Below are extracts from the introduction by Ahmed Kamal Abul-Magd to the forthcoming edition of Naguib Mahfouz's Awlad Haritna, to be published by the Cairo-based Dar Al-Shorouq in Lebanon The testimony the few lines of which you are about to peruse, reader, was published as an article in Al-Ahram on 29 December, 1994, in other words more than 10 years ago, during which time momentous changes have overtaken our cultural and political life.... Because of these many of us have been prompted to review and reassess ourselves and our umma, and to openly criticise our conditions. Likewise, the call for political, social and cultural reform became more vocal. All this also sparked off a dialogue that grew in vigour and that continues among those groups of writers, intellectuals and scholars, whom people refer to as "the intellectual elite", which thinks on behalf of society in its entirety, recasts for it its predicaments and issues and involves itself in society's ambitions, aspirations and hopes for the near and distant future. Thus, when Dar Al-Shorouq offered me the opportunity to turn this testimony into the introduction to the novel Awlad Haritna, by our outstanding, preeminent writer Naguib Mahfouz, I did not hesitate to accept. But I felt it necessary to reread the testimony, and also to reread Awlad Haritna in order to ascertain that what had been penned in 1994 remains viable, for its author at least, in 2006.... When I had done this it seemed to me that I had nothing to add to or change in the testimony. The matter, in the final analysis, hinges on two issues about which my mind has not changed. First, the basic rules of literary criticism dictate that a distinction necessarily be made [on the one hand] between a book, in which the author sets forth his idea and identifies his positions, adhering in this to historical facts and established events... and [on the other] a novel, in which the author may resort to symbol and allusion, and which may involve imagination alongside scientific fact, none of which gives reason to object... The second issue is freedom of expression and positions towards it. Granted, all freedoms cannot be exercised except in organised groups, but there is one freedom that holds aloof from organisation and expression, the freedom of thought and belief which, as something inward, leaves each answerable to his creator with no interference from anyone, whether ruler or ruled. But when a person gives expression to his thought, broadcasting and disseminating it within the group, society regains its right to assess this expression though not to the extent of compromising the original rights or expropriating the essence of freedom... TEXT OF THE TESTIMONY: When the vile attack on Egypt's preeminent writer Naguib Mahfouz took place I was abroad. On my return I asked my friend Mohamed Salmawy, who is one of his close disciples, to take me with him to [Mahfouz] so that we could perform our duty of reassuring ourselves about his health.... I said [to Mahfouz], "It remains to ask you about an opinion you expressed a few weeks ago in a message you sent to a seminar organised by Al-Ahram under the title 'Towards an Arab Civilisational Project.' You had said to the participants in the seminar that 'any Arab civilisational project must be founded on Islam and on science.' And your message, brief though it was, was transmitted clear, forthright, straightforward and unequivocal...." With passion, and in a strong voice the tones of which rang incisive, he said, "And is there anything new in this message... All of my writings, both the old and the new, adhere to these two axes: Islam, which is the source of the values of virtue in our umma, and science, which is the instrument of progress and revival in our present and future. "And I would add that even the novel Awlad Haritna, which some misunderstood, did not depart from this vision. The moral crowning the events is that when people abandoned religion, represented by Gabalawi, and imagined that with science alone, represented by 'Arafa, they could run their lives on their land (which is our alley), they discovered that science without religion had turned into an instrument of evil, and that it had left them subject to the tyranny of the ruler and divested them of their freedom. So they started searching for Gabalawi again." He added that "the problem with Awlad Haritna from the start was that I wrote it as a novel whereas some people read it as a [non-fiction] book. A novel is a literary construct that comprises truth and symbol, comprises reality and imagination. And there is nothing objectionable in this. It is not permissible that a novel be judged according to the historical facts that the writer believes in, because its author, by choosing this literary form, did not commit himself to this in the first place while expressing his opinion in a novel...." I said, "Actually I read Awlad Haritna several years ago, and I recall that I approached it at the time as a novel... This is why I understood the symbols that imagination had intervened to fashion in which it abounds. I never assumed that its author was attempting, through this [imaginative] intervention, to sketch images expressing his opinion on the facts that this imagination deals with or to which the symbols refer. But what settled in my mind in any case and what my memory retained to this day, and which I consider to be expressive of its author's position that he wishes convey to his readers, is the crowning of his symbolic [allegorical] novel with a clear declaration of the need of the alley, which represents human society, for religion and its values as given expression in the abstract symbol Al-Galabalwi, even if the inhabitants of the alley thought otherwise in their admiration for and fascination with 'Arafa who symbolises the sway of abstract science separated from the values that would provide right guidance for the people of the alley." Taking up the earlier thread of his conversation, Mr Naguib said, "I am always keen on my writings being accorded the right place by people, even if some of them have differences of opinion with me. Hence, when I realised that the confusion between 'novel' and [non-fiction] 'book' had occurred among some people, and that that misinterpretation had come about, I made reprinting it [ Awlad Haritna ] conditional on Al-Azhar's approving its publication (and this remains my position until now).".... When, with this spontaneous dialogue the visit almost turned into a seminar, Mr Ahmed Farag stepped in, saying with enthusiasm, "How I wish people -- everyone -- could hear this calm dialogue about these hot issues. I hope Mr Naguib Mahfouz would allow me to record this conversation in its entirety again for a short television seminar that would not go over 10 minutes... so that people, both those of them who agree and those who disagree, should learn the truth about Mr Naguib Mahfouz's opinion as he expressed it now..." "I appreciate and am thankful for this interest," said Mr Naguib Mahfouz, "but I would spare myself [the effort]... Instead, I suggest that Dr Kamal Abul- Magd write down the dialogue as it took place and I would be most satisfied with this." It was in the context of this documented wish, accompanied by a clear permission from Mr Naguib Mahfouz and witnessed by three of his honoured guests, that the idea for this article was born. The article is, to me, a testimony with which I wish to ward off from Naguib Mahfouz's writings the misunderstandings of those who hasten to judge and are quick to accuse, forgetting that Islam itself classified many ill suspicions among the sins that it calls to be avoided. I also wish to ward off from these writings the malevolent practice to which some writers resort when they insist on reading into Naguib Mahfouz's literary works ideas that go through their own minds and find what they would like in these writings, thus conferring on themselves a guardianship that no one possesses over anyone, let alone that any of them should possess it over a writer who, in the world of writing and literature, has Naguib Mahfouz's firm hand, wealth of experience and the rare and outstanding talent that God has blessed him with... Arabic original courtesy of Dar Al-Shorouq publishing house Translated by Hala Halim
