Plain talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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The writer I am presenting this time is one for whom I have a special feeling. PH Newby was my professor from 1941 until 1943 at Cairo University. When I went to work in London our friendship continued. He was at that time head of the second programme of the BBC and for which I presented a number of programmes on Egypt. While I was in London, where I lived for 12 years, we met often and had many opportunities to discuss our different experiences of Egypt. Unlike many other writers who lived in Egypt and wrote about it Newby had a real feeling for the country and its people.

He had a genuine love of Egypt and when, as chairman of the State Information Service, I asked him to write the text for a collection of photographs taken by the American photographer Fred Maroon, he accepted without hesitation. The book, The Egypt Story, is to my mind one of the best and most sympathetic surveys of Egypt.

Newby continued to visit Egypt, as a tourist and a lecturer for the British Council. The last time I met him was at his house in St Giles where he spoke at length of his close links with Egypt and, through it, with the Arabs. He had prepared a book on Saladin, for whom he had a great admiration, and was in the process of writing a book about Islam.

Newby's interest in Egypt never stopped. His last novel Kith, published in 1977, had Egypt as a setting. His characters are both British and Egyptian, and their lives are interwoven. Yet he believed there were distinctions between the English and the Egyptian character. In an article published in The Listener under the title "Having drunk of the Nile", he expresses the opinion that both characters feed on illusion. English fantasy, he writes, is rooted in mystery: "The East will cease to be mysterious, but a walk down an English street or ride in an English train will give us food for infinite wonder and speculation. This is because in England we never get to know one another. We have the greatest difficulty in establishing ordinary human relations. In a nation which admires eccentricity each and every Englishman, thus impressed by a sense of his own unique personality, is determined to keep his secret to himself. We do not know, therefore we have to invent. The Egyptian, on the other hand thinks he knows... The supreme oriental luxury is founded on instinctive acceptance of the improbable."

Newby's celebrated trilogy, Picnic to Sakkara, Revolution and Roses and A Guest and his Going, attempts to fathom Egyptian life and politics. The central theme in all three novels is not only the relation between England and Egypt but, as GS Fraser says, "something much deeper, the difference between madness and sanity, and at a puzzling angle to that, the difference between false logic and true impulse".

Of the two main characters, Muawiya, the Egyptian student, maddening and utterly irresponsible, but he is not mad. His tutor, Edgar Perry, who both loves Muawiya and is exasperated by him, always aims to be moderate and consistent.

Newby shows great understanding of the Egyptian scene and the political situation. He deals with the Muslim Brothers, the corruption of King Farouk and his entourage, and in Revolution and Roses with President Gamal Abdel-Nasser. In this novel the revolution has succeeded and Nasser is in power. Muawiya, former student revolutionary, is invited by the British Council to visit England where he gets in touch with his ex-tutor Perry and their relations take a new and friendly turn. Perry takes Muawiya for a walk in London, where he shows him the squares, churches and palaces of the city. It looks like a final farewell between the two, and between Egypt and England. As Fraser puts it, "we feel that, though neither was made for a permanent success, each has achieved something more important, authenticity, and generosity of heart. Saying farewell to his Egyptian friend, Perry is saying farewell to his youth. Muawiya, back in Egypt, will grow older and melt into the crowd."

In 1968 Newby published Something to Answer For, a novel with, once again, an Egyptian setting. It deals with the Suez crisis, although it is written 10 years after that debacle. Yet the main characters are still British. The hero is an ex- British sergeant who served with the British army in Suez. He is a crook and the novel is about his efforts to acquire wealth using crooked means. But the whole background of the novel is Egyptian.

Newby's sympathy for Egypt is exemplified by the text he wrote for The Egypt Story. Writing about the building of the Pyramids, Newby refuses the thesis that these great monuments were erected under a corvee system. He is of the opinion that the Egyptian workers who were engaged for their building did so as an act of faith. It was their religious enthusiasm which drove them to work. Like those who built the great cathedrals in Europe, it was belief and not compulsion that motivated them. Another point he brings up concerns Egypt's peasants. He thinks of the Egyptian fellah as the backbone of the country, the continuity in the character of Egyptians. Since invaders stick to the cities the Egyptian peasant kept his traditions intact. Egypt, rather than being the gift of the Nile, contends Newby, is really the gift of the fellah.