Mahfouz captured the intricate contradictions of Egypt, and even the wider Arab world. But would he have understood the Arab Spring, asks Abdel-Moneim Said When I received an invitation from Rasayel, an Egyptian cultural association, to deliver a speech on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Naguib Mahfouz I was amazed and somewhat perplexed. I am not a literary critic, and I am certain there is no short supply of specialists on Egypt's Nobel Prize winning novelist. Nevertheless, the invitation was appealing because it is both delightful and useful to meet with the Egyptian public these days, especially for a writer and political analyst. But perhaps the most important reason why I was pleased to accept was that Naguib Mahfouz is not just of major value to Egypt and the Arab world, but also because he was always at the centre of political controversy. His position on the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty did not sit well in some radical stomachs and his liberal and secular views set him in the crosshairs of religious extremists, one of whom tried to assassinate him by stabbing him in the neck. It is, therefore not surprising that, even after his death, Mahfouz would resurface in the midst of the political struggle the era of the new Egyptian revolution has unleashed. So I went to the commemoration and took my place alongside speakers who were far more knowledgeable than me on the many conceptual and stylistic intricacies of Mahfouz's literary mosaics. For my part, I was more concerned with the Egyptian audience who, I believe, now needs Naguib Mahfouz more than ever. Try to imagine what he would have made of Tahrir Square, bearing in mind the degree to which this Nobel Prize laureate elevated place or setting in the Arabic novel. Certainly it was not the actual size of the place that counted in his narrative. The story takes place in a hotel in Miramar, in a houseboat in Adrift on the Nile, in an alleyway in Midaq Alley and in Children of Gebelawi, and in a coffeehouse in Qashtamar. Entire worlds of human conflict unfold in these stories that speak of the interplay between time, place and the hearts and minds of ordinary human beings who yearn for love, justice and the pleasures of life. For the most part, the geography of Mahfouz's novels is restricted to that area of Cairo bordered by the Nile to the west, Abbasiya to the east, Shubra to the north, and Helmeya and Qasr Al-Aini to the south. Alexandria was a worthy exception, but even there his protagonists' dreams and stories revolved around or emanated fromCairo. This is main stage. It is where the heroes made their mark and where the revolution was both waged and betrayed. Tahrir Square was always at the heart of this arena and Ali Baba Café, which was a meeting place and a part of Mahfouz's morning ritual, peers out at that spacious square and poses unanswerable questions. Naguib Mahfouz's time did not begin with his birth in 1911 but with the 1919 Revolution which brought Saad Zaghloul to centre stage and then progressed through a series of interwoven tensions and phases until World War II. In Mahfouz's famous trilogy -- Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street -- against the backdrop of the interplay between the revolution, the royal palace and the British colonial presence, personal ambitions and desires, and faith and religion, interweave in various degrees of harmony within a single family and in various degrees of conflict at the level of the nation. However, the reader senses throughout that the novels are grappling with a much larger substance, something that extends beyond the confines of a single country and that concerns the whole of humanity. In Children of Gebelawi and in The Harafish, the protagonists' prime motivating force was not the search for absolution or redress from some original sin, but rather the quest for a greater and higher justice. While "the plight of our alleyway is forgetfulness," the fact is the alleyway always remembers the dream of justice to which it aspires. While Mahfouz ends The Harafish with an anticipation of a new revolution, the rest of his works are infused with a perpetual grief over revolution betrayed, not just by leaders but by all participants. There is always a Raouf Alwan, the opportunist in his novel The Thief and the Dogs, who will stab someone in the back and there is always The Beggar who is depressed by the passage of an era that had been inspired by a revolution. One of the reasons why Mahfouz has entered literary and intellectual immortality is that his dialectics wed a crystal clear realism with a bold abstraction. In Al-Gabalawi we have an existential conflict that plays out in a living breathing alley that talks and brawls, and that can be variously affectionate or cruel or merciful, but that ultimately fades into the mists of time and becomes a legend or a myth that merits death at the hands of Arafa. The conflict assumes the same logic in The Harafish, the revolution that erupts in another alleyway against Ashour Al-Nagui and puts paid to his dream after it became clear that it was impossible to fulfil, if it existed at all. The dialectic between freedom and justice follows a similar pattern, with the individual striving to achieve the most that his capacities allow while the dynamics of justice explode in give-and-take balance books between unequal parties. Whether in Qashtamar or in the Dweller in Truth, the calculations and assessments are always essential, even though the dialectic is unresolvable and equilibrium unattainable. The dialectic between revolution and the state calls into play the dialectic between stability and change. In Respected Sir, the venerable civil servant sets himself against the storms of a changing world. Al-Sayed Abdel-Gawad of Palace Walk sees his stable world of entrenched customs and traditions fall apart upon the heroic death of his ardently nationalist second son, Fahmi, while in subsequent volumes of the trilogy, his youngest son, Kamal, finds nothing in the space between the revolution and the state -- and even in that between religion and the state -- but a vast sea of confusion, doubt and uncertainty, even as Abdel Gawad's grandchildren are torn apart as they are pulled towards the opposing certitudes of Communists and the Muslim Brothers. It is precisely because the ideas and issues in Mahfouz's novels are as much protagonists as the protagonists themselves that his novels have become participants in history and philosophy and their derivatives, from "underdevelopment versus progress" and "tyranny versus democracy" to all the contradictions of life in Egypt, and perhaps the rest of the Arab world. Throughout his works we always find a faint glow on the horizon, but the promise of sunshine never fulfils itself. The light loses force, justice fades and -- most likely -- dawn will not appear. What would Naguib Mahfouz have had to say about our situation today? Would his voice have been heard in "Arab Spring" or is this a time of a totally new language that was born in the world of Facebook and YouTube? Could the Harafish have found contemporary counterparts in the Ultras and Mahfouz's commentaries an outlet on blogging sites? Certainly Mahfouz never had a problem with change, whether in his personal life in which he was at home with all generations, or in his career, to which testifies the rich diversity of the characters that inhabit his novels. But the change today is of a totally different order, perhaps because entire Arab political systems failed to appreciate the difference between the 20th century and the 21st. Would Mahfouz have understood the difference? Or are questions of existence above an individual's lifespan? In all events, as I told those present at the Rasayel association's commemoration of the great novelist, what matters most is that we deeply miss Naguib Mahfouz.
