By Mursi Saad El-Din English has become a common medium of creative writing in a number of countries. No wonder a new prize has been created in England for the best novel written in English by a non-English writer. So far it is the writers of former British colonies and of the British Commonwealth who have made names in English literature. Writers like Naipaul and Salman Rushdie have become part and parcel of the literary scene. I was reminded of this state of affairs when I read The Story of a Village, a novel by Dr Ramadan Al-Makallawi, a young professor of English. The village Meet Habiba can be any village in Egypt. It can be, for instance, Kafr El-Manazela, a village in the governorate of Damietta, which is the birthplace of the author. This fact, and the development of the author's education and career, gives the whole book an autobiographical character. Going through the novel, I was introduced to the life of the Egyptian countryside and of the fellaheen who make up the backbone of Egypt. I got to know the many characters in the village, types for the inhabitants of Egyptian villages, headed by the omda or mayor who lives in his luxurious saraya while ordinary people live in primitive dwellings. The novel centres on Salama, the son of Salem who, out of all the children of the village, manages to pursue his education and to finish each phase of this education with distinction until he becomes a medical doctor and a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine. But it is also the story of his love for the omda 's daughter, almost a sin in village annals. This youthful, secretive love is reminiscent of Youssef El-Sebai's novel Rod Qalbi, the love between the son and of a fellah and the daughter of the Pasha. It is a love affair that becomes tragic with the death of Warda, the omda 's daughter as a result of a loveless marriage. But the novel is more than just a literary work; it is a social science paper about life in a typical Egyptian village, the intricacies of this life, the hard work of the fellah, his closeness with his animals and traditions, and above all misery. There is Sheikh Erfan, the holy man in the eyes of the villagers, but in reality a dajjal -- a fraud whose tricks are discovered by Salama when he is a child. The women of the village visit Sheikh Erfan asking for his blessings and beseeching him to solve their problems. But Salama spotted him in the dark room playing with the beautiful Shafiqa as a small child plays with his unresisting doll. Apart from portraying the full spectrum of life in the village from happiness to sadness, traditions and superstitions, the novel is a chronicle of historical events in the life of Egypt from the 1952 Revolution to the assassination of President Sadat. The writer has used many events in the novel, and it reads like a documentary. There is the notorious slaughter of a dozen men and women and their mutilated bodies. There is the sudden demise of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the 1967 defeat, the 1973 war. An important point in the novel is the friendship and shared life of the Muslim Salama and Zaki, with their neighbour Benjamin, the son of Ammu Botros, an Egyptian Coptic Christian. Their grandfathers and great grandfathers were also neighbours and friends, while Jeanette, Benjamin's mother, Amina, Salama's mother, and Selita, Zakil's mother, were close friends as well. The field of Ammu Botros lies between the fields rented out by Salem and recently bought by Mahmoud. In the words of the author, "There were no differences whatsoever between a Muslim and a Christian resident at Meet Habiba. Indeed there are no such differences in the whole of Egypt."
