CAIRO �" On reading Al-Karnak, or Karnak Café as it is titled in the English version, I was initially shocked at what I saw as a U-turn in my favourite novelist, Naguib Mahfouz. This short novel, which appeared in print in 1974, though Mahfouz himself stated in the Arabic text that he'd completed it in December 1971, bluntly portrays the oppression in the era of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who ruled Egypt until 1970. To me, as was the case with millions of Egyptians and Arabs, Nasser was a paradigm of Arab nationalism and infallibility. At the age of eight, I attended his funeral, which was one of the biggest in human history. So, on reading Al-Karnak for the first time when I was 12, I felt that Mahfouz, who later, in 1988, became the only Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, had jumped on the bandwagon unleashed by Nasser's successor, Anwar el-Sadat, to fling mud at Nasser and his achievements. This impression was further deepened when in 1975 I watched Al-Karnak, the blockbuster film based on Mahfouz's novel. But while Mahfouz's Al-Karnak ends amidst the War of Attrition, which followed Egypt's crushing military defeat by Israel in June, 1967, the cinematic version stretches to the October 1973 War and a victory the credit for which should go to Sadat. While the brutal rape of Zeinab Diab, the female protagonist in Mahfouz's novel, by secret police, is narrated indirectly, the horrifying incident was presented in graphic detail on screen and was even the centrepiece of the posters in the streets for the film. The message rammed home by the filmmakers was that Egypt was raped under Nasser and her honour was vindicated later by Sadat. Thirty-six years later, I have just read Al-Karnak again. To my surprise, I discovered that, though pointedly poignant, the novel is consistent with Mahfouz's early works such as Al-Las wal Kalab (The Thief and the Dogs); Al-Saman wal Khareef (The Quail and the Autumn); Miramar (the name of a boarding house); Tharthara Fouq Al-Nil (Small Talk on the Nile); and Al-Hob taht Al-Matar (Love in the Rain). They all expose the feelings of malaise and disillusionment in Egypt due to what was seen as intellectual decay and irregularities in the years that followed the 1952 Revolution. Defending his oppressive methods, Khaled Safwan, the bestial chief of secret police in Mahfouz's Al-Karnak, tells one of his victims: “We protect the Revolution from its foes. We represent an omnipresent power that rewards the friend and severely punishes the traitor." With Egypt on the threshold of a new era, brimful with aspirations as well as uncertainties, I think that Al-Karnak, with all its nuances, is as relevant and prognostic now as it was when it first appeared in 1975.
