13 - 19 December 2001
Issue No.564
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 December 2001 Issue No.564 |
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Defining the times
Naguib Mahfouz talks to novelist Youssef El-Qa'id
The house at 8, Beit Al-Qadi Square in Gamaliya, in which Mahfouz was born nine decades ago, on 11 December, 1911, no longer exists. It was demolished many years ago; another house, with a cafe on the ground floor, stands in its place. Mahfouz was the youngest of seven children, the only one to have been born in the Beit Al-Qadi house. And that, Mahfouz recalls in one of the few interviews he has given in the past week, was a difficult occasion.
"My family had called the celebrated obstetrician Naguib Mahfouz [Pasha] when it became clear that it was a problematic birth and they named me after him. My complete family name is Naguib Mahfouz Abdel-Aziz Ahmed Ibrahim El-Basha, Abdel-Aziz being the name of my father. El-Basha is a family from the port city of Rashid. My paternal grandfather moved from there to the district of Gamaliya in Cairo. In Gamaliya the family name we acquired was 'Al-Sabilji,' meaning they who own a Sabil [water fountain] to provide potable water for people on the streets. It was an act of charity.
"All my siblings are dead now, though their children and grandchildren all live in Cairo. Differing interests meant our paths diverged -- I was the youngest, and the gap separating me from my siblings was large. My older brother was 10 when I was born, so rather than being siblings my brothers and sisters were more like parents."
The writer has refused endless invitations to participate in public celebrations of his 90th birthday: "There is death and blood everywhere, in the US, in Afghanistan, in Palestine. How, then, can I celebrate a birthday?" he asks. Yet despite the refusal friends have continued their attemps to persuade him that a 90th birthday is a milestone that merits celebration. Mahfouz, though, has remained adamant: "I cannot. It is inconceivable." He did, however, agree to talk about his early career.
"[My first published] book was translated from English. I was encountering difficulties in following the lectures given in English and French while studying philosophy in university and my brother suggested that I undertake a translation of an English book in order to improve my English. That is how I came to translate James Baikie's Ancient Egypt, and it was published in 1932 by Al-Majalah Al-Jadidah [The New Magazine], a periodical whose publisher, Salama Moussa, used to suspend publication during the summer months and issue a small book instead."
His first published article, a philosophical essay entitled "The death of old beliefs, the birth of new ones" had appeared in the same magazine, in the October 1930 issue. The connection with Al-Majalah Al-Jadidah was to continue until 1945, during which time the magazine published 47 articles by Mahfouz. They have never been collected in book form, in accordance with their author's wish.
"On 22 July, 1932 [my first short story] Fatrah min Al-Shabab [A Period of One's Young Age] was published in Al-Siyasa." Between 1932 and 1938 he completed some 80 short stories, from which Abdel-Hamid Gouda El-Sahar was to make the selection that comprised Mahfouz's first volume of fiction.
The first critical article on his fiction appeared in the pages of Al-Risalah, in the issue of 18 September, 1944, and addressed The Struggle of Thebes, which novel had appeared earlier in the same year. It began: "As I try to restrain myself from showering praise on this novel, I am seized by an overwhelming sense of enthusiasm and joy, something I feel obliged to confess to the reader in the hope that such a confession will allow me to assess the novel as soberly and objectively as befits any critic." It was by-lined by Sayed Qotb, the Muslim Brother leader who, 22 years later, in 1966, received a death sentence, and was hanged.
If Mahfouz is refusing public celebrations this year, there have been other birthdays. The first time the occasion was marked, he recalls, was in 1961, his 50th birthday. "Salah Jahin wanted to book a hall at the Al-Ahram building for the celebration. When he went to ask Mohamed Hassanein Heikal's permission, Heikal suggested that Al-Ahram sponsor the celebration."
Before 1961 celebrations were a purely private affair: "There was a tradition among my group of old friends, Al-Harafish, of marking each member of the group's date of birth, myself included. We would book a tent in Sahara City [on the Pyramids Plateau] where we would have dinner together and at the end of the dinner the one whose birthday it was would stand up in the middle and the rest, like apes, would turn in a circle around him, shouting Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday."
From Beit Al-Qadi Square, to a tent in Sahara City, to Stockholm and the Nobel prize, producing, along the way, a monumental body of work: some 50 works of fiction, 25 screenplays, not to mention occasional journalism, plays and other miscellaneous writings: this supplement celebrates a life devoted to the art of fiction and a writer who has joined that select group whose works define not only an epoch, but give it a name.
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