For the last three years words like “rage” and “anger” bore connotations of protest and revolution, particularly as they recalled the Friday of Anger on 28 January. And this is the spirit in which the latest book by Mohamed Al-Mansi Qandil was written. A cultural journalist (most recently in Kuwait) born in 1946, Qandil is among the most prominent figures on the literary scene. He received the Egyptian State Incentive Award for his achievement in 1988, and the Sawiris Foundation Award for Moon Over Samarqand (translated into English by Jennifer Peterson for the AUC Press) in 2006. In 2010 Qandil's A Cloudy Day on the West Side was shortlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize, and his last book, Ana Aashiqt (I Fell in Love, 2012), is being adapted for the television screen. The present book includes three magic realist short stories of the revolution. Judging by Qandil's stature, it is something of a disappointment. In the first story Qandil plants the seeds of magic realism by returning to the downtown Café Riche in the old days, when it gathered writers and artists around such figures as Naguib Mahfouz. But it is a postmillennial story that he tells. On hiding an escaped young protester in the basement of the cafe, long before January 2011, the old Nubian waiter Felfel discovers a print press dating back to the 1919 revolution. Of its own volition, the press starts churning out pictures of the casualties of that event, appended with their names. At the end of the story the press foretells the second popular revolution after 1919 when it prints a picture of the escaped protester — one of its future martyrs — an altogether contrived and predictable notion. In the second story, Qandil tells of a father taking his son to tennis training, stressing the minor details that show how keen this father is on his son's tennis — to the point of ignoring the huge demonstrations that prevent them from reaching the court, for example. As people chanting slogans block the road, the father watches his son's reaction. Having had some kind of unconscious spell, the father wakes up to find his wife in tears and numerous people are there offering him their condolences after the death of his son. A homeless, illiterate child named Zaitoun (or Olive) is the hero of the last story. Zaitoun lives in fear of the police whose job it is to track down homeless children and take them in. Zaitoun has a passion for the Nile: he wants to swim in the Nile, but time and again the Nile sends him imaginary messages of rejection. When he scars a fellow homeless child in the face during a fight, Zaitoun embarks on a flight, hiding in one place after another — until he is captured at a Metro station during the revolution. Refusing to give him food even though he asks for it, the policeman who captures Zaitoun orders him to place a bag of explosives among the protesters in Tahrir Square, otherwise he will hand him over to the boy who wants to kill him. When Zaitoun heads to Tahrir Square with the bag, he is amazed to find a girl, Radwa, offering him food even though she doesn't want anything from him. Before he manages to set off the explosives, the sit-in is attacked by thugs on camel and horse back and he decides he won't do it. Tending to the wounded in the mosque, Zaitoun is given more food by Radwa, who later starts teaching him — with a bunch of other street children — to read the slogans of the revolution. After another encounter with the policeman, Zaitoun takes back the bag only to find the boy from whom he has been fleeing. They fight, the boy accidentally detonates the explosives but before they go off Zaitoun manages to throw it into the river. As the water explodes, Radwa informs Zaitoun that Mubarak has stepped down.
