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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 August 2000 Issue No. 493
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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It was [...] not easy to convince my father, after I had obtained my licence in Law, of the seriousness of a career in literature and the future it might afford. The outstanding names in it, as I have mentioned, did not encourage one to cite them as exemplars. Lutfi al-Sayyid had not yet become Rector of the University or Minister of State. If I had mentioned Shawqi Bey, the poet, to my father, he would have answered that his standing in society depended on his previous appointment in the Palace and on his great fortune [...]
For all that, my father did not hate literature in itself [...] although it is true that he did not compose a single line of poetry after he married. [...]
Had my father been able to find an outlet for his literary tendencies and wishes, he would have spared me and freed me from this pull of literature, and I could have turned unfettered to something else. The sons of men like Lutfi al-Sayyid and Ahmad Shawqi did not resort to literature because their fathers did not repress their own inclination but found an outlet for it and released it into their lives in all the fullness of its energy and power.
My father therefore cast upon my shoulders what his circumstances did not allow him to carry. I am the prisoner of the wish he did not fulfill, and indeed the prisoner of many things I have inherited from him, some good, some bad. [...]
This prison that I live in, made of wall-like inherited traits -- could I have escaped from it? I have often tried, as every prisoner does, but it was as if I were moving in permanent fetters. The tragedy became evident to my eyes one day when I was analysing myself, and it occurred to me that only a minor proportion of the life I was living was my own, the greater proportion being that mixture, kneaded like dough, of contradictory elements deposited in the generative fluid out of which I was formed. [...]
Faced with my insistence on devoting my life to literature despite the difficulties, the advice, and the obstacles that tried to turn me back, my father began to think seriously about me. He laid out his fears before me frankly. He said he did not object to my involvement in literature except as a principal occupation, for his duty as a father was to direct his son to a dependable path. Literature was no path to a livelihood for someone who had not a fortune of his own. He knew that I was not due to inherit such wealth that it would be right for me to concern myself solely with literature as did Shawqi, or even Lutfi al-Sayyid, who would one day inherit enough from his wealthy father al-Sayyid Pasha Abu 'Ali to relieve him of the necessity of earning a living. In my father's estimation, therefore, it was indispensable for me to have an employment that would support me; there would be no harm then in indulging literature as a hobby. And my father ended with, "Anyway, there is Lutfi al-Sayyid. Come with me, and let us get his opinion."
My father took me to his old friend and colleague. I had the impression that he had remembered him on the spur of the moment, for I was certain that he had not met him for years and years, as he was by nature loath to create or renew profitable relationships, even with old friends who had risen in life. I have inherited from him this undesirable trait and accentuated it, to the point that I am sometimes irritated by, and incapable of observing, the simplest rules of civility -- such as offering congratulations or condolence, or inquiring about someone's health -- even among people dearest to me. And I am equally uncomfortable when they inquire about me. Those close to me know this, they understand me, and they leave me to this nature of mine.
I am even worse at creating a circle of connections. I have not tried to establish links even with men of letters and artists whom I ought to have cultivated, especially those who have written about me or presented my work abroad. I went to Paris recently and was within easy reach of some of these, but I did not see a single one. I was asked there which of their men of letters I was in touch with, and I replied, "No one." There was surprise at my answer, then I was sent a number of invitations to meet some but I remained aloof, not out of distaste but because of a physical, instinctive reclusiveness that defies understanding. [...]
I am therefore responsible alone for my laziness and failure. One of the characters in The People of the Cave says, "Any life is a gift, and the greatest gift to be given to a creature is life." Yet I myself, regrettably, have not been able to benefit from this gift as I ought to have done. A great deal of my ability and my talent -- if they exist -- has been lost because of my nature as leaky as a sieve, with a hundred holes made by idleness and hesitation and neglect. Moreover, medicine has it that the main threat to my health nowadays is my lack of energy and movement. [...]
I spent in Paris the years of which an approximately accurate description will be found in The Flower of Life.
Then I returned to my country. I returned with the self-same bag which I had carried with me. In it were two suits, four vests, four shirts, and six handkerchiefs. I returned with them all, not one item missing. I returned with wooden crates filled with the books I had collected during those years. I returned with all these things. Only one thing did I not bring back, and that was what I had gone out to get: a doctorate in Law. My slowness of understanding and my poor memory, in addition to the weight of the pervasive cultural struggle, into the thickest of which I had thrown myself, and the intellectual voracity which seized hold of me before the greatest spreads of civilisation -- all these left the like of me without the power or ability to shoulder another burden.
I was received by my parents in the way that a flop and a failure is received. It happened that they heard sounds rejoicing near our house, and when they inquired what the occasion was, they were told that a pavilion had been set up and glasses of syrup were being handed round to feast a neighbour who was also a colleague of mine and who had returned from abroad successful and triumphant, crowned with a doctorate. My situation was all the worse for this. I saw anxiety and grief and sorrow in my parents' eyes, and could hear them whispering around me, "The shame of it! The shame of it!"
Extracted from Tawfiq Al-Hakim's The Prison of Life: An Autobiographical Essay, translated by Pierre Cachia,The American University in Cairo Press, 1997
