by DARA RATEB

Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian screenwriter, playwright and novelist passed away Aug. 30, 2006. He was 94. Mahfouz, already recognized in Egypt as one of the Arab world’s finest writers, was the first Arab to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, bringing modern Arabic literature into the international spotlight. The oddity, however, lies in the fact that the novel chosen for the Nobel was written 30 years before his nomination.

Mahfouz was born Dec. 11, 1911, in a modest home in Gamaliyya, a heavily populated, 1,000-year-old urban city. With its narrowly networked alleyways, street bakers, centuries-old mosques, animated artisans and clustered buildings, it was his upbringing in this area that would affect the intricate details of much of his future writing. Mahfouz’s father, an old-fashioned civil servant, and his illiterate mother were very patriotic Egyptians with a passion for history, often taking the young Mahfouz and his six older siblings to museums. Although he had never traveled outside Egypt, the young Mahfouz became a voracious reader of foreign literature, from Russian classics to American detective stories.

Mahfouz’s education began at a kuttab (Qur’anic school), which provided him with a very strong basis in the complex syntax and grammar of the Arabic language, before he moved on to regular primary and secondary schools. He received his master’s degree in philosophy from Cairo University in 1931, known at the time as King Fouad University. Ye t he remained an avid reader of literature by authors from George Bernard Shaw to Ernest Hemingway. Upon graduation, Mahfouz followed in his father’s footsteps and became a government clerk while continuing to write on the side. He started out writing short stories and articles, as well as translating the works of James Baikie on ancient Egypt, eventually publishing 80 of his stories in 1938. Mahfouz held several high positions in the Ministry of Culture, such as advisor to the Minister of Culture and Director of the Film Censorship Office, before retiring in 1971.

In 1939, Mahfouz wrote his first three novels, all set against a Pharonic backdrop; the first was The Curse of Ra. Finding contemporary Egypt more appealing to his animated mind, however, he began in 1947 to mimic the social realism of his surroundings in novels such as Midaq Alley. The work gave a lucid portrayal of the winding alleys of his childhood with a set of animated, drugged characters who would perform “disfigurement surgeries” on those who wanted to be maimed for a successful career in begging.

The groundbreaking, 1,500 page, Cairo Trilogy came out in 1956 and eventually made its way into the cinemas, and sold more than 250,000 in the United States alone. The volumes provide a detailed depiction of a way of life that has vanished from modern-day, post-colonial Cairo. The narrative is situated in 1917-1944, when even the most apathetic were affected by new political trends, from the rise of Saad Zaghloul and the Wafd party to the beginnings of the Islamist movement. The novel carefully follows three generations of the fictional Abd-el-Jawad family, a typical traditional family, as they face the 20th century’s upheavals, including the changing role of women.

Perhaps the most lasting and pervasive effect of the novel came from the introduction of the iconic character, Si-Sayed, inspired by Mahfouz’s own overbearing father, who ruled his household, most particularly his wives and daughters, with an iron fist. A silent advocate of women’s rights, Mahfouz showed in each of his novels how women are able to slowly fight the oppression they face in society, quite uncommon in Middle Eastern literature.

Although the trilogy inspired profound nostalgia for a now departed era, Mahfouz was itching to criticize the repressive wave brought by Gamal Abdul Nasser’s 1952 revolution. In 1957, unable to suppress his frustration any longer, Mahfouz began writing his most critical work to date, Children of Gebelawi (“Children of Our Alley”). The highly symbolic work opens with an anonymous narrator telling the story of Gebelawi’s grand, highly secured mansion, which has been said by some to be emblematic of God and the Gardens of Eden. Gebelawi banishes his sons from his paradise, and the subsequent generations of his son’s children pray to Gebelawi for salvation. Some of the characters are said to be representations of Adam, Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad. Eventually these “children” seize part of the estate, only to subsequently ruin any chance of happiness because of greed, oppression and corruption. A ruling from Al Azhar and critics from Cairo University soon declared the themes as “unfit” for fictional work due to its religious connotations.