Naguib Mahfouz would have been 100 years old last Sunday (he died in 2006 aged 94). Mahfouz was the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was renowned for describing, in the words of the New York Times’ obituary, ‘the scent, colour and texture of life in the streets of his native Cairo’. Those qualities were particularly apparent in his best known work, The Cairo Trilogy — a historical trio spanning the two world wars, published in the mid ‘50s during Colonel Nasser’s rise. The trilogy is a native counterpoint to Lawrence Durrell’s Levantine Alexandria Quartet. The novels resound with cosmopolitanism, cultural observation and an immediate sense of place; Newsweek was so enamoured it compared Mahfouz’s Cairo to Dickens’ London.
You wonder what Mahfouz would have made of Cairo at this present moment of drama and crisis in Egypt. Mahfouz’s work indicates where his thoughts certainly would have lain. He agreed with the neo-conservatives that the Second Iraq War would inspire revolution across the region, but worried of that change might bring. In 2004, he told the quasi-official al-Ahram newspaper that he had a ‘terrible vision of a reign a chaos’.
Mahfouz was a long and outspoken critic of Islamic fundamentalism and was persecuted for his liberalism. The Cairo Trilogy, for instance, met with censure for describing social progress and existentialism in a largely secular context. And his 1959 novel The Children of Gebelawi presented an allegory against literal and regressive interpretations of religion in favour of rationalism and modernity. He received death threats in consequence, and his books were widely banned across the Arab World. Later in life, he defended Salman Rushdie, which renewed hostility towards him and his work. Indeed, in 1994, Mahfouz was stabbed by young Islamists outside his house in Cairo.
The ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood and other reactionary groups has placed Mahfouz’s legacy at the centre of debate about Egypt’s democratic future. Abdel-Monem al-Sharat — a spokesman for Salafist party Al-Nour, placed second in Egypt’s recent election — has condemned Mahfouz’s books as “prostitution”, which prompted Mohamed ElBaradei, a liberal presidential candidate, to ask if Egypt is ‘still discussing whether democracy is against sharia.’
Egypt’s interim government is determined to preserve Mahfouz’s memory: 30 days of events are currently underway in his honour. Culture Minister, Shaker Abdel Hamid, told independent newspaper Almasry Alyoum that the celebrations are ‘the best response to those attempting to tarnish this genius’. The festivities have not been harassed so far; but, with the Salafists in such ebullient mood, one wouldn’t bet against confrontation.
Mahfouz’s writing is also being resucitated in the West, an undoubted result of interest in the Arab Spring. The American University in Cairo is publishing a limited edition of the complete collection of his novels, short-stores, non-fiction and journalism. This is the first time that the whole body of his work will be available in English.
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