A sheikh, an economist and a century of political turmoil: Youssef Rakha gets into the autobiography of Galal Amin Galal Amin is that rare thing: a scholar who writes accessibly for a general audience. Nor does he write exclusively on the subject of economics -- his academic speciality. As social critic, indeed, together with the late Mohammed Sid Ahmed, he has produced some of the most pertinent commentary on the development of Egyptian society in recent history, some of which was collected in English translation by the American University in Cairo Press under the playful title -- no doubt Amin's own choice -- Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Now, at the age of 70, he has turned to autobiography, that hallowed receptacle of lives that formed so much of the basis of modern Arabic literature (examples include Taha Hussein's The Days and Galal's father Ahmed Amin's My Life -- on which more later) only to be ignored and, together with most non- fiction, largely looked down on by later generations of literati. With a rather British modesty -- perhaps the effect of marriage to an Englishwoman? -- Amin explains that in writing his autobiography he has made no assumptions about his own importance; ignoring the obvious fact that writing is pointless when it is not good, he goes so far as to say that everyone who can should consider writing their autobiography, since any life at all, however apparently unimportant, is uniquely edifying and potentially beautiful, like a slab of granite awaiting a stone sculptor, with whom he does not make bold to identify. Here as elsewhere, in effect, Amin is simply emphasising that he proffers no pretensions at all, whether literary or otherwise. What he proffers, rather, is memory -- a memory that embraces both the personal and the public and manages, through sheer dedication, to contribute valuably to history. Published last month by Dar Al-Shorouk, the almost encyclopedic tome Madha Allamatni Al-Hayah? (What Has Life Taught me?), written in the best British tradition of the comprehensive biography - down to a photo appendix, comes as a many- sided blessing. Not only is it an instantly engaging read -- humourous, dramatic and contemplative by turns -- composed in the by now rare language of Taha Hussein's generation: slow-paced, lucid, conversational without making grammatical concessions; with the added advantage of being simpler and more approachable, and more immediately aware of Western language and culture, than Ahmed Amin's My Life, for example. It is also, very importantly, a document of extremely wide-ranging significance, dealing with, yes, important people like Ahmed and the author's brother Hussein -- by all accounts one of the most formidable intellects of our times -- as well as Galal Amin himself. It also deals with middle-class manners and customs through the 20th century in Egypt -- the abrupt shift from the frugality of plenty, through the rise of consumerism, to the insane excesses of deprivation, with events like the July Revolution, institutions like the American University, places like Kuwait and Los Angeles, and with some of the most indispensable themes: identity and intercultural exchange, politics in theory and practise, family, love, death, breadwinning and the passage of time. Among the most interesting topics are Amin's three- year sojourn with the Baath Party (containing a memorable portrait of Michel Aflak), extended comparative studies of the development of his siblings (each was entirely different from the others), and an observant insider's account of teaching at the American University. The book is rather ingeniously structured around themes -- "University", "Illness and Old Age" etc. -- which, while making each of its 19 long chapters a complete, self-sufficient entity by itself, still maintains a coherent chronological line of progress to Proustian effect. In a sense Madha Allamatni Al-Hayah? can be read as an act of filial devotion. Amin begins with the circumstances surrounding his birth: the subject of a battle of wills between his father and his mother who, eager to make her sister-in-law jealous, insisted on having yet another baby in spite of her husband's every attempt at preventing it. Ahmed Amin, an Azharite-turned-university professor and a member of the earliest generation of modern Arab authors, had set out wanting no more than three children but due to his wife's schemes ended up with 10 (two of whom died in infancy). At some point the author confesses that he has read his father's autobiography over and over throughout his life -- to the point of knowing it almost by heart. And throughout the book his endeavour mimics that of his father. On the one hand he is eager to discover where his father got his notion of the sublime, and he looks for it in his early life and religious education to no avail; and on the other hand he marvels at his father's mores: how on his wedding night he rushed to have his picture taken, replacing the bride with a pile of books, and making no mention on the back of the picture of the occasion it was meant to commemorate. Throughout these games Amin plays with his father he seems to be mimicking him: they share an obsession with objectivity, a contemplative perspective and a drive to tell right from wrong. And though they sometimes express these similarities in very different ways, a constant dialectic informs the narrative in which Amin, describing, exposing and questioning and his father, ends up following in his footsteps. In publishing his private diaries, for example - touching reflections splattered with English phrases to make them illegible to his wife, in which Ahmed Amin analyses his marriage and comments on women in general -- Galal Amin is not only sharing an insight into the personal life of one of 20th- century Arabic literature's major figures, he is also -- as becomes apparent later on in the book -- digging up his own roots, his sense of identity and his connection with women: themes that he tackles in the very same text. Amin may be entirely serious, but there is enough irreverence, distance and order in this book to make it thoroughly entertaining, even gripping. And the story of his mother's tendency to hoard money should be sufficient evidence of that. Having been orphaned at an early age and suffered throughout her upbringing, said mother had a constant fear of being abandoned by her husband, to whom she was married in the traditional way. And this drove her to hoard money in the most obsessive way, keeping aside part of the household expenses dispensed with calculated carelessness by the father until she had accumulated a small fortune allowing her to buy half, then all of the house -- a privilege Ahmed Amin allowed her with a wry smile. It was at this point that she started demanding rent, however, which Amin also paid. And in later years when she would grumble about the amount of money it comprised at the end of every month, her husband continued to smile in the same way. Galal Amin presents the situation with much sympathy for all concerned, with clarity of vision and devotion to the truth, and without the slightest tendency to romanticise or heroise them.
