Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: Women of the Trilogy By Mohamed Salmawy Bermawy Munthe, who teaches at the State Islamic University of Indonesia, is an expert on the literature of Naguib Mahfouz. His Masters degree studies at McGill University, Canada, focused on the Mahfouz novel The New Cairo. He is currently writing his PhD dissertation on women in The Cairo Trilogy. The following discussion took place in Cairo recently. Munthe: I am very proud to be viewed as an authority on your works in Indonesia. I made money writing about your works! Mahfouz (laughing): A commission is perhaps in order then! Munthe: I wonder about the situation of women now and how it has changed since you wrote The Cairo Trilogy. Mahfouz: The Trilogy depicts women at various stages of development. You get the old and submissive type, but you also get the modern ones. Munthe: In my study, I compare the fictional with the historical. Since historical reality has changed, one would expect the fictional to change too. But then again, the reality you portrayed in the Trilogy was a dynamic, not a static, one. It was a flexible reality because it offered us an evolving situation, not just a snapshot of how things were. Mahfouz: I was able to do that because I presented three generations. I had to record the way my characters, women included, evolved over time. Munthe: I noticed that despite the changing circumstances, there are durable human characteristics -- traits that survived the change from one generation to the next. The women you portrayed were mostly diligent, smart, and perseverant. They embodied truth and goodness in various forms. I can see that you believe in the evolution of women. Your women evolve and become more liberated over time, but they do that gradually, not violently. Amina is one phase. Aisha and Khadiga are another phase. And Susan Hammad in Al-Sukkariya, or Sugar Street, is yet another. These three successive phases are woven into one moral fabric. They act naturally, without rebellion or revolt, without triggering a backlash. The path of women in the Trilogy differs from that of women's liberation in the West. The latter was mostly confrontational. I have looked into the reasons for the change of women's attitude in the Trilogy and found that it was education; education allowed women to assert themselves. All the women characters in the Trilogy were educated, and this is how progress occurred. The daughter of Abdel-Jawwad received her education at home, whereas the wife of Mahmoud went to college. Mahfouz: What will you teach once you get your PhD? Munthe: I will keep teaching Naguib Mahfouz, of course! Your work is amazingly profound and rich, full of dimensions that have not been fully explored. I read a lot of what has been written about you. But each time I reread one of your novels I see something new, something that went unnoticed. Your novels are very popular in Indonesia. Mahfouz: Are they available in your language? Munthe: We read your novels in the original. We study Arabic in Indonesia, for it's the language of the Qur'an.
