The Mahfouz Dialogs

Gamal al-Ghitani, Humphrey Davies

• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781617972324
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

The Mahfouz Dialogs records the memories, views, and jokes of Naguib Mahfouz on subjects ranging from politics to the relationship between his novels and his life, as delivered to intimate friends at a series of informal meetings stretching out over almost half a century. Mahfouz was a pivotal figure not only in world literature (through being awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 he became the first writer in Arabic to win a mass audience), but also in his own society, where he vastly enhanced the image of the writer in the eyes of the public and encapsulated as the victim of a savage attack on his life by an Islamist in 1994 the struggle between pluralism, tolerance, and secularism on the one hand and extremist Islam. Moderated by Gamal al-Ghitani, a writer of a younger generation who shared a common background with Mahfouz (al-Ghitani also grew up in medieval Cairo) and felt a vast personal empathy for the writer despite their sometimes different views, these exchanges throw new light on Mahfouz's life, the creation of his novels, and literary Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century.

Part One

These conversations, of which I was accustomed, especially in later years, to record a summary, took place during the gatherings that extended from the days of the Café Opéra in 1960 to the appearance of this book in 2004.

Dialogs

Café Opéra, 1960

The café has three floors. The first looks directly over the beautiful square dominated by the elegant old wooden opera building, which provided a focus for the place and contributed to the special atmosphere of the city’s downtown area, with its European layout and architecture. The first floor was a café distinguished by its elegance, where both men and women sat, and where waterpipes with authentic ‘Persian’ tobacco were available; to my amazement I would observe women who had passed middle age smoking waterpipes at a time when it was unusual to see women smoking in public.

One ascended to the second floor via a side entrance with a narrow spiral stairway that gave onto an oblong hall containing a European-style café, where there were no waterpipes, only hot and cold drinks. Here the weekly symposium that Naguib Mahfouz had initiated in 1954 (the year in which I was born) held its meetings. Entire generations passed through this group, and here the writers of the sixties discovered one another. In other words, this weekly encounter abbreviated long stretches of time that might otherwise have ended without my meeting Mohamed El-Bisatie, Yusuf al-Qa‘id, Ibrahim Asian, Sabry Hafez, the late Galal al-Sayyid, and others.

On the third floor there was a nightclub run by Artiste Safiya Hilmi. The third floor was open for business after ten o’clock in the evening, and Hilmi, who was a celebrated performer from Badi‘a Masabni’s troupe, gave her name to the entire building.

In the first-floor café, I listened to the conversations of those present, who arranged themselves around Naguib Mahfouz—conversations which, had it been possible to preserve them for posterity, would have provided an extraordinary record of the discussions that took place among the intellectuals of the period. The symposium began at ten and ended at half-past one. The Master, with his customary discipline, provided the continuity of regular hours to the group. He was always the focus of the group. Even when the talk turned away from him and those present starting discussing things among themselves, he remained the center around whom everyone else was in orbit.

One morning I arrived early and was startled to find myself alone, face to face with the Master. I sat in silence while he observed me with sparkling eyes.

Suddenly he asked me, “Gamal, why do you write?”

I was taken aback by the question but replied immediately, “I write because I want to write.”

He nodded. When I recall that brief conversation, it opens up for me all our other conversations, conversations that were to continue throughout the succeeding years. When I recall his tone of voice, I am almost certain that he was asking himself why he wrote, why the writer writes. Once in later years, he told me that writing was like an instinct, like sex, like the desire for life, like eating, hunger, repletion.

It may be that what he said then was an answer to the question he had asked me that morning long ago during the sixties of the last century.

Settlement!
Fishawi’s

AUGUST 1967

The events of June dominate our thoughts, our spirits, and our moods. Against his normal practice, he had expressed a desire to meet us at Fishawi’s, and this provided another opportunity for a private encounter with him, as only a very limited number of his friends attended.

We were three: Yusuf al-Qa‘id, Isma‘il ‘Adli, and myself. We talked about what was happening and what might happen. Suddenly, he said, “You know, everyone … .”

We looked at him.

“I’m going to tell you my opinion and I know it may upset you.”

We listened even more attentively. He said, “If we don’t have the capability to confront Israel militarily, we have to try and find a means to bring about a settlement.”

We looked at him in stupefaction.

This was in August, 1967.

Sadness
Café Riche

NOVEMBER 1980

I was sad, grief-stricken, the wound still fresh, hot, and bleeding. It started following the unexpected passing away of my father when I was far from home. I told him that I would never be able to get over my father’s sudden departure, that I would never ever see him again, never meet him again.

He said, “How do you know, Gamal? Just as matter is transformed into other forms, maybe the consciousness lives on in some form. Who are we to insist that a meeting is impossible?”

Fishawi’s

A WINTER’S MORNING, 1988

I am listening to him speak of his memories of Cairo, and from this I realize how its former landmarks were and know what it has become.

He said, “There used to be a cinema called Je Sais where the Benzion department store now stands on ‘Imad al-Din Street. That was where I heard Umm Kulthum. She used to put on her concerts in the cinema theater and she could make herself audible throughout a hall filled with three thousand people without a microphone.”

After a few moments of silence, he added, “I would listen to Umm Kulthum in the flesh and then listen to the same song recorded and I’d find a great difference. Of course, the real thing was much better.”

Fishawi’s

WEDNESDAY, A WINTER’S MORNING, 1989

He said, ‘“Ali al-Gharbi was one of the famous neighborhood gang leaders, a famous procurer, and, at the same time, one of Cairo’s most famous homosexuals. When the police caught him, there were lots of scandals. It was one of Cairo’s big incidents.”

The Ali Baba Café

A SPRING MORNING, 1989

I asked him, “Which is dearer to your heart, The Harafish or Morning and Evening Talk (Hadith al-sabah wa-l-masa’)?”

He said, “I think The Harafish… . Sometimes one is influenced by other people’s opinions.”

I asked him, “What about the unpublished novels?”

He said, “There are three. A novel whose hero is a soccer player, which I wrote in the forties and tore up, a novel about the countryside which I didn’t publish and whose whereabouts now I don’t know because I don’t keep drafts, and another social novel, the draft of which may be with the director Khayri Bishara.”

Farah Boat

SUMMER 1991

He said, “When a woman got into difficulties and started down the path of deviant behavior, she’d go to the police to register her name and she’d say to the officer, ‘I want to “walk in al-wa‘d”’ (meaning, ‘accept God’s promise (wa‘d) for me,’ or ‘accept my fate’). This was how she’d obtain a license to practice prostitution. Once the English judge bent over to the Egyptian assistant judge sitting on his right and asked him, ‘Where is this place called al-Wa‘d, my friend?’”

Farah Boat

TUESDAY 27 OCTOBER 1992

The birthday of Director Tawfiq Salih, former member of the Riffraff. Mahfouz recalls his memories of the cinema:

“The first cinema I knew was at the Egyptian Club Hotel, near the mosque of Our Master Husayn. It was a revelation to me. We looked out from it over an amazing world of the imagination. All the films were foreign. The translation was on an oblong screen to one side and if it was out of sync with the scene we’d shout, ‘Correction! Correction!’ and the man running the cinema would adjust the translation to fit the scene. The music was live, with a clever musician playing the piano next to the screen. Sometimes a bunch of us would go and we’d wake the owner of the cinema up to put on the movie for us.”

He said, “I knew the Cinéma Olympia in ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Street. On the same street there were also the Cinéma Idéal and the Cinéma Royal. The Cinéma Olympia used to print a magazine called News of the Stars. Mary Pickford was my favorite. I read that she had married Douglas Fairbanks. On al-Gaysh Street were Cinéma Ramses, Cinéma Misr, Cinéma Hollywood; there were also Cinéma Suhayr close to al-‘Abbasiya, Cinéma al-Belvédère and Cinéma Plaza in al-Zahir, Cinéma al-Fath in al-Gamaliya, and Cinéma Je Sais for French films on ‘Imad al-Din Street.”

He asks, “How many of these movie houses are left now?”

I say, “Only Cinéma Olympia and Cinéma Hollywood.”

(On Tawfiq Salih’s birthday we broke with tradition and didn’t have dinner on the Farah Boat, which was unusual, even unique. We went instead to Christo’s Restaurant at the end of Pyramids Road, which specializes in fish and where Mahfouz used to take the family every Friday.)

He said, “I only started liking fish at an advanced age. I went to Ra’s al-Barr where a friend invited me to a meal of fish. He asked me what I’d like and I said, ‘Perch, catfish, eels.’ They all laughed and my friend said, ‘Those fishes that you like are what we feed to our fish.’”

I asked him laughing, “And what about rabbit?”

He said, “I used to be afraid to eat it because one day I saw my mother skinning one after it had been slaughtered!”

Farah Boat

OCTOBER 1992

Earthquake Jokes

The following jokes were told on Tuesday evening:

They caught the guy who caused the earthquake and he confessed.

These days, when they walk in procession with the bride, they sing, ‘Quake your hips, you pretty one, you cute one.’

They said, ‘The town’s shaking and dancing!’ We said, ‘We’ll take up a collection for the musicians!’ (Meaning that the government was profiting from donations in aid of the victims.)

Sheraton Coffee Shop

SUMMER 1995

It was our first time in this place, which is designed for the meetings of lovers and businessmen. Everyone talks in low voices. We, on the other hand, had to talk loudly, which was out of the question there. We sat down and fidgeted. In front of us sat a man from the Arabian Peninsula, wearing a robe and a pointed beard. He started to exchange conversation with us as he drank his cold beer. He began with the American elections.

“That Bush, I swear he’s a nice guy.”

Then he started lamenting the fate of Islam and how little respect it got from its own followers. He said that Islam had “arrived as a stranger and would leave as a stranger”—“Yes, by God!”

He’d say that phrase and follow it with a swig of beer. Our session didn’t last long. We got up and left.

Farah Boat

FALL 1992

He said, “I read some examples of the anti-novel and came out of the experience no wiser than I went in. Marguerite Duras, however, is a different proposition: in her work I found a story, an issue, and human beings.”

Yusuf al-Qa‘id spoke of the ranking of writers in France according to public opinion surveys. Duras was the first and Ben Jelloun the twenty-eighth.

Mahfouz said, “It’s the media. They can help to get a writer known for a certain period even if he doesn’t have any real value. The media don’t add any real value. Take, for example, the novel Ulysses: every author and reader is bound to nod in admiration, but the number of people who have actually read it remains very limited.”

Farah Boat

11 NOVEMBER 1992

The earthquake, which had taken place at one in the afternoon, dominated the gathering. For me, the main feeling was one of dejection: that is the way I face events of universal purport. A joke or two could not dispel the tyranny of my mysterious, hidden melancholy.

I don’t know why I asked him about beginnings; perhaps because yesterday I looked through the first story of his to be published,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Glossary of Names
• Notes