Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: The unprotected life By Mohamed Salmawy I was the first to meet Naguib Mahfouz in the intensive care unit after the stabbing incident in November 1994. I asked the hospital director, Wagih Issa, to see Mahfouz for a few minutes, to tell him how worried we were about him. His friends had spent the night in the reception hall of the hospital, waiting for news about his health. As soon as Mahfouz saw me, his face lit up and he started telling me the details of what happened. He said he forgave the young man who attempted to kill him, for he must have been impressionable and misguided. I saw a pained expression in Mahfouz's eyes. "This young man could have been a successful athlete. What on earth would turn him into a murderer?" Mahfouz said. "You have turned down police protection in the past. Perhaps now you want to be more careful about your movements?" I said. "No one lives longer than he is destined to," Mahfouz replied. "Noqrashi Pasha was killed inside the Interior Ministry building. Anwar El-Sadat was killed in the middle of an army parade. If it's God's wish to see us, we must go and see Him." Sometime after leaving hospital, Mahfouz told me that when some scholars attacked his novel Children of the Alley, he received hate mail, but no death threats. "But the mentor of terrorists, Omar Abdel-Rahman, said that you should have been killed," I said. "That was after I won the Nobel Prize. He gave an interview to an Arab newspaper saying that, 'had we killed Mahfouz when he wrote Children of the Alley, we wouldn't have had Salman Roshdi.' This wasn't a fair comparison, for I do not write like Salman Roshdi and Children of the Alley was not The Satanic Verses." "Just as Noqrashi and Sadat, you were attacked right in front of your house, which was under police protection," I said. Mahfouz replied: "I turned down protection more than once. I was offered protection for the first time after the remarks by Sheikh Abdel-Rahman. A state security police officer called me and asked to meet me. He came to the house and told me that arrangements were underway for bodyguards to accompany me as a precautionary measure. I thanked him and turned the offer down because I believed that nothing could happen to us unless ordained by God. I didn't want a bodyguard following me everywhere. When the officer insisted, I told him that police protection would lead to murder, for I would wear down the bodyguard with my lifestyle. I go out before six in the morning, and I walk for an hour even in cold and rainy days. Then I walk from Tahrir Square to Al-Ahram building. Besides, how was I supposed to take a bodyguard along to my meetings with my friends? Either they would get mad at him and kill him, or he would get sick and tired with me and kill me. The officer seemed convinced. But two days later, he placed a sentry at my door."
