A look back at Ahdaf Soueif's debut novel "Aisha is a lesson in social commentary Egypt is a social labyrinth. A complex class structure outlines the boundaries between the millions that live pressed together in its crowded cities. Within these intangible borders, our conduct is regulated. As we go about our daily lives our social orbs interlock for moments, giving us an opportunity to glimpse into another sphere. In reality few seize those opportunities. But in fiction, the characters reach out for that peephole into other people's lives. "It is quite interesting how people can be sympathetic to a character in a novel and indifferent to people in life. I think I have always looked at life as though it were a novel, author Ahdaf Soueif remarks in an interview with The Guardian in 2005. Soueif's "Aisha gives us that rare opportunity through a collection of short stories that form a realm in which lives converge in London, Cairo, Alexandria and Paris. We meet Aisha on her homecoming to Cairo, where she is confronted with a reality other than what she had always imagined. The home, which she had pieced together as a newlywed, had become dusty and tarnished with the memories of her estranged husband. We go back in time to 1964 when Aisha was living in London at 15. Although she was the Westernized bourgeois intellectual, who outshined the English students in class, she still remained an outsider. In an effort to fit in she insisted on attending Assembly. "I wanted nothing more than to merge, to blend in silently and belong to the crowd and wasn't about to declare myself a Mohammedan, or even a Muslim, and sit in the passage looking bored and out of it with the Pakistani girls wearing their white trousers underneath their skirts. Soueif takes us back even further still to the candy and fireworks of Ramadan, a young Aisha climbing her grandmother's back who is prostrated in prayer. Each moment in time, however brief, Soueif offers her readers a chance to observe Aisha's life unravel. As voyeurs we grow to know her, understand her more with every new chapter. And through Aisha we are introduced to others in her life. Her nurse Zeina, who comes from a family of butchers, tells a young, impressionable Aisha how she was prepped and probed on her wedding night as an insurance of her purity. In another chapter, Zeina cunningly defends her position when her husband marries a second wife, plotting an inventive revenge. We meet Aisha's friend Mimi who has unrealistically high standards for a husband, and rejects potential suitors who don't measure up. "Ears were one of her favorite targets. Her criticisms ranged from the prosaic to the fanciful: they flapped, or they were too fleshy, or red, or they looked transparent, or brittle, or as if they'd been pinned back against his head when he was a baby; and sometimes they were just plain grubby. Mimi would go on to scrutinize the man's trousers, shoes, and appearance before he was even permitted the chance to speak. Finally she meets the man of her dreams only to discover -only barely avoiding a scandal for the family - that he's a player. Then there is the story of young Yosri, who finds it impossible to keep a job until he is made apprentice to Aisha's hairdresser at the Salon Romance in Alexandria, and only hopes that the customers do not discover his fetish of washing women's hair. "Aisha, Soueif's debut, launches the author as a witness to changes in her home country, and across the Arab world. Her ability to translate the lives of others into a poignant, empathic reflection on society, has earned her the role a novelist who fosters understanding. This is not limited to her foreign readers, but also to her Egyptian readers who tend to overlook the people they live with side by side. Soueif writes in English, although, she commented during an interview with a British newspaper, "she thinks and dreams in Arabic. But as a student of English literature English became her literary language. But any native Arabic speaker reading the dialogue feels as if it's being spoken in Arabic. Soueif doesn't stoop to the sporadic interjection of Arabic words or phrases, it's much more deep-rooted that that. As you read the words take shape in Arabic, in the way that they flow and the way that each character speaks candidly. Through the dialogue Soueif gives her characters an added dimension of truthfulness that makes it hard to believe they are a figment of her imagination. Soueif has become a cultural commentator, both through her novels and short stories as well as her widely publicized articles. In 2006 she wrote a series of articles for The Guardian about the national presidential elections and the rise of bottom-up civil opposition movements. She is an outspoken advocate for the Palestinian cause. Western audiences turn to her for understanding about the trend towards perceived religious extremism in the Arab world and the status of women. The same ability Soueif demonstrated in "Aisha and her successive works to create empathy for her characters by shedding light on reality, she demonstrates in her essays. As a result, she has become a witness to our times and a powerful catalyst of cross-cultural understanding. AishaBy Ahdaf SoueifBloomsbury Paperbacks, 1983
