Youssef Zeidan, Al-Nabati, Cairo: Dar El Shorouk, 2010 In 2008, Youssef Zeidan -- an Islamic studies scholar and the director of the Alexandria Library's Manuscripts Centre -- rose to literary prominence amid much controversy with Azazeel (Beelzebub), the novel that won the second International Prize for Arabic Fiction; a best-seller in Egypt, it has since made the lists in Turkey as well. Zeidan is particularly interested in the development of monotheism and the intersection of its three principal manifestations in the Middle East, and Azazeel takes the form of an unknown manuscript by an Egyptian monk, written near Antioch in the 5th century, in which he recounts the persecution of Pagans by Christians in Alexandria and their brutal murder of Hipatia of Alexandria against the backdrop of the famous Christological debate between Cyril and Nestorius -- the first major rift in the Christian world -- which seems to echo theological differences between Christianity and Islam. By portraying Cyril as a bloodthirsty power- monger and giving short shrift to the argument against Nestorius, Zeidan -- not unwittingly -- upset his neighbours at the Coptic Orthodox Church. In his new intellectual potboiler, Al-Nabati (The Nabatean) -- the story of Maria, an Egyptian woman's marriage to a Nabatean from Arabia and her multiple lives or incarnations as such in various parts of the region -- Zeidan takes the monotheistic theme further, exploring all manner of contemporaneous issues. The Nabateans were a race of nomadic Arabs whose name -- according to the novel -- is derived from their distinct method of storing and circulating water. Due to their geographic extent and their presence at the heart of the transformation from Judaeo-Christian to Muslim predominance, they make the perfect interactive complement to neighbours in the Nile Delta, across the Red Sea. Zeidan prefaces the book with a seemingly cryptic statement: "The endings of this novel were written before its beginnings. Of the ending the beginning is forged." According to Zeidan himself, speaking over the phone from Alexandria, "this statement embraces countless possible meanings. First, there is the historical incident of whose occurrence I chose to write the novel in advance, which makes the end forgone and decided; this is challenging to the writer since it can undermine the structure." He speaks of the Arab conquest of Egypt in of AD 641, the occasion for Maria and her Nabatean husband's return to Egypt after living in Arabia. "For me the historical event is untouchable, which is why I create space around it in which to write my novel. But a second meaning of the statement might occur to the reader too: that it is the Muslim conquest of Egypt that explains how the events of the novel come about. But there are many other interpretations and I leave it to my reader to decide, I write for an informed and intelligent reader and I will not interfere in their interpretation." Zeidan divides the book into three Lives of Maria, and he uses the Quranic spelling of the word for life. "It was a challenge I set myself," he says, "to use a staid Arabic." The theory of reincarnation is repeatedly touched on in the novel and explained to Maria by her Nabatean brother-in-law, but Zeidan does not state the Lives are a reference to it. In the first Life Maria, at 18, is already an inhabitant in a small village in the eastern part of the Nile Delta; she lives with her brother and mother, a servant at the tax collector's home. When the Nabatean Salama arrives from the other side of the Red Sea and demands her hand in marriage, she is therefore in no position to refuse. In the background the Byzantines are trying to expel the Persians, which is why Salama is in a hurry to have the marriage, contravening Egyptian tradition. In the second Life, Maria embarks on the long journey through the desert to rejoin her bridegroom in Arabia. Through her eyes, Zeidan indulges in documenting life in the desert and comparing it with life in the Delta. He blends historical incidents with an evocation of life in Arabia to bring to life not only documented anecdotes but also religious conflicts. Maria's suffering in the desert becomes a sort of metaphor for the birth pangs of Islam, but it also evokes the Jewish Exodus from Egypt and the earliest impulses towards the monastic life (and monastic debates of the day, better expounded in his non-fiction book Arab Theology and the Origins of Religious Violence, published in December 2009). Time passes, but Maria's journey still does not come to an end. Eventually, within Salama's own family, Maria forges relations with Al-Houdi -- a word denoting someone who, not born to a Jewish mother, aspires nonetheless to being a Jew -- and his son Omayyir, who, together with another relation of Salama's, the Al-Nabati of the title, aid her through several legs of the journey before she is brought face to face with two of the most significant historical figures of the time: Hatib ibn Abi-Balta and Amr ibnul 'Aass (the latter being the Companion of the Prophet Muhammad who conquered Egypt). Insights arrived at in Arab Theology come through in Maria's conversation with a Coptic monk during the night she spends in a monastery, when she is told that the Byzantines have a different religion and a different patriarch from her own. Finally Maria and Salama arrive at the latter's home: she meets her mother in law, who renames her Mawia. The family is a microcosm of the religious constitution of the Middle East in the seventh century: Salama is a Christian, Al-Houdi a wannabe Jew, Al-Nabati a prophet in his own right (it was common among Arabs at the time to claim receiving inspiration directly from God); one sister is an atheist with no religion at all, while the mother in law, Ummul Banin (so named because she has given birth to many sons) follows the pagan beliefs of her ancestors. Maria's third Life is the most stable: she has settled down with her husband though he is often away from long stretches of time. Maria often feels lost and visits Ummul Banin for comfort; unused to the Arabs' tents, she lives in a former temple carved into the stone of the mountains of Petra by herself. It is with Al-Nabati, however, that Maria remains fascinated; he gives her unique and always interesting answers to the questions she poses to him. In the end she does not mind the absence of her husband, whom she does not love, but spends time with his sister Laila -- the closest thing she has found here to Al-Nabati. It is remarkable that Zeidan named the book after such a minor character. "My titles," he said over the phone, "always point to a further horizon, suggesting a meaning parallel to the one the book sets out." Al-Nabati -- Maria's secret love -- may be a sort of prophecy of the emergence of Islam, which takes up much of the rest of the book. It is the challenges Islam faces that he concentrates on (as he does in Arab Theology, contending that it is the resistance a new religion must face that brings about religious violence). Emigration is the answer, or it can be: it was what the Prophet Muhammad initially opted for, and it enabled him to limit the scope of bloodshed during the initial phases of Islam. In Arab Theology as much as in this book, he reiterates the idea that the Abrahamic religions are but three manifestations of the same response to the world; and he links their being known as the heavenly religions, al adyan ass samawiyyah, with the etymological derivation of the Arabic word for heaven meaning to place on thing -- one Message -- on top of another. Once again, as in Azazeel, Islam prevails as the final layer of a three-stage construction: Salama eventually converts to Islam in order to stop drinking, and Maria celebrates this cure to a halitosis from which she has thus far suffered. Abruptly he has become a very generous husband, offering her gifts of gold. This too seems at first to result simply from the conversion. But then Salama informs Maria that the entire family will be travelling to her homeland with the armies of Amr, something that has become necessary for survival with the turbulence all around them; and Maria finds out that -- since she has so far failed to give him a child -- he has resolved to marry another where he married her (another reason for giving up the Christian faith?) The cycle comes full circle. Only Al-Nabati refuses to join the caravan, preferring to stay in his homeland even if it cost him his life. As they begin the journey, with Maria at the tail, it occurs to her that at any moment she could simply turn back and rejoin him in Nabatea. Reviewed by Soha Hesham
