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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Book Fair Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A transient condition
In his introduction to Idris Ali's second novel Enfegar Gomgoma (The Explosion of a Skull), the late Fathi Ghanem writes that the book itself is an explosion on the many levels that constitute its narrative. It is not only the author's discourse on truth that is explosive, but his method of presentation, too. In the context of the Arab novel, the searing honesty of the narrative voice represents an unprecedented innovation.
Fast of pace, sharp of tongue, it speaks the language of the people for the people, from the kofta seller (who uses mainly cat meat) and the garbage man, to the ghosts of the city whose life they own. The novel is composed as a challenge -- and sometimes, in Ghanem's view, a sordid one -- to the established self-images of community and nation. Ranging across every social segment and every geographic area of Egypt in search of the issues that fire it, the result is a personal testimony of rare audacity, a scandalous hymn to the way we live now.
As the book progresses, Ali's awareness and understanding of the man on the street gains in substance. He speaks of the illiterate soldier on duty, of the belly-dancer who has to pay her taxes, of a mother who stuffs her son's mouth with caramelised sugar to keep him from asking the many questions which she never answers.
Enfegar Gomgoma is divided into three parts. The novel centres on two main characters, Qenawi and Belal. It is difficult not to associate this Belal with his more famous predecessor, the first muezzin in the history of Islam, at a time when this apparently ageless faith was still a new religion. Both their cries -- the athan (call to prayer) that marked the dawn of a new monotheism, and the words uttered by Ali's character -- are rebellious, even revolutionary in their respective contexts. Furthermore, they are both invitations to the active participation of the community. But this modern Belal is a burden. No one understands the motives for which he insists on revealing to them what they can already see. "What do you want from people? Explain to me so I can understand... Either you'll kill me before my time or you'll drive me crazy... What do you want?" his mother asks him. She is not the only one to feel such bewilderment and uncertainty.
The narrator personally addresses Belal in the first and third parts of the novel, describing his state of mind -- usually one of total confusion or bitter resentment -- in a manner that seems sometimes to transgress the boundaries of description and become a form of dictation. In the process, however, the narrator also appears to make direct contact with the reader, who figures as an alternative "you" on which his gaze may be fixed: "You get out of bed. Peace abandons you, you open the window, darkness; between the imminent dawn and the endless night. You gaze sadly on the city of silence and minarets and pyramids and a dull sphinx, you look, you reach out to the dawn... and no dawn, as if darkness was the standard rule, and daylight merely a transient condition."
In his introduction, Ghanem states that it is vital this novel avoid the twin perils that may lie in wait for it: neglect, and censorship, for any genuine reconstruction will have to stem from just such an explosion.
