Started: July 23, 2018
Finished: September 14, 2018
This is the 3rd book in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. For the first 2 books, see my review of Palace Walk and Palace of Desires.
Now that I'm at the 3rd book, I'm not going to waste any time re-explaining what this trilogy is and what it's about. (See my previous 2 book reviews for that.) I'm just going to jump right into the story.
And, because it's hard not to comment on the story without spoiling it, there will be plenty of spoilers.
The Review (*SPOILERS*)
This is the most depressing, and also the most interesting, book in the trilogy.
It's depressing because Naguib Mahfouz really hammers in his point about how time destroys everything. He is not subtle about this at all. He just hits the reader on the head over and over and over again with this theme.
In certain literary circles, subtlety is thought to be a virtue. And if you're of that mindset, Mahfouz's explicitness about his themes is going to be irritating.
But perhaps these things go in and out of style? In the Arab world in the 1950s, was the writing style more explicit? I don't know.
Anyway, be prepared for a lot of long descriptions about how miserable aging has made most of the main characters.
Mahfouz really has a depressing view of aging. His characters start to have problems at 50, and are dying by 65. It can be a bit of a drag to read this book, and think, "Is this what the next 30 years have in store for me? Boy, life really sucks!"
Personally, however, I'm inclined, to reject Mahfouz's extreme pessimism about aging. The older people I know have continued to be happy and productive into old age. (Or take Donald Trump. For all his many many faults, he does seem to be proof that one's ability to be active and participate in society is not over by age 70).
...I don't know. Check back on this blog in another 20 or 30 years to see how life is treating me, I guess.
Not all of Mahfouz's characters are destroyed by aging. Some of them have also been destroyed by tragedy. Aisha, who was so happy and carefree child at the beginning of this trilogy, has been so completely destroyed by tragedy (the deaths of her husband and children) that she is just a ghost of herself by the end. She is still technically alive (she still eats and smokes and drinks coffee), but she has completely given up on life.
And there are a lot of characters like this--characters who were once happy at the beginning of the trilogy, but whose fortune has been reversed. A rich family who lost all their money. A once respectable girl who ends up working at a disreputable bar.
It's a reminder, I suppose, that although our present happiness always has the illusion of permanency, life is inherently unstable. Everything we love could be gone tomorrow.
(...did I mention this book was depressing to read?)
But, for all that depressing stuff, this book is also the most interesting in the trilogy. A lot of things finally happen in this book.
On a societal level, changes in Egyptian society, that have been slowly brewing for the past couple decades, are now finally beginning to happen.
In the first two books, the second generation mildly pushed back against the traditions of their parents. But in this last book, the grandchildren have full out embraced radical politics.
And on a character level, a lot of the plot points that were set up in the first two books are now finally beginning to pay off. I used to be confused about what the point of certain characters was, but now that I've read the whole trilogy, I can see what everyone's arc was.
And it is for that second reason that I recommend this book. And this trilogy. It's a fascinating look on the changes in Egyptian society. I'll comment on a few of the themes that struck me, and some other odd details, down below.
Conversations With Egyptians
I've had the opportunity to talk to a two different Egyptian friends about these books on two different occasions, so I'll just jot down a few notes here about what they told me.
Both of them told me that these books are tremendously famous in Egypt. And that Naguib Mahfouz is looked upon as a national treasure.
I was a bit confused, because these books present an image of Egypt getting gradually more liberal over time. But isn't Egypt well-known nowadays for being a conservative Islamic country?
They both confirmed to me that there had been a period of liberalization, but now the pendulum has indeed swing back the other way.
"Well, then, how are Naguib Mahfouz's books regarded now?" I asked. "Since Naguib Mahfouz shows the gradual introduction of Western ideas into Egypt (like Darwinism and Marxism) and the gradual lessening of the patriarchal power, wouldn't these books be out of favor in a conservative Islamic Egypt?"
(...although, re-thinking it now, I may have exaggerated the liberalism of these books. The end of the trilogy has shown some changes in Egyptian society, but it's still firmly a traditional Muslim country. But I got the sense that Mahfouz's sympathy was with the characters who were pushing the intellectual boundaries--the transformation of Kamal into a humanist philosopher in the second book, and the transformation of Kamal's nephew Ahmed into a Marxist revolutionary in the third book--but perhaps that was just me reading in my own sympathies.)
Anyway, both of them confirmed that inspite the changing intellectual climate, Mahfouz is still as popular as ever.
One of them told me that everyone loved Naguib Mahfouz because he is the only Egyptian author who has gotten any sort of broader international recognition. "In Egypt, the people who read novels tend to be more open minded," he said. "So the people who actual read Mahfouz's novels aren't offended by it, because they are open minded. And the people who don't read still love Naguib Mahfouz because he has brought prestige to Egypt. And because they don't read, they've never discovered what is in his books, so there's no chance of them getting offended."
All of this brings me to my next topic, which is...
Changes in Egyptian Society and the Expansion of Intellectual Boundaries
This book continues the theme of the trilogy which is that every generation pushes the boundaries of progress out a little bit more.
In the first book, the eldest son Fahmy became involved in the Egyptian nationalist revolution against the English. (And he became a martyr to that movement). In the second book, the youngest son Kamal loses his religious faith and becomes a secular humanist.
By this 3rd book, the nephews of Fahmy and Kamal have fully embraced radical politics. One of them gets involved in the Muslim Brotherhood, the other one joins the communists. (I suspect it's intentional symbolism that neither Fahmy nor Kamal have any physical offspring. Fahmy died young, and Kamal remained a bachelor. But in their nephews, they have intellectual offspring.)
Like most people, I first heard of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2012 Egyptian revolution. I had no idea they went back all the way to the 1930s. But it turns out they do. (See their Wikipedia Page. Also one of my Egyptian friends confirmed this to me in conversation--although they only recently got political power, the Muslim Brotherhood have been around for a long time).
I do have one minor complaint, however....
In my original review of Palace Walk, I mentioned that Naguib Mahfouz had a talent for writing realistic 3-dimensional characters, with the exception of Fahmy's political radicalism, which seemed to me more contrived than realistic.
It's true that young people are often attracted to radical politics, but they do not become one note political zealots. They also have complex emotional needs and insecurities which interact with their political development in all sorts of ways.
The two brothers in Sugar Street are in danger of becoming one-note characters. One is always talking about Muslim purity, one is always talking about the poor people.
It's also maybe just a bit too contrived to have them be brothers in the same house-hold. On the one hand, I see what Naguib Mahfouz is going for, and there is some interesting parallelism going on with their different trajectories. (Each brother chooses a completely different path, but they both end up in the exact same place at the end of the novel.) But it's also a little bit too neat. In the first half of the book especially, I had trouble taking them seriously as characters. They seemed more like plot devices than characters.
They do, however, get more depth as the book continues, so by the time we got to the end of the book, I felt like they had been a bit more fleshed out into full characters.
Both brothers do get a bit more humanized when they encounter romantic obstacles. And, interestingly enough, both end up falling in love in ways which is challenging to their respective ideology. (The Muslim brother falls in love with a girl who he regards as a sexual temptation. The Communist brother falls in love with a girl who is looking for a rich husband.)
That complaint aside, I like a lot of other things about this plot.
I like the interaction between the nephews and their uncle Kamal. Kamal had been the radical intellectual in the previous book, but now he's finding himself outflanked by his nephews.
It's also interesting to see that the radicalism of the first novel (the Egyptian nationalist revolution) has now become regarded as conservative by the younger generation:
Ahmed, the communist nephew, says at one point: "It's not unlikely that in the future we'll come to regard martyrs of the nationalist movement as we now do victims of foolish battles between tribes and clans."
At which point his Uncle Kamal reacts by thinking "Foolish battles! You fool!" Kamal thought. "Fahmy did not die in a foolish battle. But how can you be certain?" (p.30-31)
By the end of the novel, both brothers are in jail.
The family members had suspected all along that the godless communist would end up in trouble, but it's a surprise that the brother obsessed with Muslim purity also ends up in jail.
When Kamal relates the news to his friend, his friend asks: "The one who worships God and the one who doesn't?"
Kamal answers "You must worship the government first and foremost if you wish your life to be free of problems." (p.328)
So true!
The interrogating police officer, it turns out, was a friend of Fahmy's 30 years ago. (This was actually set up back in the first book. Fahmy did have a police officer friend who was a minor character in Palace Walk.)
The officer says: "Your lamented uncle Fahmy was a dear friend of mine. I assume you know that he died in the spring of his life and that those of his comrades who survived now hold some of the most important [government] posts."
The police officer means this as an admonishment for the young people to respect the government their martyred uncle helped to create. But the communist nephew Ahmad sees it instead as a call to perpetual revolution, and replies, "Allow me to ask you, sir, what condition Egypt would be in if my uncle and others like him had not sacrificed their lives." (p.320)
(Professor Grant Voth, in his analysis of this trilogy, says that Mahfouz is showing how individuals die, but society progresses. Fahmy sacrifices his life to the nationalist revolution, but by doing so he helps create the conditions that allows his nephews to push society further. In effect, Fahmy willed his remaining lifespan over to the next generation.)
Other Notes
* Some interesting historical details in here about life in Cairo during World War II.
I had vaguely known that there was a North Africa campaign during World War II, but I hadn't quite realized that the inhabitants of Cairo experienced bombing raids.
Naguib Mahfouz does a good job of showing how the War directly affected everyday life in Cairo.
* I suspect most readers of this book identify most with Kamal. At least this was true of me. (I'd be flattering myself if I called myself an "intellectual", but I am at least more inclined to books than to sports. And I think in general the type of person who would read a trilogy like this is most likely to be the type of person who would identify with the bookish Kamal.)
So I was most invested in Kamal's progression.
There's a frustrating moment in the trilogy when Kamal is on the verge of finding love, but throws it away through hesitation and failure to act. It's frustrating for the reader. (You want to slap Kamal.) But at the same time, I identified with it. I have been there many times in my own past.
Kamal had spent the whole 2nd book in the trilogy obsessed with a girl he could not possess. By this book, he is no longer in love with her. But he's still fascinated with his past obsession as something that had taken on a life of its own independent of the actual girl.
The truth was that he no longer wanted Aida. But he still wished to learn her secret, which might at least convince him that the best years of his life had not been wasted. (p.257)This, I also felt, was something I could identify with.
At the end, we get somewhat of a conclusion to Kamal's progression. He leaves the book with at least some sort of purpose in his life.
Kamal had long wondered what was true and what was false, but perhaps doubt was as much of an evasion of responsibility as mysticism or a passive belief in science.But the book ends before we find out if Kamal succeeds in his new purpose. Or if this is just one of the many phases he goes through. (Kamal has gone through several phases before.)
"Could you be a model teacher, an exemplary husband, and a lifelong revolutionary?" he asked himself. (p.330)
Connections with Other Books I've Read
I don't know exactly what Naguib Mahfouz's politics are, but he's obviously done his research on Marxism. (According to Wikipedia, he had some sympathies with socialist ideas).
He knows about the romance between Karl Marx and the aristocrat Jenny Von Wesphalen, and makes references to this. (Something that I had also picked up from the biographies - of - Karl Marx I read). And he seems well-versed in socialist history, name dropping figures like Louis Blanc (who was prominent in the 1848 Revolution).
Links
* Fellow blogger Blogging the Canon reviews this same book here. His takeaway?
the genius of Mahfouz is that he makes his characters so familiar and so human that they transcend the foreignness of the culture and become instantly relate-able. Whether we speak English or Arabic or German, we all have the same emotions, and we all grow old and have the same frustrations. I highly recommend these books, they're some of the best I've read for this blog.* I mentioned this book briefly before in the vlog: The Books on My Shelf Part 3: The Books I Haven't Even Started.
Video Review
Video Review HERE and embedded below:
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky | How Come we Live in Open Society with a lot of Information and yet we Know so Little?
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