Book review: The intertwined personal and political in Egypt

In Fouad Qandeel's 'State of the Scorpion,' the very personal is inescapably intertwined with the purely political, portraying the anxiety of life in Egypt amid turbulance

Dawlat Al-Aqrab(State of the Scorpion),by Fouad Qandeel, Cairo: Dar Al-Maktaba Al-Arabiyah Lilkitab Publishing, 2013.
Qandeel, the winner of a number of prestigious awards, opens his latest novel (his 19th to date) with an introduction focusing on the four main characters: Zeinab, her daughter Reem, her lover Nagy, and Al-Mursi (Zeinab's horrid husband). The main characters were all born and bred in Cairo's old quarter of Al-Sayeda Zeinab, with its entire religious aura. The author presents the two characters Zeinab and Reem as if they are an extension of one persona. He also fluctuates between Sufism and the desire to live life to the fullest.
Through Zeinab, the author weaves a lyrical love story between her and Nabeel, the brother of her future husband who died in a car accident on their wedding night. Throughout the book, Zeinab struggles to overcome the trauma of her husband's death because she became pregnant before their formal wedding, although she was lawfully his wife. (Tradition stipulates that marriage is not accomplished until a formal ceremony is held). Her father obliges her to marry Al-Mursi, Nabeel's insipid brother, to avoid a scandal. Thus, her personal life-long dilemma begins, which eventually leads her to suffer from a malignant brain tumour.
As an extension, there is her eldest daughter Reem, who is a modern newer version of Zeinab. Reem is bolder, more cultured, militant (participating in the 6 of April Movement) and practices Kung-Fu lessons. Both Zeinab and Reem love art and choose it as their profession. Zeinab is a drawing teacher and Reem becomes a promising stage actress. She chooses performing arts based on her confrontations with the audience, alluding to her boldness and confidence. Reem's mother instils in her that dignity equals life itself. Both of them are also deprived from love as Zeinab, suffers from Nabeel's death and Reem by the imprisonment of her lover Nagy. Later in the book he is released while she is passed out.
Elements of Sufism appear numerously throughout the novel. It is reflected in the annual festival of Al-Sayeda Zeinab's (Prophet Mohamed's granddaughter) birthday, the Sufi verses mentioned, the eagerness of Zeinab to visit Al-Sayeda Zeinab's mosque, the comfort Reem feels when she is in the same mosque, and Zeinab leading an almost ascetic way of life.
Throughout the novel, Qandeel stresses the presence of Aesthetics and its significance in life by focusing on Nabeel as a virtuoso at playing the violin and lady Sherwet's (a significant minor character) superb piano, playing besides her musical composing talent.
There is a recurring metaphor about an oil spill. At first the author uses it in a highly charged, beautifully written figure of speech related to the activities of the State Security Police, which swallows the whole country. Then after many pages, he mentions that an oil spill caused the death of Nabeel, Zeinab's lover and fiancée on the Ring Road in Cairo.
Qandeel cleverly and delicately portrays the female characters namely Zeinab and Reem, with every minor feeling running through their intellect. It seems that Qandeel attributes every horrendous act made by the character Al-Mursi to the National Democratic Party's (NDP, the former ruling party in Egypt) horrible personnel and practices. Al-Mursi is painted as an idle weakling, lacking any merit and as a sexually repressed character. All this at first may have attracted sympathy; this is shattered after the he rapes his daughter, in actuality his niece Reem, not once but twice. Later, he asks her to keep the baby. This was utterly unconvincing and out of character. Soon after, he climbs the ladder of the NDP and works in the governorate to marry a highly-attractive woman. Yet, the beautiful woman's father is his nemesis and a well-known thief. He also acquires along the way LE9 million in about three months. Meanwhile, he asks his favourite café owner to kidnap his daughter for a month until he seizes his daughter's apartment.
Initially, the title of the novel contains the word Al-Aqrab (meaning the scorpion in Arabic). This could be in reference to the notorious prison in which Nagy, Reem's soulmate who is also a playwright, was imprisoned briefly. It also appears in Sally's talk, Reem's younger sister. Although her zodiac sign is a Scorpio, she embraces more humane characteristics. This can be interpreted as the author's emphasis on the human will rather than the signs.
Towards the end of the novel, one Islamist ex-prisoner meets Nagy and discloses a secret that the Americans are trying to reach a cure for cancer by extracting it from scorpions' poison. At the end of the novel, innumerable scorpions attack cars and the ambulance carrying Reem. The author leaves a question in the air; did the Americans release the scorpions in coordination with the Islamists? Or are the scorpions the Islamists themselves released by the Americans in a figurative level?
At the end of the novel, the author decides to transform the symbolic Reem from a deeply exhausted weak patient hanging to life only through her frail heartbeat during the January 25 Revolution into the future of the revolution itself. He shines light on the idea that there is a glimmer of hope presenting itself in Reem. The hope that begins to open her eyes after Nagy wonders what to tell her about the outcome of the revolution.
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