughts on Naguib Mahfouz in the Spirit of Secular Criticism

Near the end of Qasr as-shawq (Palace of Desire), the second volume in Naguib Mahfouz’s famous novel The Cairo Trilogy, one of the principal characters, Kamāl ʿAbd al-Jawād runs into his older brother Yāsīn at ʿAyūsha-Rose’s brothel on Massage Street. The encounter is accidental and surprising, especially for Yāsīn, who has known Kamāl as religiously devout, only to discover that he is now one of Rose’s favorites. Unexpectedly finding his bookish youngest brother drinking and whoring so bemuses Yāsīn that he invites him to a night of drinking, during which he offers a genetic explanation for the two brothers’ hedonist tendencies, regaling Kamāl with stories of their father’s own celebrated hedonism. Thus Kamāl first learns that the morally absolutist, pious, and tyrannical Ahmad ʿAbd alJawād he knows at home is publicly the convivial friend, hedonistic philanderer, and lover as-Sayyid Ahmad. Rather pleased at learning his father is as much a lover and friend as he is a sanctimonious tyrant, Kamāl returns home very late and very drunk, only to be severely reproached by that same father for staying out late. He is then consoled by his mother, who, explaining that his father’s severity comes from wanting to protect Kamāl’s upright-

Palace of Desire

The sensual and provocative second volume in the Cairo Trilogy, Palace Of Desire follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities. Having given up his vices after his son's death, ageing patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad pursues an arousing lute-player - only to find she has married his eldest son. His rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination as they test the loosening reins of societal and parental control. And Ahmad's youngest son, in an unforgettable portrayal of unrequited love, ardently courts the sophisticated daughter of a rich Europeanised family.

A Trade like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt

Anyone who has read Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy will remember the low esteem in whichfemale entertainers in Egypt were held. To many, this went hand in hand with prostitution, alcoholand drugs. Mahfouz’s novel may have been set many years ago, but it seems such attitudes werestill prevalent in the late 1980s and prompted Karin van Nieuwkerk to undertake her study of femalesingers and dancers in Egypt. On the whole, she is successful. Her ethnography fuses together issuesimportant in the fields of feminism, ethnomusicology, dance and anthropology, whilst remainingappealing for non-academic audiences.