Ours, theirs

Naguib Mahfouz was the centre of attention during the Book Fair's final week. Youssef Rakha sums up a week of intensive, if not necessarily popular, debate
By virtue of touching on his "international" aspect, the last Cairo Book Fair seminar on Naguib Mahfouz was the most important in that it brought to light just what this author's presence in the West entails. It also focussed on Mahfouz's status as a Nobel laureate, the secret behind not only his success abroad but the phenomenal attention he has received locally, in his capacity as "our international author," over the last 14 years.
As the last in a series, the seminar, tackling the issue of Mahfouz outside Egypt, had about it more than a touch of festivity. It commanded a larger audience and a more vibrant atmosphere, engaged a broader variety of figures and, unlike previous seminars (which were equally late to start), went on for much longer than its allotted time. The quiet, sedate, even starchy atmosphere of the Lotus Hall -- for the previous six days the setting of Cairo Book Fair's Naguib Mahfouz Festival (celebrating the author's 90th birthday) -- acquired a celebratory edge. El-Sahhar's Maktabat Misr and the AUC Press, Mahfouz's Cairo publishers in Arabic and English, respectively, set up book stands on either side of the entrance to the auditorium, offering the latest publications by the author at a discount. There were banners, posters, schedules, advertisements, leaflets, bookmarks: Mahfouz professing loyalty to the "people of the alleys," not only in Egypt but "all over the world."
To discuss the transmigration of the author's work across the world, an impressive battalion of scholars had been recruited. Aside from the American University in Cairo (AUC) scholar of Arabic Hamdi El-Sakkout (the Festival's principal organiser) and the veteran, formidable academic and literary translator Fatma Mosussa (both of whom were omnipresent through the week), speakers included the director of the AUC Press, Mark Linz, the Palestinian critic Mohamed Shahine, professor of French Hoda Wasfi, French scholar Richard Jacquemond and Mahfouz's American biographer Raymond Stock.
Each of these, as El-Sakkout was subsequently to note to Al-Ahram Weekly, speaking of festival participants as a whole, had a genuine and new contribution to make. They were palpably interested in their respective topics, which in the fervour of argument seemed to transcend the figure of Mahfouz (on whom the discussions were focussed) to the wider arena of Arabic letters, a national treasure if ever one existed.
Linz opened the proceedings with an account of the AUC Press's role in translating Arabic literature in to English, a process that began "more than 25 years ago... with the object of effecting a cultural link between the Arab World and the rest of the world." Of the world's annual book publications, only 10 per cent (50,000 books) is made up of translations, Linz explained. Of these, however, only one per cent (500 books) originates in the Arab World. It is in this lack, he went on to imply, that AUC Press finds its motivation.
Quoting the Swedish Academy, Linz then outlined Mahfouz's achievement, demarcating the territory occupied by his writing, "an Arabic narrative art that is relevant to the world at large." Thus to AUC Press's relation with Mahfouz, which dates back to December 1985, three years before he received the Nobel prize, when the Press became the author's international agent, gaining copyrights to his work in any language other than Arabic: nine of the author's novels, he asserted, were published in English prior to 1988. Of these translations, Linz quoted Mahfouz saying: "It is through these translations that publishers became acquainted with my works, translating them to other languages. I am certain they were among the most important factors contributing to my being awarded the Nobel prize."
In 1989, moreover, Mahfouz received the AUC President's Medal in recognition of his achievement, becoming an honourary member of the American Academy of Letters in 1992 and receiving an honourary PhD in 1995. In 1996, on the occasion of Mahfouz's 85th birthday (when Echoes of Autobiography was launched in English), Linz went on to recount, the annual Naguib Mahfouz Medal was established as a promotional vehicle for a younger generation of writers. As Mahfouz's agent, Linz concluded, the Press has presided over the publication of some 400 editions of Mahfouz's work in 28 languages. More than a quarter of these, it is worth noting, were English; and they have sold some one million copies.
Providing a general picture of Mahfouz in other languages, Linz went on to explain that Zuqaq Al-Meddaq (30 editions in 15 languages) is his most popular work, followed by The Trilogy (25 editions in 12 languages) and Al-Liss wal-Kilab and Miramar (more than 20 editions in 10 languages). Promoting some of the Press's most recent publications, Linz ended on a cheerful, if somewhat commercial, note: the Press "hopes to continue vitalising Arab culture in the outside world through translating more and more distinctive works" etc..
Shahine, in stark contrast, relied on a remarkably large number of testimonies and interviews by non- Egyptian Arab writers and critics, in an attempt to place Naguib Mahfouz firmly on the map of Arab writing elsewhere.
Juggling names and statements, he quoted, first, Mo'nis Al-Razzaz: "My father [the well-known politician, Shahine supplied] advised me to read The Trilogy while I was a preparatory student, then I read Al- Liss wal-Kilab and eventually Al-Harafish." Al- Razzaz was fascinated by the thought patterns underlying these works, so much so that when he went to university he specialised in philosophy. "Mahfouz encouraged me not to start from zero degree," i.e., the literary emptiness with which Mahfouz's early classics were filled, "so that I was bold enough to stenograph [historical] time, as it were, venturing into new forms and thus beginning where Mahfouz left off."
It would be ludicrous to deny Mahfouz's innovative contribution, however, Al-Razzaz continued, since the classic, pioneering works in question form only part of his achievement. Novelist Abdel-Rahman Mounief, Al-Razzaz added, sees in Mahfouz a role model; and although Mounif was too timid and concerned with his readership's capacity for literary appreciation to experiment very extensively, he too, Al-Razzaz insists, acknowledges Mahfouz's place among the ranks of innovators.
Shahine demonstrated an instance of Mahfouz's influence outside Egypt. Another, rather different instance concerned the Jordanian author Ziyad Qasem, who found in the tireless documentation of Cairo life practiced in Mahfouz's "realist" works inspiration for similarly documenting the history and geography of Amman.
Qasem cites Hanna Mina's novels Al-Maqha (The Café), Al-Haya Al-Yawmiya (Everyday Life) and Al- Moumis (The Prostitute) as examples of Mahfouz's influence, noting it is these, rather than later novels, that best express Mina's creativity. For writers like Ghassan Kanafani and Tawfiq Youssef Awwad, Qasem continues, Mahfouz's work provided the "spinal cord" of narrative writing.
Laila Al-Atrash and Ibrahim Nasralla testified to the inevitability of Mahfouz's influence, pointing to his (direct and indirect) contributions to the cinema, an additional means through which his influence reached Arab writers: "How can an Arab author begin his literary journey not having read Mahfouz?"
Ihsan Abbas fondly remembers attending Mahfouz's café gatherings in the company of Mohamed Youssef Negm -- "It was a remarkably diverse gathering; and when I asked Negm whether he thought Mahfouz might profess a Cairene extremism that forbids us, as non- Egyptians, from attending, he reminded me of Mahfouz's generosity and good cheer, saying that, even so, we were relying on an unwritten pact that gives all Arabs the right to be in Cairo." -- while Hassan Hamid stressed the wider resonance of his work: "Naguib Mahfouz has written the novel of Arab society at the economic, historical and political level. His social commitment is unmistakable: forever he was seeking out the deepest problems besetting the people, the organic motives of his real-life characters and the ways in which these motives conditioned their actions. His was a broad and inimitably intelligent vision, for although he was not as overtly concerned with the tumultuous events with which the Arab World was plagued through the duration of his remarkably long career, the dynamics of these events were always on his mind, present in his writing."
Palestinian "wounds," for one obvious, ongoing and critical cluster of misfortunes, may not have figured very prominently in Mahfouz's life and work: was he, Shahine asked on cue, as unconcerned for them as some have accused him of being? Should we consider Mahfouz as, ultimately, an apolitical writer?
To answer this question, Shahine brought into play a wealth of stimulating, mostly unknown material. First, he noted, it would be unfair "to judge a writer on something he has not written." Secondly, it is well to ask whether Mahfouz was committed to his Arab identity and the struggles associated with it. Shahine cited an unpublished 1968 interview by Samir Saigh, in which Mahfouz discusses the 1967 defeat with unprecedented openness, identifying the writer's role as one of "prophecy and outcry."
The war, Mahfouz told Saigh, was the result of numerous factors, so was the defeat; it could not, as many intellectuals claimed, have been a shock that enforced a reconsideration. Because he intellectuals in question were living up to their role, they would be sufficiently aware of the factors that led up to it not to be surprised. "If the Naksa really came as a surprise to them," Mahfouz stated provocatively, "that would make authors traitors." For writers, regardless of their reaction to the blow (you hit somebody and he might hit you back, sulk in the corner, pretend he doesn't care etc), are not living up to their role if they do not see it coming. The true artist, Mahfouz added, is like an animal in that he can smell the disaster before its occurrence, when everybody else becomes aware of it. The writer does not make predictions, no, but he apprehends what is coming from his deep and intimate observation of the reality surrounding him.
Nothing could establish Mahfouz's committed engagement with the unfolding of Arab events more clearly than this interview. In this context, Shahine referred to both Mahfouz's more recent meeting with Mahmoud Darwish (their exchanges were published in Akhbar Al- Adab) and a statement by Faisal Darrag: "Those who censured Naguib Mahfouz [on political grounds] have produced works whose vision is impaired."
'How can an Arab author begin his literary journey not having read Mahfouz?'
El-Sakkout was quick to second Shahine's arguments by pointing to the short stories written just before and after the 1967 War ("Sa'eq Al-Qitar," "Al-Gabbar," Khammarat Al-Qitt Al-Aswad, "That Al-Mazalla," "Shar Al-Asal," Hikaya Bila Bidatya Wala Nihaya etc.), which, he insisted, cannot be understood without reference to 1967.
Following Shahine's deeply engaging address, Moussa and Wasfi briefly took the lead. And while the former delivered an extended eulogy on the role of the AUC Press in translating Mahfouz and other Arab writers, incorporating her critiques of certain, specific translations that "require reconsideration and reassessment" and stressing the importance of marketing and promotion as a neglected part of the publishing process (one at which the Press, unlike other Cairo-based publishers, pays due attention), the latter reviewed the French press on Mahfouz in an attempt to demarcate the territory occupied by his writing in the mind of the French reader: why, and how, might an Arab writer like Mahfouz be read in France?
Both Moussa and Wasfi gave examples of the problems inherent in English and French translations of Mahfouz.
But the "aesthetics of difference" and Mahfouz's "otherness" as an example of the exotic took up most of Wasfi's address. Having sorted out her initial troubles with the microphone, the professor quoted figures like Tudorov in the process of describing the space occupied by Mahfouz in French culture: the exotic is "the sharp, momentary apprehension of literary misunderstanding;" translation, she added, is one of the most important vehicles of such misunderstanding. Daily papers have promoted Mahfouz as "curious," "a tourist attraction" and "a gateway to another world," but is his otherness all that receives attention in France? Wasfi provided no satisfactory answer to this question, reverting instead to an account of the tendency to compare Mahfouz to such figures as Zola, Dickens, Balzac, even Flaubert and, most controversially, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
More lucid, and provocative, was Jacquemond's similarly oriented address: Mahfouz does not occupy the same place in Arabic literature as Marquez in Spanish, he pointed out; his success in the West cannot sensibly be explained by his innovative role. Following an account of the history of Mahfouz in French translation before and after the Nobel prize (in which the Arab World Institute figured prominently), Jacquemond explained how the award triggered a burst of activity in which numerous translations of varying qualities were produced over a brief spell of time, giving examples of idiosyncrasies and variants that make for an even less holistic understanding of the author's achievement. In France, Jacquemond insisted, Mahfouz is not presented as an innovator but a derivative "story-teller." The intervention of publishers and translators has stressed the ancient Egyptian novels, for example, which, in fuelling an already rife commercial Egyptomania, "remain of less literary value and thus soil Mahfouz's reputation, giving a distorted picture of Arabic literature." Innovative, "modern" novels, on the other hand, are less current.
Jacquemond made two potent points in connection with the Nobel prize. First, it is no guaranteed recipe for commercial success; it may have afforded Mahfouz the opportunity to be widely translated but it cannot account for the sales of his books. Therefore his success must be explained otherwise: the secret of his success in the West, in Jacquemond's own view, is that he offers simple and informative books that fit the Western criteria of good writing; rather than reading encyclopedias and history books about Egypt, then, the French reader reads works from the period generally referred to as "realism."
Secondly, since readers and publishers alike prefer to restrict their access to such "far-away literatures" to one author, Mahfouz's success means that the French readership has access only to Arabic literature as it was in the 1940s, not as it is now. Mahfouz's Nobel prize thus acts to obscure the achievement of younger writers, some of whom might more sensibly be compared to Marquez.
Bearing a letter of apology from the Arabic scholar Roger Allen, who due to professional obligations could not leave Philadelphia to attend the festival, Stock presented an outline of the history of Mahfouz in other languages, how the Swedish Academy managed to single him out and the attention he has received since then. The time allotted to the seminar was long finished and the untoward sound of the urban folk star Shaaban Abdel-Rehim, booming in some other part of the fair grounds, was penetrating the auditorium. Following a handful of brief interactions with audience memebers, El-Sakkout, looking exhausted, made his way out.
"Don't draw me into these labyrinths," El-Sakkout retorted when asked about the difficulties inherent in organising a literary event in the framework of the Cairo Book Fair. "Suffice it to say that if not for the University and my having an office there, none of this would have taken place."
"Let me first tell you what the Festival comprised, because I feel this is important. Each day there was a seminar on one aspect of Mahfouz's achievement, preceded by three artists who discuss their personal relations with Mahfouz and recount first-hand experiences of his life and work, and followed by a performance of the play or a film based on one of Mahfouz's novels. The first seminar, on Friday, revolved around the social perspective on Mahfouz; and several major critics contributed to it. The second, on Saturday, concerned Mahfouz's political and ideological orientation as it might be gauged in his work; and a different, equally major group of critics contributed to it. The third, on Sunday, concerned woman's manifestation in Mahfouz's books. The fourth, on Monday, brought together a truly remarkable array of philosophy and aesthetics scholars who discussed these two aspects of the author's work. The fifth, on Tuesday, concerned Mahfouz and the narrative arts. And the fifth tackled Mahfouz and drama. The sixth," El-Sakkout concluded wearily, "you've just attended; so you know what to say about it."
Preparations were already underway for the final performance of the play El-Sakkout referred to, Fouad Haggag's Muhakamat Shakhsiyat Naguib Mahfouz (The Trial of Naguib Mahfouz's Characters), directed by Ahmed Abdel-Meguid and starring Olfat Imam. Conceived as a celebration of the Nobel prize, the play involves characters from various works by Mahfouz trying the author about the difficulties he made them live through on. Judging by the throng of spectators shouldering their way into the auditorium, the performance may well have been the Festival's most popular event.
How popular were the main seminars? "There is a small, committed audience that attended everything regularly, so much so that their faces became familiar over the week. They weren't critics and writers, no, just people who have a genuine interest in the subjects at hand. And many of them made important contributions...
"My overall assessment is that, at least as far as the panel is concerned, a lot was said that was constructive, valuable and new. Every day there were valuable contributions. The organisation may have been lacking in some respects" -- he reverted to his initial theme: "The seminars did not always begin on time. But seminar contributions are truly worthy of respect: the valuable information offered by those who knew Naguib Mahfouz at close quarters (Salwa El-Anani, Yehya El- Rakhawi, Mohamed Gibril, farouq Shousha); somebody like Dr Shahine tonight; critics like Ibrahim Fathi, Mahmoud El-Rubi'I, Salah Fadl; philosophers of aesthetics like Mohsen Al-Mousawi, Said Tawfik, Salah Qunsuwa, Farouq Ibrahim... They may not have drawn an incredibly large audience on most days," El-Sakkout observed. "But you had to listen to what they said.
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