12 1 World Literature Today Samia ern Center Arabic Mehrez for literature Translation is a professor and Studies director of at of modthe the ernArabicliterature anddirector ofthe CenterforTranslation Studiesat the American University inCairo.Sheistheauthor ofEgyptian Writers between History andFiction: Essays onNaguib Mahfouz, Sonallah Ibrahim and Gamalal-Ghitani (1994/2004) and Egypt's Culture Wars: Politics andPractice (2008/2010). Most recently, Mehrez edited andpartially translated thecompanion volumesTheLiterary Atlasof Cairo: OneHundred Years onthe Streets ofthe City (2010)andThe Literary Life ofCairo: OneHundred Years inthe Heart ofthe City (AUCPress, 2011). Michelle Johnson: We've read whereyou've described yourself as "a Cairogirl."Is there a particular textthatcaptures whatCairois to you? SamiaMehrez: ] ] Ifthere wereonetext thatcapturedwhatCairois to me,I wouldnothave undertaken thetwo-volume literary atlasproject !Eachand everytextthatI included inthe atlasimparts one impression of thecity, one levelofitsenergy, oneaspect ofitslife, ofbeing init,moving init,butalsoreading it,discoveringit ,andimagining it.Itwas a great pleasure 0 1 LU -I o. O Ui a. 5 O u ce u -i u_ 3:££ o 1o X a. working on theatlasproject precisely because itbrought together all theserepresentations of a citythatdefies being"captured" inonetext. Moreover, thecityis an ever-growing creature with many faces that areinconstant flux. I grew up in a Cairothatwas substantially different from whatthecity hasbecome today. I therefore sharea lotofthenostalgia insomeofthetexts forthatcityofmychildhood as a privileged, upper-middle-class childand teenager. Atthis level,I can relateto representations ofa belle epoque Cairo withits cleanboulevardsand poshneighborhoods, itsbourgeois households andtastes, etc.ButI alsoknowhowlimited and limiting that impression ofthecity is.Hencemy fascination with those other faces ofCairothat I don'tknowfirsthand andthat havecometopreoccupy much ofthemore recent imaginings and literary topographies ofCairo.I havelearned a tremendous amountaboutthosefragments of thecity through theaesthetics oftheir representation inthetexts. I remember tellingone of my friends, writer Mona Prince(whoseworkis included intheatlas),abouttheproject before I started it,and herremark was: "You don'tknowthe cityenoughto embark on thisproject." ButI really didn't needto"know"thecity, for noone really can,whether atthe"real"or"imagined" levels.I justneededto discover itin thenarratives . Itis through thejuxtaposition ofthese multiple andpolyphonic impressions aboutthe cityfrom suchdiversewriters thatone might finally "capture" thecity. After myfriend read theatlas, sheadmitted that she,too,haddiscovereda city intheliterary texts that she,whois far more streetwise than I,didnotknowbefore. MJ: Inyourintroduction toTheLiterary Atlas of Cairo ,youwrite that "many oftheissuesraised inthesocialsciences andinurban studies arein fact represented inliterary texts that haveprovidedsomeofthemost eloquent andperceptive readings ofurbanandsocialreality." Does creativewriting provideopportunities fortextual topography that areunavailable innonfiction? SM:Yes,itcertainly does,byvirtue ofitsselfconscious relationship tolife, humanrelations, andlanguage. Theriseofthenovel, ingeneral, isintricately linked totheAristotelian concept of mimesis orimitation andrepresentation. However ,even thoughmimesislies at the core ofdebatessurrounding narrative theories and poeticsofthenovel,theactofrepresentation in literary textsis alwayscomplicated by the literariness ofthetextitself and itsconscious and aesthetic use of rhetorical, technical, and structural devices toconstruct a narrative, "realistic " orotherwise. Thisbasically meansthat art doesn't justimitate reality orreproduce it;itis notsimply referential. Rather, through a deliberateuseofa setofaesthetic toolsandtechniques, artproduces an impression oflifeand human relations ingeneral through rhetoricity, temporality , and narrativity. Therefore, eventhough novelsare made fromthestuff of life,their literary geography or textual topography will necessarily provide analytical toolsthatdissect thetext inunusual waysandwillemphasize, as Franco Moretti putitinhisAtlas ofthe European Novel , "theonlyrealissue ofliterary history: society, rhetoric, andtheir interaction." Despite thedifferences between Moretti's project andmy own,itremains self-evident, tomeatleast, that weshare the conviction that literary geography can "change thewaywe readnovels"and,I would add,can equallychangethewaywe readthe spaceinwhich these novels cameinto being. On another level,as Benedict Anderson hasarguedinImagined Communities ,there isan intrinsic relationship betweenthebirth ofthe imagined community ofthemodern nation and thenewstructures, forms, and languagesthat developedwiththenoveland thenewspaper, for"theseforms provided thetechnical means for're-presenting' thekindofimagined community thatis thenation." Itis through these new structures of representation thatreaders cameto imagine themselves as a community, eveniftheyhad neverseenand wouldnever see each other.This imaginedcommunity is cemented through a "presentation ofsimultaneityin 'homogenous, empty time,' ora complex glossupontheword'meanwhile.'" Thenovel, then, imitates thenationtoa greatextent, not only through setting, temporality, character, andevent, butalsothrough language. However, thequestion ofauthority (whetherpolitical , religious, orsocial),initsrelationship to narrativity and its positionvis-a-vis boththehistorical and literary records as narratives ofsociety, is ofparamount importance. The extent to whichauthorities intervene to construct narratives thatrepresent society and moralize"reality" willdetermine thecreative Creative writers emerge as "underground" historians of the city, whose experience and words provide alternative faces and lives of the city with its geography, topography, and...