The sovereign genre

On the tenth anniversary of the death of Egypt's Chekhov, Youssef Idris, "master of the Arabic short story" remains his most popular adjunct. Below and opposite, samples of the writer's work demonstrate his narrative prowess, while, speaking to Youssef Rakha, the usual suspects illuminate aspects of his achievement
Youssef Idris remains the uncontested overlord of the Arabic short story. In being repeated, ad nauseam, this statement loses its force, channelling the emphasis away from the prospect of Idris's vision and towards the genre that best represents it. "A few writers were born as if with an appointment with destiny," critic and professor of modern Arabic literature at London University, Sabri Hafez, states sedately, identifying Idris as the second of the two accepted protagonists of contemporary Arabic literature. "Mahfouz, who was destined to put the Arabic novel on the international map, was born in the year in which Zaynab, the first Arabic novel, was written. Idris, who was destined to establish the short story as a major literary genre in Arabic, was born four months after the closure of Al-Fajr (The Dawn), the pioneering journal that put the short story on the cultural map of Egypt and the Arab world. Edited by a medical doctor, Ahmad Khayri Said, Al-Fajr established the short story as a major literary form in a culture that had not previously known it," Hafez adds emphatically. "And a quarter of a century later, Idris, another medical doctor, gave it its first great breakthrough, for before Idris a predilection for the short story was synonymous with mediocrity. Idris provided the genre with popularity, sophistication and artistic excellence," Hafez states.
The short story truly is "the genre in which Idris made his lasting impact and which provided him with his outstanding literary status and extensive impact on the literary movement," as Hafez insists. But identifying Idris's achievement with his short stories alone remains an arbitrary strategy of assessment at best. Idris embodied a range of literary phenomena: the visceral vitality that informed his numerous short stories and novellas (some of which, in the process of being composed, tipped over into the form of the novel) also informed his essays, journalistic articles and plays. In a 1990 introduction, Idris called Al-Bayda' (White Woman), his one full-length novel (an early autobiographical statement on the collapse of the communist movement in Egypt), "a story that has become aged, like aged wine, the work for which I paid the most precious years of my life." Similarly Al-Farafir, Idris's theatrical landmark (in book form the text is preceded by the seminal essay "Towards an Egyptian Theatre"), spawned dozens of self-consciously Egyptian theatrical experiments that set out to body forth his prophecy that a grass roots tradition of theatre should emerge independently in Egypt, liberated from the overriding influence of the Western model.
This concern with what is Egyptian -- the ideological and aesthetic compulsion to make things Egyptian -- intimates an approach to Idris. So does the language he used, which in turn reflects his desire to give voice to the genius and poetry of his life-like cast of characters, many of whom had hitherto been denied access to literary discourse. To concentrate on the vehicle through which he expressed himself, by contrast, is to miss the point: form was, after all, the least of Idris's concerns. Among his priorities, rather, writer Ibrahim Aslan points out, was "the project of capturing the spiritual aspect of the local: Youssef Idris managed to present to the readership the contours of a true Egyptian short story, paying attention to those who were socially marginalised and presenting a huge number of archetypes," Aslan reiterates. "His genius resided in his ability to hunt down the archetypes and paradigms that were already part of reality; he was capable of applying his politically committed beliefs to the dynamics of society with the utmost ease; the connections he made were always convincing."
The writer Youssef Abu-Rayya, too, speaks of Idris's ability "to create, out of the mud of villages, creatures of flesh and blood, shaping them as they really were, never resorting to the iron mould of predetermined ideas about them. His provincial narratives, unlike those of the pioneers of the modern literary renaissance, moved from inside out. The pioneers in question always offered a city-dweller's view: they wrote in their spare time while looking after their farms or working in government bureaus; all that they sought in the provinces was a picturesque backdrop for their tales of romantic love, modelled on French literature. Youssef Idris never made up an experience of the countryside; he arrived in the big city covered in a layer of provincial dust..." Similarly, the writer Shehata El-Iryan remarks that the Arabic title of Idris's first collection of short stories, "The Cheapest Nights," properly conjugated, should read Arkhas Layalin (not Arkhas Layali). But Idris's relationship with language was so intimate, El-Iryan says, he insisted on the vernacular variant, favouring "the wrong layali over the correct layalin."
As a master story-teller, Idris had distinctive qualities: "A thunderous gushing of narrative that takes over your soul, blowing away any preconception you might consider having while still at the foot of the story," El-Iryan explains. "He takes your hand and guides you upwards through the storm, then, at any moment during the climb, he lets go of your hand; and immediately you fall through one of the breaches that have undermined your existence all along without you knowing about it, a breach you never knew existed. Happy about making this discovery, you wonder how you failed to notice that breach before. And as is the case while reading any delightful literature, you might stray away from the story momentarily, become aware of yourself and purposely clear your mind as if you were about to join in its composition. He invariably demolishes your expectations, simply because he writes without pre-planning. He lets the narrative lead him until you start wondering whether he forgot the story altogether, letting himself be absorbed wholly in the digression at hand. Many pages later he will remember the story suddenly, deciding that he must complete it somehow."
The short story may have been the appropriate medium for dramatising what Hafez calls "the social concerns of [Idris's] reading public and the national causes of his country." But the choice of genre could only be incidental to his phenomenal impact. "The work of Idris was so powerful and popular, not only did it overshadow that of many writers of his own generation, it eclipsed the work of those slightly older and those slightly younger than him. From the 1960s on," Hafez explains, Idris embraced "the change of literary sensibility towards modernistic writing." As an editor he introduced the work of Bahaa Taher and the late Yahya Taher Abdullah, two pillars of the generation of the 1960s, to whom he remained something of a Freudian patriarch, at once a helper and a dangerous adversary. As "the most influential and prolific" of all "the Arab writers who started their careers in the 1950s amidst the euphoria of independence," Idris nonetheless maintained his distance.
"Everyone loved what he did and looked to him with admiration," the writer Mohamed El-Bisatie, another of the 1960s' "slightly younger" writers who grew up in his shadow, declaims. "But there was always fear of falling into the trap of imitating him; those who tried to recreate what he invented almost invariably gave up writing within a few years." Younger writers suffered the consequent isolation: "When we, the sons of the cruel 1970s, arrived," Abu-Rayya asserts, speaking of "a Karamazov relation" in which Idris plays the part of the ruthless father, "Idris was so far removed, talking about him was like talking about literary heritage. Encountering him through the filter of the generation of the 1960s, we sometimes spoke of his literature with reckless arrogance; one of us even dared to brag that his work needed rewriting. And he duly responded in public, with the words, 'We are the last of the generation of ambition,' referring, of course, to himself. Thus we had a tense relationship with him, we were always taking issue with him, and he with us. Yet even in the course of disagreements, we would furtively return to his books in order to regain our faith in magnificent writing."
Bibliography of published works by Youssef Idris
Arkhas Layali (The Cheapest Nights), Cairo: Dar Rose El-Youssef, 1954.
Gumhuriyyat Farahat (Farahat's Republic), Cairo: Dar Rose El-Youssef, 1956.
Qissat Hubb (Love Story), Cairo: Dar Rose El-Youssef, 1956 (in Gumhuriyyat Farahat).
Al-Batal (The Hero), Cairo: Dar Al-Fikr, 1957.
Alaysa Kadhalika (Isn't That So?), Cairo: Markaz Kutub Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 1957.
Malik Al-Qutn Wa Gumhuriyyat Farahat (Cotton Baron & Farahat's Republic), Cairo: Al-Muassassah Al-Qawmiyyah Lil-Nashr, 1957.
Hadithat Sharaf (An Affair of Honour), Beirut: Dar Al-Adab, 1958.
Al-Lahzah Al-Harigah (Moment of Anxiety), Cairo: Al-Sharikah Al-'Arabiyyah Lil-Tiba'ah, 1958.
Al-Haram (The Taboo), Cairo: Al-Sharikah Al-'Arabiyyah Lil-Tiba'ah, 1959, [translated into English as The Sinners, trans. Kristin Peterson-Ishaq, Washington: Three Continents Press, 1984].
Akhir Al-Dunya (The End of the World), Cairo: Dar Rose El-Youssef, 1961.
Al-'Ayb (The Sin), Cairo: Rose El-Youssef, 1962.
Al-'Askari Al-Aswad (The Black Policeman), Cairo: Dar Al-Ma'rifah, 1962.
Rigal Wa Thiran (Men and Bulls), Cairo: Al-Mu'assassah Al-Misriyyah Al-'Ammah Lil-Ta'lif, 1964.
Lughat Al-Ay Ay (The Language of Screams), Cairo: Rose El-Youssef, 1965.
Al-Farafir Wa Al-Mahzalah Al-Ardiyyah (Farfours and The Terrestrial Comedy), Cairo: Al-Ahram, 1966.
Al-Naddahah (The Siren), Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal, 1969.
Al-Mukhattatin (Men in Stripes), in Al-Masrah, May 1969: 81-96.
Al-Bayda' (White Woman), Beirut: Dar Al-Tali'ah, 1970.
Bayt Min Lahm (House of Flesh), Cairo: 'Alam Al-Kutub, 1971.
Al-Gins Al-Thalith (The Third Sex), Cairo: 'Alam Al-Kutub, 1971.
Nyu-Yurk 80 (New York '80), Cairo: Dar Misr Lil-Tiba'ah, nd.
Al-'Atab 'Ala Al-Nazar (Vision at Fault), Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Translation and Publishing, 1987.
Al-Bahlawan (The Clown), Cairo: Dar Misr Lil-Tiba'ah, nd.
Uqtulha (I'll Kill Her), Cairo: Maktabat Misr, nd.
Ana Sultan Qanun Al-Wugud (I'm The Lord of the Law of Existence), Cairo: Dar Misr Lil-Tiba'ah, nd.
Translated collections
In the Eye of the Beholder: Tales of Egyptian Life from the Writings of Yusuf Idris, ed. Roger Allen, Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1978.
The Cheapest Nights and Other Stories, trans. Wadida Wassef, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1990.
Rings of Burnished Brass And Other Stories, trans. Catherine Cobham, Cairo: AUC Press, 1990.
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