By Mohamed Salmawy When I got close to the family of Naguib Mahfouz and met his wife and two daughters, I found that Mahfouz was quite the opposite of Ahmed Abdel-Gawwad, or Sis Sayid, the astounding husband in The Cairo Trilogy. So I asked Mahfouz about the real life figures on which he based Sis Sayid, the literary character that so ably sums up the foibles of so many men at the turn of the century. "Was your father a Sis Sayid character?" I asked. Mahfouz laughed. "No, he was as far from Sis Sayid as you can get. He was a gentle, kind soul who loved music and singing. He was a fan of Saleh Abdel-Hay, El-Manyalawi and Abdel Hayy Helmi, the greatest singers of his time. At that time, we had no radios so my father had to go to their concerts and listen to them live. When radios came out, my father bought one and we used to gather at home and listen to the greatest hits of our time. "My father was democratic in a modern way. He respected the choices of his children and wouldn't impose anything on them against their wishes. I recall that when I graduated from school, my father wanted me to go to Law School to become a deputy attorney and walk in the street with a soldier following me. But he didn't object when I decided to study philosophy at the College of Arts, although he wasn't happy about it. My father lived to see some of my earliest stories published in magazines, but unfortunately he died in 1937, before my first novel came out. "My father's love for art is the only thing he had in common with Sis Sayid. As for Sis Sayid's obsession with women, I took that from an uncle of mine, Said, who was an attractive and well-dressed man and used to have numerous affairs. His wife would come to us to complain and my father would then try to talk sense into him, telling him that his daughters were at the age of marriage and that his escapades might harm their marriage prospects. "As for Sis Sayid's strict ways, I borrowed that from a neighbour who lived in our old house in Midan Beit Al-Qadi in Al-Gammaliya. His name was Am Bashir and he was Syrian. He used to treat his wife with excessive harshness and I used to hear her come to my mother and complain about it. I was touched by the story, so I used it 15 years later when I was writing the Trilogy. The only one in our family who was that hard in his manners was the husband of my sister, Zeinab. He came from Upper Egypt and wasn't exactly easy to deal with. "So Sis Sayid was a composite of various characters I came to know earlier. I gave him the harshness of Am Bashir and my brother-in- law, the womanising of uncle Said and the artistic tendencies of my father. But this mix gave birth to a new character in the Trilogy, one that differs from any of the people who inspired it. This character had a life in the day and another one at night, and was hypocritical in ways none of the real-life characters I mentioned were. All the men who inspired Sis Sayid's character were straightforwar d people who were consistent in their deeds and actions," Mahfouz said.
