The aesthetics of chagrin

Daq al-toboul (Drum beats), Mohamed El-Bisatie, Cairo: Hilal Novels, Oct. 2005. pp132

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Daq al-toboul (Drum beats), Mohamed El-Bisatie

The latest book to published by Egyptian novelist Mohamed El-Bisatie, this is an economical text that displays all the subtelty of Bisatie's work: a cutting objectivity combined with intimate involvement.

In the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat review, Palestinian critic Faisal Darraj characterised the novel as a triumph of style. "Economy of means has been one of Bisatie's main literary characteristics since he first started writing 38 years ago," Darraj wrote. "It is as if Bisatie claculates every step towards a reader he assumes is no less discerning nor calculating than he, weaving a series of tableaux in which what might be termed the 'aesthetics of chagrin' is an outstanding feature."

Drum Beats is set in an imaginary oil-rich Arabian Gulf state during a strange time when the country is inhabited entirely by foreigners, its nationals having deserted to France to support their national football team in the World Cup, leaving the country to the slave-like creatures who work in their service. It is, as Darraj puts it, "a story of 'elegant slavery', in which the slave, cleansed, occupies a new, luxurious palace as cold as a grave... a spineless country inhabited by spineless people as if apart of all time..... This is what makes the absence of the masters a matter of appearance, for the slaves who remain in the country behave as if the masters were still there. It is a presence more like absence, and an absence more like presence, where the force of habit reigns supreme."