NAGUIB MAHFOUZ CREATES A MYTHIC HISTORY
Author: By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff
Date: Friday, April 8, 1994
Page: 47
Section: LIVING
When the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in 1988, his
work had an audience of millions of readers, almost none of them in America.
Since the prize, however, Doubleday has published 16 of Mahfouz's books in
English translation -- still only a fraction of his output, since he has
written nearly 50 books. The "Cairo Trilogy," the early novels that
established Mahfouz's reputation, won loyal readers here and sold more than
250,000 copies.
The trilogy was a meticulous depiction of a specific place and time; it was
written on the models of the major English, French and Russian novels of the
19th century. But it was in no sense a derivative work; what was original
about it was the myth, mystery and immemorial history that informed the
unfolding account of daily events.
In a way, "The Harafish," now translated for the first time, is a
complement to the "Cairo Trilogy," or the "Cairo Trilogy" turned inside out.
It too is a novel about generations of a family living in an alley in an
unspecified city, presumably Cairo. But this time there is none of the
machinery of literary realism; the story covers something like 800 years, but
time does not seem to pass as events mirror each other across the generations.
The literary manner is that of myth, fable, allegory or parable, yet the
effect is of the most intense actuality because Mahfouz's understanding of
human psychology and history is so profound.
"Harafish" is the Arabic word for riffraff; for Mahfouz, it means the
common people, or, as his Scots translator, Catherine Cobham, puts it in a
note, "those in menial jobs, casual workers, and the unemployed and homeless."
Ashur Abdullah, a foundling, comes from the harafish; by physical prowess and
strength of character he becomes the chief of the clan, the leader of his
people and a legend for generations to come, Ashur al-Nagi (Ashur the
Survivor).
"The Harafish," in 10 epic tales, traces the history of the al-Nagi famly
through 10 generations -- one is tempted to say degenerations, because by
degrees the family falls away from its hereditary ideals, makes and squanders
fortunes, acquires power, misuses it and loses it. At the end there is a new
Ashur al-Nagi, who restores his family's fortunes by returning to its original
ideals.
"Degenerations," however, may not be the right word, because it implies
forms of judgment, even condemnation, and while there are many forms of
intolerance, injustice and cruelty that Mahfouz condemns with hot anger, the
overriding emotion in his work is of sympathy for the way people are, support
for their aspirations and wry resignation at what usually happens when
aspirations come into conflict with the way of the world.
There are memorable characters in "The Harafish." There is the madman
Galal, obsessed with immortality; he builds a strange minaret without a mosque
and dies of a poison administered by his former mistress, the prostitute
Zaynat, the blonde. Mahfouz has always excelled in his depiction of the
strength of women; Zahira, an al-Nagi, uses her beauty and ambition to acquire
power. "She was struck forcibly by the idea that a woman's weakness is her
emotions; and that her relationships with men should be rational and
calculated. Life is precious, with vast possibilities, limitless horizons.
Love is nothing more than a blind beggar, creeping around the alleyways."
The incidents in "The Harafish" are colorful, dramatic and often violent --
there is murder, suicide, deviant sexuality, domestic violence and every form
of family support and conflict; all of this of course is a kind of metaphor
for government and the process, not the progress, of history.
Incompetent jacket copy on the galley proofs compares all of this to soap
opera, an observation that has been picked up in some of the early reviews.
But there is nothing soap-operatic about the rich entertainment provided by
''The Harafish," because every event has a context. Two buildings frame each
tale, the mosque and the bar; each member of the al-Nagi family comes by night
to the square before the mosque to meditate and hear the prayer-chants.
Everything unfolds within an immemorial pattern of seasons, of weather, of
risings of the Nile, of years. One brother, confronted by another, says he
will listen to what he has to say "On condition that it has nothing to do with
morals." "Everything has to do with morals," the other brother replies.
Mahfouz was 66 when he published "The Harafish" in 1977. By leaving so
much out of his novel, he has put more in; this is a great book, by a wise
man.
DYER ;04/06 NIGRO ;04/08,10:49 BOOK08
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