Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: First love By Mohamed Salmawy Was it Abla, Ola, or Abir, or did she have an unusual name: Anbar perhaps? Who is this elusive character that keeps appearing in Naguib Mahfouz's works without ever revealing her real name? Once she was Aida Shadda, the woman Kamal Abdel-Gawwad falls in love with in the Trilogy. Kamal is of course the one character most closely resembling Mahfouz himself. In his latest works, Mahfouz doesn't give the woman a name, but keeps referring to her with the Arabic letter " ayn ", rendered alternately as a, o, or e in English. Ayn appears in the Dreams repeatedly. She is the main character in dreams 14 and 144. She marries another man in dream 191, just as Aida married someone other than Kamal in the Trilogy. I asked Mahfouz once about love in his own life. He said that his first love was when the family moved to Abbasiya. One day he was playing football with other children of the neighbourhood when a window opened and a face that seemed out of a painting, an epitome of beauty, appeared. The girl he saw in that window didn't look like any other in the neighbourhood. She was a classic beauty, and her features looked somewhat Western. The 13-year-old Mahfouz fell in love with that girl at first sight. He used to stand in front of her house for hours, hoping for a glimpse. This is the real " ayn " that keeps appearing in Mahfouz's works. He never mentioned her name, but it came to my knowledge that her real name was Enayat. She was the daughter of a rich family in Abbasiya at the time. This wasn't the problem. The problem was that Enayat, whom Mahfouz described as a Mona Lisa look- alike, was 20. She went on to marry someone of her age, just as Aida married someone other than Kamal, just as " ayn " married someone other than the protagonist of dream 191. That first love must have left its mark on Mahfouz, for he kept going back to it in his writings. As a youngster, Mahfouz admits to have taken a shot at debauchery, drowning his unrequited love into something more carnal. Mahfouz became infatuated with the underworld of dancers and prostitutes, and thought he would never fall in love again. Eventually, Mahfouz told me, he felt the need to settle down. He got married in the early 1950s. He did so in secret, for he didn't wish to confront his mother who had lined up several prospective brides for him. His wife's name started with " ayn ". Coincidence or fate?
