12 - 18 April 2001
Issue No.529
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 April 2001 Issue No.529 |
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Feelings of identity
Wasaya Al-Lawh Al-Maksour (Commandments of the Broken Tablet), Ghubrial Zaki Ghubrial, Cairo: Al-Hadara Publishing, 2000. pp252
Ghubrial Zaki Ghubrial -- leftist, October War veteran, occasional short-story writer and veterinarian -- is a Copt, and this fact seems to quiver on every page of the present volume, the author's first, self-published novel. In general outline it follows the three-part Christian scheme of temptation, sin and redemption, the Arabic word lawh of the title implies an affinity with the divine: al-lawh al-maksour (the broken tablet) might even be read as a play on the expression al-lawh al-mahfouz (the preserved tablet), which is a description of the Qur'an that stresses the book's physical existence rather than its verbal one as al-nass, or text. In this novel, temptation and sin are figured in the form of an extramarital affair, the protagonist being redeemed by a return to the church's teaching, his internal conflict resolved. However, just as importantly, the novel is also one about the "Coptic predicament," and it expresses the author's feelings about his identity.
illustration: Gamil Shafik
Ghubrial, born in Cairo at the end of the Second World War, belongs to a generation caught up in a process of a relentless historical change, as the middle-class system of pre-1952 years gave way first to the nationalist discourse of Nasserism and then to the transformations of the Sadat era. In the early 1970s, Ghubrial left university, joining the army during the October War as a medical officer, and the protagonist of his novel, Bula, seems to resemble its author in many respects. A middle-aged family man, Bula is also an October War veteran, and, through the extended introspective passages that mark Ghubrial's novel, the reader discovers that, though troubled, the protagonist's relationship with his church is the central fact of his life. Bula, however, is also a troubled leftist, and he has a lover, Teresa, an old college sweetheart and now a middle-aged widow and mother. It is the conflict of loyalties that this situation gives rise to that gives the novel its drama.
At the beginning of the narrative, Bula is drowning his sorrows in a bar, having been forced out of the house by Teresa's expressions of guilt at their relationship. Later, he hears of a visit that she has undertaken to Israel despite Pope Shenouda's edict that no Copt should visit the holy city while it remains under Israeli occupation. Bula is incredulous, and here Christian sentiment, embodied in Teresa, is seen in opposition to the national imperative to shun the Zionist state. Teresa's desire to visit the holy city of Jerusalem, which for her outweighs all political or historical considerations, is a source of the novel's conflict of values, and this informs many of the book's conversations and episodes.
"Whatever the Pope may say, it's still No to Israel. I am not political, but No to Israel. Egypt is negotiating; the Palestinians are negotiating; all are free to do as they choose. But, as far as I am concerned, No to Israel... You mock my patriotism, but I am no patriot, at least not in the sense you think... It's simply that I can't bear to see an Israeli, my whole body shivers if I do. I couldn't bear it; I couldn't answer for what my actions might be."
In addition to this national and religious theme, the novel also supplies a wealth of information on contemporary social mores. Essentially the story of a love affair between Bula and Teresa, it similarly explores the love that develops between Teresa's son and Bula's daughter, the characters' family lives, Bula's work in a government institution, his relocation to Bani Sweif and the Coptic presence within the Egyptian bureaucratic hierarchy. Bula dies in a train accident, and this the author apparently wants us to understand as a form of divine intervention, God resolving Bula's conflicts through death.
Perhaps the novel's most memorable aspects lie in the constant presence in it of the church and its rituals, some of which being so recondite as to require footnotes to explain them to the uninitiated, and the way in which Ghubrial's narrative remains faithful to what is an essentially patriarchal, family- and church-oriented understanding of human affairs. This society, however, is also shown as being able to harbour both rebellion and outsiders.
Both Bula and the reader are brought up against the fact of religion in everyday life, even as Bula asserts an irreligious attitude. At one point in the novel though Bula is not used to going to church and has cast off his Coptic identity, he replies to an invitation to mass with the words, "Pray for me."
Reviewed by Youssef Rakha
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