Memories of Meltdown, , trans. Samah Selim, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005. pp102 By coincidence it happened that an Egyptian writer of rare talent and sensitivity arrived in the city of Kiev in the Soviet Union in 1986 in order to continue his studies of alternative medicine. He went there just a few months before the disaster that occurred in the nearby nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. The fire in the reactor erupted on 26 April causing an explosion, and it is about this happening, of which there had been numerous warnings, all of which had been "either ignored or deliberately concealed", that this book deals. In Memories of Meltdown, , a writer known for his short stories and for a particular partiality for the pungent sketch of a mere hundred words or so, tells what it felt like to be living at that time in a city threatened by a catastrophe of enormous magnitude. The disaster had largely come about, he writes, through the cronyism and bribery by which political favourites and well-connected people were hired in place of experts, and he describes how those employed in the control room of the ill-fated reactor were playing poker and dominoes instead of concentrating on their work and paying heed to the warnings that had been given. "Sheer stupidity", he writes, "had managed to override more than a hundred security systems." It seems that the director of the plant had also lied about the possible dangers, hoping that his men would be able to put out the fire that had occurred in the reactor before he needed to alert the nearby city of Kiev of the danger that threatened it and its inhabitants. Makhzangi describes how he strolled through the city of Kiev under the bright sun of an early spring morning blissfully unaware of the danger of the drifting nuclear radiation, about which there had been no word of warning. As it happened, it seems that the wind that morning was blowing in exactly the opposite direction from the city of Kiev. It appears that while the world's media were talking about "the worst atomic disaster in human history", a whole nine days passed before the Ukrainian minister of health appeared on local television in an attempt both to reassure people and at the same time to warn them to keep their windows closed, to cover all food, to leave shoes outside the house and to take a shower after entering one's home. It was then that the writer began to feel that he was, whether he liked it or not, part of a unique experience, and that, as a writer, he owed it to himself to record it. As a result, Makhzangi began writing his observations about the city in which he was living in a small notebook, a city overshadowed by the possibilities of a nuclear disaster. The chapters in this part of the book are headed with the names of the seasons: the spring when the disaster occurs, then the summer, described as "simply a hotter version of spring", by which time all the children of Kiev had been sent away to distant beach camps to save them from possible harm, and so the fateful year draws to its close. In the final chapter of the book, entitled "Moscow Queues", the writer describes spending a short time in Moscow some years later. He wanders around, gazing at the various famous landmarks of the capital: Gorky Street, the vast shopping centre GUM with its escalators and walkways, then the red stone walls of the Kremlin. The writer is depressed at the sight of these famous landmarks, which no longer seem to have any significance. Leaving Red Square, he is suddenly faced with a single letter M and discovers that it is the beginning of the word "McDonalds". Two years before, when he had last been in Moscow, it had not been there. He remembers how he and a friend had gone to a delightful Russian café, with its samovar and painted coffee cups of Leningrad porcelain, which had then occupied the very spot where the American fast-food emporium now stood. The writer remarks to himself as he views the vast crowds who now occupy the place: "Good God, are they all going to stand here forever just to come away in the end with a piece of hamburger wrapped in paper and some French fries?" He expresses the same horror as this reviewer felt when, in the magical city of Marrakesh in Morocco, he found an obscene large capital M over a prime site in the city's main street. "Memories in Meltdown" is well-written -- and well translated -- and deserves careful reading. If one has any regrets about the book, it is simply that it is so short. By Denys Johnson-Davies
