Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: The forgotten letter By Mohamed Salmawy Among the old papers of Naguib Mahfouz is a letter that was never sent. In that letter, written in the 1950s, the author tells a friend about the plot of the then yet-to-be- published Cairo Trilogy. The letter is handwritten and seven pages long. When I asked Mahfouz about that letter, he explained why he never sent it. He had told another author the plot of the Trilogy, on which he had worked for four years. Six months later the same author published a story tracing three generations of one family -- the same plot as the Trilogy. "Proud to have finished the Trilogy, I kept telling its story to everyone who would ask. But when my friend copied the plot in a work of his, I was afraid that publishers would think that I copied him," Mahfouz said. "You spent four years writing the Trilogy and the author to whom you refer wrote his in six months. This alone shows the difference between the two works. Now no one remembers the novel written by the friend you refuse now to name, but your Trilogy became a landmark of literature in the 20th century. Perhaps some good came out of this incident, for you became more cautious," I remarked. "The friend to whom the letter was intended was not a writer and wouldn't have published anything I mentioned in the letter; but once bitten twice shy, as they say. I feared that the letter may fall into the wrong hands and didn't want to take the risk. But the letter proved helpful in a curious way. After the Trilogy was published, journalists would come to interview me and I would quote what I wrote in this letter to them," Mahfouz added. I read the letter, which had a summary of the plot as well as a cogent analysis of its significance. When a French publisher wanted to send out a press release ahead of a new edition of the Trilogy, Mahfouz gave me the letter to forward to him. "Here it is. More mileage, perhaps for the last time, from the same letter," he said. I asked Mahfouz about the manuscript of the Trilogy. "There is no such a thing. Just as I did in my other novels, I used to write by hand then destroy the rough copy after making a final one. The final copy would go to the printer, and you know how print workers are. I was once given the original notes of a novel that was sent to the printer for a revision and I couldn't read a thing -- the paper was totally smudged," Mahfouz noted. The blueprints of much of what our great novelist wrote may have been lost to posterity, but I am sure hundreds of his letters to friends remain, and perhaps we'll read them one day.
