Accompanied by a great Writer Gamal
El-Ghitani, Dr. Priti Singh, the Indian Writer and Professor at Delhi
University, toured the streets and alleys of the Fatimid Cairo which were
vividly depicted in the novels of the great man of letter, Naguib Mahfouz. She
saw for herself how they withstood the test of time. Although some of the
features of these streets and alleys have changed with the passage of time,
others have only slightly changed, to reveal to us how the work of Naguib
Mahfouz, the Noble Prize Winner, have turned reality into novelistic
literature.
When Amina, the wife of Mr. Ahmed
Abdel Gawad, gets up every day at midnight, the first thing she does is to wrap
her veil about her and head for the balcony. From this “closed cage” formed by
the wooden latticework she stands waiting for the coming of her husband. The
balcony overlooks a cistern and a school which were situated in the middle of
Palace Walk, or Bayn al-Qasrayn. Two roads met there: al-Nahassin or
Coppersmiths Street and Palace Walk. From the balcony Amina was able to see the
minarets of the two mosques of Qala’un and Barquk looming up like ghostly giants enjoying a night out by
the light of the gleaming stars. To her right, the street appeared narrow and
twisting enveloped by the darkness of the night. To her left on the other side, the road went East emitting a
faint light coming from the handcarts and from the vapor lamps of coffeehouses. The great Indian writer,
Priti Singh tells us her following experience in which she tries to explore the
realistic settings of Naguib Mahfouz’s novels.
Accompanied by the Novelist and
Journalist, Gamal El-Ghitani, who is also an authority on the literature of
Naguib Mahfouz, I have lately decided to find out if the scene which Amina had
continued to see from her balcony for almost a quarter of a century at the
beginning of the 90s was still there. We stood at the place her house was
supposedly there and over which her balcony looks, where the roads of Fatimid
Cairo intersect.
We discovered that the cistern and
school were housed in a building owned by Abdel Rahman Katkhodah, and because
it occupies one point of a triangle separating between the Palace Walk and
El-Nahassin streets, it was surely a suitable point for distributing water. The
school must have been upstairs. Doubtless the adjacency of this building
to Amina’s balcony has
enabled her to live her life in the manner she was allowed to by others.
Looking to the left, as Amina was
accustomed to do every night, we found the minarets still towering high, its
shadows were directed perpendicularly in angles towards the sky over the narrow
crowded streets. The houses were still embracing in disharmony on both sides of
the street like a queue of soldiers standing languidly. There was not, however,
any possibility that we could see al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al- Gawad coming in his
squares omnibus with its lamps swimming in the darkness, nor the school or the
cistern were still used today. Change has doubtless crept over the area. But
many things were still present as
they were described by Naguib Mahfouz, bearing an eloquent testimony to the
marvelous manner in which many places in reality have changed into a setting
for the major events of Naguib Mahfouz’s novels.
Born to a middle class, simple family
living in one of the most ancient districts in Cairo, Naguib Mahfouz was able
to embody the district in which he was brought up in a moving picture
overflowing with life in novels of different forms ranging from long to short
ones. His sense of the place has particularly reached its climax in the first
realistic stage of his literary life. In his famous Trilogy, he plants the
roots of his epic through the life of three generations of a Muslim family
living in the streets of El-Gamalia and Khan El-Khalili districts. He used
these realistic places as a
realistic setting for the events and also to symbolize the hopes and failures
of people who were trying to get out of the burdens of the past to the horizons
of the more expansive and changing world of the present.
Naguib Mahfouz depicts the alleys of
El-Gamalia and Khan El-Khalili as a world of its own, in which trade activities
conflict with civil service, mosques with whorehouses, schools with cafes, the
inhabitants of the city with the soldiers of the occupation, men with women,
sons with fathers, dreams with reality and the young with the elderly. Each one
of the main characters in the trilogy makes a secret journey, often to his
chosen destination within the border of his own world in which each step serves
as one of the rites which marks his transfer to the second part of his journey.
Thus, Amina ventures to go out of her
closed world, her marital house, to make a trip to El-Hussain Mosque in the
company of her son, in a revolution against the instructions of her the then
absent husband. We decided to follow the same path she had taken. So we went
along the road from her house to Kirmiz alley through a lane looking like a
tunnel. Here, Amina’s son drew his mother’s attention to the famous vaulted
ceiling and then he recited the opening verses of the Koran to protect him from
the jinn, which lived under its shadows. The vaulted ceiling was still entrenched though, a little
bit neglected. There was surely no jinn in the place. Walking under its rough
walls and solid rocks, it was easy to recognize that it was once used as trench
against the aircraft raids during the Second World War. In “El-Sukaryia”
Mahfouz describes how Kamal had to carry al-Sayyid Ahmed, who was by then old
and weak, to this trench to hide
from the bombs and aircraft. Turning around the corner, we saw the lebbek trees
in Bayt al-Qadi square still towering but not fruitful. The Gamalyia Police
Station was also still standing erect. We took the narrow lane to Khan Jaafar
alley, then to the mosque. which Amina found it less impressing than she had
thought.
For women living in this area nowadays, going to the mosque is
not a great event at all as it was for Amina. Our cameras found the mosque and
its surrounding areas full of women going into and out of the mosque without any embarrassment. Yet, on the
road leading to the corner of El-Ghoryia street one is liable to the risk
of stumbling and falling as Amina
was.
The road Amina took to the mosque,
El-Ghitani told us, was known to Mahfouz, and he himself was used to take it as
a child, as his own house then was located across the road of El-Gamalyia
Police Station. As for house No. 8 which has recently been rebuilt, it is a new
building whose front was
decorated, to our disappointment by two washing lines. House No. 6 in
El-Kababgi alley is near to this house and it was the building of the cistern
and the school where Naguib Mahfouz strated to memorize the Koran. He must have
surely drunk from the water of the cistern. When we went to this building we
found it totally closed and in a depleted state.
The men in the life of Amina had
other destinations in the area surrounding the mosque. Her husband the merchant
al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad made a daily trip to his store, situated in front
of the mosque of Barquq on
al-Nahhasin street. Stores selling aluminum and copper troughs and utensils now
occupies this place. Mr. Gamal El-Ghitani told me that these stores have been
existing for hundreds of years. He added that there was no store in area which
matched that of Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s in which containers of coffee beans, rice,
nuts, dried fruit, and soap were crammed on the shelves and piled by the walls.
. Mr. Gamal El-Ghitani also said that the description of al-Sayyid Ahmad’s
store applies to a shop on al-Sagha street called “Khiddr al-Attar” which is
full of customers and the street is replete with passers-by and cars.
Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad had other
destinations beside his shop, among them, or rather his most favourtie of all were the coffeehouses of the area.
Egypt knew coffeehouses in the middle ages with the arrival of coffee seeds from Yemen. Coffeehouses in Egypt were
threatened to closure several times due to the then prevalent belief that
coffee had a narcotic effect, and they have remained up to this day a place
where men gather to sip coffee, tea and smoke hubble-bubble. A coffeehouse is
also a place in which various commercial transactions are most often concluded
and this applied to al-Sayyid
Ahmad as much as it applied to the Egyptians nowadays. The coffeehouse of al-Sayyid Ali was
the most favourite to al-Sayyid Ahmad, because he could see from this café the
house of Zebida, the singer above the heads of the passers-by who crowded the street. Mr. Gamal
El-Ghitani took us to an alley in El-Hamzawi district. Naguib Mahfouz is
supposed to have imagined the home of Zanouba one of the homes whose windows
overlook this narrow alley. Looking at them from the street, these one-storey
homes look narrow but Mr. El-Ghitani affirmed that such homes often comprised a big hall with a vapor lamp
dangling from its ceiling and it contained a sofa, two big
chairs and a Persian rug as well as tables inlaid with shells. In such halls
al-Sayyid Ahmad made his many romantic and sensual adventures.
In the second volume of Mahfouz’s
Cairo trilogy, al-Sayyid Ahmad’s mistress Zanouba convinces him to accommodate
her in a houseboat on the banks of
the Nile near El-Zamalek bridge. In the pre-revolution period, such houseboats
were places of fun and amusement for the rich and celebrities. There were
hundreds of them queuing on the banks of the Nile in the lush districts like
Agouza, Rawdda and Zamalek. Like many of the well-off people of his time,
al-Sayyid Ahmad used to frequent this houseboat to visit his young mistress.
Yet, we did not find any houseboats near the bridge of Zamalek. In fact, what is left of them is only
less than 30 mainly in the Kit-Kat square, all were concentrated in one area
under the scrutiny of the policemen.
The sons of al-Sayyid Ahmad preferred
to be always away from their strong father. They had their different
destinations for work and fun inside and outside the area. Yassin, his son from
his first wife preferred to walk in such areas from which he can see women from
the nearest possible angle. Yassin’s inclination to possess women emanated from
his miserable childhood he lived with his mother in the alley of the palace of
desire. Hence, he loved al-Tarabi alley which was frequented by women of all
levels who walked in front of him hidden under their wraps and black veils to
buy perfumes that accentuated their beauty. This roofed, long, alley was full
of adjoining shops on both sides
looking like cells of bees. Yassin was fond of going there on Fridays to
examine the faces of women any time they lifted their veils and to see the
outlines of their statures when their wraps were stuck to their bodies. The
street has not changed a lot, but we did not see the roof of the alley. We saw
the women who visited this alley wearing veils but we did not see the wraps as
Naguib Mahfouz described them.
When Yassin & Zanouba were
separated, he started to visit the café of Ahmed Abdouh which was sloping
underground in Khan El-Khalili area.
This café was described more elabortately and precisely by Naguib
Mahfouz than anyone else. Gamal El-Ghitani told us that El-Fishawi, the famous
café which lies in a remote corner of Khan El-Khalili has now replaced the old
café. We could not see any pictures of the old café, unlike El-Fishawi which
still retains some of its pictures since the rule of King Farouq. Of course,
there is a great difference between how it looked in the past and the way it looks
nowadays. We noticed that the flow of passers-by around this area in one hour
is much higher than that in a number of streets.
As for Fahmi, the second son of
al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, his transition from childhood to manhood led to
his moving out of old Cairo. The destination he chose or the circumstances so
chosen for him was Ramsis square which lies in front of the main railway
station. There he participated in the student demonstrations against the
British occupation. The demonstrators used to go through the Opera-house and
El-Azbakyyia road which lies to the west of old Cairo. This area was first
developed by Prince Azbakyia in the 15th century, and the whole was
upgraded and revamped in the 19th century by Ismail Pasha as part of
its plan to modernize the city of Cairo. This led to the obliteration of many
of the old features of Cairo, but the modernization process had made
El-Azbakyia one of the most marvelous squares in the world. Yet, little is left
of the previous glory of the square. The Opera-house has disappeared as a
result of a big fire which devoured it in the early 70s, and a multi-stories
building used as a parking place for cars towered in the area.
Kamal, the youngest sons of al-Sayyid
Ahmad Abd al-Jawad’s was more concerned with education and thoughtful than the
rest of his brothers. The school of Khalil Agha was associated with him and his
schoolmates would scatter in the afternoons throughout El-Darassa area, some of
them in the new streets, others in El-Hussain streets. Some of them would
gather around peddlers who sell melon seeds, pea-nuts and candies. One of the
nice moments revealed by Naguib Mahfouz was when Fahmy bought candy from a
nearby shop and started to mince it on his way to El-Hussain. We saw many of
these shops on the road and one of them might have inspired this scene to Naguib Mahfouz. The
horizons of Kamal’s world expanded
after he had finished his secondary education. He chose to join the faculty of
teachers. These horizons even grew wider when he started to get out of the
boundaries of this area to visit his friends at their homes. One of these
friends stayed in El-Abbassyia. The street of El-Abassyia, for someone who was
accustomed only to the alleys of the old area, looked wide and long as if it
were endless. This street with its length still stands in contradiction with
the alleys of the old area. It is still the same as it was described by Naguib Mahfouz, but its cleanliness,
fine planning and the quite reigning over its houses were replaced by noise, traffic
intensity and the accumulation of high
buildings.
Naguib Mahfouz described the house of
Aida, the true love in the life of Kamal as facing the palaces street and lying
at the edge of the desert. This desert, of course, is no longer seen, as the urban
encroachment has pushed it many miles back. The road of Giza is no longer as
Kamal saw it when he went through it with Aida and her brother on their way to
the pyramids. The high trees on both sides of the road with their long bouroughs overshadowing the sky are gone now and are something of the past.
Life for the two daughters of
al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad remained confined in a number of streets around
the house of the family. Both Khadija and Aesha were married off from the
family of Shawkat and they moved to live in the remnants of an ancient house in
Al-Sukaryia, not too much far from their own house. It took us sometime to
reach El-Sukaryia. When we reached there, we found that the place was so narrow
that the rays of the sun can hardly reach there. Most of the doors were closed.
El-Sukaryia was so enveloped by quite the day we got there, we thought it was
at pains to maintain the holiness of the month of Ramadan. We did not find the
streets were crowded by passers-by, fortune-tellers or peddlers. On
scrutinizing the place, we could
easily imagine the closed life Khadija and Aesha had lived in, thus
emulating perfectly the model of life their mother had laid for them. The only
excursion each one of them made was to visit the family household in the palace
walk.
Naguib Mahfouz portrayed the streets
of the old area, narrow and short as they were, as blocked roads for women
beyond which they cannot go. He has expounded further on this idea in “El-Maddaq Alley” which was issued
first in 1947. While the triology was distinguished by the expanse of the space
and time of the events, the setting of “El-Maddaq Alley’ was confined to one of
the alleys of the area where Naguib Mahfouz has almost touched the way of life
of this place in a rare genius.
El-Maddaq alley acquired its name from the fact that spices were grounded there
prior to export them to Syria. In addition to this, the alley was a market for
selling slaves in the 18th century. In Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, the
heroine, although she was not a slave, revolts against a life which was hardly
different from that of slaves. We found the alley was almost the same as
described by Naguib Mahfouz in his novel but not as crowded as he described it.
It was wide to some extent but doubtless shorter than he described. We
found the famous café of Kirsha
but it was now closed. Of all the places in which the events of the novel took
place, the only operational thing was the oven where some young people were
sitting on the floor sifting the grains to prepare it for making bread. At the
end of the alley we saw the house of Hamida and its window from which she used
to look at the alley. We were told that the famous grape trellis which surrounded the house were only
cut a few years ago.
While the alley is no longer replete
with its former noisy life, we could easily recognize how Naguib mobilized it
to symbolize a world full of vitality but moving with heavy steps towards
change. We could recognize and understand Hamid’s desire to move to a more
expansive world, socially and geographically, as the area of the alley whose
length does not exceed 50 meters was so narrow for its inhabitants that its
weather looked suffocating. So it seemed for us although were just visitors.
It was not also difficult to realize
how the departure of Hamida in an inevitably catastrophic manner has not
affected life in the shops of the alley and its thresholds. Although we did not see Kamel sleeping
indifferently in the threshold of his shop with the whisker of flies on his
lap, the general atmosphere suggested that every new day would not bring in any
form of change
calling its inhabitants to give up their indifferent attitude towards those who
had departed.
In the seven year following the 1953
revolution, Naguib Mahfouz did not write any new work, but he published in the
sixties, novels in which he both
sensitively and boldly dealt with the crisis of identity. Intellectuals suffered from this crisis
of identity in view of the political changes which followed this historical
event. The setting Mahfouz's subsequent novels revolved on the old areas of
Cairo as well as outside area. It seemed that the great novelist had found in
most of the cases, other places in
the more modern Cairo to build the events of his novels. We find that the grandsons
of al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd el-Gawad in the Skaryia itself were not content with
living within the borders of the old area. Thus the sons of Aida, Khadiga and
Yassin move to live in what is known now as the center of the town, Al-Maadi
and even Helwan.
In " The Thief and the
Dogs" the protagonist returns after going out of his prison to El-Darrasa
area where he finds his home exactly as he had left it, hardly different from
homes at the time of Adam. He hires a flat above Nagm El-Din street behind the
cemeteries of Bab El-Nasser. Events alternate between this old area of Cairo
and the luxurious villa situated on the Nile and owned by Rauf Elwan, Said's
traitor friend. Although these villas had disappeared now, the cemeteries
behind Said's home have to a great extent remained as they are Amidst the
crowded cemeteries in the city of death. Mahfouz describes the last moments
when Said fell in the hands of the police who traced him with the help of their
dogs. The scene was depicted marvelously by Mahfouz although it is a recurrent
scene in the history of the police.
Mahfouz's sense of the place remains
strong in
“ the Chandler and the Autumn”
whose events move between many areas of Cairo, the villas of El-Doqi district,
the downtown hotels and the crowded streets with its many sores, cafes and
Cafterias. May be Gropi situated at Abedl-Khaleq Tharwat street was one of
these Cafeterias which had acquired much fame at a certain time. This Cafeteria
which owes its fame to the soldiers of British occupation still exists in its
place, but it has become less brilliant and crowded than what it was then. This
may be due to the change in its surroundings as the streets around it are now
full of grand hotels, big stores and offices.
This, however, does not indicate that
Mahfouz has totally abandoned the old areas of Gamalyia and Khan El-Khalili.
For example, in his novel,
“The
reverend Sir” which was issued for the first time in 1975, the protagonist is
the son of a proprietor of a go-cart. He is employed in the archive of a
government office. He goes back when he finishes his work hours to his home in
El-Hussain area which he consider an extension for his body and soul.
Great novelists show a great talent for thinking and imagination. They create deep inside them vast horizons for the world within their novels. Doubtless this does not involve the human experience alone but also a concrete sense of time and place. Just as Dickens did in the city of London and as Jobson did in Dublin, Warton in New York, Naguib was able to employ Cairo with its streets and alleys which he was familiar with for the events of his novels. While Cairo is actually one of the most famous cities in the Middle East with its rich history, the way Mahfouz has embodied it in his novels has made even richer. The homes, places and monuments Naguib Mahfouz chose for the events of his novels are bound to be obliterated one day time, but, never will time be able to slip into the pages of Mahfouz's novels to obliterate these places. We were lucky that some of these places have remained in order to see them in the way Naguib Mahfouz saw them.