On being a journalist in English

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The Golden Rules of British Journalism:

1-If you can’t buy it, it’s not worth writing about

2-So we know the topic? Now let’s get five of them

3-Always remember the reader is a lazy, dyslexic half wit

The Golden Rule of American journalism:

If you give us a draft by Monday, then maybe we can have something to work with by the end of the week. Oh, it’s been three weeks already? Right, don’t get discouraged. See if we manage to truck through this one… What do you mean the piece isn’t actually improving! Once you’ve reworked the thirtieth draft five or six times, then maybe we can start working on the article.

Being Faten Hamama

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I saw Omar Sharif last weekend. Well, I saw a picture of him. But it made him so present I thought I really did see him. Immediately, the images began to foxtrot through my head: Doctor Zhivago, Sharif’s Ali to Peter O’Toole’s TE Lawrence, mustachioed International Star (as the Egyptian media likes to call him), bearded French TV host, bridge champion, exotic heartthrob but most importantly of all, icon of the marriage, in the course of the 20th century, between the Arab world and the West.

It was a recent picture, part of a full-page ad at the front of Emirates Business 24/7: gracing a new resort development, he stands to one side with manicured green in the background, formally dressed, silver haired and bearded. But his charismatic smile has not changed one bit since he starred in Youssef Chahine’s black-and-white films as a clean-shaven young man, both slimmer and more casual, with a conspicuous “beauty mark” to the right of his nose.

Aside from the momentary nostalgia Sharif’s face always evokes – a nostalgia for 1950s Egyptian cinema and the artistically vibrant, multicultural Egypt it stands for – which, on Abu Dhabi’s Airport Road, is prone to turning into a far cruder nostalgia for every old Egypt, cosmopolitan or not, I would not have given that eminently multinational face so much as another wink.

But the reason I spent all afternoon ruminating on Omar Sharif was the coincidence of seeing him on this particular weekend. It was the second day of the Art for Aid charity exhibition (held at the Cultural Foundation under the auspices of Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan Al Nahyan to raise funds for the Red Crescent of the UAE), and I was scheduled to attend a “live interview” with the exhibition’s star guest, the Lady of the Arab Screen, Faten Hamama. For those who don’t know, said Lady was Sharif’s wife from 1955 to 1974.

A live interview, as I was to discover, is practically a talk show episode, but more sober and less brief: the perfect opportunity to raise the big, complicated questions and expect to discuss them at length.

Maybe I thought of Chahine first because, before I could remember the fact, it had subconsciously dawned on me that Chahine’s 1954 Struggle in the Valley was the film in which Faten and Sharif famously, fabulously met.

After years of categorically refusing to be kissed on screen Faten gave in to what was, in context, a relative moral compromise, only to turn round and legitimise the act by marrying the man she had compromised herself with. Even Chahine, who had grown jealously attached to both leads, could not guess what was coming. By his own admission, the marriage was so abrupt and devastating it drove him to (probably half-hearted) suicide. I actually remembered the couple more clearly in River of Love, the 1960 Anna Karenina adaptation directed by Faten’s first husband Ezzeddin Zulfuqar, from whom she had separated while Struggle in the Valley was being filmed.

A stately tragedy full of palatial ballrooms and sumptuous trains: the controversial message of River of Love – that a woman will be unfaithful if she is unhappily married – sets the tone for much of Faten’s work. While Sharif was fast relocating to Hollywood and Chahine, more gradually, to Cannes, she consolidated her local career through roles that spoke to the female predicament: a peasant girl who gets pregnant out of wedlock; another who is the victim of an honour killing; a woman of good family unable to divorce the abusive husband who has marred her life; an otherwise happy wife whose marriage suffers from an insufferably meddlesome mother-in-law; a young woman who proves herself in the legal profession against all odds.

The Lady had always managed to safeguard her reputation while mixing in decadent circles, but the mere fact of her doing so pointed to Egypt’s capacity, all through the 1950s and 1960s, for cosmopolitanism. It seems telling that her divorce from Sharif – the very epitome of such decadence – took place within three years of Anwar Sadat, the self-avowed “Believer President”, coming to power in late 1970.

True, Sadat freed political prisoners as well as the economy, making sensibly pragmatic peace with Israel rather than subjecting his people to yet another war. But in being terrified of “the communists” he not only gradually refilled the prisons but also set off wave after wave of religious fundamentalism; fundamentalists, not communists, would eventually assassinate him.

In making money, not worldliness, the standard of chic, Sadat’s reign ushered in an era of relative insularity that continues to this day; and Faten was in a much better position than either Sharif or Chahine to accommodate the new mores without giving up too many of her principles.

By 4.30pm the space set out for the live interview on the first floor of the Foundation had been quietly filled. Faten’s Emirati hostess was already bringing up topics like whether women should dress to impress their men or for themselves, and whether khul’ – the most recent development in the personal status rights of Muslim women in Egypt – was necessarily a good thing.

Being in large part a modern, televised variation on the traditional Emirati unisex gathering, this was an awkward place for a man. A feast of hors d’oeuvres flanked the lush armchairs that stretched from the Lady’s seat at one end of the space to a screen silently playing footage from her 97-strong filmography at the other. The only males allowed in were journalists and organisers; and a tacit determination to assert girl power pervaded the proceedings.

An interesting way for feminism to find expression in middle-class and segregated settings, this: what it served to demonstrate was just how insular and conservative Arabs have become since Struggle in the Valley. Egged on by no less than a hundred Arab women Faten held forth on a range of subjects. But when talking about the social influence her work has exercised, the Arab woman she consistently invoked was the lowest common denominator – a disappointingly monocultural creature who, even as she complains of patriarchal abuses, does not even conceive of questioning the status quo.

Only some mention of Sharif, I decided, could counter such traditionalism.

So when it was finally my turn to race through a question or two, microphone in hand, I plucked up the courage to mention an ad I had seen on the front page of Emirates Business 24/7. “What,” I began to say, “could the coincidence of Omar Sharif –” when I was abruptly cut short.

Not by Faten, mind you: her face had not lost its composure and, while she did not object to the hostess reminding me of the provision against “personal questions”, it was not clear whether she wanted to respond to the question or not. Before I could push my luck, however, I had already lost her.

The women around Faten were suddenly tut-tutting and shaking their heads; and I could not help thinking that, like so many Arabs now, they were all paragons of an increasinly hermetic culture. A culture which, forgetting that it actually produced them, can only tolerate Omar Sharif and Youssef Chahine as the eccentric remnants of a time or a place sufficiently removed not to be threatening.

Faten had looked imposing at the centre, as fresh, sharp and appealing as she was 20 or 40 years ago. But it was the face of Omar Sharif – icon of the marriage not between himself and Faten Hamama, but between the Arab world and the West – that would stay with me; that I missed.

The National, May 9, 2008

Tractatus Franco-Arabicus

Reading Sonallah Ibrahim’s last two books, Youssef Rakha suggests an early Wittgenstein-style formulation of the kind of literary problem Bonaparte’s Campaign to Egypt might present
1. An Arab novel can be written about Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian Campaign (1798-1801).
1.1. At first sight, this is perfectly self-evident: a novel in Arabic (or by an Arab writer) can be written about anything at all. But an Egyptian novelist writing about the Egyptian Campaign is, by definition, responding to a particular colonial legacy from the position of the colonised.
1.1.1. Bonaparte’s failed bid to take Egypt and Syria was intended to safeguard French trade in the Middle East and obstruct the British route to India. What it achieved was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the 22-volume Description de l’Egypte, as well as bringing the first print press into the country.
1.2. An Arab novel about the Egyptian Campaign is, by definition, a response to both the left-wing idea that the campaign abused Egyptians and the right-wing idea that it propelled Egypt, a nominally Ottoman province ruled by feudal Mamelukes, into the modern age.
1.2.1. It was in the wake of the Campaign, and at least partly as a result of it, that the Ottoman general Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849) founded the modern state of Egypt and Greater Syria, establishing not only a precedent for non-European modernity but also the basis of an Arab commonwealth in the Middle East, one whose energy and foresight initially made it a stronger world power than the Ottoman empire.
1.3. A novelist who has chosen to write about the Campaign will probably have political as well as literary motives.
1.3.1. Whether he agrees with him or not, it is likely that he will seek historical counsel with Abdel-Rahman Al-Jabarti (1753-1825), whose canonical chronicle, Aja’ib Al-Aathar fil-Tarajim wal Akhbaar (better known in English as Jabarti’s History of Egypt), remains the principal Arabic reference on the topic.
1.4. Already, these conditions moderate the notion of a novel considerably.
1.4.1. However else defined, a novel should remain fictitious, it should present individual characters in the process of change; it should make no concessions to a predetermined view of the forces affecting their lives.
1.4.2. The Arab novel as exemplified by its celebrated practitioner, Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), has seldom had a political agenda. Even when it is intended as a statement on a historical period (Al-Karnak, 1974; The Thief and the Dogs, 1961), even when it is generically historical (Rhadopes of Nubia, 1943; The Struggle of Thebes, 1944), Mahfouz’s novel never presents history as a debate in which the writer might take sides (however representative or typical of that writer’s national identity the side he takes).
1.4.3. In this respect, Mahfouz follows in the footsteps of many 19th-century Russian and (ironically in the context of this tractatus) French masters of the novel.
1.4.4. To a greater or a lesser degree, younger (so called Generation of the Sixties) heirs of Mahfouz like Sonallah Ibrahim (b. 1937) were too morally or intellectually bound by historical grand narratives and political positions to practise novel writing with the same degree of political detachment.
1.4.5. Ideas of and about history affected these writers’ work to varying degrees, transporting much weight from the individual to the collective and from the shifting consciousness of a character in history to the fixed consciousness of the writer as a possible agent of historical change.
1.5. These ideas underpin what modification of the novel has taken place since Mahfouz. Apart from the more universal registers of Marxism, they have tended to converge on the image of an abused nation shedding the tethers of colonialism. Novelists like Ibrahim were, to use a word that did not yet exist when the Generation of the Sixties emerged on the scene, postcolonial.
1.5.1. In contemporary Arabic literature, “the Generation of the Sixties” remains an amorphous term, but with Ibrahim, at least, it is safe to define its significance in terms of a response to (the failure of) Arab nationalism, the earliest reflection in the language on what independence from British rule in 1956 and the emergence of a populist military dictatorship could mean for ordinary Egyptians.
1.6. Ibrahim’s standpoint will automatically favour the idea that the Campaign abused the people over the idea that it facilitated the emergence of Muhammad Ali’s commonwealth.
1.6.1. Its socialist dimension prevents him from sympathising any of the relevant historical parties – Ottomans, Mamelukes, French, British – since none of them can be identified with the people.
1.6.2. Its nationalist dimension precludes a positive view of the cultural intermingling and ethnic multiplicity those three years made possible even as he depicts them, since it prioritises the political significance of the event in them-and-us terms (the “us” in question being an undifferentiated and ultimately mute majority).
2. An Arab novel about the Egyptian Campaign is likely to be written from a Generation of the Sixties standpoint.
2.1. This is because only a “postcolonial novelist” like Sonallah Ibrahim is likely to write such a novel.
2.1.2. A writer who is interested in neither the position of the colonised in general nor the French colonial legacy in particular – or one who is interested in these topics in a less prescribed way – cannot write such a novel without undermining basic precepts of Arab nationalism (in however sophisticated or watered-down a form these precepts may now be expressed) and in so doing he risks being called a traitor.
2.1.3. Such a writer is unlikely to find the subject of the Egyptian Campaign immediately appealing or directly relevant to the process of pronouncing fictitiously on contemporary Arab life anyway.
2.2. However disinterested in Jabarti per se, Ibrahim will peruse Aja’ib Al-Aathar to corroborate his standpoint. His novel Al-Amamah wal-Qubba’ah (The Turban and the Hat, Dar Al-Mustaqbal,2008) takes the form of a newly discovered manuscript – the secret diary of a fictional 18-year-old student/scribe of Jabarti’s who lives with the historian and works at one of the Campaign’s “scientific” centres in Cairo.
2.2.1. Somewhat too conveniently for comfort, and often sounding a far more modern note than would be expected of a person from Jabarti’s era, this unnamed chronicler has an affair with one of Napoleon’s courtesans, comes in close contact with the Coptic collaborators seeking independence from the Ottoman-Mameluke stronghold, and befriends the Syrian student Suleiman al Halabi – the assassin of Napoleon’s successor in Egypt, General Kléber – who will eventually be impaled on a stake.
2.2.2. Though he achieves a prose very like the 19th-century historian’s – creating a contemporary correlative of the relevant parts of the chronicle – Ibrahim reads Jabarti’s life and work with an agenda.
2.2.3. Jabarti, rather than being a source of inspiration as such, acts to bolster up a predetermined grand narrative in which the Ottomans (including Muhammad Ali) were holding back the people, and the French through a mixture of brute force and immoral guile exploited and abused them.
2.2.3. Jabarti himself becomes party to all manner of political scheming, hiding and replacing versions and/or parts of his own chronicle when he realises the Ottomans will replace the French as the Mamelukes’ conquerors of the day. (This is the moment directly preceding Muhammad Ali’s arrival as part of the Ottoman army.)
2.3. From a historical standpoint, as a student of Jabarti, it seems easy to contest this view of the genesis of the modern Arab nation. Yet it is equally easy to understand it – even, to some extent, sympathise with it – once Ibrahim’s standpoint is taken into account.
2.4. To demand that Ibrahim should have a different or less predetermined standpoint is to demand that he should not write about the Egyptian Campaign.
2.4.1. To demand that Ibrahim should have a different standpoint and still write about the Egyptian Campaign is to demand that Arab intellectual consciousness since the mid-1950s should change radically (that it should shed all vestiges of nationalism, for example).
2.5. Such demands are historically impossible.
3. An Arab novel about the Egyptian Campaign can only say so much.
3.1. This becomes especially clear in Al-Qaanoun Al-Faransi (The French Law, Dar Al-Mustaqbal, 2009), a kind of sequel to Ibrahim’s novel Amrikanli (Dar Al-Mustaqbal, 2003) in which the Cairo University historian protagonist of the latter, Dr Shukri, travels to France to participate in a conference on the Egyptian Campaign with a newly discovered manuscript by an apprentice of Jabarti’s.
3.1.2. That manuscript is The Turban and the Hat.
3.2. That an Arab novel about the Campaign can only say so much becomes clear in The French Law in a number of different ways.
3.2.1. One of these is that, without the pretence of being an 18th-century history student who happens to be sleeping with a lover of Bonaparte’s, Ibrahim’s political observations are far more resonant.
3.2.2. “The reason for all the problems we suffer in the Arab world,” Dr Shukri tells his colleagues during a meal at one point in the course of his trip, “is that we did not manage to establish an advanced national industry. At the beginning the Ottomans divested us of the kind of human and material resources that go into the accumulation necessary for the move into the age of the machine, and after them came the French and the English. Every attempt we made, the West immediately aborted.”
3.2.3. It is beyond the scope of the tractatus to advance an argument against this line of thinking. Such an argument is not only possible but necessary.
3.2.4. If they are neither Mamelukes nor Ottomans nor quasi-Ottoman proteges of the West, who are the “we” Dr Shukri refers to? Where would that advanced national industry come from, if not through the very colonies he sets out to critique? What might modern Arab consciousness be identified with beyond the peasants who had no role to play in the unfolding of history except through an originally Ottoman army?
3.3. Here as in Amrikanli, Dr Shukri stands in stark contrast to both his morally (for which read politically) compromised Arab colleagues and the more or less racist Westerners he comes in contact with.
3.4. As in The Turban and the Hat, from the aesthetic if not the intellectual point of view, the clash between east and west is most poignantly portrayed in an interracial amorous or erotic encounter.
3.4.1. Dr Shukri’s encounter with Celine, who does community work with the children of immigrants, is a strong expression of that clash. The two characters’ growing closeness is melodramatically and somewhat unconvincingly cut short when on Dr Shukri’s last night in France Celine, who has by then confessed to having breast cancer, gets drunk, becomes increasingly aggressive, and gives in to a seemingly irrational rage directed at Dr Shukri.
3.4.2. Celine not only dismisses Dr Shukri’s statements on postcolonial politics as so much rubbish, she also confesses to hating the children of immigrants with whom she works. (This seems a somewhat crass way of dismissing Western pretensions to equality and the desire to benefit humanity at large, regardless of race or creed, even though one might understand the urge to dismiss such pretensions).
3.5. The Turban and the Hat ends with the image of Dr Shukri waking up at 5 am to prepare for his return to the homeland – only to find that copy of the conference programme on which he had written his address for Celine to have on the floor outside the door to his room.
3.5.1. “I picked it up to find a line in pencil beneath my address… ‘My response is precisely that you are a naive, backward human being.’ I put the programme in my handbag and proceeded to the lift with heavy steps.”
4. An Arab novel about the Egyptian Campaign cannot go beyond that image.

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Sartre, my father and me

When my father’s body gave in at the age of 67, there was no cause of death as such. His health was undoubtedly poorly, he was addicted to a range of pharmaceuticals — but none of the vital organs had stopped functioning. Strangely, my mother and I saw it coming: there were tears on the day, long before we could have known it was happening. And when it did happen, the relief of no longer having to care for a prostrate depressive seemed to justify it. In the next few months there was oblivion. I had felt alienated from his dead body, I saw it wrapped in white cloth, in public, and I thought I was over the fact.

Then, suddenly, a sharp, steely grief was boring into me. Within weeks it had disoriented me so profoundly I could no longer recognise myself. Principally it expressed itself through fear, a fear so primal it rendered the greatest fears of my life ridiculous; and the worst part of it was that it had no object. It didn’t belong in space or time. Only a solitary subject existed, to suffer it. And that subject wasn’t a self I could relate to. For the first time I felt I was getting Jean-Paul Sartre’s point about the self being separate from consciousness. I had read enough to be familiar with the concept, but I hadn’t managed to bring it onto any experiential plane. Then, out of nowhere, everything was making sense: the notion of freedom as an unbearable burden of responsibility, the conflict between imagination and situation in life, and the way in which this could be made to fit in a radical ideological framework.

Much like Baba’s death, it turned out, consciousness had no cause; it was just there, inescapable, a force of nature with its own rules. Where your self is something you might want to define, consciousness is nothing at all. Rather it’s a grief, a fear, capable of transforming you at will, negating you. But besides the self-consciousness dilemma, there was the look Baba gave me a few hours before he died: I was on my way out, I chose not to be with him though I could intuit he would die; and there was something humiliating about this. For the rest of my life I would have to accept being a person who preferred going out to sitting by his father’s deathbed. It was a brief, vacant look — you could argue it meant nothing — but it taught how hell really could be someone else’s eyes.

It would take me years to be able to remember my father without experiencing the abysmal horror of those days, but it seemed natural that I should seek out his own thoughts about Sartre eventually. And not only because it was his death that made existentialism real: however marginal and uncommitted, he remained a member of the generation of so-called intellectuals who engaged with both Marxism and French existentialism. People like Ibrahim Fathi and Yehya El-Taher Abdalla were once his friends, but he only expressed admiration for Saad Zaghloul and Mustafa El-Nahhas (both Pashas); he referred not to 1952 but 1919 as the glorious moment at which Egyptians made a free historical choice. It seemed that, through some warped ideological devolution, he had become a latter-day Wafdi — a “liberal wanker” of the homegrown variety, someone who saw the way out in a small, elitist coterie who believed in fairness, charity and empirical common sense. In 1989 he obsessed about the collapse of the Soviet Union, but never in a plaintive way; more than once he called Gorbachev courageous and commended the principles of perestroika.

I have not been able to locate Abdel-Rahman Badawi’s translation of Being and Nothingness, though I seem to recall him labouring over it. Maybe I’ve invented this memory: in my lifetime he seldom read anything involved, beyond the law books of his profession and some early 20th-century history. Occasionally he would pick up an old favourite like Nikos Kzanzakis’s Freedom and Death and spend months reading and rereading it.

In contrast to his revolutionary adolescence — he himself never recounted it to me — by the time I was old enough to discuss things, he could only adopt a reactionary stance. Very occasionally, he spoke about communist activity in the 1950s. Once, in extremely simple terms, he described how Nasser had managed to either crush or co-opt all those who could have championed “the cause”. It would be easy to link his disillusion to the failure of the July Revolution (for many members of the generation in question, the 1967 War was the moment it all came down), except that he never supported it in the first place. He was always vitriolic about Nasser, emphasising the failures of what he saw as a coup d’etat, and lamenting the way in which the regime turned Egypt into a police state, a mega-community of informers, a madhouse of personal ambition and political suicide. For him Nasser was personally accountable for eliminating all hope for democracy or progress, let alone social transformation. Which hope, in the 1920s, he firmly believed there had been grounds for husbanding. In his all but unique opinion, I think, the Sadat regime, which leftists decry as counterrevolutionary, was but a logical result of the reign of Nasser.

Of the Marxism some things did persist. And I don’t mean the lingo he sometimes sarcastically reiterated or the vast knowledge he must have had, judging by his library, most of which consists of cheap “popular edition” paperbacks. Marxism manifested most prominently in his daily life: as someone who never drove, he refused to acknowledge the advantages of the taxi over the public bus, even when he started coming home with bumps and bruises from attempts to get on and off insanely chaotic, overcrowded vehicles. He was always class-conscious — something that paradoxically emerged in his rejection of the social implications of class: he would treat working-class people as equals; he never managed to cut his subordinates’ salaries or otherwise exercise administrative authority at work; and, in spite of despising his own background — ” petty bourgeoisie”, he always stressed — he tended to share his money with hard-up relations and friends. I think he would have enjoyed being single and poor — a rare virtue indeed for an Arab Marxist. He owned very few things of his own and seldom bought clothes. Perhaps sympathy with the Wafd party was his way of reconciling his personality with the fact that, after much resistance, he had conceded the role of middle-class husband and father, he owned electric appliances and sent his son to expensive educational institutions; he let his wife accumulate savings.

But at the level of the intellect none of this counted. What remained of Marxism in the way of mental activity had, rather, to do with the existentialist principles I came to discover the hard way. I say principles, not practises. For in the end my father’s attachment to Sartre’s notions of freedom and consciousness remained, tragically, a matter of wavering conviction and occasional verbal commentary, not one of personal expression.

His admiration for free love as it manifested in Sartre’s relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, for example, would never go beyond just that, an admiration — something he could only express in conversation, as it were on the margins of life, and towards which, insofar as it belonged to him at all, he could only feel frustration. The same sense of ambivalence permeated his feelings about religion, and even, perhaps, Marx as prophet. To fend off the no doubt stifling awareness of being petty bourgeois, he would place himself in the category of muthaqqafeen (intelligentsia), a group apart who were agents of the transformation towards communist society. He would pronounce the word in a wavering tone, with a mixture of gravity and comic self-awareness; it was as if he realised that, though it meant a lot to him, in the grander scheme of things it meant nothing. And so, too, with his response to my mother’s religiosity, which at the surface level he neither rejected nor endorsed. He was capable of humouring her and others about religion and God — hypocritically, I felt — but at times it seemed he was just as capable of embracing these concepts. His belief in chance as the overriding rule of being in the world, his sense of reality as a place shaped wholly by the radical consciousness of those who chose to change it: all of this turns out, the more I think about it, to be the frail gesture of an isolated and powerless intellect.

Contrary to his political discourse, which centred, with the exception of polemics directed at Nasser, on the evolution of modern Egypt and the beauty of 1919, he made frequent references to Sartre’s contribution. He quoted him, recounted episodes of his novels and plays, remembered his famous visit to Egypt in 1967. With the dispassionate objectivity of an emotionally involved observer, he stated Sartre’s position on Israel. Memorably, he would sometimes mention the way in which a Sartre character fatally injured at war asks the nurse, minutes before he dies, to touch him. Only at the moment of death, Sartre wrote, could imagination (consciousness, being-for-itself) be free of the constraints of situation (self, being-in-itself). And, somewhat in the same vein, at the hospital where they failed to identify a terminal illness (when he was released, none of the doctors thought he would die), Baba developed a desire for the blonde nurse who attended to his needs.

I’ve had to remove my mother’s mattress to dig out the well-kept paperbacks he left behind; the flat was too small to accommodate all the books he owned, and in the wake of his death especially, my mother justifiably resorted to hiding them. Some half of the total number have the word “Sartre”, in Arabic letters, on the cover: The Virtuous Whore, Marxism and Revolution, No Exit, The Flies, What is Literature, The New Colonialism, Critique of Dialectical Mind… Lying in a large cardboard box at the other end of the house, in English, are my own Nausea and The Wall. As I walk from one room to the other, I can’t help noting a kind of inter-generational continuity. But at the same time — it suddenly occurs to me — my interest in French existentialism has nothing to do with his; it is a mere coincidence, a historical accident, that we happen to have this particular thing in common. At a deeper level, I’d like to think, what we do have in common is a tormented consciousness of being in the world, subject to dying suddenly, without a cause. I might have chosen to stay by his deathbed that fateful evening in 2000. And yet, I reassure myself, he would still have died alone.

M for Manar

Image by Ben Piven via Flickr

Sunday, June 15, 2008
Youssef Rakha
Al Manar has dragged itself into the future and away from the 1950s sets.

It seems the graphics people at al Manar TV are brushing up their act. NileSat’s most resolutely retro news channel, whose sets used to look like they were out of the 1950s, is suddenly using slick digital transitions to advertise its programmes. It is pacing broadcasts much faster, challenging the competition with colourful plaques, distinctive logos and the full gamut of special effects. The anchors are adopting Jazeera-like voices and the stringers, like al Jazeera’s, report breathlessly from the thick.
It is also screening historical soap operas and serial documentaries on topics like the struggle of the Palestinians, the struggle against colonialism and the struggle to maintain national identity. Many of these are imported from Syria, some are dubbed from Farsi, but all seek to lure the global Arabic-speaking viewer into that world of eternal truth, ruthless justice and ever so punctilious philanthropy dreamt up by Hizbollah.
Contrary to the views of American neoconservatives, Hizbollah is not in fact a bunch of Jew-hating terrorists with Nazi or Qa’eda aspirations (for neoconservatives, either comparison will do). Their televisual mouthpiece need not be automatically identified with a venom-spitting monster, therefore.

Al Manar does provide a mouthpiece for justified Arab and Muslim discontent. Because it focuses on otherwise voiceless victims of Israel (the people of southern Lebanon, the Palestinians, some Syrians) and speaks to all those who feel bad about people being systematically humiliated, denied homes in which to live or simply finished off, because it gives so much airtime to everyday Hizbollah supporters phoning in to exchange emotional moments with representatives of the movement and its political and doctrinal allies, al Manar has a kind of credibility. Combined with the tendency to look and sound like a news channel from an Iron Curtain dictatorship during the Cold War, this used to give it a certain reason-defying appeal.
Then again, al Manar does promote a dodgy piece of theologising in Khomeini’s doctrine of velayat-e faqih, by which the Shia cleric gets to act as “guardian” of the regime, and which even the most pious Shia Iranians believe has proven by far less Islamic, benevolent or just than the pre-1979 Shah’s regime.

Aside from its shameless advocation of theocracy, what is bad about al Manar, and what the graphic revolution has not managed to improve, is its obsessive devotion to ideology. Unlike subtler Lebanese channels with a political agenda – LBC or Future, for example – al Manar has been a more or less avowed propaganda machine since its inception in 1991 (the channel has been transmitting via satellite since 2000). And the new look is clearly trying to build up its image to make it look less like one.
It seems worrying therefore that, however much you may sympathise with Hizbollah, al Manar’s modus operandi is liable to turn you into a Shia-hating, anti-populist Bushophile whatever else you claim to be.

Tickers, almanar.com and archives on DVD have improved neither overblown rhetoric nor partisan orientation: America is an incarnation of the selfsame Satan who first tempted Adam in Paradise; velayat-e faqih is the only form of leadership that could bring order to the chaos of Arab-Muslim politics, retrieving the sovereignty said Satan has appropriated; Iran is ready to take over the entire Muslim world and, without so much as a harsh word or a drop of blood, challenge American hegemony and rebuild the glories of Islam.
Grown up people with respectable beards actually sit down to say these things, with perfectly straight faces, and anchors nod enthusiastically as if to say, “Dah!” Talk show hosts support their guests’ outrageous views – that Khomeini worked just like a prophet of Allah, that he actually was a prophet of Allah – before the guest has expressed them: “So, your samaha the sheikh, how would you comment on Imam Ruhollah’s approach to revolution, which was identical to that of the Prophet Mohammad peace be upon him?” “Well, it was identical…” People phone in to hysterically decry the death of their loved ones under Israeli or Future Movement fire or pronounce Hassan Nassrallah the Redeemer. And atrocities committed against Arabs and Muslims are flaunted to classical verses written in the style of Shia lamentations and set to heart-rending music.
By invoking certain standards of objectivity, the newly introduced, smooth-operating methods only dramatise the misinformation being presented. Those secular Arabs clinging onto the ever more elusive life-raft of critical thinking may very well cheer the resistance Hizbollah has come to embody. But they will still have serious trouble watching al Manar.
© Copyright of Abu Dhabi Media Company.

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Cry my beloved poetry

Cover of Lynch (One)

Spring brought poetry from the inaugural round of the Dubai International Poetry Festival (4-10 March) to this week’s issue of Cairo’s most popular literary publication, Akhbar Al Adab, which dedicated its Bustan (Orchard) department to poetry criticism and poets’ testimonies: Youssef Rakha considers a maligned genre

In a video interview about Lost Highway, the American director David Lynch describes his ideal film as an abstract composition, a sort of audiovisual symphony. Then again, Lynch says that a film seldom works for the viewer without the benefit of a compelling narrative. In his own work he would rather do away with the narrative side of film-making, he says, but he endeavours to have enough story-line to keep people watching.
Lynch suggests there is a chasm between imagery and storytelling – which seems particularly relevant to contemporary Arabic writing in Egypt. Since the establishment critic Gabir Asfour made his millennial declaration that we are living in “the Age of the Novel” (zaman arruwayah), the idea of a contest between poets and novelists in which the latter are beating the former has sparked much ludicrous debate.
No reliable statistics have established that more novels are being sold now than a decade or two ago, or more novels than “diwans” of poems. But this is the prevailing belief; and the response of poets has ranged from publishing novels to holding a personal grudge against Asfour.
***
At the JW Marriott, Kuwait, attendance of the annual Alarabi Magazine Symposium (held on 2-4 March to mark the Kuwaiti institution’s 51st anniversary) was embarrassingly low until the final session – devoted to poetry. Prodded perhaps by embarrassment, perhaps by the presence at the podium of the south Lebanon poet Mohammad Ali Shamseddin – together with the Kuwaiti poets Saadiyah Mifrih and Salah Dabshah – previously m.i.a. invitees now nearly filled the hall.
Ironically it was Asfour of all people who replaced the co-ordinator of the session, the poet and patron of literature Abdulaziz Al-Babbatin, who could not make it to the seminar. Asfour was joined at the podium by another establishment critic, Salah Fadl – speaking in his capacity as head of the jury of the Abu Dhabi-based television programme Amir Ashshu’ara’ (Prince of Poets).
Amir Al-Shu’ara’ is the standard-Arabic edition of the pan-Arab Nabati (or Bedouin Colloquial) verse competition programme Sha’ir Al-Milyon (Millions’ Poet) – phenomenally popular in the Gulf – in which millions are awarded to the best poems written in free verse (ashshi’r alhorr, also known as shi’r attaf’ilah). Free verse breaks up and intermingles different metric schemes from ‘Aroud Al-Khalil (the compendium of metrical rules put together by Ibn Ahmad Al-Farahidi in the eighth century), partly or wholly doing away with rhyme. The taf’ilah – as this form’s rhythmic unit came to be called – may have emerged as early as the 1930s, but it did not achieve recognition until the 1960s.
Though some Sixties Generation poets wrote prose (Mohammad Al-Maghout and Sargon Boulos), the last generation of household-name poets (Mahmoud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani) wrote free verse. After its heyday towards the end of the 1960s, free verse continued to appear, without making much of an impact, until the emergence in the 1990s of a new kind of prose poem showed up its anachronism more clearly than ever before.
***
Fadl did not cite the pre-eminance of the prose poem as a reason to reject the Age of the Novel, but he did point out that rejecting it is not unjustified. The prose poem remains the one original and definable form to have cohered and stood out since the 1990s, when said Age is supposed to have dawned. The novel, on the other hand, has fluctuated considerably, defined and redefined itself, and dithered at many crossroads without moving very far in any direction.
Whatever you think about this, ferocious exchanges will probably continue to take place. What is missing is a responsible discussion of what each genre actually constitutes.
The case for Arabic poetry in prose is resolved in practise; in recent memory hardly a single self-respecting talent has produced any verse. Yet it remains officially on the table, while “novel” – the youngest genre in the language, barely 100 years old, as opposed to the 1,400-year-old verse tradition – has become the catch-all term for almost any literary writing typeset in paragraphs rather than lines.
Memoir, autobiography, travel writing, sequence of short stories or essays, reportage, erotica, and of course extended poem: all are unthinkingly stamped NOVEL (by writers and publishers alike). In the absence of corrective classification, this makes Asfour’s epochal declaration redundant.
With the gradual emergence of popular non-fiction books like Khalid Al-Khamisi’s Taxi, classification is slowly improving. But the prose poem is still at best ignored. At worst it is subjected to a notoriously retarded attack by the poet Ahmad Abdelmo’ti Higazi, a didactic figure whose authority rests less on either enduring significance or sales figures than short-lived critical acclaim in the 1960s and a career in government institutions since.
***
Had Fadl mentioned the prose poem by name, however, he would have underlined the fact that, in restricting its scope to free verse, Amir Al-Shu’ara’ is in effect ignoring the most interesting poetry being written in Arabic today. Even within the Gulf, where verse traditions are more alive and tastes more conservative than elsewhere, only prose poets (Ibrahim Al-Mulla and Khalid Al-Budour in the UAE, for example) have achieved pan-Arab recognition.
Instead, Fadl stressed the role of TV – and, implicitly, of course, cash – in spreading the word about the Arabs’ trademark legacy at a time of relative decline. He did not touch on the absurdity inherent in quantifying “the success of the poem” compared to another poem. He did not deal with the implications of evaluating poetry through a system of points awarded by s.m.s., among other means. And he did not suggest that there may be better ways to financially serve poetry (which there are: the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which funds both programmes, still does not have a single publishing house to its name). Only Shamseddin, the most cogent speaker by far, made any reference to the difference between poetry and verse.

Perhaps inevitably, in the presence of Asfour, the proceedings centred on poetry during the Age of the Novel – whether or not, and how (if not through television) poetry can “extend” into an Age other than its own. But the to-and-fro between Fadl and Asfour failed to show how, while the prose poem is attacked or ignored, the novel which is not a novel acts to obscure the meaning of narrative. On the one hand there is the perception that novels may be selling because they tell stories; on the other, the fact that, whether or not they are selling, the books called novels are by and large un-story-like.
***
Egypt has an emergent, as yet vaguely articulated magic realist movement. Its authors – Hamdi Abugolail, Ibrahim Farghali, Mustafa Zikri, and, more recently, Tarek Imam, among others – are more or less atypically un-poetic. But aside from the new fictional realms intimated – or, rather, promised – by their work, the novel per se has contributed little to Arabic literature since the 1990s. Its function has been to transport the achievements of the prose poem to a place where they are safe from being attacked for making a clean break with the ‘Aroud. Higazi suffered censure for his pre-modern stand.
But someone has yet to attack the novel for identity theft.
In retrospect, notwithstanding the Age, extensions across or within, many have come to see free verse as an involuntary stopgap. It was the means for a verse-dominated culture to ease itself away from the ancient drum beats of the desert and the twinkle-twinkle cadences of a love song by Om Kulthoum – past the 1960s countless affirmations of and arguments with the aptly named ‘amoud (pillar) of traditional verse – and into an image-driven, down-to-earth music all its own.
Like many facets of Arab modernity, it seems, the free verse revolution was half-hearted and timorous. It could not be effective until the liberation of language and emotion that it implied was carried to its logical conclusion. But when eventually, at last, it came time for people to realise their poetic modernity in full, they ended up going on stage to an all but empty auditorium. Still, they performed anyway.
***
By the 1990s, in occasional publications like Al-Kitabah Al-Ukhrah and Al-Garad, incandescent talents like Iman Mersal and Ahmad Yamani were reinventing language. They de-ideologised discourse, de-nationalised human concerns, and acknowledged their (post) modern identity in genuine rather than authentic registers.
Accepting bare-headed status, they no longer wore the fez of free verse, much less the turban of the ‘Aroud. But it was hard to prove that, in taking these off, they had not slipped on Ataturk’s self-hating hat behind Higazi’s back. What can only be described as ancestor worship came in the way of Nineties Generation poets being immediately recognised or celebrated.
So did the insecurity of taf’ilah gurus suddenly realising that their role had not been quite as “historical” as they had thought, and that their insurgent energy may in fact have been reactionary.
Anyway, by then talented Sixties Generation writers like Ibrahim Aslan and Mohammad Al-Bisati – precisely by debasing narrative – had contributed to the loss of what little readership existed when they emerged on the scene. Themselves arguably frustrated prose poets, they excelled at short stories but caught the germ of obsessive novel disorder.
Now that the readership seems to be regrouping (around them as much as younger so called novelists), the Nineties prose poem – the only true agent of change – is the farthest from being a beneficiary of the good fortune.

القائمة القصيرة لجائزة الرواية العربية

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الثلثاء 15 كانون الأول 2009

الجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية (البوكر العربية) 2010

الإعلان عن اللائحة القصيرة

www.arabicfiction.org

جمال ناجي، ربعي المدهون، ربيع جابر، عبده خال، محمد المنسي قنديل ومنصورة عز الدين هم الكتّاب الستة الذين اختيروا ضمن اللائحة القصيرة لـِ”الجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية” (البوكر العربية) لسنة 2010، وهي الامتياز الادبي المرموق الذي يهدف الى مكافأة التميّز في الكتابة الروائية العربية المعاصرة والى توسيع دائرة قرّاء الأدب العربي في العالم.

وقد أعلن رئيس لجنة التحكيم الكاتب طالب الرفاعي اسماء اللائحة القصيرة خلال مؤتمر صحافي انعقد في إطار معرض بيروت الدولي للكتاب في البيال، يوم الثلثاء 15 كانون الأول 2009.

اختيرت الأعمال الستة من اصل 115 عملاً تأهلت للمشاركة وهي للكتّاب الآتية أسماؤهم، مع جنسياتهم، وعناوين الروايات، وأسماء الناشرين: (بالترتيب الألفبائي):

العنوان	اسم الكاتب	الناشر	جنسية الكاتب
عندما تشيخ الذئاب	جمال ناجي	منشورات وزارة الثقافة	أردني
السيدة من تل أبيب	ربعي المدهون	المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر	فلسطيني
أميركا	ربيع جابر	المركز الثقافي العربي	لبناني
ترمي بشرر	عبده خال	منشورات الجمل	سعودي
يوم غائم في البر الغربي	محمد المنسي قنديل	دار الشروق	مصري
وراء الفردوس	منصورة عز الدين	دار العين للنشر	مصرية

وعلّق رئيس لجنة التحكيم طالب الرفاعي قائلاً: “جرى نقاش حرّ وموضوعي، وكان الهدف الأهم الوصول الى قائمة متوافق عليها من جانب جميع أعضاء لجنة التحكيم. هذه القائمة تمثّل رأي المحكّمين، مع الاحترام والتقدير لجميع الروايات المشاركة في هذه الدورة”.

وقد أذيعت اليوم أيضاً أسماء الأعضاء في لجنة التحكيم المرموقة، الذين ينتمون الى البلدان الآتية: الكويت وتونس وعُمان ومصر وفرنسا. وهم طالب الرفاعي، روائي وقاص كويتي؛ رجاء بن سلامة، أستاذة محاضرة في كليّة الآداب والفنون والإنسانيات في منوبة، من تونس؛ سيف الرحبي، شاعر وكاتب عُماني؛ شيرين أبو النجا، أستاذة أدب انكليزي ومقارن في جامعة القاهرة، من مصر؛ وفريدريك لاغرانج، باحث أكاديمي ومترجم ومدير قسم الدراسات العربية والعبرية في جامعة السوربون (باريس 4) من فرنسا.

تحتفل الجائزة الأدبية المهيبة هذه السنة بعامها الثالث، وتهدف إلى مكافأة الامتياز في الكتابة العربية الإبداعية المعاصرة، إلى جانب توفير أكبر عدد ممكن من القرّاء العالميين للأدب العربي الجيد. أُطلقت الجائزة في أبو ظبي في الإمارات العربية المتحدة، في نيسان 2007، بالتعاون مع جائزة البوكر البريطانية، وبدعم من مؤسسة الإمارات.

خلال المؤتمر الصحافي الذي عقد اليوم، قال جوناثان تايلور الذي يرئس مجلس الأمناء: “الجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية هي جائزة رائدة في عالم الأدب العربي. تأثيرها بات لا يقبل الجدال، مع اعتبار الفائزين بها وكتّاب اللائحة القصيرة من أهم الأقلام في الأدب العربي المعاصر. والكثر منهم وصلوا إلى العالم اليوم عبر ترجمة أعمالهم، وذلك بفضل الجائزة”.

أما رئيسة برنامج الثقافة والفنون في مؤسسة الامارات سلوى مقدادي، فأضافت: “مؤسسة الامارات فخورة برعايتها هذه الجائزة المتزايد تأثيرها في الحياة الثقافية العربية. ففي غضون ثلاث سنوات فقط، استطاع نفوذها الثقافي واستقلالية مجلس أمنائها ولجان تحكيمها على السواء، صيرورتها الحائزة الأدبية الأبرز والأهم في العالم العربي”.

تأهل للجائزة هذه السنة 115 كتاباً من 17 بلداً عربياً هي: مصر، سوريا، لبنان، الأردن، فلسطين، العراق، الإمارات العربية المتحدة، الكويت، المملكة العربية السعودية، اليمن، البحرين، عمان، المغرب، ليبيا، السودان، تونس، والجزائر. وكانت أعلنت اللائحة الطويلة من 16 عملاً في القاهرة خلال تشرين الثاني/ نوفمبر الفائت.

وعلّقت المديرة الإدارية للجائزة جمانة حداد قائلةً: “نحن فخورون بأن تساهم الجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية في زيادة الاهتمام بالأدب العربي المعاصر قراءةً وترجمة. لم تحظ أي جائزة أدبية عربية بهذا القدر من الانتباه والتأثير من قبل، وقد جاءت البوكر العربية لتلبيّ حاجة ثقافية ملحّة في حياتنا الأدبية”.

يحصل كل من المرشّحين الستة النهائيين على 10000 دولار، أما الرابح فيفوز بـ 50000 دولار إضافية. وينعم كتّابها بالقدرة على الوصول الى جمهور واسع من القرّاء على الصعيدين العربي والعالمي في آن واحد، وعلى تأمين عقود ترجمة لأعمالهم. الفائزان السابقان بالجائزة، بهاء طاهر عن “واحة الغروب”، ويوسف زيدان عن “عزازيل”، لم يُنشر عملاهما بالإنكليزية فحسب في بريطانيا، في داري “سبتر” و”أتلانتيك”، بل حصلا على عدد كبير من عقود الترجمة العالمية جرّاء الجائزة”.

يذكر أخيرا أن هوية الفائز بالجائزة النهائية سوف تعلن خلال حفل رسمي في ابو ظبي، مساء الثلثاء 2 آذار 2010، وهو اليوم الأول من “معرض أبو ظبي الدولي للكتاب”.

*

عندما تشيخ الذئاب، جمال ناجي

منشورات وزارة الثقافة، عمان، 2008

يختار الروائي الفلسطيني الأردني جمال ناجي تقنية تعدد الوجوه والأصوات، فينسحب الراوي العليم ليفسح المجال أمام شخصيات متعاقبة، تروي أحداثا ومشاهد تتكرر وتختلف وتتنامى من شخصية إلى أخرى. رواية تصور الهشاشة البشرية والتعالق المعقد بين الجنس والدين والسياسة، وتقدم لوحة حية عن عوالم الوعاظ والجمعيات الخيرية والساسة، وأسرار الارتقاء الاجتماعي من الحارات الفقيرة إلى مراكز السلطة والثراء في عمان. الشخصية الرئيسية في الرواية لا تتكلم وتبقى لغزا رغم انكشافها الجزئي: عزمي الوجيه. فهل هو الذئب الوحيد الذي لا يشيخ؟

السيدة من تل أبيب، ربعي المدهون

المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر، بيروت، 2009

يتناول الكاتب الفلسطيني ربعي المدهون في روايته قضية الصراع الفلسطيني/ العربي/ الاسرائيلي ويختار لحظة مشحونة بالهواجس والتوتر والريبة حدَّ الانفجار. البطلان هما وليد دهمان العائد من مغتربه الاوروبي بعد سنين طويلة لزيارة أهله في غزة عبر مطار بن غوريون في تل أبيب، والاسرائيلية دانا أهوفا التي تشاء المصادفات أن تجلس في المقعد المجاور لمقعده. هكذا يبدأ التماس بينهما، وما يشبه الحوار المتقطع الذي يأخذ القارئ الى أصقاع نائية في الذاكرة والتاريخ والذات البشرية. رواية تحاول مقاربة الحقيقة في تعقدها ولبسها وغموضها، ولا تركن الى أحكام ايديولوجية جاهزة.

أميركا، ربيع جابر

المركز الثقافي العربي، بيروت- الرباط، 2009

تستحضر رواية اللبناني ربيع جابر ملحمة هؤلاء الذين دفعهم الفقر وروح المغامرة الى ترك سوريا الكبرى في السنوات الأولى من القرن العشرين ليجربوا حظهم في أميركا الناشئة، حاملين “الكشة” عبر السهول والجبال، يندمجون تدريجيا في نسيجها الاجتماعي ويشاركون في حروبها. يركز السردعلى سيرة مارتا التي تقرر الذهاب وحدها إلى نيويورك من أجل العثور على زوجها بعدما انقطعت عنه الأخبار. تأتي الرواية تحيةً من الباقين إلى الذين رحلوا في أراضي المهجر، متخطين ما كانت ظروفهم تقدّره لهم من مصير، حتى يصنعوا هوياتهم الجديدة بأيديهم وعزيمتهم.

ترمي بشرر، عبده خال

دار الجمل، بغداد – بيروت، 2009

يأتي قص الكاتب السعودي عبده خال حاملا تكملة لعنوان الرواية: ترمي بشرر “كالقصر”. قصر بهيج هو جنة جحيمية، ترمي بشررها على جحيم الحارات البائسة في جدة، فيمتد الحكي جسرا بين عالم سيد القصر ومن تحولوا دمى بشرية وعبيداً، من اجتاحهم القصر وسلبهم بحرهم وقوارب نجاتهم. رواية ساخرة فاجعة تصور فظاعة تدمير البيئة وتدمير النفوس بالمتعة المطلقة بالسلطة والمتعة المطلقة بالثراء، وتقدم البوح الملتاع لمن أغوتهم أنوار القصر الفاحشة فاستسلموا إلى عبودية مختارة من النوع الحديث.

يوم غائم في البر الغربي، محمد المنسي قنديل

دار الشروق، القاهرة، 2009

يحيي الروائي المصري محمد المنسي قنديل فترة الاكتشافات الأثرية والنضال الوطني في مصر، ويضمنها ملحمة فتاة تهرب بها والدتها من زوجها المغتصب، وتودعها ديرا في أسيوط بعد أن تغير اسمها وتدق على ذراعها الصغيرة صليبا. ثم يتداخل مصير الفتاة وقد أضحت مترجمة، مع مسيرة شخصيات تاريخية مثل هوارد كارتر واللورد كرومر وعبد الرحمن الرفاعي. ويتداخل القص الشيق مع التوثيق الدقيق في وصف الأمكنة والأزمنة.

وراء الفردوس، منصورة عز الدين

دار العين للنشر، القاهرة، 2009

تتناول رواية الكاتبة المصرية منصورة عز الدين الطبقة البورجوازية في الريف، وذلك من خلال شخصية سلمى التي تعمل محررة في جريدة أدبية وتحاول أن تتخلص من ماض طويل محمّل ذكريات أليمة وصوراً سلبية عن الذات، مما شجعها على كتابة رواية خاصة بها، تسرد فيها تاريخ العائلة، تاريخ الحب، تاريخ الجسد، تاريخ الحراك الطبقي داخل القرية، تاريخ الجنون، تاريخ الكتابة: وكأن الذات قد انشطرت قسمين، قسماً يراقب ويسرد والآخر ينقب بهستيريا عن مكنونه لتخرج الرواية.

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction was officially launched in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in April 2007. It is the result of a collaborative effort by the Booker Prize Foundation, the Emirates Foundation and the Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue, whose aim was to develop a dedicated prize for Arabic fiction.
A steering committee of Arab literary experts, publishers and journalists was established to advise on the set-up of the Prize and its independent Board of Trustees, whose members have been drawn from across the Arab and Anglophone worlds, and are responsible for the overall management of the prize. The Emirates Foundation pledged its financial and substantive support for the initiative.

The Prize is specifically for the novel literary genre, and it awards $10,000 to each of the six shortlisted authors, with an additional $50,000 to the winner.

About the Booker Prize:

The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity which, since 2002, has been responsible for the award of the Man Booker Prize (formally the Booker Prize).

Established in 1968, the Man Booker Prize (formally known as ‘The Booker Prize’) is a prestigious literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.

The judges of the Man Booker Prize are selected from leading literary critics, writers, academics and notable public figures. The judging panel changes each year to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize and its integrity.
A Russian version of the prize was created in 1992. And an African version, the “Caine Prize”, was launched in 2000 .
The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success. It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be nominated for the Booker longlist or selected for inclusion in the shortlist.

About the Emirates Foundation:

Established in 2005, the Emirates Foundation is one of the leading philanthropic organizations in the UAE. It is committed to improving the quality of life for all people in the UAE, through a variety of local and international projects that stimulate intellectual and social growth, as well as increase access to cultural, educational and technological resources, and foster increased participation in civic life.

فرحة الفائز بالجائزة لحظة إعلان النتيجة

يحدث أحياناً أن تلتقي بشخص لا تعرفه أو تصلك مكاتبة من آخر، يقول إنه قرأ لك شيئاً وإنه معجب بكتابتك. يحدث أحياناً قليلة جداً، ولا أقول إن حدوثه يبكيك فرحاً أو يشعرك بجدوى الحياة. لكن هذا التعبير العفوي عن استمتاع طرف مجهول بقراءة شيء كتبتَه قد يكون هو المكافأة الوحيدة الخالية من المنغصات.

فأنت إذا مُهر كتابك بختم الطبعة الخامسة، مثلاً، ستتذكر أن الطبعة قد لا تزيد على خمسمئة نسخة. وإذا حصلت على اعتراف من صديق أو نظير ستشك في أنه يجاملك أو يخلي ذمته، لأن (ابن الكار ما يحبش ابن كاره). أما إذا نزل على رأسك تكريم (عالمي)، فسيشكك في نزاهته محيطك الأدبي المصاب بنظرية المؤامرة، الباحث عن مصالحك مع المانح من قبل أن يقرأ عملك الممنوح. وقد يبلغ استياؤك من التشكيك أن تأخذك الجلالة وترفض التكريم في استعراض إعلامي يضاعف من اللغط المثار.

لكن المحزن حقاً أن ردة فعل مثل تلك الأخيرة سيكون لها ما يبررها، أيضاً. فالمفترض أن القائمين على النشاط الأدبي يقرأون الأعمال التي يروجون لها، لكن مَن يقرأ مَن ومتى؟ وبأي قدر يتدخل التقييم المُجهّل في الحكم، مقارنة بآليات وثغرات العمل المؤسسي وهيراركيات التكريس؟

الآن تتذكر أن محيطك الأدبي مصاب، قبل نظرية المؤامرة وقبل أي (فساد) محتمل، بالشفاهة والمجاملة والاستسهال. وقد تنتبه إلى أن هناك ضمن الأعمال أو الأسماء الحاصلة على نفس جائزتك عدداً من غير ذوي القيمة، وتخمن أن حصولهم عليها يستند إلى تاريخهم أو علاقاتهم، إلى المثابرة المستميتة أو أرقام التوزيع الزائفة، أي شيء غير القراءة المنزهة… بل وقد تخمن السر وراء فوزك أنت نفسك، والذي سيكون بعيداً بالضرورة عن أي صدق أو عفوية في قراءة شيء كتبته من جانب طرف مجهول.

سر المكان

معنى أن تغادر…

موضوع قد يستغرق الأبد.

أن تغادر المكان الذي ألفتَ زواياه كأنها في

خبايا فكرك انعطافات الحلم الذي لا يلوي على شيء –

المكان الذي سره أبداً لم يُستكشف، لأنه صار أليفاً وأنت

لن تقبل إلا بما لا تعرفه، قابلاً لما تعرف لكن عارفاً أن هناك

شيئاً خبيئاً وراء بابك، شيئاً لن تطاله الأضواء التي

لن تعرف سرها ولن تراها…

أن تغادر المكان الذي يلتف سره بالأحاجي

لأنه صار أليفاً، والأليف حين يُستكشف يُطرح جانباً في العادة؛

قد يحدث هذا، ذات يوم، عندما تركب قطاراً

إلى الريف أو المنفى:

أن تجد كل طريق، كل حقل، كل بيت

مغتسلاً برونق بهاء ليس سوى بعضاً من ترنّقه

في مرآة الترف: اللون، والشكل، زوايا التظليل، إطار المتعة

الباذخة في العين – حصان يرعى في المخيلة.

جسر يتجسد فوق ضفتين، ما وراء النظر

لكنك ترى في غفلة

ظله العابر.

وإذ تعبر بالبركة (في أية قرية!)

وتحجز في نظرتك الماء الساكن، وباحات البيوت

والقارب المقيّد بالحبل

إلى رصيف المرفأ، وتفكر، ولا تدري أنك فكرت إلا فيما بعد:

«كم ساكن هذا الظل وأسود في الماء»

فإنك تدرك، في الحال، أن المرأة الملفعة بعباءة

سوداء في الحديقة، تبكي لأن أحدهم أجبرها

على أن تقبل بالحقيقة.

ولستَ متأكداً إن كان هذا جزءً من الحلم، أو شهادة

سمعت تفاصيلها ذات مرة

لكنك تدري أن ما جاهدتَ أن تدريه في تلك اللحظة

شيء يمكن لك الآن، في عمرك هذا، أن تعرفه أكثر

لأن الخليقة وضعتك في هذا الموضع بالذات

حيث ترى، وتمتلك الرؤية.

إنك آنذاك، حين يتقمصك الوضوح، وتكون في

حال من فرط انجلائها، أنك لا تفكر حتى بأن تفكر:

آنذاك قد يحدث أن تحدس السر الذي لم تستكشف طواياه

في المكان الذي غادرته، ذلك الشيء الخبيء ما وراء أستار وأبواب

ذلك الشيء الذي لن تطاله الأنوار التي رأيتها في منامك.

تلك التي لم ترها سوى في منامك.

(نص قصيدة سركون بولص من «عظمة أخرى لكلب القبيلة»)

Obituary, The Guardian

Sargon Boulus

Iraqi poet who joined the Beat generation

• Peter Clark
• The Guardian, Friday 18 January 2008

In 1967 a penniless 23-year-old Iraqi, with no documentation, applied to the American embassy in Beirut for a visa to enter the US. A writer, he claimed an intimate knowledge of American poetry. He was called to meet the ambassador, who asked him about poetry. He started with Walt Whitman and referred to many contemporary Beat poets, of whom the ambassador had not heard. But he was impressed. “Enough!” he said, “you’ve got it.” The young man went to New York, and on to San Francisco, which became his home for the next 40 years.The young man was Sargon Boulus, who has died in Berlin aged 63, after some months of poor health.

Sargon was born in al-Habbaniyah, on the Euphrates in Iraq, to an Assyrian family. The British had provided the Assyrians, an ancient but threatened Christian sect, speaking its own Semitic language, with a safe haven near a military base. His family moved to Kirkuk, where Sargon had his secondary education. He started writing poetry aged 12. His first published poem came a year or two later since when, as he wrote, “I haven’t stopped. It just grabbed me, this magic of words, of music.”

It was an exciting time for Arabic poetry, with a rejection of classical forms that had held sway for a millennium and more. Beirut was the centre of experimental poetry, especially the magazine Shi’r (Poetry), edited by Yusuf al-Khal. When he was 17, Sargon sent some poems to Yusuf al-Khal that were immediately published. He was encouraged to go to Beirut and made the journey from Baghdad with no identification papers, avoiding public transport and official border posts. He was warmly welcomed by the innovative poets based in Beirut and lived a hand-to-mouth existence, gathering at the Horseshoe cafe with other writers, and writing for the newspaper al-Nahar. He was picked up by police as an illegal immigrant and jailed. Friends intervened and he applied, successfully, for entry to the US.

In San Francisco, he became part of the Beat generation. Sargon lived on the edge, running a Middle Eastern restaurant, writing and translating, demonstrating for native American rights and against the Vietnam war. He introduced Arab readers to Allen Ginsberg, Carl Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He became intoxicated by the classical English poets and translated Shakespeare’s sonnets, as well as Shelley, Ezra Pound, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. At his death, he left uncompleted a major study and translation of the writings of WH Auden.

He wrote his own poetry, feeling savage about the limitations of Arabic and the upholders of formal classical traditions. He talked about “linguistic fundamentalists”. Arabic, thought Sargon, “is always too full of decoration, unnecessary words and fat – linguistic fat. I’m cutting it like a butcher and I’m trying to show the bones behind the flesh and I think that’s something worth doing.” He wrote poetry in Assyrian, Arabic and English.

He spent time in Athens and Germany, where Iraqi publisher Khalid al-Maaly helped promote his work. He was also a journalist and translated romantic novels into Arabic. From 1998 he was a consultant editor of Banipal, a London-based magazine of Arab literature, and a prolific contributor, translating a range of contemporary Arab poetry into clear and concise English.

Sargon worked hard, played hard and travelled hard. His last years were dogged by ill-health, but he was working and writing to the end. He is survived by his partner of several decades; she shares a name with film star Elke Sommer.

· Sargon Boulus, poet, born 1944; died October 22 2007

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تسعة عشر بيتاً من التائية الكبرى

ولا غروَ أن سُدْتُ الألَى سبقوا ، أو قدْ *** تمسَّكتُ ، من طهَ ، بأوثقِ عُروةِ

عليها مجازيُّ سلامي ، فإنَّما *** حقيقتُهُ منِّي إلَّيّ تحيَّتي

وأطيبُ ما فيها وجدتُ بِمبتدا *** غرامي ، وقدْ أبدَى بِهَا كلَّ نذرةِ

ظهوري ، وقدْ أخفيتُ حاليَ مُنشداً *** بها ، طرباً ، والحالُ غيرُ خفيَّةِ

بدتْ ، فرأيتُ الحزمَ في نقضِ توبتي، *** وقامَ بها عندَ النُّهى عُذرُ مِحنتي

فَمنها أماني منْ ضَنى جسدي بِها، *** أمانيُّ آمالٍ سَخَتْ ، ثمَّ شحَّتِ

وفيها تلافي الجسمِ ، بالُّسقمِ صحَّةِ *** له ، وتلافُ الَّنفسِ نفسُ الفتوَّةِ

ومَوتي بِها ، وَجداً ، حياةٌ هنيئةٌ، *** وإنْ لم أمُتْ في الحبِّ عِشتُ بغُصّةِ

فيا مُهجتي ذوبي جَوىً وصبابةً، *** ويا لوعَتي كوني ، كذاكَ ، مُذيبتي

ويا نارَ أحشائي أقيمي ، مِنَ الجوَى، *** حَنايَا ضُلوعي ، فهيَ غيرُ قويمةِ

ويا حُسنَ صبري ، في رِضى من أُحبُّها، *** تجمَّل ، وكن للدَّهرِ بي غيرَ مُشمِتِ

ويا جَلَدي ، في جنبِ طاعةِ حُبِّها، *** تحمَّل ، عَداَكَ الكَلُّ ، كُلَّ عظيمةِ

ويا جسَدي المُضنَى تسَلَّ عن الشِّفَا، *** ويا كبِدي ، مَنْ لي بأنْ تتَفتَّتي

ويا سقَمي لا تُبْقِ لي رَمقاً ، فقدْ *** أبيتُ ، لبُقيا العِزِّ ، ذُلَّ البقيَّةِ

ويا صحَّتي ، ما كانَ من صُحبتي انْقضى، *** ووصلُك في الأحشاءِ ميتاً كهجرَةِ

ويا كُلَّ ما أبقَى الضَّنى منِّي ارتحِلْ، *** فما لَكَ مأوىً في عظامٍ رميمةِ

ويا ما عسَى منِّي أُناجي ، توهُّماً *** بياءِ النّدا ، أُونِستُ منكَ بوحشةِ

وكلُّ الَّذي ترضاهُ ، والموتُ دونَهُ، *** بهِ أنا راضٍ ، والصَّبابةُ أرضَتِ

ونفسيَ لمْ تجزَعْ باتلافهَا أسىً، *** ولو جَزِعَتْ كانت بغيري تأسَّتِ

وفي كُلِّ حيٍّ كلُّ حيٍّ كَميِّتٍ *** بها ، عندَهُ قتْلُ الهوى خيرُ مَوْتَهِ

Ibn al-Farid’s father moved from his native town, Hama in Syria, to Cairowhere he Umar was born. Some sources say that his father was a respected farid (an advocate for women’s causes) and others say that his profession was the allocation of shares (furūḍ) in cases of inheritance. Whichever is the case, Ibn al-Farid’s father was a knowledgeable scholar and gave his son a good foundation in belles lettres.

When he was a young man Ibn al-Farid would go on extended spiritual retreats among the oases, specifically the Oasis of the Wretches (Wadi al-Mustad’afin), outside of Cairo, but he eventually felt that he was not making deep enough spiritual progress. He abandoned his spiritual wanderings and enteredlaw school studying in the shafi’i school of law.

One day Ibn al-Farid saw a greengrocer performing the ritual Muslim ablutions outside the door of the law school, but the man was doing them out of the prescribed order. When Ibn al-Farid tried to correct him, the greengrocer looked at him and said, “Umar! You will not be enlightened in Egypt. You will be enlightened only in the Hijaz, in Mecca…”

Umar Ibn al-Farid was stunned by this statement, seeing that this simple greengrocer was no ordinary man. But he argued that he couldn’t possibly make the trip to Mecca right away. Then the man gave Ibn al-Farid a vision, in that very moment, of Mecca. Ibn al-Farid was so transfixed by this experience that he left immediately for Mecca and, in his own words, “Then as I entered it, enlightenment came to me wave after wave and never left.”

Shaykh Umar Ibn al-Farid stayed in Mecca for fifteen years, but eventually returned to Cairo because he heard the same greengrocer calling him back to attend his funeral. Upon return, he found the greengrocer on the point of death and they wished each other farewell.

Upon Ibn al-Farid’s return to Cairo, he was treated as a Saint. He would hold teaching sessions with judges, viziers and other leaders of the city. While walking down the street, people would come up to him and crowd around him, seeking spiritual blessings (barakah) and try to kiss his hand (he would respond by shaking their hand). Ibn al-Farid became a scholar of Muslim law, a teacher of the hadith (the traditions surrounding the sayings and life of the prophet Muhammad), and a teacher of poetry.

Unlike many other respected poets of the day such as Ibn Sana al-Mulk, Ibn Unayn, Baha al-Din Zuhayr and Ibn Matruh, Ibn al-Farid refused the patronage of wealthy governmental figures which would have required him to produce poetry for propaganda, preferring the relatively humble life of a teacher that allowed him to compose his poetry of enlightenment unhampered. One time al-Malik al-Kamil, who was the Ayubbid sultan at that time, liked sone of his odes so much that he sent the poet an exorbitant amount of money and offered to build a shrine for him. Ibn al-Farid denied both the money and the offer of the shrine, choosing to trust in God to supply for his needs. His position as a teacher at the Azharmosque allowed him to provide for his family, which included three children.

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FOUR HOURS IN CHATILA

by Jean Genet

(This is the complete version. The sentences which have been shamelessly deleted by the cowardly editors of the Revue d’Etudes palestiniennes in Paris, in its number 6 published in 1983, have been restored here. The missing sentences, visible here in TT (typewriter police) have been published in the footnotes of the text in the posthumous volume called L’Ennemi déclaré, Gallimard, 1991, p. 408. The English translation has been done by Daniel R. Dupecher and Martha Perrigaud.)  

“Goyim kill goyim, and they come to hang the Jews.”

Menachem Begin (Knesset, September 1982)

No one, nothing, no narrative technique, can put into words the six months, and especially the first weeks, which the fedayeen spent in the mountains of jerash and Ajloun in Jordan. As for relating the events, establishing the chronology, the successes and failures of the PLO, that has been done by others. The feeling in the air, the color of the sky, of the earth, of the trees, these can be told; but never the faint intoxication, the lightness of footsteps barely touching the earth, the sparkle in the eyes, the openness of relationships not only between the fedayeen but also between them and their leaders. Under the trees, everything, everyone was aquiver, laughing, filled with wonder at this life, so new for all, and in these vibrations there was something strangely immovable, watchful, reserved, protected like someone praying. Everything belonged to everyone. Everyone was alone in himself. And perhaps not. In the end, smiling and haggard. The area in Jordan where they had withdrawn for political reasons extended from the Syrian border to Salt, and was bounded by the Jordan River and the road from Jerash to Irbid. About 60 kilometers long and 20 deep, this mountainous area was covered with holm oaks, little Jordanian villages and sparse crops. Under the trees and the camouflaged tents the fedayeen had set up combat units and emplaced light and semiheavy arms. The artillery in place, directed mainly against possible Jordanian operations, young soldiers would take care of their weapons, disassemble them to clean and grease them, then reassemble them quickly. Some managed this feat of disassembling and reassembling their weapons blindfolded so they could do it at night. Between each soldier and his weapon a loving, magical bond had developed. Since the fedayeen had only recently left adolescence behind, the rifle, as a weapon, was the sign of triumphant virility and gave assurance of being. Aggressiveness disappeared: teeth showed behind the smile. The rest of the time, the fedayeen drank tea, criticized their leaders and the rich, Palestinian and others, insulted Israel, and above all they talked about the revolution, the one they were involved in and the one they were about to enter upon. For me, the word “Palestinians,” whether in a headline, in the body of an article, on a handout, immediately calls to mind fedayeen in a specific spot – jordan – and at an easily determined date: October, November, December 1970, January, February, March, April 1971. It was then and there that I discovered the Palestinian Revolution. The extraordinary evidence of what was happening, the intensity of this joy at being alive is also called beauty. Ten years went by, and I heard nothing about them, except that the fedayeen were in Lebanon. The European press spoke offhandedly, even disdainfully, about the Palestinian people. Then suddenly, West Beirut.

***

A photograph has two dimensions, so does a television screen; neither can be walked through. From one wall of the street to the other, bent or arched, with their feet pushing against one wall and their heads pressing against the other, the black and bloated corpses that I had to step over were all Palestinian and Lebanese. For me, as for what remained of the population, walking through Chatila and Sabra resembled a game of hopscotch. Sometimes a dead child blocked the streets: they were so small, so narrow, and the dead so numerous. The smell is probably familiar to old people; it didn’t bother me. But there were so many flies. If I lifted the handkerchief or the Arab newspaper placed over a head, I disturbed them. Infuriated by my action, they swarmed onto the back of my hand and tried to feed there.

The first corpse I saw was that of a man fifty or sixty years old. He would have had a shock of white hair if a wound (an axe blow, it seemed to me) hadn’t split his skull. Part of the blackened brain was on the ground, next to the the head. The whole body was lying in a pool of black and clotted blood. The belt was unbuckled, a single button held the pants. The dead man’s feet and legs were bare and black, purple and blue; perhaps he had been taken by surprise at night or at dawn. Was he running away? He was lying in a little alley immediately to the right of the entry to Shatfla camp which is across from the Kuwaiti Embassy. Did the Chatila massacre take place in hushed tones or in total silence, if the Israelis, both soldiers and officers, claim to have heard nothing, to have suspected nothing whereas they had been occupying this building since Wednesday afternoon? A photograph doesn’t show the flies nor the thick white smell of death. Neither does it show how you must jump over bodies as you walk along from one corpse to the next. If you look closely at a corpse, an odd phenomenon occurs: the absence of life in this body corresponds to the total absence of the body, or rather to its continuous backing away. You feel that even by coming closer you can never touch it. That happens when you look at it carefully. But should you make a move in its direction, get down next to it, move an arm or a finger, suddenly it is very much there and almost friendly. Love and death. These two words are quickly associated when one of them is written down. I had to go to Chatila to understand the obscenity of love and the obscenity of death. In both cases the body has nothing more to hide: positions, contortions, gestures, signs, even silences belong to one world and to the other. The body of a man of thirty to thirty-five was lying face down. As if the whole body was nothing but a bladder in the shape of a man, it had become so bloated in the sun and through the chemistry of decomposition that the pants were stretched tight as though they were going to burst open at the buttocks and thighs. The only part of the face that I could see was purple and black. Slightly above the knee you could see a thigh wound under the torn fabric. Cause of the wound: a bayonet, a knife, a dagger? Flies on the wound and around it. His head was larger than a watermelons black watermelon. I asked his name; he was a Muslim.

–”Who is it?” “A Palestinian,” a man about forty answered in French. “See what they’ve done.” He pulled back the blanket covering the feet and part of the legs. The calves were bare, black and swollen. The feet, in black unlaced army boots, and the ankles of both feet were very tightly bound together by the knot of a strong rope-its strength was obvious-about nine feet long, which I arranged so that Mrs. S. (an American) could get a good picture of it. I asked the man of forty if I could see the face.

–”If you want to, but look at it yourself.” — “Would you help me turn his head?” — “No.” — “Did they drag him through the streets with this rope?” — “I don’t know, sir.” — “Who tied him up?” — “I don’t know, sir.” — “Was it Haddad’s men?” — “I don’t know.” — – “The Israelis?” “I don’t know.” — “The Kataeb?” “I don’t know.” — “Did you know him?” “Yes.” — “Did you see him die?” — “Yes.” — “Who killed him?” — “I don’t know.” He hastily walked away from the dead man and me. From afar he looked back at me and disappeared into a side street. Which alley should I take now? I was drawn by men fifty years old, by young men of twenty, by two old Arab women, and I felt as if I were the center of a compass whose quadrants contained hundreds of dead. I jot this down now, not knowing exactly why at this point in my narrative: “The French have a habit of using the insipid expression ‘dirty work.’ Well, just like the Israeli army ordered the Kataeb or the Haddadists to do their’dirty work,’the Labor Party had its’dirty work’done by the Likud, Begin, Sharon, Shamir.” I have just quoted R., a Palestinian journalist who was still in Beirut on Sunday, September 19. In the middle, near them, all these tortured victims, my mind can’t get rid of this “invisible vision”: what was the torturer like? Who was he? I see him and I don’t see him. He’s as large as life and the only shape he will ever have is the one formed by the stances, positions, and grotesque gestures of the dead fermenting in the sun under clouds of flies. If the American Marines, the French paratroopers, and the Italian bersagliere who made up an intervention force in Lebanon left so quickly (the Italians, who arrived by ship two days late, fled in Hercules airplanes!) one day or thirty-six hours before their official departure date, as if they were running away, and on the day before Bashir Gemayel’s assassination, are the Palestinians really wrong in wondering if Americans, French and Italians had not been warned to clear out pronto so as not to appear mixed up in the bombing of the Kataeb headquarters?

They left very quickly and very early. Israel brags and boasts about its combat efficiency, its battle preparedness, its skill in turning circumstances to its favor, in creating circumstances. Let’s see; the PLO leaves Beirut in triumph, on a Greek ship, with a naval escort. Bashir, hiding as best he can, visits Begin in Israel. The intervention of the three armies (American, French, Italian) comes to an end on Monday. On Tuesday, Bashir is assassinated. Tsahal [Israel Defense Forces] enters West Beirut on Wednesday morning. As if they were coming from the port, Israeli soldiers were advancing on Beirut the morning of Bashir’s funeral. With binoculars, from the eighth floor of my house I saw them coming in single file: one column. I was surprised that nothing else happened, because with a good rifle with a sight they could have been picked off. Their brutality preceded them. The tanks came after them. Then the jeeps. Tired out by such a long early-morning march, they stopped near the French Embassy, letting the tanks go on ahead of them, going right into Hamra. The soldiers sat down on the sidewalk at thirty foot intervals and leaned against the embassy wall, their rifles pointed straight ahead. With their long torsos they looked like boas with two legs stretched out in front of them. “Israel had promised the American representative Habib not to set foot in West Beirut and especially to respect the civilan populations of the Palestinian camps. Arafat still has the letter in which Reagan made the same promise. Habib supposedly promised Arafat that nine thousand prisoners in Israel would be freed. On Thursday the massacres in Chatila and Sabra begin. The ‘bloodbath’ that Israel claimed it would prevent by restoring order to the camps . . .” a Lebanese writer told me.

“It will be very easy for Israel to clear itself of all the accusations. Journalists of all the European press are already at work clearing them: no one will say that on the nights from Thursday to Friday and from Friday to Saturday Hebrew was spoken in Chatila.” That is what another Lebanese told me. The Palestinian woman – for I couldn’t leave Chatila without going from one corpse to another and this jeu de l’oie would inevitably end up at this miracle: Chatila and Sabra razed to the ground and real estate battles to rebuild on this very flat cemetery – the Palestinian woman was probably elderly because her hair was gray. She was stretched out on her back, laid or left there on the rubble, the bricks, the twisted iron rods, without comfort. At first I was surprised by a strange braid made of rope and cloth which went from one wrist to the other, holding the two arms apart horizontally, as if crucified. Her black and swollen face, turned towards the sky, revealed an open mouth, black with flies, and teeth that seemed very white to me, a face that seemed, without moving a muscle, either to grin or smile or else to cry out in a silent and unbroken scream. Her stockings were black wool, and her pink and gray flowered dress, slightly hiked up or too short, I don’t know which, revealed the tops of swollen black calves, again with the delicate mauve tints matched by a similar purple and mauve in the cheeks. Were these bruises or the natural result of rotting in the sun? “Did they strike her with the butt of the rifle?” — “Look, sir, look at her hands.” I hadn’t noticed. The fingers of the two hands were spread out and the ten fingers were cut as if with gardening shears. Soldiers, laughing like kids and gaily singing, had probably had fun discovering and using these shears. “Look, sir.” The ends of the fingers, the top joints, with the nail, lay in the dust. The young man, who was simply and naturally showing me how the dead had been tortured, calmly put a cloth back over the face and hands of the Palestinian woman, and a piece of corrugated cardboard over her legs. All I could distinguish now was a heap of pink and gray cloth, hovered over by flies. Three young men led me down an alley. “Go in, sit, we’ll wait for you outside.” The first room was what remained of a two-story house. The room gave an impression of serenity and even friendliness, of near happiness; perhaps real happiness had been created out of others’ throwaways, with what survives from a destroyed piece of wall, with what I first thought were three armchairs, actually three car seats (perhaps a Mercedes from a junkyard), a couch with cushions covered with gaudy flowered material with stylized designs, a small silent radio, two unlit candelabras. A fairly quiet room, in spite of the carpet of spent shells. The door swung, as if there were a draft. I walked on the spent shells and pushed the door, which opened towards the other room, but I had to push hard: the heel of a boot blocked the way, the heel of a corpse lying on its back, near two other corpses of men lying face down, all of them resting on another carpet of spent shells. I nearly fell several times because of them. At the back of the room another door was open, without lock or latch. I stepped over the bodies as one crosses chasms. The room contained the corpses of four men, piled on top of each other on a single bed, as if each one had taken care to protect the one under him, or as if they had been caught in a decaying orgiastic copulation. This pile of shields smelled strongly, but it didn’t smell bad. The smell and the flies had, so it seemed, gotten used to me. I no longer disturbed anything in these ruins, in this quiet.

During the night from Thursday to Friday, and during those from Friday to Saturday and Saturday to Sunday no one had kept vigil with them, I thought. Yet, it seemed to me that someone had visited these dead men before me and after their death. The three young men were waiting fairly far from the house with handkerchiefs over their noses. It was then, as I was coming out of the house, that I had a sudden attack of slight madness that made me almost smile. I thought to myself that there would never be enough boards or carpenters to make the coffins. But then why would they need coffins? The dead men and women were all Muslims, who are sewn into shrouds. How many yards would it take to enshroud so many corpses? And how many prayers? What was missing here, I realized, was the rhythm of prayers. “Come, sir, come quickly.” It is time to note that this sudden and quite momentary madness which made me count yards of white cloth gave an almost brisk liveliness to my step, and that it may have been caused by a remark I heard a Palestinian womanfriend make the day before. “I was waiting for them to bring me my keys (which keys: to her car, her house, all I know now is the word keys) when an old man went running by. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To get help. I’m the gravedigger. They’ve bombed the cemetery. All the bones are uncovered. I need help gathering the bones’.” This friend is a Christian, I think. She continued: “When the vacuum bomb, a so-called implosion bomb, killed two hundred and fifty people, we had only one box. The men dug a mass grave in the Orthodox Church cemetery. We filled the box, and went to empty it. We back and forth under the bombs, digging out bodies and limbs as best we could.” Over the last three months, hands have had a double function: during the day to grasp and touch, at night, to see. Electricity cuts made this “school for the blind” necessary, as it did the climbing, two or three times a day, of that white marble cliff, the eight-floor stairway. We had to fill all the containers in the house with water. The telephone was cut off when the Israeli soldiers entered West Beirut along with their Hebrew inscriptions. So were the roads around Beirut.The Merkava tanks which never stopped showed they were keeping an eye on the whole city, and at the same time one imagined those inside scared they would become a fixed target. They no doubt feared the activity of the Murabitoun* and the fedayeen who might remain in sections of West Beirut. The day after the entrance of the Israeli army we were prisoners, but it seemed to me that the invaders were less feared than despised, they caused less fear than disgust. No soldier was laughing or smiling. No one was throwing rice or flowers. Bashir's father, Gemayel, appeared on Lebanese television, thin-faced with eyebrow arches very shallow and full of shadow, and very thin lips. The only expression: naked cruelty. Since the roads had been cut off and the telephone was silent, deprived of contact with the rest of the world, for the first time in my life, I felt myself become Palestinian and hate Israel. At the Sports Stadium, near the Beirut-Damascus highway, which was already nearly completely destroyed by aerial bombardment, the Lebanese deliver piles of weapons, all supposedly voluntarily damaged, to Israeli officers. In the apartment where I am staying, everyone has a radio. We listen to Radio-Kataeb, Radio-Murabitoun, Radio-Amman, Radio-Jerusalem (in French), Radio-Lebanon. They are probably doing the same thing in every apartment. “We are linked to Israel by many currents which bring us bombs, tanks, soldiers, fruit, vegetables; they carry off our soldiers, our children to Palestine, in a continual and unceasing coming and going, because according to them, we have been linked to them since Abraham, in his lineage, in his language, in the same origins. . .” (A Palestinian fedai). “In short,” he adds, “they invade us, they stuff us, suffocate us and would like to hug us. They say they are our cousins. They’re very sad to see us turn away from them. They must be furious with us and with themselves.”

***

The statement that there is a beauty peculiar to revolutionaries raises many problems. Everyone knows, everyone suspects, that young children or adolescents living in old and harsh surroundings have a beauty of face, body, movement and gaze similar to that of the fedayeen. Perhaps this may be explained in the following way: breaking with the ancient ways, a new freedom pushes through the dead skin, and fathers and grandfathers will have a hard time extinguishing the gleam in the eyes, the throbbing in the temples, the joy of blood flowing through the veins. In the spring of 1971, in the Palestinian bases, that beauty subtly pervaded a forest made alive by the freedom of the fedayeen. In the camps a different, more muted beauty prevailed because of the presence of women and children. The camps received a sort of light from the combat bases, and as for the women, it would take a long and complex discussion to explain their radiance. Even more than the men, more than the fedayeen in combat, the Palestinian women seemed strong enough to sustain the resistance and accept the changes that came along with a revolution. They had already disobeyed the customs: they looked the men straight in the eye, they refused to wear a veil, their hair was visible, sometimes completely uncovered, their voices steady. The briefest and most prosaic of their tasks was but a small step in the self-assured journey towards a new, and therefore unknown, order, but which gave them a hint of a cleansing liberation for themselves, and a glowing pride for the men. They were ready to become both the wives and the mothers of heroes, as they already were for their men. In the woods of Ajloun, the fedayeen were perhaps dreaming of girls though it seems, rather, that each one conjured up or shaped a girl lying against him, hence the particular gracefulness, the strength-with their amused laughter-of the armed fedayeen. We were not only at the dawn of pre-revolution but in a sensual limbo. A cystallizing frost gave a gentleness to every action. Constantly, and every day for a month, always in Ajloun, I saw a skinny but strong woman crouching in the cold, crouching like the Andean Indians or certain Black Africans, the untouchables of Tokyo, the Tziganes at market, ready to take off suddenly in case of danger, under trees in front of the guardhouse, a small, hastily erected permanent structure. She was waiting barefoot in her black dress trimmed with braid at the hem and on the edge of the sleeves. Her face was serious but not ill-tempered, tired but not weary. The commando leader would prepare a nearly empty room, then he would signal her. She would enter the room, closing the door, but not locking it. Then she would come out, without a word or a smile, and barefoot and very erect, would return to Jerash and to Baq’a camp. I found out that in the room reserved for her in the guardhouse she used to take off her two black skirts, remove the envelopes and the letters sewn inside, bundle them together and knock once on the door. Turning the letters over to the leader she would go out and leave without saying a word. She would come back the next day. Other older women would laugh because for a home they had only three blackened stones which, at Jebel Hussein (Amman), they gleefully referred to as “our house.” They showed me the three stones, and sometimes the glowing coals, with such childlike voices, laughing and saying: “darna.” These old women belonged neither to the revolution nor to the Palestinian resistance: they were mirth which has lost all hope. The sun above them continued its journey. An arm or an extended finger created an increasingly thin shadow. But what land? Jordan, through an administrative and political fiction created by France, England, Turkey, America… Mirth which has lost all hope, ” most joyful because it is the most desperate. They still saw a Palestine which no longer existed when they were sixteen, but finally they had a land. They were neither under nor on top of it, but in a disturbing space where any movement was a wrong one. Under the bare feet of these octogenarian and supremely elegant tragediennes was the earth solid? It was less and less true. After having fled Hebron under Israeli threats the earth here seemed solid, everyone was lighthearted and moved sensuously in the Arabic language. As time went by the earth seemed to experience this: the Palestinians were less and less bearable at the same time as these same Palestinians, these peasant-farmers, were discovering movement, walking, running, the pleasure of ideas dealt out nearly every day like playing cards, the weapons assembled, disassembled and used. Each of the women speaks in turn. They are laughing. One of them is reported to have said: “Heroes! What a joke! I gave birth to and spanked five or six of them who are in the jebel. I wiped their bottoms. I know what they’re made of, and I can make some more.” In the ever-blue sky the sun has continued its journey, but it is still warm. These tragediennes remember and imagine at the same time. To emphasize what they say they point their finger at the end of a sentence and stress the emphatic consonants. Should a Jordanian soldier happen by he would be delighted: in the rhythm of the sentences he would rediscover the rhythm of Bedouin dances. Without the sentences, an Israeli soldier, should he see these goddesses, would empty his automatic rifle into their skulls.

***

Here in the ruins of Chatila there is nothing left. A few silent old women hastily hiding behind a door where a white cloth is nailed. As for the very young fedayeen, I will meet some in Damascus. You can select a particular community other than that of your birth, whereas you are born into a people; this selection is based on an irrational affinity, which is not to say that justice has no role, but this justice and the entire defense of this community take place because of an emotional – perhaps intuitive, sensual – attraction; I am French, but I defend the Palestinians whole heartedly and automatically. They are in the right because I love them. But would I love them if injustice had not turned them into a wandering people? Almost all the buildings in Beirut have been hit, in what they still call West Beirut. They crumble in different ways: like puff pastry squeezed between the fingers of some indifferent and voracious giant King Kong; other times the top three or four floors lean deliciously in an elegant pleat, giving a sort of Lebanese draping to the building. If one facade is intact, go around the house; the other walls will be shell-pocked. If the four walls are standing with no cracks, the bomb dropped by the airplane fell in the center and made a hole out of what was the staircase and the elevator shaft. In West Beirut, after the Israelis arrived, S – told me: “Night had fallen; it must have been seven o’clock. All of a sudden there was a loud clank, clank, clank. Everybody, my sister, my brother-in-law and I ran out on the balcony. The night was very dark. And every once in a while there was something like lightning less than a hundred yards away. You know that almost across from us there is a kind of Israeli command post: four tanks, a house occupied by soldiers, officers and guards. Night. And the clanking noise is getting closer. The lightning; a few lit torches. And forty or fifty kids about twelve or thirteen years old beating rhythmically on little jerrycans, either with rocks or hammers or something else. They were screaming, chanting: La ilah illa Allah, la Kataeb wa la yahoud (There is no God but Allah; no to the Kataeb; no to the Jews.)” H. said to me: “When you came to Beirut and Damascus in 1928 Damascus was destroyed. General Gouraud and his troops, Moroccan and Tunisian infantry, had been shooting and cleaned out Damascus. Whom did the Syrian people accuse?” Me: “The Syrians blamed France for the massacres and the destruction in Damascus.” He: “We blame Israel for the massacres in Chatila and Sabra. Don’t only blame the Kataeb who replaced them. Israel is guilty of allowing two companies of Kataeb to enter the camps, of giving them orders and of encouraging them for three days and nights, of bringing them food and drink, of lighting the camps at night.” H. again, professor of history: “In 1917 Abraham’s trick was brought up to date, or if you prefer, God was already the prefiguration of Lord Balfour. The Jews used to say and still say that God had promised Abraham and his descendents a land of milk and honey. But this land, which didn’t belong to the God of the Jews (this land was full of gods), this land was inhabited by the Canaanites, who had their own gods, and who fought against Joshua’s troops and ended up stealing the famous Ark of the Covenant, without which the Jews would never have won. And England, in 1917, didn’t yet rule over Palestine (that land of milk and honey) since the treaty giving it a mandate had not yet been signed.” “Begin claims that he came to the country . . . .” “That’s the name of a movie: The Long Absence. Does that Pole strike you as the heir to Solomon?” In the camps, after twenty years of exile, the refugees dreamed of their Palestine, and no one dared to think or say that Israel had destroyed it from top to bottom, that where the barley field had been there was a bank, and a power station where a climbing vine had grown. “Shall we replace the gate to the field?” “We’ll have to rebuild part of the wall next to the fig tree.” “All the pans must be rusted: buy an emery-cloth.” “Maybe we should hook up electricity to the barn.” “Oh no, no more hand-embroidered dresses: you can get me one machine for sewing and one for embroidering.” The old people of the camps were wretched; they may also have been so in Palestine but there nostalgia played a magical role. They may remain prisoners of the camp’s unhappy spell. It is not certain that this Palestinian group will leave the camps with regret. In this sense, extreme destitution makes you yearn for the past. The man who has known this, along with bitterness has known a joy which is extreme, solitary and impossible to communicate. The Jordanian camps perched on the rocky slopes are bare, but around them there is a more desolate barrenness: shanties, tents with holes in them inhabited by families whose pride glows. Anyone who denies that men can become fond and proud of their obvious destitution understands nothing of the human heart; they can be proud because this obvious destitution veils a hidden glory. The solitude of the dead in Chatila camp was even more palpable because they had gestures and poses which they had not planned. Dead any old how. Dead and abandoned. Yet around us, in the camp, all the affection, the tenderness and love floated in search of Palestinians who would never answer. ” What can we say to their families who left with Arafat, trusting in the promises of Reagan, Mitterrand and Perini, who had assured them that the civilian population of the camps would be safe? How can we explain that we allowed children, old people and women to be massacred, and that we are abandoning their bodies without prayers? How can we tell them that we don’t know where they are buried?” The massacres did not take place in silence and darkness. Lit by Israeli flares, the Israelis were listening to Chatila as early as Thursday evening. What partying, what feasting went on there as death seemed to take part in the pranks of soldiers drunk on wine, on hatred, and probably drunk on the joy of entertaining the Israeli army which was listening, looking, giving encouragement, egging them on. I didn’t see this Israeli army listening and watching. I saw what it did. To the argument: What did Israel gain by assassinating Bashir: entering Beirut, reestablishing order and preventing the bloodbath. What did Israel gain in the Chatila massacre? Answer: what did it gain by entering Lebanon? What did it gain by bombing the civilian population for two months; by hunting down and destroying Palestinians? What did it want to gain in Chatila: the destruction of Palestinians. It kills men, it kills corpses. It razes Chatila. It is not uninterested in the real estate speculation on the improved land: it’s worth five million old francs per square yard still in ruins. But “cleaned up” it will be worth … ? I am writing this in Beirut where, perhaps because death is so close, still lying on the ground, everything is truer than in France: everything seems to be happening as if, weary and tired of being an example, of being untouchable, of taking advantage of what it believes it has become – the vengeful saint of the Inquisition – Israel had decided to allow itself to be judged coldly.

The Jewish people, far from being the most miserable on earth - the Indians of the Andes sink deeper in misery and neglect - pretend to be a victim of genocide, while in America, rich and poor Jews have sperm reserves for the procreation and continuity of the "chosen" people. Thanks to a skillful but predictable metamorphosis, it is now what it has long been becoming: a loathsome, temporal power, colonialist in a way which few dare to imitate, having become the Definitive judge which it owes to its longstanding curse as much as to its chosen status. This loathsome power, once more in its history, is pushing so far as to deserve unanimous condemnation; and one wonders if it does not want to recover its destiny of a wandering, humiliated people, with secret power. This time, it is exposed in the terrible light of massacres that it is no longer undergoing, but that it inflicts on others; and it wants to recover its former image to become again the "salt of the earth" - assuming that it ever was. But then, what an approach! The Soviet Union and Arab states, spineless as they were in refusing to interfere in this war, have allowed Israel to finally appear to the world and in a bright light as insane among nations. Many questions remain. If the Israelis merely lit up the camp, listened to it, heard the shots fired by so many guns, whose spent shells I kicked underfoot (tens of thousands), who was actually firing? Who was risking their skin by killing? The Phalangists? The Haddadists? Who? And how many? What happened to the weapons responsible for all these corpses? And what about the weapons of those who defended themselves? In the part of the camp which I visited, I saw only two unused anti-tank weapons. How did the assassins get into the camps? Were the Israelis at all the exits to Chatila? In any case, on Thursday they were already at the Akka Hospital, across from one camp entrance. According to the newspapers, the Israelis entered Chatila camp as soon as they knew about the massacres, and they stopped them immediately, that is, on Saturday. But what did they do with the slayers and where have they gone? After the assassination of Bashir Gemayel and twenty of his friends, after the massacres, Mrs. B., a member of the Beirut upper class, came to see me when she found out I was coming back from Chatila. She climbed the eight floors of the building — no electricity; I suppose she is elderly, elegant but elderly. “Before Bashir’s death, before the massacres, you were right to tell me that the worst was about to happen. I saw it.” “Please don’t tell me what you saw in Chatila. I am too highly strung, and I must keep my strength to face the worst which is still to come.” She lives alone with her husband (seventy years old) and her maid in a large apartment in Ras Beirut. She is very elegant. Very refined. Her furniture is antique, Louis XVI, I think. “We knew that Bashir had gone to Israel. He was wrong. An elected head of state should not associate with people like that. I was sure that something awful would happen to him. But I don’t want to hear about it. I have to save my strength to withstand the terrible blows that are yet to come. Bashir was going to give back that letter in which Mr. Begin calls him my dear friend.” The upper class, with its silent servants, has its own way of resisting. Mrs. B. and her husband “don’t quite believe in metempsychosis.” What will happen if they are reborn as Israelis? The day of Bashir’s burial is also the day the Israeli army enters West Beirut. The explosions get closer to the building where we are; finally everyone goes to the shelter in the basement. Ambassadors, doctors, their wives and daughters, a UN representative to Lebanon, their servants. “Carlos, bring me a pillow.” “Carlos, my glasses.” “Carlos, a little water.” The servants, too, are accepted in the shelter as they also speak French It may be necessary to look after them, their wounds, their transport to the hospital or the cemetery, what a predicament! You have to know that the Palestinian camps of Chatila and Sabra are made up of miles and miles of narrow little alleys – for here, even the alleys are so skinny, so threadlike that sometimes two people cannot walk together unless one walks sideways – strewn with rubbish, cement blocks, bricks, dirty multicolored rags, and that at night, under the light of the Israeli flares which lit up the camps, fifteen or twenty even well-armed fighters would have been unable to carry out this slaughter. The killers worked and they were numerous, and probably accompanied by torture squads who split skulls, slashed thighs, cut off arms, hands and fingers, and dragged the dying at the end of a rope, men and women who were still alive since blood had flowed from the bodies for a long time, so much that I was unable to determine who, in the hall of a house, had left this trickle of dried blood, from the end of the hall where there was a pool as far as the doorstep where it disappeared into the dust. Was it a Palestinian man? A woman? A Phalangist whose body had been removed? From Paris, one can entertain doubts about the whole thing, especially if one knows nothing about the layout of the camps. One can allow Israel to claim that the journalists from Jerusalem were the first to report the massacre. How did they phrase it for the Arab countries and in Arabic? And how in English and French? And exactly when? Just think about the precautions surrounding a suspicious death in the West, fingerprints, ballistics reports, autopsies, testimonies and counter-testimonies! In Beirut, scarcely had the massacre become known than the Lebanese army officially took charge of the camps and immediately eradicated the ruins of the houses and the remains of the bodies. Who ordered this haste? Especially after this statement had swept the world that Christians and Muslims had killed each other, and even after cameras had recorded the brutality of the slayings. Akka Hospital, occupied by the Israelis, and across from an entrance to Chatila, is not two hundred yards from the camp, but forty. They saw nothing, heard nothing, understood nothing? Because that’s just what Begin declared to the Knesset: “Goyim kill goyim, and they come to hang the Jews.” I must conclude my description of Chatila, which was briefly interrupted. Here are the bodies I saw last, on Sunday, about two o’clock in the afternoon, when the International Red Cross came in with its bulldozers. The stench of death was coming neither from a house nor a victim: my body, my being, seemed to emit it. In a narrow street, in the shadow of a wall, I thought I saw a black boxer sitting on the ground, laughing, surprised to have been knocked out. No one had had the heart to close his eyelids, his eyes as white as porcelain and bulging out, were looking at me. He seemed crestfallen, with his arm raised, leaning against this angle of the wall. He was a Palestinian who had been dead two or three days. If I mistook him at first for a black boxer it is because his head was enormous, swollen and black, like all the heads and all the bodies, whether in the sun or in the shadow of the houses. I walked near his feet. I picked up an upper dental plate in the dust and set it on what remained of the window ledge. The palm of his hand open towards the sky, his open mouth, the opening in his pants where the belt was missing: all hives where flies were feeding. I stepped over one corpse, then another. There in the dust, in the space between the two bodies, there was at last a very living object, intact in the carnage, a translucent pink object which could still be used: an artificial leg, apparently in plastic, and wearing a black shoe and a gray sock. As I looked closer, it became clear that it had been brutally wrenched off the amputated leg, because the straps that usually held it to the thigh were all broken. This artificial leg belonged to the second body, the one on which I had noticed only one leg with a foot wearing a black shoe and a gray sock. In the street perpendicular to the one where I left the three bodies, there was another. It was not completely blocking the way, but it was lying at the entrance of the street so that I had to walk by it and turn around to see the sight: seated on a chair, surrounded by fairly young and silent men and women, a woman – in Arab dress – was sobbing; she could have been sixteen or sixty. She was crying over her brother whose body almost blocked the way. I came closer to her. I looked more carefully. She had a scarf tied around her neck. She was crying, mourning the death of her brother next to her. Her face was pink, a baby pink, the same color all over, very soft, tender, but without eyelashes or eyebrows, and what I thought was pink was not the top layer of skin but an under layer edged in gray skin. Her whole face was burned. I don’t know by what, but I understood by whom. With the first bodies, I tried to count them. When I got to twelve or fifteen, surrounded by the smell, the sun, stumbling over each ruin, it was impossible; everything became confused. I have seen lots of crumbling buildings and gutted houses spilling out eiderdown and have not been moved, but when I looked at those in West Beirut and Chatila I saw fear. The dead generally become very familiar, even friendly to me, but when I saw those in the camps I perceived only the hatred and joy of those who had killed them. A barbaric party had taken place there: rage, drunkenness, dances, songs, curses, laments, moans, in honor of the voyeurs who were laughing on the top floor of Akka Hospital. In France, before the Algerian war, the Arabs weren’t beautiful, their gait was awkward, shuffling, they had ugly mugs, and almost suddenly victory made them beautiful; but a little before victory was assured, while more than half a million French soldiers were straining and dying in the Aures and throughout Algeria, a curious thing happened to the faces and bodies of the Arab workers: something like the intimation, the hint of a still fragile beauty which was going to blind us when the scales finally fell from their skin and our eyes. We had to admit it: they had achieved political freedom in order to be seen as they were: very beautiful. In the same way, once they had escaped from the refugee camps, from the morality and the order of the camps, from a morality imposed by the need to survive, once they had at the same time escaped from shame, the fedayeen were very beautiful; and since this beauty was new, shall we say pristine, naive, it was fresh, so alive that it discovered at once what connected it to all the beauties of the world, freeing themselves from shame. Lots of Algerian pimps walking through Pigalle at night used their charms in the service of the Algerian revolution. Virtue was also there. It is Hannah Arendt, I believe, who distinguishes between revolutions according to whether they aspire to freedom or virtue — and therefore work. Perhaps we should also recognize that revolutions or liberations aim — obscurely — at discovering or rediscovering beauty, that is the intangible, unnameable except by this word. But no, on the other hand: let us mean by beauty a laughing insolence goaded by past unhappiness, systems and men responsible for unhappiness and shame, above all a laughing insolence which realizes that, freed of shame, growth is easy. But on this page we should also address the following question: is a revolution a revolution when it has not removed from faces and bodies the dead skin that made them ugly? I am not speaking about academic beauty, but about the intangible – unnameable – joy of bodies, faces, cries, words which are no longer cheerless, I mean a sensual joy so strong that it chases away all eroticism.

* * *

Here I am again in Ajloun, in Jordan, then in Irbid. I remove what I believe is one of my white hairs from my sweater and put it on the knee of Hamza, sitting near me. He takes it between his thumb and middle finger, looks at it, smiles, puts it in the pocket of his black jacket, and pats it saying: “A hair from the Prophet’s beard is worth less than that.” He takes a slightly deeper breath and starts over: “A hair from the Prophet’s beard is not worth more than that.” He was only twenty-two years old, his thoughts leaped easily high above the Palestinians who were forty, but he was already bearing the signs – on himself, on his body, in his actions — which linked him to the older ones. In the old days farmers used to blow their noses in their fingers. Then they flipped the snot into the thorns. They wiped their noses on their corduroy sleeves, which at the end of a month were covered with a pearly luster. So did the fedayeen. They blew their noses the same way noblemen and churchmen took snuff: slightly stooped over. I did the same thing, which they taught me without realizing. And the women? Night and day they embroidered the seven dresses (one for each day of the week) of the engagement trousseau given by a generally older husband chosen by the family, painful awakening. The Palestinian girls became very beautiful when they revolted against their fathers and broke their needles and embroidery scissors. It was on the mountains of Ajloun, Salt and Irbid, in the forests themselves that sensuality had come down, freed by the revolution and by guns, let’s not forget the guns. That was enough, everyone was happy. Without realizing it, the fedayeen — is it true? — were perfecting a new beauty: the liveliness of their actions and their obvious fatigue, the quickness and brightness of their eyes, the clearer tone of voice harmonized with the swiftness and brevity of the reply. With its precision too. They had done away with long sentences, learned and glib rhetoric. Many died in Chatila, and my friendship, my affection for their rotting corpses was also immense, because I had known them. Blackened swollen, decayed by the sun and by death, they were still fedayeen. Around two o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday three soldiers from the Lebanese army drove me, at gunpoint, to a jeep where an officer was dozing. I asked him: “Do you speak French?” “English.” The voice was dry, maybe because I had awakened it with a start. He looked at my passport, and said to me, in French: “Have you just been there?” He pointed to Chatila. “Yes.” — “And did you see?” — “Yes.” — “Are you going to write about it?” — “Yes.” He gave me back my passport. He signaled me to leave. The three rifles were lowered. I had spent four hours in Chatila. About forty bodies remained in my memory. All of them – and I mean all – had been tortured, probably against a backdrop of drunkenness, song, laughter, the smell of gunpowder and already of decaying flesh. I was probably alone, I mean the only European (with a few old Palestinian women still clinging to a torn white cloth; with a few young unarmed fedayeen), but if these five or six human beings had not been there and I had discovered this butchered city, black and swollen Palestinians lying there, I would have gone crazy. Or did I? That city lying in smithereens which I saw or thought I saw, which I walked through, felt, and whose death stench I wore, had all that taken place? I had explored, and poorly at that, only a twentieth of Chatila and Sabra, nothing of Bir Hassan, nothing of Bourj al-Barajneh. It’s not because of my leanings that I lived through the Jordanian period as if it were a fairy tale. Europeans and North African Arabs have told me about the spell that kept them there. As I lived through this long span of six months, barely colored by night for twelve or thirteen hours, I discovered the ethereality of what was happening, the exceptional quality of the fedayeen, but I had a premonition of the fragility of the structure. Everywhere in Jordan where the Palestinian army had assembled, near the Jordan River, there were checkpoints where the fedayeen were so sure of their rights and their might that the arrival of a visitor, by night or by day, at one of the checkpoints was a pretext for tea, for talk mixed with bursts of laughter and brotherly kisses (the one they embraced would be leaving that night, cross the Jordan River to plant bombs in Palestine and often would not return). The only islands of silence were the Jordanian villages; they kept their mouths shut. All the fedayeen seemed to be walking slightly above the ground, like the effect of a very light glass of wine or a drag on a little hashish. What was it? Youth, oblivious of death and with Czech and Chinese weapons to fire into the air. Protected by weapons that talked so big, the fedayeen weren’t afraid of anything. Any reader who has seen a map of Palestine and Jordan knows that the land is not like a sheet of paper. Along the Jordan River the land is in high relief. This whole escapade should have been subtitled A Midsummer Night’s Dream in spite of the flare-ups between the forty-year-old leaders. All that was possible because of youth, the joy of being under the trees, of playing with weapons, of being away from women, in other words, of conjuring away a difficult problem, of being the brightest and the most forward point of the revolution, of having the approval of the population of the camps, or being photogenic no matter what, and perhaps of foreseeing that this revolutionary fairy tale might soon be defiled: the fedayeen didn’t want power; they had freedom. At the Damascus airport on my way back from Beirut I met some young fedayeen who had escaped from the Israeli hell. They were sixteen or seventeen. They were laughing; they were like the ones in Ajloun. They will die like them. The struggle for a country can fill a very rich life, but a short one. That was the choice, as we recall, of Achilles in the Iliad.

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Translated by Daniel R. Dupecher and Martha Perrigaud

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homepage SOLUS solussolus@hotmail.com

Li Po’s EXILE’S LETTER

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TO So-Kiu of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor Gen.
Now I remember that you built me a special tavern By the south
side of the bridge at Ten-shin.
With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for songs and laughter
And we were drunk for month on month, forgetting the kings and
princes.
Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and from the west
border, And with them, and with you especially There was nothing
at cross purpose, And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of
mountain-crossing, If only they could be of that fellowship, And
we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and without regret.
And then I was sent off to South Wai, smothered in laurel groves,
And you to the north of  Raku-hoku, Till we had nothing but
thoughts and memories in common.
And then, when separation had come to its worst, We met, and
travelled into Sen-jo, Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning
and twisting waters, Into a valley of the thousand bright flowers,
That was the first valley; And into ten thousand valleys full of
voices and pine-winds.
And with silver harness and reins of gold, Out came the East of
Kan foreman and his company.
And there came also the “True man” of Shi-yo to meet me, Playing
on a jewelled mouth-organ.
In the storied houses of San-ka they gave us more  Sennin music,
Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix broods.
The foreman of Kan-chu, drunk, danced because his long sleeves
wouldn’t keep still With that music playing, And I, wrapped in
brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap, And my spirit so
high it was all over the heavens, And before the end of the day we
were scattered like stars, or rain.
I had to be off to So, far away over the waters, You back to your
river-bridge.
And your father, who was brave as a leopard, With governor in
Hei Shu, and put down the barbarian rabble.
And one May he had you send for me, despite the long distance.3
And what with broken wheels and so on, I won’t say it wasn’t hard
going, Over roads twisted like sheep’s guts.
And I was still going, late in the year, in the cutting wind from the
North, And thinking how little you cared for the cost, and you
caring enough to pay it.
And what a reception: Red jade cups, food well set on a blue
jewelled table, And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning.
And you would walk out with me to the western corner of the
castle, To the dynastic temple, with water about it clear as blue
jade, With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and
drums, With ripples like dragon-scales, going grass green on the
water, Pleasure lasting, with  courtezans, going and coming
without hindrance, With the willow flakes falling like snow, And
the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset, And the water, a
hundred feet deep, reflecting green eyebrows -Eyebrows painted
green are a fine sight in young moonlight, Gracefully paintedAnd
the girls singing back at each other, Dancing in transparent
brocade, Ant the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it, Tossing
it up under the clouds.
And all this comes to an end.
And is not again to be met with.
I went up to the court for examination, Tried Yo Yu’s luck, offered
the Choyo song, And got no promotion, and went back to the East
Mountains White-headed.
And once again, later, we met at the South bridgehead.
And then the crowd broke up, you went north to San palace, And
if you ask how I regret that parting: It is like the flowers falling at
Spring’s end Confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking, There is
no end of things in the heart.
I call in the boy, Have him sit on his knees here To seal this, And
send it a thousand miles, thinking.

January 2000

Image by jankie via Flickr

Azhar al-Shams (Flowers of the Sun),Youssef Rakha, Cairo: Sharqiat Publishing House, 1999. pp143

Summer torments

Azhar al-Shams is Youssef Rakha’s first collection of short stories, yet it constitutes a mature beginning, containing none of the faults characteristic of many young authors’ early works. His thematic framework is robustly formulated, his language elaborately multilayered and evocative, with the interplay between connection and association, and its resulting resonance, effectively portraying “misfits” who relate to the world only through fantasies that both connect and separate them from the flow of “ordinary” life.

“Jails”, for example, the first story, hints at an ambiguous force that delights in putting young people in jail and thus in “ruining their future”. The story begins following the dispersal of a “gang”, only two members of which now remain in contact. The first of these, who is the narrator of the story, is himself about to serve a prison sentence, while his friend is on trial and is terrified of going to jail. It is spring, and the remembrance of past springs — of family, Easter eggs and salted fish in public parks, beer and the secretive talk of girlfriends — is all that makes life worth living. Not only physical jails await the two young men however: frustration and isolation make an entrance into the story too, and they are shown clinging to fleeting moments of light as a refuge against existential solitude and their dreary lives. Here as elsewhere in Rakha’s stories a dreamy narrator-protagonist is shown to be suffocating under the weight of reality: the very air of the city where he lives is still, and all that is left to him are the shreds of human contact. All his attempts to engage with the human or natural environment are shown to be doomed, apprehensions and obsessions haunting him as he sinks into fantasies of fear or failure.

“Fire is nothing but elongated orange shapes”, a key phrase in another short story, “Tea Leaves”, would seem to sum up this condition. In this story, the narrator finds himself in a boat on a lake, “the boat is very black, the lake is green as olives, the wood of the boat in flames” — a nightmarish hallucination that aptly represents Rakha’s sense of being-in-the-world. The narrator of the story, a newspaper boy deserted by his Upper Egyptian family, is prey to such hallucinations, which resemble abstract paintings in line and in colour, and these become more frequent following the death of his only friend in a motorcycle accident. The friend leaves him nothing but “a stone bringing luck” that in sunlight glows in “a hundred thousand shades of colour”, such colour being represented, for example, in the fire that surrounds the boat. This is described as being without flame and merely a mass of bright orange polygons surrounding a patch of darkness.

The hero of this story is devoid of heroism, his daily early-morning bicycle rides to deliver the papers offering him a view of the city clad in one enormous cloud. Unsurprisingly, he pictures himself swimming in this cloud, as if seeking an impossible shore. The house in which he is staying with his lover, a servant, does not belong to him, since she has only been given the keys to clean the house while its owners are away and, as the story progresses, their return, which will force his departure, becomes increasingly immanent. Towards the end of the story the lovers are shown clinging to each other, as if eager to squeeze out the very last drops of vitality from their relationship, though, as their lovemaking becomes noisier, the narrator envisions an undesired baby in his partner’s belly. Despite these fears, shortly before being expelled from this momentary paradise, the two protagonists stand on the balcony drinking tea. The protagonist has lost his good-luck stone, and the wet tea leaves at the bottom of his glass, though they too manage to glow “in one hundred thousand shades of colour”, seem faint and subdued, like many of Rakha’s moments of remembrance.

Another story, “Blackberry Bushes”, shows the narrator attempting to break out of this miserable condition, a parallel being drawn between the contents of the narrator’s psyche and the bushes. Against a background of deepening sky and dimming stars, the narrator comes upon an old blackberry bush with dried-up branches and no blossom, and this, “together with the façade of a yellow building… made up an ugly painting.” An image of blackberry bushes swaying in the wind brings to mind his old father against the backdrop of the sea, since, outside the old house in which they had once lived, had stood a half-dead blackberry bush. Thus the bush the narrator sees in present time is a kind of “double”; a parallel between the dying bush and the narrator’s aging father, with his wrinkled face and white hair, is established, fleshed out by the roaring of the sea and the sound of the bush swaying in the wind. Failing to rid himself of the bush’s image, together with the disconcerting roaring of the sea, the narrator is shown to be similarly incapable of ridding himself of the people and relationships associated with it. The oppressive conditions under which he lives are internalised as an obsessive feeling of “surveillance”, or chase. “Blackberry Bushes” in its lack of linear time and developing plot well represents the essence of Rakha’s method. Instead of these he posits symbolic relations and a tightly structured web of themes employed to represent characters against their respective realities and to give concrete form to the life of the mind.

“Flowers of the Sun”, the title story, though it does not depart from these general features, represents a special locus slightly removed from this framework of suffocation and dreams of revolt. The longest and also the most elaborate of the stories in the volume, it sets the tone for the rest of the collection and illuminates it. The narrator-protagonist here is a wannabe artist who loves poetry and music and lives a suspended life, based on memories and fantasies from the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. The Dutch artist’s letters to his brother Theo form a sub-text to Rakha’s tale. The protagonist describes himself as a person of no consequence who will leave no mark on people or on things and, in what seems to be an inversion of the familiar idea of mimesis — the view that art “reflects” a prior reality — life here is shown to be imitating art throughout, as the narrator’s life takes on the shape of Van Gogh’s. Images of death haunt the protagonist: images of his aging father, a kitchen knife, a “vase capable of crushing my skull at any moment, its shrapnel penetrating my brain cells” seem strangely powerful, and yet on arriving at an Alexandria beach before sunrise and watching the light grow while lounging on the sand, “the happy moments in the life of Van Gogh” are also brought to life for him, causing him to sprint along the edge of the sea. When such physical effort has exhausted him, he feels rejuvenated despite his fatigue, and his fears ebb away as the skyline changes colour, giving way to the clear blue light of dawn. This is a primary instance of moments of pure joy that permeate the collection, despite its otherwise sombre tone.

The next day the narrator decides to paint the sunrise in an attempt to ’solarise’ the world around him, as Van Gogh is thought to have done. Things are still not altogether cheerful, however, and the darker side of Van Gogh’s world, portrayed impressively in the paintings, is likened to the narrator’s own field of vision. A Paris café in red and green is evoked by places where the narrator’s friends and colleagues gather; a disproportionately attractive girl who loves paintings reminds the narrator of the English woman who refused to marry Van Gogh, in turn reminding him of a brief and abortive love affair in Switzerland; the Nile resembles Van Gogh’s final, suicidal wheat fields. Human endeavour acquires a Sisyphus-like quality, made bearable only through things like flowers and the sun, and particularly by the sunflower that Van Gogh himself had famously painted. This brings with it “the memory of a boundless field, a spring of water, Van Gogh to one side painting the big flower which opens up towards the sun, the light emanating from inside it, as if it were itself a little sun”.

The story ends with the narrator walking from his house to the Nile before sunset, waiting on the bridge until “Cairo’s noise returns”, and throwing away a cigarette-end that symbolises all the hidden torments of summer.

“Flowers of the Sun” represents in condensed form many of the narrative features of the collection. Events are few and insignificant, while Rakha is able to orchestrate a variety of images and symbols in subtly repetitive patterns, and it is the movement of these as they interact that testifies to the author’s skill, giving him a distinctive voice of his own. The narrator moves from a domain of darkness to one of light — or from cold to warmth, death to life — with the business of living invariably triumphing in the end. That said, one is reminded that such a movement takes place only in the realm of imagination. It is a desire that forever seeks fulfilment without the certainty of ever achieving it.

Reviewed by Ibrahim Fathi

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The Letter Arrived سركون بولص

وصلت الرسالة

قُلتَ

أنك تكتب والقنابل تتساقط، تُزيلُ تاريخَ السقوف

تَمحقُ وجهَ البيوت.

قلت

أكتبُ إليك بينما اللّه

يسمحُ لهؤلاء أن يكتبوا مصيري. هذا ما يجعلني أشكُّ في أنه الله.

كتبتَ تقول:

كلماتي، هذه المخلوقات المهدَّدة بالنار.

لولاها، لما كنتُ أحيا.

بعد أن يذهبوا، سأستعيدها

بكلّ بَهائها كأنها سريري الأبيض في ليل البرابرة.

أسهرُ في قصيدتي حتى الفجر، كلَّ ليلة.

قلتَ: أحتاجُ إلى جبَلٍ، إلى محطّة. أحتاجُ إلى بشَرٍ آخرين.

وبعثتَ بالرسالة.



You said
that you write while the bombs
rain down, erase the history of the roofs,
eradicate the faces of the houses.

You said:
I write to you while God
allows them to write my destiny;
this is what makes me doubt He is God.

You wrote to say:
My words, these creatures threatened
with fire. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to live.

After “they” are gone, I will regain them
with all their purity like my white bed
in the barbarians’ dark night.

I keep vigil in my poem until dawn, every night.

Then you said:
I need a mountain, a sanctuary. I need other humans.

And you sent the letter.



Cairo, culture, conquer

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Letter on status

mother of cities and seat of Pharaoh the tyrant, mistress of broad regions and fruitful lands, boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor, the meeting-place of comer and goer, the halting-place of feeble and mighty… — Ibn Battuta (Gibb)

Cairo means ‘conqueror’; it is female. Every night she dreams of being herself, every morning she wakes up alienated. Pondering over the city’s fate I am reminded of canonical Arab and Arabized scholar-writers (examples I’m thinking of range from the 10th to the 15th century), for whom the words for ‘essay’ and ‘epistle’ — also ‘book’— were one and the same. The role of Cairo, a central destination on their frequently Maghreb-to-Mecca itinerary, strikes me as the kind of notion that might interest them. She seems the right subject for a letter, anyway: rather than the inevitably false claim to impartiality, the city elicits a subjectivity both particular and prescribed. An epistolary subjectivity: involuntary postmodernism. A letter is intimate and specific, and yet those writers were encyclopedists and synthesizers: generalists in the most efficacious sense. Aside from their occasionally confessional tone, their object was never private. They saw the world whole, and it was the wholeness of that vision, not the integrity of their texts, that excited them. They were spokesmen for the unity of reality, but they wrote rather like pen pals addressing their patrons, sometimes each other, never unduly concerned with standpoint, seldom self-consciously artistic. They conveyed knowledge geographically, which means that they spread it individually over a collective surface: the Arabic tongue, the Koranic rhetoric that underpinned it and an unyielding commitment to truth. It also means that, while they sustained a classificatory compulsion, their sense of detail remained paramount.
Rather than a temporal, linear arrangement, they assayed a spatial, non-sequential scattering: precisely the mode of progress I am proposing here—a medieval-style ‘letter’ on the status of the City (no longer so) Victorious.

*

For Arabs everywhere Cairo is geographically central—as much in the physical as in that wider, conceptual sense, posited in contrast to the historical, which is not only temporal and linear but makes a more persuasive case for the city’s name—yet since the 20th century, and I take this rightly or wrongly to be the principal historical framework of the present, her significance has derived largely from numbers. (I maintain the affectation of personifying Cairo as a woman; let it evoke a wrinkled whore!) Egypt is significantly smaller than its cartographic representation, due to both the positioning and the density of its human habitation, and within that smallness—since AD 639, at least—seethes the greater smallness of its unequivocal and tyrannical hub. (So much so that, in Arabic, all through post-Arab Conquest history, Egypt and Cairo have often been confused in the reference to masr (misr in standard Arabic), with the more predominant occurrences denoting the city.) Outside of Cairo, Egyptians complain of being marginalized, something that has come to be known in government-supported cultural circles as ‘the predicament of the provinces’; but in perpetuating the conviction that nothing happens anywhere else, in feeling deprived and seeking fortune in her ‘bounty’, it is the alleged victims who contribute more than anyone to the centralism and arrogance of the city.
In this connection it should be stressed that Cairo has been subject to an unrelenting process of de-urbanization since 1956, when the migratory waves began to converge on her following the greater freedom of movement imparted to the fellahin—in a spirit of both ‘nationalism’ (later, and more importantly, nonalignment-style ‘socialism’) and ‘nationalization’—abandoning agriculture, deserting civic fronts: the postcolonial fate which the Arab states, themselves colonial inventions, have one way or another shared with the rest of the so called Third World. It was in those times, paradoxically, that Cairo’s role as Arab capital was fervently emphasized. At one point, with the declaration of the United Arab Republic in 1958, the notion might even have sounded viable; for, of course, it is totally absurd to speak of a capital—however ‘cultural’ its designation, the concept of a capital city is political in essence—when the larger demographic entity in which it occupies a position of prominence is but a loose conglomerate of nations of dubious sovereignty, with very emphatic (and, for the vast majority, largely impenetrable) borders separating one from the other. (Note the ease, the sheer legitimacy with which an Israeli citizen passes into Egypt, compared to the Arab holder of Palestinian papers—for example.) Cairo looks down, muttering cliches about the Palestinians being selfish and unreliable.

*

Most will now claim that Arabness is a myth, shunning it in favor Islam or some other form of pragmatic globalism—whether dominant (like Bushism) or submissive (like Ladenism), so to speak—which will be invariably bound by the atavistic and universalist imperatives of the millennium’s incredibly narrow political spectrum. Certainly, some degree of fragility remains inherent to the concept in the light of political experience; the terms ‘pan-Arabism’ and ‘Arab unity’, at least, are always on the verge of implosion, as if by merely uttering them one is instantly replaying the Lebanese Civil War, recalling the 1967 War, underlining the Gulf nations’ wholesale defection to a mode of pan-Americanism.
Arabness as a cultural condition remains profoundly geographic—as opposed to historical—a trait complicated further by the fact that it is quite simply interesting, especially in the first decade of the millennium, for something to be called Arab. ‘Interesting’ implies, above all, plurality: it means more things to be Arab than it does to be communist, for example, or even modern.
One thing it does not mean is that the subject should consider Cairo her cultural capital. In fact inter-Arab chauvinism—Bedouin vs. Hadar, Mashreq vs. Maghreb, Umawite-Levantine vs. Abbasid-Gulfie: all are as much intellectual as psychological divides—may well be at the root of inter-Arab strife; and in this context the imperialist divide-and-rule volley can travel incredibly far, as has been demonstrated time and again over the decades. (Witness, once more by way of example, the recent history of Sunni-Shia strife in Iraq, the effect of the US ‘liberation’ of the country on the escalation of that strife, and the ideological—for which read, in effect, tribal—substance of its drive.) The fact that, through cinema, then radio and eventually television, Egypt had for a long time dominated the audiovisual media—it is this, and the country’s location, that explain the currency of Egyptian Arabic, compared to other dialects, in both Mashreq and Maghreb—has often made other urban Arabs (Beirutis, for example) deeply resentful of Cairo, eager to point up both contradictions and disappointments as they claim a position of leadership for their cities. Cairo shrugs, laughing shrilly as she thrusts forward her cleavage: she knows that no other girl on the market has been around for longer, none will ever have as many clients.

*

Still, Egyptian chauvinism is arguably the worst of all; after the blatant fact of political segregation, it is the complacency and corruption of the Cairenes’ own sense of identity that forms the first obstacle in the way of the city actualizing her potential as Arab cultural median. (Nasser, the first truly Egyptian head of state and Egypt’s only true champion of Arabness, delivered his speeches in a combination of broken standard Arabic and dialect, breaking with a tradition that had maintained a level of linguistic proficiency in formal contexts in the wake of the 19th-century battle against the official imposition of Turkish on Egyptian—also, by general consensus, Arab—life, especially in the military, where Nasser was a corporal.) This chauvinism manifests in an infinity of registers, many of which have only the most contingent connection with other Arabs, some of which have to do with postcolonial self-hatred a la Frantz Fanon, and a few, a very few of which hark back to pre-Conquest times.
One of the latter, I believe, is conservatism, colored by both inflexibility and stasis. Much has been made of the rise of religiosity in Egypt in terms of both (potentially militant) political dissent and (middle-class) social attitudes. The truth is that, while their Wahhabi and consumerist registers may indeed be recent developments, ritual piety, sartorial modesty, ageism, nepotism and classism—the mainstays of Egyptian public life—are as old as the Pharaohs; they do not occur with the same incidence in other Arab states; and they have negative implications for the theory and practice of culture. It is possible to see 20th-century sociopolitical phenomena that have a bearing on cultural life as expressions of this ancient trait.
Nasser’s Soviet influence, for example, has made for a legacy of both police-state security and inefficient bureaucracy. This means that, among many implications for culture, outdoor gatherings are outlawed; it means that writers and artists are often also civil servants, with their loyalty to the establishment, the only available source of money and kudos, overruling the creative impulse. But outdoor gatherings are hardly sanctioned by city-dwellers themselves, unless they have to do with religion; and a place in the official hierarchy, to a far greater extent than artistic accomplishment outside the popular media, is the gauge by which the vast majority—including police personnel—will judge a person they do not know. It also means that, when a young blogger receives a prison sentence for speaking his mind about Islam, his parents are the first to support the move and disown him. State, religion and family suddenly put aside their differences and become one, alienating the individual beyond any hope: this is Egyptian. Together with xenophobia—a condition less of history per se than of cumulative lack of access to information—it makes for an unsafe and inhospitable cultural space. Cairo smiles sheepishly, concerned and slightly ashamed: she gathers her bundle of tatters, adjusts her makeup, and leaves…

*

There are now in Egypt three means to the production of culture: a nepotism-ridden ministry suffering all the symptoms of a formerly socialist dictatorship and inextricably linked with similarly afflicted government and pro-government bodies; a commercial sector prone not only to profit-making constraints but, more importantly, to censorial intervention from the official, the religious and the family establishment—as in the case of the blogger; and an ‘independent’ sector with roots in the NGO scene, frequently subject to the same patterns of conservatism as the other two. Of the three only the latter, however, is eager to maintain links with the rest of the Arab world. But there are indications of the meaning of Arabness in all of them, whether positive or negative. Rather than showing that Cairo is or isn’t cultural capital, two examples of these should give an idea of what is involved in saying that she is:
Ellimbi. Star comedian Mohammad Saad’s cult figure Ellimbi, who first appeared in his late peer Alaa Waleyeddin’s 2000 film vehicle Al-Nazir (Salaheddin) but found fuller expression in Saad’s subsequent, eponymous vehicle of 2002, is among the most eloquent metaphors for urban dispossession in recent Arab culture. Ellimbi is illiterate, a drunk-druggie and a thug—all of which, as well as reflecting socioeconomic deprivation, are occasions for comic interest and laughter: a powerful statement about the contemporary inner-city Arab living in a country of relative stability and struggling with unemployment and official oppression—but his most compelling attribute is the way he speaks. Together with Waleyeddin, Mohammad Heneidi, Ahmad Helmi and, to a lesser extent, Hani Ramzi, Saad is part of the cinematic phenomenon I have tentatively named ‘new-wave comedy’, which, though it remains a wholly commercial development and in the process perpetuates rather than questions sociopolitical norms, has evidenced a comic sensibility distinct from that of the previous generation of Egyptian comedians, like the superstar Adel Imam, whose verbal antics expressed emotional responses to meaningful dramatic situations. In new-wave comedy, by contrast, laughter derives directly from such verbal antics, which in reflecting the development of the vernacular—the latest slang, the influence of satellite TV, the results of urban-rural and inter-Arab interactions—capitalize, rather, on the breakdown of language as a the principal container of meaning.
In Ellimbi such breakdown reaches an apex; though Saad has made a sequel, Elli Bali Balak (2003) and attempted a series of variations since, nothing compares to the power of the original, suggesting that, in Ellibmi, Saad had already exhausted the possibilities of this late-in-the-day figure of fun. In Ellimbi’s mouth, all the major components of the vernacular, both standard and dialect—love poetry, including the lyrics of classic Om Kolthoum songs; everyday sayings, proverbs, idioms and turns of phrase; exclamations and interrogative constructions; the platitudes and comforts of an entire society—are semantically and phonetically distorted, mispronounced, misappropriated, muddled and confused to the point of being meaningless; the situation is understood, and the characters’ position within it, but never through the ordinary (normative) operation of language; and the result, though funny—largely because laughable—can be profoundly unsettling. It is as though, in Ellimbi, the linguistic frailty of Nasser’s speeches reaches its ultimate conclusion, reflecting a parallel process of disintegration that afflicted society in the half century separating the two popular figures (however incompatible they look at first glance): the suicide of the spoken word; the death of collective meaning insofar as it can be verbally communicated.
Amkenah. The flowering of the nineteen sixties, quickly cut short by 1967 and the return of both conservatism and unchecked capitalism under Sadat, gave way to a deep rift in reader-writer relations. Since then serious poetry and fiction have not had the benefit of a readership to speak of, partly because they were increasingly inaccessible, partly because fewer people were interested in books. It wasn’t until the mid nineteen nineties that a new current in prose poetry—subsequently igniting more novel(ette)s than diwans, but also informing a much wider range of scriveners from less self-consciously ‘professional’ novelists to journalists, diarists, humorists and political analysts—opened up the parameters of literature somewhat. In this regard nonfiction seems to promise rather more than ‘literature’ as it is currently understood by the vast majority of creative writers: fiction and poetry; and it is Amkenah (Places), the occasional magazine published from Alexandria since 1999, that demonstrates this. An initiative of Alaa Khaled — himself not only a nineties prose poet but, since he is based in Alexandria, technically also ‘a writer of the provinces’ —the magazine showcases the widest variety of nonfiction texts, sometimes interspersed with or accompanied by monochromatic photographs or archival extracts.
In so doing Amkenah has managed to become financially self-sufficient—a genuinely unprecedented feat; Khaled, refusing to align himself with the so called independent scene, the only funding option available to him, has had to produce the magazine from his own pocket, overseeing its Cairo sales in person. Amkenah—openly defiant of Cairo’s centralism, and thus a modest precursor to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina—must be Cairo’s best-selling literary publication—paradoxically enough—which says an amazingly great deal for the appeal of nonfiction in Arabic. Nonfiction, arguably the most lasting consequence of the nineteen nineties’, as it were, breath of fresh air—seems to be freeing literature from the tentacles of obscurantism and ‘sophistication’, finally. It is a slow process, but it is ongoing and gathers advocates by the day. The influence of Amkenah has certainly been felt throughout the literary scene, and it is gradually reaching other Arab countries by way of Cairo…

*

Mixing her (non-alcoholic) cocktail, the old whore listens in silence. She is consumed by a passion of remembrance but will not divulge her grief. At the street corner she gazes at the billboard of Mohammad Saad’s latest film, ignoring a book stall where Amkenah is stacked to one side, dusty and obscured. It is sunset and she must find work: she sniffs after expensive eau de toilet; she listens hard for non-Egyptian cadences of speech. Then she crosses the streets in hurry, paying no attention to traffic lights, strutting her tired stuff.

this piece published two years ago in Magaz, the design magazine

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Library of Dreams

Leaving the UAE and returning to Cairo, Youssef Rakha puts Abu Dhabi on the shelf with his favourite books of the world.

Just a few short weeks ago, a scene much like the opening of Kafka’s The Trial marked the beginning of the end of my year-long life in Abu Dhabi: Someone must have been telling lies about Youssef R, for without having done anything wrong he was divested of his belongings one fine evening. His Tamil cleaner, who should have been there to oversee the procedure, failed to appear. That was totally unexpected. R was lounging about with two American friends, watching Barack Obama’s inauguration on TV, when two men, having mysteriously arrived at his apartment, found their way straight into the room without knocking or ringing the door bell, which was out of order anyway. It took R a long time to remember that he had left his door ajar on purpose and even longer to realise that the two men were not so much uninvited as unannounced. They had come for a purpose of which he was in fact aware – to purchase, at the absurdly low price of Dh600, the complete contents of R’s apartment. Ignoring his friends, who did not seem to be in the least interested or surprised by this strange turn of events, R got up and greeted the men respectfully, asking them, with Abu Dhabi-style courtesy, where they were from… I recall this from the room where I grew up, in an apartment on the western side of the Nile in Cairo – a space I have not stably occupied for a year. And glancing through the window at the large, perpetually half-dead juniper tree that fed my childhood nightmares so many aeons ago, I marvel that only yesterday I was still trudging down Old Airport Road, casually ordering coffee at the Wahda Mall, looking out of the taxi window on the way from Khalidiya to the Beach Rotana – not fully registering the fact that I was doing those things for the last time. Today Abu Dhabi might as well be the moon. (As far as it resembles nowhere else in the world in its combination of interlocking identities, the essential youth of its institutions, and its location in a tentative human future, the city really is a kind of moon: a heavenly body inhabited by early settlers seeking a better, quieter life.) Back in Cairo, the last year (particularly the month separating inauguration night from the present moment) feels like a long, complicated reverie. In all probability it will haunt me till the end of my life, flashing through my thoughts and dreams with periodic intensity, more so than other places I have been. I have only recently begun to realise why this is. My departure had to be relatively final, and it had to be homebound, for me to finally see Abu Dhabi not just as an adopted hometown – a place you might appreciate for the standard of living it affords you, or dislike for lack of edge – but as a literary experiment. Not simply, as might be understood from the term, a place to inspire literature: what I mean is that Abu Dhabi is itself literature on the grandest lived scale. Consciously and unconsciously – perhaps more often unconsciously – people write new lives in Abu Dhabi, author previously untested versions of themselves. And Abu Dhabi, that silent dramatist, creates epics of itself and of its people. In this sense, nowhere else I know will ever serve as the setting for so many scenes, scenarios and sagas: fantastical, magically realistic, existential, surreal, even sci-fi. I believe I will have dreams about Abu Dhabi, and in those dreams the city will replay and overlap with other literatures of the world. Brave New World seems a likely candidate, but so does RK Narayan’s delightfully humane fictional South Indian town, Malgudi. Dream-altered versions of One Hundred Years of Solitude, of VS Naipaul’s picaroon biographies, of the bafflingly moral-less, unexpectedly multicultural stories in One Thousand and One Nights, and psychological thrillers of illicit or unrequited love, à la Flaubert, all come to mind. These books will be superimposed on Abu Dhabi (the sale of my furniture will be relived as a Kafka story); and in turn Abu Dhabi, like all great literature, will weave its sounds, sights, textures, flavours, characters, plots and perspectives into various far-flung corners of my memory where books live. In this sense, no matter how much I forget it, Abu Dhabi will always be there. Perhaps the central aspect of my dream literature of Abu Dhabi will be the journeys there and back, the constant toing and froing on which the young metropolis thrives. When I first came to Abu Dhabi, it felt like a giant terminus – itself constantly metamorphosing – at which people arrive, stay for a little or long while, and then leave: a port of call to the power of infinity. Whatever else you might say about it, Abu Dhabi offers that unique zest that comes about only when no one is ever entirely settled, and everyone seems to be stopping on the way to somewhere else. I was 32 then, strapped in my seat as the huge Etihad airbus plunged through dense cloud to Cairo airport. (So begins my dream mash-up of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood with memories of my departure.) Once the plane was on the ground, soft music began to flow from the ceiling speakers: the seraphic voice of Fairuz singing of love in the winter. This particular tune has never failed to send a shudder through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever. I bent forward, my face in my hands to keep my skull from splitting open. Eventually I straightened up and looked out of the window at the clouds hanging over the tarmac, thinking of all I had lost now that I was back: times gone forever, friends left behind, feelings that I would never have again and, perhaps most of all, the sense that I was living in an airport, a giant airport where nothing could ever stay still.

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Empty Feeling: The Vagaries of the Sixties

Cover of The White Tiger: A Novel

The Egyptian writers who rose to prominence in the 1960s cast a long shadow over decades of Arabic fiction. Youssef Rakha considers the vexed legacy of a generation.

Hunger: A Modern Arabic Novel
Mohamed el Bisatie, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies
American University in Cairo Press
Dh90

In July 2007, I met the novelist Gamal al Ghitani in Cairo to discuss the Egyptian State Merit Award, which he had just received (too late, he felt). We agreed that the group of writers known in Egypt as the Generation of the Sixties – a politically engaged, predominantly working-class group of poetically-inclined writers who made their names in the late 1960s and early 1970s – remain the principle reference point for much contemporary Arabic literature. Al Ghitani said that the Sixties’ achievement comprises only two kinds of writing. “One draws on the news and other immediate manifestations of history to take realism to its logical conclusion; it is represented by Sonallah Ibrahim. The other, which is inspired by old books and uses the old storytelling to comment on the present, is my own.”

It seemed unnecessary to disagree at the time, but I thought to myself that there was a third Sixties contingent, one typified by Ibrahim Aslan and Mohamed el Bisatie. Their work is even more typical of “the movement” than either Ibrahim’s brand of hyper-realism or al Ghitani’s heritage-orientated approach. It embodies all the qualities that come to mind when you think of the Generation of the Sixties: it focuses on collective rather than individual experience. It works through evocation and insinuation, is often almost too subtle to understand, and prioritises style over storytelling. It asserts the importance of the lower-middle and working classes, which were more visible under the Nasser regime than they had ever been before.

What sets Aslan and el Bisatie – the former a postman-turned-editor, the latter (like Naguib Mahfouz) a lifelong civil servant – apart from their generational cohort is their almost exclusive emphasis on the experience of marginalised groups, rather than all of society or the ebb and flow of history. Their short stories – always short, sometimes rambling – are Faulkneresque in their focus on small communities and their vernaculars. Aslan has the Nile-side Cairo slum of Kitkat, el Bisatie an unnamed small town overlooking Lake Manzalah in the north-eastern Nile Delta. Like Ibrahim, both authors engage broad themes like sex, religion and politics, but only indirectly, only to the extent that they play out in the lives of the disinherited, and generally in a more personal register. Like al Ghitani, they situate their narratives in an explicitly historical context, but only on behalf of the small, poor communities in question.

In addition to his numerous short stories, Aslan has only produced two novels – Malik al Hazin (Heron, 1983) and Asafir al Nil (Nile Sparrows, 2000). Recently, in an unprecedented move for a Sixties Generation writer, he has branched out into literary non-fiction. El Bisatie, on the other hand, has spent the last three decades steadily producing short novels of starkly uneven quality. To a greater extent than Aslan, he has failed to remedy the shortcoming inherent in much of the new writing celebrated in the 1960s and 1970s: a lack of strong characters or gripping storylines. The power of language to convey an intimately observed environment – particularly one where common people live – was thought to be enough for literature. But it rarely is; now that the Sixties’ political points are no longer fresh, their style frequently seems stale as well.

“Hunger” is the idiomatic translation of both Al Ju’ and Ju’: the definite and indefinite forms of the word, respectively. El Bisatie’s choice of the latter as the title of his latest book (since published as Hunger by the American University in Cairo press) reflects a particular humility of the Sixties: the belief that, when the title of a book is a one-word abstraction, the definite article is too presumptuous to include. To call the book Al Ju’ (so goes this absurd argument, advanced by a whole range of Sixties critics) would imply that the author is laying exclusive claim to the concept of hunger (this is the rough opposite of how it works in English).

Reading Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger – another recent book about poverty in the third world, one that recognises the age-old literary virtues of character and storyline – I was reminded of many such Sixties hang-ups (all of which Adiga transcends). They include a paradoxical combination of commitment to “the people” and a lack of concern for accessibility, a tendency to prioritise flashy language over storytelling, and commitment to the unwritten commandment “Thou shalt not make context clear or state the facts”. These qualities occasionally combined to produce an exquisite short story or novella (and are much less pronounced in al Ghitani and Ibrahim than in Aslan or el Bisatie), but they restricted the scope of much talent, alienated many readers and effected a huge drop in novel sales, which had reached a peak in the mid-1960s with the works of journalist-novelists like Ihsan abdul Quddous and Fathi Ghanem; contemporary Arabic literature has had serious trouble building a readership ever since.

********************************

El Bisatie devised his technique of a collective narrative voice in two 1978 novellas, Al Maqha az Zujaji (The Glass Cafe) and Al Ayyam as Sa’bah (Hard Days): simple, sad evocations of the lives of geographically isolated town-dwellers. In these books, as in the bulk of el Bisatie’s subsequent work, the narration is either delivered by an amorphous “we” or by a rapidly shifting blend of individual voices – in both cases, it as if el Bisatie’s small town itself is telling its own tale.

It is a technically impressive mode of writing, one el Bisatie employed to brilliant effect as recently as 1994, in Sakhab al Buhairah (Clamour of the Lake), a prose poem-cum-foundation myth of life in the rural space between the lake and the sea in the governorate of Domyat. But none of the collective voice’s potential poetic power (often squandered by sloppiness and repetition) makes up for a lack of absorbing drama or vivid individual characters. This helps explain why Ju’ is such a slow and dreary read.

The book opens with a woman named Sakina sitting by the doorstep of her rough-and-tumble, mostly mud-brick family house, her headscarf in a bundle between her legs. Her perpetually unemployed husband, Zaghloul, uses a piece of straw to clean his teeth – his way of telling her that she had better borrow a reghif or two of bread from the neighbour who baked that morning. Inside the house, their sons (Zaher, 12, and Ragab, 10), barely awake, caress their tummies. Dialogue between husband and wife is intermingled with their respective internal monologues, all rendered in a language somewhere between dialect and standard Arabic. El Bisatie’s usual poetic intensity is replaced by a more true-to-life, mundane idiom that is neither absorbing nor (as the intention sometimes seems to be) comic.

From the start, it is hard not to recall far more powerful depictions of the subjective experience of hunger (in Mohammad Choukri or Knut Hamsen, for example). You race through the next few pages, hoping for some more compelling situation or scene. But having taken in that first image, it turns out you have taken in the whole book: paper-thin characters on the lookout for food, only food, and not thinking much at all.

Ju’ is built around four anecdotes recalled without any indication of when they occur or how (or if) they relate. First, Zaghloul takes to eavesdropping on a group of young men from the town who are studying at university in Cairo. Home for the holiday, they are meeting at the cafe around which Zaghloul hovers (hoping against hope for a free drink, perhaps?). “Oh Sakina,” he later recalls to his wife, “education is so sweet… Sitting on the mastaba by the wall, I hear them talking. And, oh, what talk! I understand bit, I don’t understand a bit… They say that one shouldn’t work everyday like a water buffalo tied to a water wheel, one has to have time to think. But, people, think about what? They did not say. I wanted to ask them but I was silent.”

The encounter, far from influencing Zaghloul one way or the other, acts only to dehumanise him for the reader, to solidify him as a caricature of the sub-proletariat. Likewise, in the second anecdote he blasphemes: “God in His glory created the world and the people and everything, and ordered them to worship Him. I say to myself, if He created all this, what does He need their worshipping for … If He in His glory wants them to worship him, why doesn’t He appear in whatever form He likes and say ‘I created you, worship Me!’ Then nobody will say no.” This is a silly caricature of shallow atheism – neither interesting in its own right nor useful in developing Zaghloul’s character, which remains opaque and stereotyped: the poor man with poor thoughts who invariably ends up being beaten by the imam.

The third anecdote involves Hagg Abdur Rahim – a man who “returned home from foreign countries” to the village with as much new money as new weight, which renders him immobile. Zaghloul works for Hagg Abdur for two months, bringing his family a rare stretch of financial stability. In the fourth – and perhaps the most interesting – anecdote, Sakina is similarly subcontracted as a servant by the two female teenage servants of Hagg Hashem, another affluent member of the community. When she moves into Hashem’s house, she brings along her husband and children, who feast on the household’s supplies. But once again, the protagonists reveal no individuality, enacting their destiny (acquiring what food they can) like shadow puppets, two-dimensional and skin deep.

Ju’ ends with Zaher being beaten up by the father of his relatively affluent friend Abdalla, who has been providing him with much-needed snacks. “His father,” who does not want him to mix with such rabble, “was a teacher at the primary school and he had not one but four galabeyas, he wore an undershirt and had three meals a day.” Zaghloul accepts a few meters of fabric as compensation, but when Abdalla’s father hands Zaher a galabeya to replace the one that was torn during the beating, Zaher throws the garment on the ground and walks away. In The White Tiger, Adiga has his poor man protagonist, Balram, rebel – and transform himself with a brutal murder. In Ju’, el Bisatie has Zaher make a feeble, hackneyed gesture, without the slightest indication of whether or how the rebellion will improve (or worsen) his lot. Perhaps a gesture of this type is in character for Zaher; we never know him well enough to say.

********************************

Perhaps what al Ghitani was getting at (consciously or unconsciously) in our conversation was not that the Sixties produced only two kinds of writing but rather that only two kinds of writing have survived since. Aslan and el Bisatie’s mode, arguably the most characteristic of the Generation, is fast dying out, just like the predominantly deferential, ineffectual characters it depicts. Today, the Zaghlouls of Egyptian fiction are more like Adiga’s Balram: upwardly mobile heroes who at least try to change their lives. The heirs of the Generation of the Sixties (prose poets-turned-novelists some three decades younger, often referred to quite aptly as the Generation of the Nineties) have turned the principles of their forebears upside down. Writers like Mustafa Zikri and Ibrahim Farghali – however else you evaluate their achievement – have traded the collective for the individual, the musical swirl of the “we” for the developed narratives of the “I”. As a vehicle for conveying modern reality, el Bisatie’s collective voice sounds less and less convincing – like the echo of an echo, no longer beautiful twice removed. It is doubtful that the poetic style he perfected in Shakhab al Buhairah will live on much longer.

Early on, partly in response to the Sixties Generation’s obsession with “the people”, the Nineties writers avoided social and political engagement altogether, and edged away from the vernacular towards a dynamic, thoroughly contemporary standard Arabic designed for finding the magic in the quotidien. As a result, they are realists only insofar as they use everyday contemporary life as their starting point. They write about foreigners and rich people with fully developed and convincing personalities – and about ghosts, psychotic breaks, unrealistic and fantastical turns of events. Their styles borrow from across high and low culture. Most importantly, they show at least as much interest in plot and character development as style. They tell stories of love, death, hunger and the full range of specimens who experience them. In doing so, they offer the reader so much more than the Sixties version of reality which, through relentless, obstinate insistence on being true to the grassroots vernacular of its time (and nothing more), already appears unreal.

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Running on empty

Image via Wikipedia

The National

Marathon man: It never occurs to you, reading Murakami’s novels, that his characters look Japanese. Courtesy Rex Features

In his new memoir, Haruki Murakami reflects on life as a ‘running novelist’ and ponders the meaning of a marathon. Youssef Rakha logs his discontent with the great storyteller’s descent into pop wisdom.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Haruki Murakami
Translated by Philip Gabriel
Harvill Secker
Dh67

Aug 18, Dubai — Day 1

Haruki Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (translated into English by Philip Gabriel), is the only book I have with me on my tour of the Emirates, and so far I am not gripped by it. For the first time since I discovered Murakami, it looks like I will not be enjoying one of his books.

The stated focus of What I Talk About is Murakami’s life as a writer, a runner, a runner who writes and a writer who runs – not inherently boring topics. But however much Murakami labours to present himself in an everyday, informal register, to “just write honestly about what I think and feel about running”, the fact that he is a famous, best-selling novelist remains paramount; everything in the book tells me I am to be interested in his thoughts on life and productivity not for their own sake, but because they have been issued by Haruki Murakami, Famous Author. This will clearly undermine identification.

Even worse, I cannot help fearing that Murakami himself will end up exemplifying a disturbing notion often expressed by the writers in his novels: that, in an “advanced capitalist society” like Japan, producing copy for publication is as ingloriously Sisyphean as an “shovelling snow”.

Aug 19, Ras al Khaimah – Day 2

“Writers should be read,” wrote Daphne du Maurier, “but neither seen nor heard.” As I predicted, I find it hard to appreciate Murakami when he speaks in his own voice. Having declared himself a professional novelist, my favourite shoveller stops producing the (Raymond) Carver Effect (That’s it exactly! And exactly as I might’ve written it myself!).

As Carver himself put it: “Anyone can express himself, or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.” And surely this means shedding your professional writerly persona (if you have one) – forgetting for a while whatever status you have acquired since you were young. But in What I Talk About, Murakami remains too conscious of his success to achieve the necessary and expected intimacy.

He takes care to distinguish himself from “legendary figures” like Shakespeare, Dickens and Balzac – whom he takes to have been so prodigiously talented that questions of routine, discipline, running and so on are irrelevant (this is absurd, but a topic for another essay). Instead, he counts himself among “the remaining majority of writers”, the “many who write for a living”. Here he forgets not his own status, but the fact that literary success remains fickle. He forgets that a writer might be talented, work hard, produce good work and still, for arbitrary or circumstantial reasons, not sell – or even be noticed at all. In mental and physical spheres where commercial English-language publishing does not exist, members of the real “remaining majority” of writers live and die with neither access to nor desire for a global market. They write to write, and make their money otherwise. Where does the author of a memoir predestined to sell across the world, no matter how bad it is, get the nerve to speak for them, even indirectly?

Aug 21, Ras al Khaimah – Day 4

Had What I Talk About been an efficient Murakami novel, it probably would have started 27 superfluous pages later than it actually does, and it would go something like this: at exactly 1:30pm on April 1, 1978, while watching a baseball game and sipping beer at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium, the young owner-manager of a hip new jazz club was gripped by the sudden urge to write a novel. Over the next few months, working for one hour each night, he wrote his first short novel, Hear The Wind Sing. In 1979, it was published in Japan’s most influential literary magazine. The young man decided to sell his thriving club, move out of Tokyo with his wife and adopt an efficient routine: to get serious about writing. He stopped smoking, took up running and in due course started pounding out phenomenal full-length novels.

Murakami takes running to be the magic ingredient in all this. Chapter Two, Tips on Becoming a Running Novelist, ends on this hyperbolically epic note: “Thirty-three – that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.”
But since this is not an efficient Murakami novel, it goes on. Convinced that his running and writing are so essentially linked that any information about the former will illuminate the latter, Murakami proceeds to essentially share his training logs for marathons, ultra-marathons and triathlons. He observes a bit, reminisces a lot and reveals little. He writes around running, not about it.

Aug 22, Ajman – Day 5

Four chapters in, I am struggling to place What I Talk About in Murakami’s oeuvre.
Platonically speaking, there are two Murakami books. Book A – which occurs in its purest real-world form in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) – is an exercise in universe construction, an otherworldly cerebral puzzle with brilliant dramatisations of complex, abstract intellectual premises. It is off-putting to hear the author of Book A write with overbearingly false modesty, as he does now, “I’m not the brightest person” and “I’m a physical, not intellectual type of person.”
Platonic Murakami Book B – Norwegian Wood being the closest thing – has more to do with character and coming-of age, and is full of references to pop culture. Book B produces the Carver Effect in spades, particularly for young people.

Big, complicated but readable Murakami books like The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and the distich of A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance work by combining the immediate psychological appeal of Book B with Book A’s supernatural /philosophical underpinnings. So do smaller works like South of the Border, West of the Sun and Sputnik Sweetheart. Even Underground, Murakami’s account of the 1995 gas attacks on Tokyo’s subway system, has its magical elements.
What I Talk About is the first Murakami book that bears no traces of Book A. In this sense, it prompts questions about whether or not it is really (as many commentators assume) the Carveresque readability of Murakami’s novels that make them so compelling. Without at least a bit of the deep wacky stuff, it seems, my friend Haruki just doesn’t work.

Aug 24, Abu Dhabi – Day 8

Now that I have finished What I Talk About, I realise that its entire message is simply stated by the title of its fourth chapter: Most of What I Know About Writing Fiction I’ve Learned From Running Every Day.
Murakami elaborates on that message with the kind of platitudinous pop wisdom that perennially inspires young would-be writers: “To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm”, etc. But the is either unable or too complacent to articulate the connection between long-distance running and novel writing. “I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist,” he writes, “my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would have definitely been different.” Maybe it is this failure that makes the book most disappointing.
“Easy reading is damned hard writing,” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne. Reversing that logic: for the first time since we met, my good friend Haruki seems to have done some damned easy writing.

Sept 1, Abu Dhabi – Day 16

Leafing back through What I Talk About, I am struck by how American it is. Not that you expect anything particularly Japanese from Murakami. It never even occurs to you, reading his novels, that his characters look Japanese. Nor do you find serious evidence of Japan’s fawning embrace of its erstwhile conqueror’s culture. Sure, Colonel Saunders appears in the flesh in Kafka on the Shore, but that does not undermine or seem out of place with the novel’s engagement with Shintoism. Norwegian Wood may be named after a Beatles song, but it still tells a culturally rooted story of love and loss against the backdrop of Japan’s 1960s student movement.
Murakami’s novels transcend cultural barriers not so much because they are acultural, but because they evoke a sort of universal openness: to the imaginary, the uncanny, the implausible, the out-of-place, the curious – to everything, as long as it is compelling, as long as it works. These are the origins of the Sheep Man of Dance Dance Dance, who plays the music of destiny on a switchboard in an extraterrestrial hotel room; and Toru Okada, the Wind-Up man, sitting quietly in a dry, abandoned well near his house in suburban Tokyo, looking for his lost cat …
What I Talk About leaves us with a different, banal image: a man in his fifties jogging every morning through Cambridge, Massachusetts with Brian Adams’s 18 ‘Til I Die playing through his earphones. It is fine to be that man. But to build a memoir around that image, some attendant facts about muscle pain and training regimens and a sprinkling of gnomic wisdom is not open: it is narrow, a tunnel of suburban triteness.
Writing is a tricky business. It takes talent, focus and endurance – the three qualities Murakami lists, in that order, as necessary for his “manual labour” of completing novels. And it is interesting to hear that (albeit not much about how) running has helped him with the last two of those elements. But writing novels – at least novels like Murakami’s – also takes a sort of subversion: a willingness to obsess over feelings and images ignored by most people in their everyday lives. In his eagerness to underline the importance of discipline and good health to his success, Murakami overlooks this. It’s a shame: surely all that running – all that solitary, self-inflicted pain, itself practice for more of the same – can tell us something interesting about where Murakami is writing from. But he has little to say on this subject.

So why must he upset me now with this otiose memoir, a book that will remain marginal to his achievement? Perhaps Murakami is, for whatever reason, desperate to convince himself that writing is just a job like any other. Perhaps he is just writing honestly, or trying to. But everybody knows that writing honestly is not the same as writing well. Putting away this little hardback, I know I will never pick it up again. I can only compare reading it with Murakami’s own experience of finishing a marathon in less-than-satisfactory time: “I guess I should be proud of what I’ve done, but right now I don’t care. What makes me happy right now is knowing that I don’t have to run another step, Whew! – I don’t have to run anymore.”

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القسم الثاني من كتاب الطغرى أو غرائب التاريخ في مدينة المريخ

Image by Magh via Flickr

الحمد لله

هذا كتاب الطُغرى المسمى «غرائب التاريخ في مدينة المريخ»، نسبة إلى الكوكب القاهر (المريخ) الذي أُخذ عنه اسم قاهرة المعز، حيث بُني سورها في طالعه عن طريق الخطأ. وفيه أخبار طلاق وارتحال الصحفي مصطفى نايف الشوربجي يوماً بيوم من ٣0 مارس إلى 19 أبريل 2007، كما رصدها بنفسه في الأسابيع التالية على هذا التاريخ، موجهاً كلامه، على طريقة الكتب العربية القديمة، إلى الطبيب النفسي راشد جلال السيوطي المقيم في العاصمة البريطانية منذ 2001، ومعتمداً الحرف الأعجمي للدلالة على الأصوات غير العربية.^* لقد ضمّن الشوربجي نصه المكتوب بلغة مضطربة بين العامية والفصحى عبارات منسوبة لأصولها بين الفصول، كما أضاف رسوماً من أعماله وصورة فوتوغرافية واحدة مؤرخة ١٩١٦، تبَبَّن أنها ترجع إلى قصر دولما باهتشه (طولما باغچه) في حي بشكتاش بإستانبول. كتاب الطغرى عبارة عن حدوتة مكتوبة على تسعة أقسام هي تسع رحلات وتسعة أحداث. في كل قسم، يعني، رحلة يقوم بها مصطفى داخل حدود المدينة التي أعاد تسمية أحيائها وضواحيها (كما سيرد مفصلاً في القسم الثاني) بحيث أصبح:

حي المعادي درب الكلب

والمنطقة الواقعة غرب النيل بما فيها الدقي والمهندسين والعجوزة والجامعة جسر المنام

ومنطقة الجزيرة بما فيها حي الزمالك بحر اليابان

ووسط البلد بما فيها الإسعاف حيث مقر الجريدة التي يعمل بها مصطفى باب الدنيا

وسوپرماركت كارفور الواقع على أول طريق مصر-إسكندرية الصحراوي خان السر

وقرى الجيزة ما وراء حي الهرم بما في ذلك سوق جمال برقاش مينا الرمل

وحي الهضبة الوسطى بتل المقطم كوم شجر

وميناء القاهرة الجوي كما يسمى رسمياً المطار حوش طيارة.

وكل رحلة من الرحلات التسع ترتبط بحدث من أحداث الحدوتة:

وإذ آثرنا التنويع يأتي الكتاب، في القسم الأول والثاني والرابع والخامس والسابع، على لسان مصطفى. أما في القسم الثالث والسادس والثامن والتاسع، فيأتي على لسان راوٍ مجهول. كما أن هناك ملاحظتين لابد من ذكرها في الأول حتى لا يتوه أي قارئ يقع في يده الكتاب (بالذات لو كان القارئ هذا من غير المصريين، أو من الذين – مثل أكثرنا – لا يعرفون شيئاً عن تاريخ الإسلام) .

أول ملاحظة تخص عنوان الكتاب:

الطغرى، أو الطغراء (والغين، على فكرة، لا تنطق في الأصل التركي للكلمة) هي عبارة عن تكوين خطي مميز اشتهر باعتباره ختم سلطان الدولة العثمانية، الذي يكتب به اسمه على المراسيم والفرمانات والمسكوكات. وكان يوضع على سبيل التوقيع الرسمي أعلى الرق أو الصك وليس أسفله، حتى لو كانت الوثيقة مكتوبة باليونانية. معروف أن العثمانيين كان عندهم فن الخط العربي شيئاً مذهلاً، والطغرى أبدع ما توصلوا إليه كاختزال بصري لاسم «ظل الله على الأرض» كما كان يدعى السلطان. مصطفى اهتم بها كثيراً أثناء احتكاكه بالتاريخ العثماني المترتب على الحدث الرئيسي في الحدوتة، واختلط رسمها في رأسه بخريطة لمدينة القاهرة كان يحاول أن يرسمها منذ انفصل عن امرأته.

الملاحظة الثانية:

لا نعتقد أن أحداً ممكن يفهم أحداث هذه الحدوتة من غير ما يعرف بعض الوقائع التاريخية عن العثمانيين. قد يقول مصطفى إن كل شيء موجود في نص الكتاب، وهذا صحيح. لكن الوقائع التاريخية مخلوطة بسيرته وخواطره فضلاًَ عن تطور الأحداث بدرجة تخلي متابعتها مستحيلة. ورغم أنه يؤكد أنه هو نفسه ما كان يعرف هذه الوقائع قبل ثلاثة أيام مضّاها يبحث ويقرأ ويتجول في مواقع الإنترنت (في القسم الخامس) نعتقد أنه يكون أحسن لو سردنا الحكاية وأهم تواريخها هنا باختصار:

بدأت الدولة العثمانية في منتصف القرن الثالث عشر كإقطاع يحكمه غازٍ اسمه عثمان ابن أرطغرل (والغازي لقب يعني المقاتل في سبيل الله) كانت أرضه متاخمة للأناضول حيث الأصول المباشرة لقبائل التركمان الموالية لسلاجقة قونية. واتخذ أورخان ابن عثمان (توفي سنة ١٣٥١) لقب السلطان بعد انتصاراته العسكرية وتوسع أراضيه في الأناضول والمنطقة الأوروبية المسماة روميليا نسبة إلى روما الشرقية أو بيزنطة،التي تمكن السلطان محمد الثاني سنة ١٤٥٣ من الاستيلاء على عاصمتها القسطنطينية أو إستانبول – ما حلم به المسلمون منذ أيام الرسول عليه السلام – فلُقّب بالفاتح نتيجة لذلك. كان نفوذ العثمانيين قد اتسع بفضل القوة العسكرية للانكشارية، وهو الجيش الذي كونوه من أبناء مزارعي البلقان ممن جُنّدوا واستُعبدوا باسم السلطان وديوانه المعروف بالباب العالي (طپ قپو، باللسان التركي، وهو أيضاً اسم القصر الذي بناه محمد الفاتح في إستانبول)؛ وكان الاستعباد يتم على سبيل الخراج أو الجزية. إلا أن أنظار الدولة لم تتجه إلى الشرق حتى القرن السادس عشر، حيث انتصر السلطان سليم الأول (1465-1520) على دولة المماليك في مصر والشام سنة ١٥١٧، وكان من عواقب ذلك سيطرة الدولة العثمانية على الأراضي المقدسة والقاهرة، مقر الخلافة السنية منذ استقدم الظاهر بيبرس الخليفة القاسم أحمد – أول من عاش في كنف المماليك من بني العباس – سنة ١٢٦١. وكان ذلك بعد أن قضى صلاح الدين الأيوبي (1138-1193) على الدولة الفاطمية (وهم شيعة إسماعيلية) وأعاد شارات الخلافة العباسية السوداء إلى البلاد، جاعلاً خطبة الجمعة باسم الخليفة. أقدم سليم عشية الفتح على ما لم يسبقه إليه حاكم تركي آخر بإعلان نفسه خليفة رسول الله وإمام المسلمين عن طريق إجبار العباسي العائش وقتئذ في كنف الأشرف قنصوه الغوري (١٤٤٦-١٥١٦) على تسليمه الراية وإعطائه الحق على الملأ، كما أعدم ابن أخي الغوري طومان باي الذي قاد حرب شوارع ضده بضع أسابيع. وظل العالم الإسلامي يبايع السلطان العثماني بالخلافة حتى انهيار الدولة سنة ١٩٢٢ ورحيل عبد المجيد ابن عبد العزيز (١٨٦٨-١٩٤٤) الذي لقبه مصطفى كمال خليفة صورياً في أعقاب إعلان الجمهورية التركية ثم سارع إلى التخلص منه. وكان عبد المجيد ابن عم آخر ثلاثة سلاطين: محمد وحيد الدين ابن عبد المجيد (١٨٦١-١٩٢٢)، ومحمد رشاد ابن عبد المجيد (١٨٤٤-١٩١٨)، وعبد الحميد ابن عبد المجيد (١٨٤٢-١٩١٨).

هذا…

وخير ما نبتدئ به، بعد الصلاة على النبي، اقتباس من شمس الدين الذهبي (عن ابن إياس^*) يروي سر تسمية المدينة التي شيدها جوهر الصقلي شمال شرق مصر القديمة (فسطاط عمرو) سنة ٩٦٩، وذلك استعداداً لمجيء الإمام الفاطمي المعز لدين الله من مقر الخلافة الإسماعيلية في القيروان:

«لما أراد جوهر القائد أن يبني سور القاهرة اختط أساس المدينة وجمع أرباب الفَلَك وأمرهم بأن يختاروا له مطلعاً سعيداً حتى يضع فيه أساس المدينة فجعل على كل جهة من أساس المدينة قوائم من خشب، وبين كل قائمة منها حبلاً وفيه أجراس من نحاس، ثم وقفت الفلكية ينتظرون دخول الساعة الجيدة والطالع السعيد حتى يضعوا فيه الأساس. وكان لهم إشارة مع البنائين إذا حركوا تلك الأجراس يلقون ما بأيديهم من الحجارة إذا سمعوا حس الأجراس. فبينما هم واقفون لانتظار الساعة السعيدة، وإذا بغراب وقع على تلك الحبال فتحركت تلك الأجراس فظن البناءون أن الفلكية قد حركوا لهم الحبال التي فيها الأجراس. فألقوا ما بأيديهم من الحجارة في أساس السور، فصاح عليهم الفلكية: “لا لا، القاهر في الطالع،“ يعنون المريخ، واسمه عندهم القاهر، فقضي الأمر.»

قال مصطفى نايف الشوربجي:

هكذا تبدأ الحدوتة اللي غرضي أحكيها لك يا راشد:

بخروجي من بيت الزوجية قبل مولد النبي بيوم.

أنا ودعت امرأتي مساء الجمعة.

الخميس، كانت يلدز اتهمتني بإخفاء معلومالت سعياً إلى تعاطف لا أستأهله.

السبت مر المولد بلا أي احتفال في البيت. لا حلاوة ولا ابتهالات. أنا فاكر أني مضيت ساعة أو زيادة – وأمي تقرأ قرآناً على الكنبة – أفكر في شراء عروسة مولد لأحطها قدامي وأتفل في وجهها، أطعنها بالسكين، أدلق عليها سبرتو وأوّلع… كنت أخمن أيضاً أن يلدز لها فترة تنشر دعوتها. وفعلاً وقتما رجعت المكتب يوم الأحد (لأول مرة منذ عام، سقت إلى ميدان الإسعاف من الدقي وأنا متأكد أني سأعود إلى الدقي آخر اليوم، وفي بداية اليوم التالي أرجع أسوق من الدقي إلى الإسعاف) لاحظت في كلام بقية العوانس اتهام مضمر، الأمر الذي أحزنني دونما يُيَسِّر الدفاع. كيف أشرح؟ لحد الوقت، الكرامة تأخذني كلما تفكرت. أنفر من يلدز. ثقتها الفارغة وارتكانها إلى الكليشيهات. كأنها رئيس الجماعة الوطنية للأخلاق الحميدة. هي واعية ومحقة وتعرف كل شيء. والواقع أنها تتخبط مثلنا جميعاً. زيادة عنا، حتى، تتخبط. لكنها تسحبك من ذراعك وتقعد معك تعطيك محاضرة. تنشر دعوتها بلا أي اعتبار لإرادتك. إذا واجهتها بالحقيقة تنهار. وأنت تعرف أن دوافعها غير ما تقول. الظاهر ثقة وثقافة، فعل الخير وشد الأذن. فماذا عن الحقد والجبن وخداع الذات؟ تحديداً، خداع الذات. الكرامة تأخذني فتتحول خيباتها من سبب للحنان إلى طاقة ضغينة. بأي حق تحكم على دوافعي؟ مثلاً في اكتئابها تحس أنها لقمة ممضوغة: أفكر أنها فعلاً لقمة ممضوغة ويجب أن تحس بذلك. وأود لو أن كل النسوان لسن مثل يلدز. يوم الأحد ما كدت أنصب العدة على مكتبي حتى رجعت تسألني:

«هل قلت لامرأتك شيئاً عن ما كان حصل معي؟»

لا أعرف إن كنت أريده أن يحصل مرة ثانية. لن أتكلم عنه حتى لا تكون الشخبطة انتقاماً. فقط أود لو أن كل النسوان لسن نحيفات ومعقدات مثل يلدز. حتى شهوتها بر وتقوى، أو يعني كشف حساب. مستعدة أن تخاطر بأي شيء من أجل وهم أنها على حقا، وهي ليست على حقا. قادرة أن تخصي واحداً وتقتل الثاني دونما يطرأ على خاطرها شك أنها تؤذي أو تضر. هي قديسة ومضحية وكل تصرفاتها مبررة. بضان، فكرت. والأبضن أنها غير واعية بشيء. اسمعها ثم تابع تصرفاتها ستعرف: عزلة كاملة بين مخها والحياة. كل الأوضاع المحتملة وتصلي، بنت الكلب. الدين والدراما. امرأتي كمان: ما كان يخطر ببالي، قبل زواجنا، أن في بطنها كل هذه المسرحيات. مليت العقائد وأسئلة الهوية. في اليوم التالي – الإثنين – يلدز نفسها لن تكون في المكتب، وحين أسأل عنها – على سبيل التعامل وكأننا لازلنا أصدقاء – سيقولون إنها أخذت إجازة ثلاثة أسابيع لأن الشغل أتعبها. فأستريح. إجازة طويلة هكذا من غير ما تقول لي رغم أننا تقابلنا البارح؟ على الأقل لن أشوفها في الفترة الحرجة هذه. ورغم فضولي لم أسأل إن كانت ستمضي إجازتها في مصر أو تسافر، لكن فهمت من كلام الزملاء أنها مفلسة ومكتئبة فافترضت أنها ستكون في مصر. عارف أنها لن تتصل بي، مع ذلك. إذن لا خوف.

واستغربت كم أنا مستريح لفكرة أن لا أراها.

خبر بادرة إدراك مصطفى لمهمته التاريخية

ذاك الأحد، أول يوم على رجوعي الدقي، كان عندي إحساس غريب وأنا طالع م الگراج. إحساس سألاحظ تكرره بعدين وأعيد تفسيره أكثر من مرة. يعني خلاف الفرحة بالخطر تساوي نهاية زواج، كأن شيئاً أبعد وأوسع يحصل في نفس الوقت. شيء لا يتكرر إلا مرة أو مرتين كل ألف عام. كنت أقول: الدنيا انهدمت من حوالي. دلوقت كأن وقفتي على أطلالها نظرة أخيرة يلقيها الجنرال المهزوم على مدينته بعدما احتلتها جيوش الغزاة… وقفتي بالوجه الباكي من غير دموع، ذاك الذي رسمته ليلة ما نمت في الدقي ونصف حاجتي في العربة والجنين متشرد في بطن امرأتي وهي تشد شعرها الذي تعلمت أن أتجنبه تماماً بعدما جئت أملس عليه أكثر من مرة فزعقت لي – تصدق أنها كانت تتخانق معي لو خبطت فيها بالغلط ونحن نائمان؟ – ثم عفش البيت ينزل سلالم العمارة من ورائنا وكل الخانات التي كانت امتلأت – الحب، العائلة، السكن – دوائر فارغة في التراب… وكأن وقفتي هذه أو نظرة الجنرال الأخيرة علامة انتهاء زمن بأسره – زمن كانت المدينة التي هي الدنيا يحكمها أهلها – وبداية زمن ثانٍ من الذل والغياب. راشد: هذا الزمن الجديد فيه مكان أوسع للمتطرفين دينياً والرائحين مع أمريكا أو ضدها. هؤلاء أمثال صديقي السني أمجد صلاح عبد الجليل من ناحية، وصديقي القبطي المتعصب ميشيل سمير فستق من ناحية أخرى، ثم زميلاتي اللائي هن – على أحدث صيحة – محجبات. أرباب النيوليبرالية، يعني. فاكر لما كنا نقول إن هؤلاء الناس عائشون في سوپرماركت لانهائي، ونضحك بمرح حقيقي حين يخطر لنا أنهم فعلاً يرون في التسوق غاية كافية للحياة؟ يعني ما جاءت في بالي، في هذه المرحلة، حكاية النظام العالمي والواي أوڤ لايف اللي يروج له الأمريكان. ما جاء في بالي لا الخصخصة ولا وقائع 11 سبتمبر 2001 ولا بطاقات الائتمان. ومع ذلك، اقترن انهدام الدنيا من حولي – الشك المفاجئ في وجود تنظيم سري يفسد علي حياتي – بإحساس أن العالم الذي جئت إليه كله ينتهي وأن عالماً جديداً يحل محله ليس فيه سگاير ولا لغة عربية.

مجرد لحظة، وأنا أدير وجهي لكوبري الدقي بعدما خرجت من الگراج وألاحظ عربة همر تكاد تجهز على الـ128 التي أمامها… كان علي أن أتفادى ولداً صغيراً يقطع الشارع جرياً وعلى كتفه شنتة مكتوب عليها «سپايدرمان».

فصل هو خط سير الرحلة اليومية ذهاباً وإياباً

لكن أغرب حاجة أني بقيت أستمتع بطريق الرحلة اليومية رغم الزحام الجنوني والحر المتصاعد كل يوم، الشيء الذي ما كان يحصل أبداً أيام المعادي. متعة السواقة م الدقي للإسعاف وبالعكس هي الثانية جزء من برنامج إصلاح الذات الذي وضعته لنفسي نصف واعٍ على سبيل احتواء نوازعي التدميرية؟ احتمال. ومع ذلك، ما إن أطلع المكتب حتى يرجع لي الغيظ. مَن هؤلاء؟ لوهلة، وأنا قاعد في المكتب يوم الإثنين، ستبدو الدنيا التي أنا بصدد بنائها عبارة عن دائرة أو دورة تبدأ بمحطة بنزين وتنتهي بجمع من الناس محشورين في بعضهم، في وسطها عجلة عربة وهي تدور وتدور عكس اتجاه عقارب الساعة. وسأخرج الدفتر فجأة، وسط حديث طويل مع شاهين أُگُواوا زميلنا السمين الذي أحكي لك عنه – ابن المثال الأفريقي الشهير، صديق يوسف السباعي الذي مات بعد مقتله بأيام – وأعمل رسمة صغيرة بسذاجة فنية تقريباً متعمدة.

فتكون بمثابة اختزال بصري لدنياي – الرحلة اليومية التي أقوم بها، ذهاباً وعودة: أطلع م الگراج عند منزل كوبري الدقي تقريباً – لصق البنزينة وميدان الدقي في ظهرك على اليمين – لكن لابد من الوصول إلى آخر شارع الدقي على شان اليوتِرن. على بوابة جنينة الأورمان ظهرت لافتة عملاقة تبشر بمهرجان زهور الربيع. أبطئ أكثر مما ينبغي لأسترجع المشهد: تراب مقيم في الهواء وسماء صفراء وأخبار الحرب في المنطقة، ثم برنامج الإصلاح الاقتصادي. (ماذا يذكرني، كلما رأيت لافتة مهرجان الزهور، ببرنامج الإصلاح الاقتصادي؟) من الأورمان إلى مطلع كوبري أكتوبر خط مستقيم. الميكروباسات تتقاتل وأطفال المدارس بالدستة في المقاعد الخلفية للتاكسيات. إعلانات ملابس كونكريت بطول الرصيف الوسطاني عبارة عن صبيان وبنات لم يبلغوا في أوضاع موحية. وبعد كده، عندك الذين ينتظرون مواصلة على مطلع الكوبري: لأي شيء الناس كلها مكشرة؟ لا أعرف كيف أصف الدقي لأنه مألوف أكثر بكثير من أي مكان آخر، لكن ممكن أكلمك عن الحَفْر الجداري في سور الكوبري أو الرائحة المنبعثة من تجويف مَنْزَله حيث يتبول ويتبرز المتشردون. ممكن أكلمك عن لون الأسفلت في الضوء البرتقالي بعد المطر، ولمعان أغطية البالوعات في وسطه، أو ثلاثة أجيال من الأقباط السذج يسكنون الگراج الذي أطلع منه كل يوم.

أخبرك عن سوء سمعة الشقق المفروشة حول مسرح نجم، أو عن وقت – كما قال لي أبي الميت – ما كان فيه حي يدعى المهندسين. الدقي عبارة عن بضعة شوارع تتخلل الغيطان الممتدة شمال الجامعة وغرب النيل. سكنا على حافة بقايا قرية اسمها داير الناحية، وفضل أبي – في وصف الجيوب الشعبية الباقية هناك رغم سواد الأسمنت والاستهلاكية في محيط الميدان وهيئة المساحة – يستبدل عبارة الدقي البلدي بالدقي القديم. السور الواطئ الذي ينتهي عند عمارتنا – إذن – تقاطع عالمين… أحدهما قَدَر الضواحي حيث جلبة الطبقية والوجبات السريعة. هناك يظل الجسد البشري محروماً من حقه في اقتسام المساحة المتاحة مع العربات. العالم الثاني يشبه قرى الدلتا حيث الجيرة والفقر والتفاعل الريفي. وأكون مريت بالگراج فيبدو مختلفاً تماماً عن المكان الذي أطلع منه كل صباح… من الأورمان إلى المطلع خط مستقيم: كوبري أكتوبر عالم منفصل لا يخلو، في أغرب الأماكن، من مشاة. وبغض النظر عن الحبّيبة المتعانقين على النيل – كل الصبايا محجبات، حتى وهن في أوضاع مخلّة بمقاييس الحجاب – والأعراس الصاخبة وقتما يتزوجون (في نفس أماكن العناق ولكن في آخر الليل والدنيا أهدأ: خلال شهر يكفون نهائياً عن العناق)، والخارجين م الأتوبيسات إلى أشغالهم، والهائمين على وجوههم مثل كلاب الشوارع… البناء ذاته يتنفس، بغض النظر… في نموه المطرد منذ عودتي من إنگلترا، كائن يمرض ويصح. يشيخ. وقت يرتعش أديمه في مرور النقل الثقيل، كأن شخصاً تعرفه يتأوه. فأنت وقتما تأخذ كوبري أكتوبر يومياً – وأحياناً إلى مصر الجديدة أو مدينة نصر – تصير تعمل له حساباً. لا تستبدله بقصر النيل، مثلاً، حتى إن كان واقفاً، وتتعجب من عبقريته والدنيا سالكة.

خبر الفقي وحيد الدين

كنت أقول: الأحد استجوبتني يلدز. والإثنين، كما سبق، رسمت رحلتي من الدقي إلى الإسعاف وأنا قاعد مع شاهين. أنا فاكر أنه ضحك وقال: «ما تحاولش يا مصطفى إنت ما بتعرفش ترسم.» فاكر كمان أني استغربت صوته وبصيت له كأني أشوفه لأول مرة. الوقت أنت لو سمعت صوت شاهين من بعيد، بالذات وهو يضحك، سهل تفكره بنتاً عندها خمس عشرة سنة، أو يعني ممثلة إغراء في فيلم عربي. يعني فيه شيء منسون، أكيد، لكن لا هذا ولا رفعه الشديد يفسر الحالة الخنثية التي تخبطك في وجهك كلما يجيء على بالك شاهين… في صوت هذا الفوتوغرافي المحبط أيضاً نبرة أو أداء، شيء مثل اللزوجة أو التفصد، صعب تتخيله من غير ما تكون شفت منظر اللحم المتهدل بلون البن الغامق على درجاته من كل مِلّي مكشوف حتى جفن العين… وعلى حافة الكرسي، مهما اتسعت قاعدته – كما الآن – شراشيب مؤخرة لا يمكن يقال عنها إلا عجيزة تختفي فوراً إذا وقف، لأن أكوام اللحم المتدلية من بطنه تلف حواليها تغطيها. تتحول البيضة العملاقة إلى قمع من البن المعجون بالزيت، كل مرة تقرب منه يخضك طوله لأنه تقريباً مربع فتظن أنه قصير. قمع عملاق طوله قد عرضه ويلمع، ما فيه أي شعر من أي نوع – فقط أسنان كبيرة مثل قوالب الثلج بائنة من الفتحة التي فوقه وحمرة باهتة في عينين ضيقتين – وكل مِلّي في هذا القمع، مع كل كلمة ينطقها بصوت بنت عندها خمس عشرة سنة، يرعش بنفس الأداء. ما علينا: أنا قعدت أُحَكّي معه لحد ما وصل الأستاذ وحيد – أقول وحيد مع أنه يصر أن نناديه بعبارة الأستاذ وحيد الدين على بعضها – وصل بعد الحادية عشرة مساءً. فاستبشرنا نحن الإثنان لأن وجوده سيضحكنا. نعرف أننا في وجوده – بالذات مع شاهين الذي يأخذ راحته معه – مؤكد سنقع م الضحك. أغرب واحد في المكتب، هذا الإنسان. ما حضرته مرة يجيء إلا هكذا سواريه بزيادة، ولا يفتح فمه إلا بطلوع الروح. وقتما يتكلم، يفعل بسرعة مربكة وهو ينهج ويصفر بجنون. ونادراً ما تخلو جملة من نص قرآني أو حديث. الجملة تبدأ وتنتهي بصيغة تعجب مبهمة: «هه!» ولو كنت قدامه أثناء الكلام، تمشي وكل سنتي من وجهك مبلول. دائماً يتصرف كما لو كان يتلصص على الآخرين، لكنه يعمل كده وهو متردد وخائف بدرجة تبعد الريبة وتقرّب العطف. الأستاذ وحيد فعلاً حاجة قليلة ورذيلة كأنه من فصيلة القوارض. لكن ليس صعباً دائماً أن يعطف الواحد عليه. ومع ذلك، كان اهتمامي به ليلة الإثنين أعمق وأبعد من العطف أو الفكاهة. لأول مرة أبص له بتمعن وأسأل نفسي لأي شيء هو هكذا.

هكذا كيف، رددت؟

يعني يمشي مثني الركبة كأنه يزحف أو يستعد للقفز… دائماً محني الظهر وعلى رأسه طاقية مقلمة… ذقنه النابتة تهدد بالاخضرار. فوق الجورب في رجله شبشب حمام أخضر فوسفوري – والله أقول لك الحق – وطول السنة يلبس نفس البدلة الصيفي، فوقها شرز كارو في الشتاء. يعني إذا كلمته يرد – أحياناً يسأل عن شاهين من نفسه، كأنه يكح وهو ماشٍ – لكنه، غير ذلك، لا يبدأ أبداً بالكلام. وكل عشر دقائق يشد رحاله على الحمام يغتسل. لا أذكر من قال لي إن عنده وسواس قهري – آخر همي. الملفت بصحيح أنه يقبض مرتبه من غير ما يعمل حاجة. عنده منصب محترم لكنه لا يقبض مكافأة (كلنا نعيش أساساً من المكافآت) ولا يحضر اجتماعاً واحداً أو يقترح مقالاً ولو من أجل المنظر. مثله في المؤسسة الكافكاوية مئات، عملياً. لكن الأستاذ وحيد يميزه مواعيد مجيئه ومظهره وانقطاعه التام عن الناس. اللي أخبرني بوسواسه قال لي أيضاً إنه، في بداية عمله عندنا، كان نشيطاً ومتفوقاً، ثم اختفى سنتين – أخذ إجازة بدون مرتب – ولما رجع كان هكذا فيلم رعب. سمعت أيضاً أن رجال الأمن ضبطوه يتفرج على الپورنو في شاشات الأجهزة المتصلة بالإنترنت؛ لا أعرف إن كانوا رأوه يلعب في نفسه وهو قاعد. في المرات القليلة لما خبطت فيه برة الجرنال، كان يمشي كالخائف بنفس الطاقية ونفس زوغان العينين. لا أحد يعرف شيئاً عن الأستاذ وحيد الدين؛ لا أحد يهتم أن يسأل.

أنا اقتنعت لما سمعت لهجته في نطق العربي ولاحظت طريقته المتذللة في التحية أنه فعلاً أزهري. إلا أن كلامه لشاهين عن الفتاوى – وحده شاهين الذي يرتاح له الأستاذ وحيد، في المكتب – أثبت لي أنه فقيه من غير شك، أو يعني فقي (تحريف فقيه؟) وبعدين أثارني كونه لا يعمل شيئاً في الجرنال ويجيء سواريه بزيادة ويلبس حاجات غريبة.

فصل

ليلتها أجلسه شاهين وسطنا وابتدأ يسأله رأيه في الزميلات م الناحية الجنسية. والأستاذ وحيد يحمر ويتهته – هل خلع نظاراته في هذي اللحظة؟ هل كان يلبس نظارات؟ – الشهوة بائنة عليه:«الررراجل روخر من حقه يا أستاذ أگواوا، هه! الله عز وجل يقول مثنى وثللللاث… هه… ورباع!» وشاهين لا يكف عن وصف الزميلات بالتفصيل، بطريقته المخنثة تلك:

«يعني هي من فوق أحسن شوية من غيرها برضه ولا إيه رأيك يا وحيد الدين، بس أنا عارف إن عينك من غيرها عشان إنت دايماً بتحب تفكر ف اللي تحت.»

«هه! معاذ الللللله يا عم شاهين. بس النكاح روخر مباح بفضل الله، ومفيش نكككككاح من غير لا مؤاخذة اللي تحت.» لما شاهين رفع حاجبه الشمال بطريقة لوطية شوية وقال له «إنما صحيح يا وحيد الدين، هو إنت ليه متجوزتش لحد الوقت»… وقف على حيله من أول وجديد وابتدأ يلقي خطبة كأنها سعلة واحدة طويلة. «هه» – قال – «يا أستاذ أگواوا. الزواج روخر كله مسألة قسمة» – عطش الجيم في الزواج ونطق القاف في قسمة – «ومع ذلك والله يا أستاذي الفضضضضيل شاهين أگواوا، أغرب قصة قصة أخوك وحححيد الدين. أنا أتشرف بأخوتك يعني، هه!» – ضحكة هستيرية – «ذلك أني لما جيت بسلللامتك من أسوان كنت روخر خاطب لكن الببببببنت طلعت لامؤاخذة مش بنت، يعني كانت أستغفر الله العظيم وقعت في الرذيلة ومارست الفحشاء. وروخر ربُنا نجاني إذ أني ما دخللللتش بها»… عينه راحت في الأرض والحمرة رجعت في وجهه، ثم جاء كلامه بطيئاً – أول مرة أسمع وحيد الدين يتكلم بإيقاع مثل هذا – وكأنه الذيل الرفيع الذي تنتهي به السعلة. «زي ما تقول يا أستاذ أگگگواوا روخر الواحد اتعقد. كان السن صغير وأخوك فرررررحان بالخطبه…» وتبين من طريقته أننا مهما ضغطنا عليه، لن يحكي لنا كيف عرف أن خطيبته وقعت في الرذيلة؛ بأسى حقيقي، تذكرت أمجد صلاح. «ثم إذا بك تتأكد أن خطيببببببتك يعني… هه!»

في العادة، كنت ضحكت لما مت. لكني الليلة لا أعرف ماذا صار معي طول الحديث الدائر. بس أبتسم من وراء قلبي – وضحكة شاهين كأنها الضحكة الرقيعة لممثلة إغراء في فيلم هابط تجلجل في أرجاء المؤسسة – وأسأل نفسي لأي شيء ما عاد يضحكني وحيد الدين. كنت رسمت خط سيري مرة، ووقتما أرجع لسريري سأرسمه مرة ثانية. بعد الواحدة صباحاً، مع فيلم عسكر في المعسك^*ر، سأتساءل إن كان وحيد مدركاً أن شاهين لا يضحك معه قدّ ما يضحك عليه، ولأي شيء يرتاح لشاهين دون غيره، ماذا جرى له في اختفائه، وهل في تحسين منظره من أمل… ثم أصحو مفزوعاً في نصف الليل وساعة ما أروح في النوم من جديد تتواصل أحداث الحلم اللي أفزعني. سأفكر في ذاك المنام كثيراً في الأيام التالية. يمكن لأني منذ الخروج من المعادي، ما كنت حلمت إلا بالأشياء الظاهرة، أتفه أشياء. أتفرج على الكوميديان أحمد حلمي في فيلم زكي شان^* فأراه يخلع ملابسه رضوخاً لفتوة شارعهم. أو أحمّل إصداراً جديداً من فوتوشوپ فأمضي نومي أعيد اختراع فَلَاتِرَه… هذا طبعاً باستثناء منام الحفرة المتكرر وحلم أو اثنين بأبي. «ليلة مجيء الغرباء» – هكذا كتبت في دفتري عشية موته، ولما وقع الدفتر في يد أحدهم، بعد سنة أو أكثر، قال لي: هذا شعر – «لم أكن قد اتخذت قراراً بشأن قبلة الوداع، والجار يؤكد لي أن الغرفة ملآنة ملائكة. أغلقت الباب دون أن يخطر ببالي شيء مما صنعته من أجلي. سبعة قطعان من المسافرين، وأنا أواصل اختبائي، عقدوا العزم على إيداعك المرتفع. كان غريباً أن نصبح في البلدة بدونك: بدر ساقط في قلب الصوان (كما وصفت عمتي) وأفواج من الذين يغفرون دون اعتذار؛ عجائز لا أعرفهم، ينهنهون على صدري. لكنك بالطبع كان لابد أن تكون غائباً، يوم راجت بضاعتك».

لا أعرف لأي شيء أبي على بالي هذه الأيام. لكن غير أبي، لا شيء. يعني لا شيء إلا التفاهة وتصعيد خيالي للتوهان. على صوت صلاح عبد الله يغني «الهوستا كوستا والكيف أليسطا، والبنكنوتا مالي الجاكوتا،» لذلك، خلدت إلى النعاس وأنا مش مِدّي خوانة. بماذا أحلم أكثر من تهويمات فيلم ساقط: محمد هنيدي عسكري أمن مركزي يقول للطفل الذي يرش عليه المياه: «كِخ يا بابا كِخ»؛ محمد هنيدي مصري قديم صغير يجري من الصعيدي السمين الذي يسعى لقتله…

ذكر الذي حصل قبل النوم ليلة أول منام

ليلة الإثنين، بعد رجوعي من المكتب متأخراً – وهو، إضافة لإعادة اكتشاف زميلنا الغريب وحيد الدين، الزومبي كما يسميه أمجد، ثاني شيء حدث في الحدوتة التي أحكيها لك – سأقعد على حيلي في السرير وأنظر مرة ثانية إلى الدائرة التي رسمتها وأنا أحكّي مع شاهين زميلنا المحنتف. باقي على بداية فيلم عسكر في المعسكر بطولة محمد هنيدي نصف ساعة أو زيادة، فطفّيت التلفزيون وجهزت روحي لأكتب ملاحظات في الدفتر. نسيت حكاية الدائرة اللي رسمتها لكن ما إن فتحته حتى طالعتني. ومن جديد دخلت في حالة تهييس فحسبت الدائرة تدور مثل الفراشة حول اللمبة، بنفس السرعة المعتدلة دورة ثم دورة ثم دورة، عكس عقارب الساعة، ولا تكف عن الدوران. نزل على أذني صمت مطبق، وماما نائمة، وهمد كل شيء فكأن الدنيا كلها بطلت تتحرك والزمن نفسه وقف. يعني الكرة الأرضية ثابتة في الأثير ولا شيء يتنفس غير الفراشة. ثم بدأت أفكر أني أنا شخصياً هذي الفراشة وأن الدنيا توقفت وأنا أدور.

الله!

الغبار يملأ رأسي، نفس الغبار السحري. وقبلما يكبس علي التوهان لحد ما يخنقني، سأنتفض وأفتح التلفزيون وأقوم أعمل قهوة. في طريق العودة من المطبخ فكرت أن هو ذا الكلام، فعلاً. لا تخضع للتوهان وابن دنياك من جديد، المهم أن تبني. جاء في بالي، في هذا السياق، أن الدائرة اللي رسمتها في المكتب لا تبيّن حركة الطريق كما أحسها كل يوم وأنا ماش. وقررت أني بدل ما أكتب ملاحظات سأتابع خط سيري بالقلم الرصاص على صفحة جديدة. لم أجرؤ أن أطفّي التلفزيون مرة ثانية وأنا أضع القهوة على التربيزة وأولّع سيگارة، ثم رجعت قعدت على حيلي في السرير والدفتر في يدي. شفطة أولى رجعت لي نشاطي، بالذات لما حبستها بنفس سيگارة. غمضت وركزت. ومن جديد بقيت فراشة خارجة من الگراج تقصد ميدان الإسعاف. يدي تتحرك على الورقة كأنما من تلقاء نفسها، ترسم خط السير بدقة فطرية غير مفهومة. وأنا أكثر من مرة أكاد أفتح عيني – شفطة قهوة ثانية – ولا أفعل. فقط يدي تستمر في رسم الطريق. لما انتهيت كان الفيلم على وشك أن يبدأ والقهوة مازالت ساخنة. السيگارة كلها احترقت. ولعت واحدة ثانية وأخذت شفطة كبيرة هي الثانية حبستها بنفس. ثم نظرت إلى دائرة رحلتي اليومية بعد التعديل:

مع بداية الفيلم كنت أفكر في الذي تعنيه الدنيا إذا ما تحولت إلى خط سير. وبيأس ضاحك قلت في سري: «يا أخي بلا نيلة! أصلاً أنت من غير ما تعني الدنيا شيئاً محتار، ولا تفهم لأي شيء يجب على نسوان الخليج أن تغطي وجوهها مثلاً، أو الذي يجعل الإنگليز عمليين وقليلي الذوق إلى هذا الحد – الذي يجعل تبادل المشاعر معهم مستحيلاً في غير حالات السكر البيّن، وحصول أو متابعة العلاقات محض صدفة – ولا تفهم لأي شيء فيه حدود بين بلاد تشبه بعضها، ولا الذي يخلّي بعض الناس أغنى أو أقسى، ولا أين يوجد ذلك الذي يتكلم عنه الجميع باعتبار أنه أهم شيء، ولأي شيء لا يتدخل لو أنه يستطيع. لا تفهم» – فكرت، ثم ابتدأ الفيلم – «إلا أن فيه خط سير لازم تتبعه كل يوم، ذلك على الرغم من وجود أماكن أخرى في الدنيا تتحول، بدورها، إلى خطوط سير. يعني لا تفهم أي حاجة في أي حاجة، باختصار.» دلوقت موسيقى الفيلم تعلو وأنا آخذ آخر شفطة قهوة…

المنام الأول

كأني قمت من سريري وخرجت الشارع، لكن الوقت صبح وأنا في مدينة ثانية. هل هذه فعلاً مدينة؟ أينما تطلعت مياه تتلألأ وخضرة منقطة بالزهور. لا أسفلت ولا عربات. بحثت عن ميدان الدقي دون جدوى. اختفت أبراج وكباري القاهرة، لافتات النيون وواجهات الأكشاك والأرصفة وأسوار المداخل. الهدير الميكانيكي الدائم ما له أثر في أذني. لا إعلانات ولا عواميد نور. والعمائر كلها إما حجر أو خشب أو طين. بعضها هائلة، شكلها يذكّر بالإغريق والرومان، لكن طولها لا يزيد أبداً عن عرضها وكلها مهدمة وجميلة. أنا وسط ساحة رملية وفيه طريق نازل كأني فوق تلة. المكان فاضٍ تماماً، لكن أصوات الصراخ الصاعدة من ناحية الغرب تجذبني برفق إلى مركز الجلبة المكتومة – طبول ومزامير وحوافر خيل ثم اصطكاك وتلاطم – كأني أسمعها، كلها، في راديو ملفوف بخرقة مبلولة. ثم قرص الشمس طالع من وسط المياه وراء شجرة سرو ضخمة – لابد أني غادرت التلة إلى الشاطئ: أنا واقف بحذاء صف الحجر الرمادي الذي ينفجر فيه الموج، وجهي للشمس – ومن أمامي ثلاثة قساوسة عجائز يمسكون بالصلبان المعلقة في أعناقهم أمام ذقونهم الكثة ويجرون بأقصى سرعة باتجاه المياه – الهواء يرفع ثيابهم السوداء فتبدو مثل أشرعة مراكب قراصنة وهم يتكعبلون في الأحجار ويتفادون الزرع… لا شيء يوقفهم، وفيه دعاء محموم ظننته باليوناني يختلط بلهاثهم وخطواتهم المتلاحقة على التراب – لغاية ما ارتفعوا وطاروا وأرجلهم مفتوحة زي ما يعمل النينجا في الأفلام الأمريكية…

سقطوا في المياه بلا صوت.

فصل هو بقية المنام

كأني قمت مرة أخرى وأنا عارف أن هذا حلم. يعني أسيطر على الفزع بحيث لا يوقظني، وبنفس منطق الفرحة بالخطر: الإحساس الذي انتابني حيال نبوءة فستق. هذه المرة، ما بحثت عن ميدان الدقي ولا استغربت المكان: إلى يميني حَجَر العمارة – لا أعرف كيف جئت هنا من الشاطئ – عمارة شاهقة فوقها قبة بحجم قرية كاملة، ومن النقوش المحفورة على أعمدتها خمنت أنها كاتدرائية إغريقية^*. دلوقت أنا وسط الجلبة، قطعة من هضبة بشرية تمتد إلى مرمى البصر. وكلهم في هدوم تاريخية كأنه فيلم وا إسلاماه. «إنتي فين يا جهاد؟» لكنه مقنع أكثر. فيه بارود وأكل وشرب والهدوم ليست كلها مهندمة ولا ألوانها فاقعة. وجوه النسوان مغطاة. من زاوية نظري أدركت على الفور أني وسط الجمع المصطف على جانبي مدخل هذي الكنيسة العريقة وكأنها مركز الكون. لا أريد أن أنظر خلفي لكي لا أرى أحشاء الناس والخيول تقضمها القطط والثعالب. وكنت أذكّر نفسي أني أحلم حتى أتحمل المنظر. أعضاء مجزورة تحوم حواليها كلاب. فيه أيضاً أكوام من محتويات المنازل – عفش وقماش وخزين وجواهر – يحرسها العسكر على الأركان.

طفل معمم ولّع في أيقونة قده مرتين: دلق عليها وقوداً ثم قرّب النار من طرفها. عكس فيلم وا إسلاماه، هنا، المشهد أقرب إلى التسجيلات المصورة للحرب اللبنانية: نسوان تولول وناس تجري وتراب يعصف في الهواء. ومع ذلك، فيه إحساس عام بالبهجة. حر مايو – لا أعرف ماذا أكد لي أننا في مايو – وأنت تشم رائحة الدم والشعر المحترق والشواء. وتسمع طلق مدافع كأن الأرض تتفجر من فوقها، يليه لغط ألسنة ليس من بينها العربي تتبين فيها، مع ذلك، عبارة «الله أكبر» بلهجات كأنها أوروبية. ثم، بصوت مبتهج، «لا إله إلا الله.» للدم رائحة مقيئة في الأحلام. لما رفعت يدي إلى رأسي، هالني أني أنا الآخر لابس عمّة. ساعتها بس حسيت بالثوب على جسمي: قطن سميك أخضر محزوم بكتان وفوقه جبة حرير. وكنت أتسلل عبر الأجساد المضغوطة إلى أول الصف، ثم إلى اليمين باتجاه البوابة، وكأن شيئاً يحملني. هناك فيه عسكار معظم قفاطينهم زرق، وطربوش كالقمع على رأس كل واحد فيهم، تتدلى من قالب مذهب في وجهه قماشة بيضاء كالطرحة وراء الظهر، ووسط القالب هذا – عند أكثرهم – نجمة بثمانية ضلوع محفورة من تقاطع مربعين.

لأي شيء هم بلا ذقون زي بقية الناس؟ حتى أنا عندي سكسوكة كثيفة مصبوغة بالحناء… لحد ما علا الصوت واضطربت الحركة وسمعنا التلاطم من خلفنا يشتد. الوقت ظهر فرسان بضروع كأنهم حاشية، والجمع كله خطا للخلف مفسحاً لموكبهم… زخارف السرج تسرق العين لكن الفرس الأبيض يبرق. بياضه يرد على العمة الكبيرة الملفوفة على طاقية حمراء مدببة فوق رأس الفارس. الصفير والطبول. ما فيه واحدة زيها في كل الهضبة البشرية، فلا أكاد أصدق أن عين الموكب هو ذاك الشاب الأخضر. من قال لي إن اسمه الفاتح^*، وإنه ما بلغ الرابعة والعشرين؟ بأنفه الروماني ولحيته الحمراء وعينيه العسليتين، كأنه طفل فعلاً. معقول، هو ذا السلطان؟ لكن الشيوخ يقبّلون طرف قفطانه ويتمسحون بسرجه والفرس يتهادى باتجاه البوابة. وأنا لا أكاد أصدق: وخز خفيف كأن مقبض سيفه في رأسي فلا أدري إلا وأنا أنحني على يده أقبلها، فكأني حصلت على أسمى شرف في العالم؛ حتى الشيوخ ما طالوا إلا طرف قفطانه. زهو كالطيران وأنا أتبعه بين الجموع، لأنه اختارني أنا فمن أكون؟ لحد ما ترجل فانحنيت تلقائياً وهو مازال يعطيني ظهره. مجرد طفل في الواحدة والعشرين. رفعت يدي أناوله التراب فنثره على عمامته وعاد صوت انفجار الأرض والله أكبر. ثم سمعته يهمس: «الحمد لرب العالمين،» بنفس اللهجة الأوروبية.

كان يخطو فوق عتبة الكاتدرائية – فجأة التمعت السيوف في الهواء واندفعت جموع كالجرذان المفزوعة على جانبيه، يخرجون جرياً بأقصى سرعة فيصطدمون بالآخرين. لا توجد عمامات على رؤوسهم ووجوه نسوانهم مكشوفة. أنا رفعت رأسي قليلاً فشهقت… وتاه فكري عن الكوم الذي كنا نعدّي من فوقه: كأنها أجولة محطوطة فوق بعضها تحجب البلاط، يملأها شيء طري متماسك مثل القطن الخام؛ وأنا لسبب غير معلوم أتحاشى النظر إليها… داخل العمارة، كأنك في قصر من قصور الجنة. وعلى الرغم من العذراء تحمل ابنها ومار جرجس يقتل التنين، ملأني إحساس بالانتماء للإسلام نادراً ما أحسه وأنا صاح. السلطان يسجد – سجدت وراءه. أكبس رأسي في الأرض المعكوكة ماءً وغباراً ودماء. ساعتها بس تجيئني القدرة فأنظر ورائي وأدرك أن الكوم الذي عدينا فوقه أجسام ميتين كانوا لاذوا بالكاتدرائية لما حصل الحدث الذي جلب السلطان. غثيان مفاجئ فأكاد أفيق من نومي لكن شيئاً يقول لي إني لازم أبقى لأداء صلاة الجمعة فأغوص في النوم. من جديد أرفع رأسي وأشهق: وسط الأيقونات والصلبان، في قلب هذي الكنيسة البيزنطية الرائعة كأنها مركز الكون، والفاتح الساجد أمامي دون الرابعة والعشرين، سمعت أحد الشيوخ يقيم الصلاة…

عود على بدء

نسيت أن أخبرك، في الحديث عن الطريق من الأورمان، بجذوع الشجر الأخضر الصاعدة كالخوازيق بين أعمدة الإضاءة – خوازيق أطول – والإعلانات، المارقين بين العربات مثل أفراد جيش يتقهقر وشعور باللاجدوى يبرك على صدرك عند تقاطع نادي الصيد… بعد المطلع، اليفط تكبر وتتباعد. بين إصطبلات الجزيرة حيث تاريخي الزملكاوي مع فتاة يابانية والميني توين تاورز – هكذا أسمي البرجين المتلاصقين قرب مبنى الإذاعة والتلفزيون منذ سبتمبر 2001 – نهر ناشف مرتفع عن مستوى الأسفلت يفضي إلى أحياء. وكثيراً ما تابعت اليفط باهتمام لأمرر الوقت: الكعبة أصغر من سرير أودة نوم فارهة تطل على الحرم المكي، ثلاثية السمن والزيت ومسحوق الغسيل، محمول يعد بتحويل حامله إلى سوپرمان… بحذاء منزل الإسعاف، على الشِمال، أطلال مبنى حجر وخشب كأنه مصنع أو محطة. وقصاده – بين نجوم الكوميديا الهابطة ومطربي الكلِپات – عمرو خالد بنفس ابتسامته المبهمة على حافة الهستيريا، عينه تحاذي أرقام الخط الساخن على خطى الحبيب. أغلب الوقت – حتى والكوبري سالك – لا تكاد تمر بعمرو خالد حتى يبدأ الزحف. من فوق، كتلة العربات المرقطة بالمشاة كأنها يوم القيامة. فأتذكر طلوع الميتين من قبورهم والتعبير الدارج: «أنا طلْعان ميتيني.» وأحس أن الدنيا كلها طلعان ميتينها فأطمئن:

لست وحدي الذي انهدم كل شيء من حوله ولا يعرف ماذا يصنع.

«والعلم علمان منبوذ ومكتسب، والبحر بحران مركوب وومرهوب» - الحلاج

يوم الثلاثاء، سيخطر لي أن ميدان الإسعاف كان دائماً نقطة انطلاق (ليس دائماً، يعني، ولكن منذ اشتغلت صحفياً بعد انتهاء دراستي في إنگلترا بأقل من شهرين، منذ عشر سنين تقريباً من يوم ما أخذت تاكسي من الدقي إلى أحد أقبح مباني القاهرة الكبيرة وطلعت في الأسانسير فلقيت نفسي في هذا المكتب)… من ميدان الإسعاف تعلمت أن أذهب، بالترتيب:

 إلى الزمالك حيث بيت حبيبتي اليابانية ثم قهوة العروبة؛

 عبر وسط البلد (زهرة البستان والإستوريل وقهوة الحرية وسويس إير شارع عدلي ثم المشربية والتاونهاوس والجامعة الأمريكية إلخ إلخ) إلى الغورية حيث قعدة البنقو التي واظبت عليها عاماً كاملاً في حارة حوش قدم، البيوت القديمة بعروضها الفولكلورية ومقاهي الحسين على الجانب الآخر من شارع الأزهر؛

 فوق الكوبري – أو عبر طريق صلاح سالم – إلى المطار ومدينة نصر حيث حجرة صديقي مخرج السينما على سطح أجرد في الحي العاشر، ثم شقة أهل يلدز حيث كنت أزورها على الهضبة الوسطى من تل المقطم، أو القطامية؛

 إلى المعادي حيث بيت صحفي متقاعد تعلقت بامرأته عاماً كاملاً ثم صحبة امرأتي في شقة الزوجية؛

 إلى مدينة 6 أكتوبر (بيوت صحفيين آخرين) وكارفور الطريق الصحراوي – عبر حديقة الأزبكية حيث يسكن أمجد صلاح – وأحياناً، عبر الطريق نفسه، إلى وادي النطرون أو الإسكندرية؛

 إلى مصر القديمة وسوق الإمام وبرقاش في الصباح الباكر؛

 بالذات بعدما بقيت أسوق بانتظام، إلى عدد كبير من المساكن والمصالح في المهندسين والعجوزة وأرض اللوا، مصر الجديدة والعباسية وعين شمس، الجيزة والهرم وإمبابة؛

ماذا أيضاً… كان ميدان الإسعاف كأنه باب انفتح، وشفت وراءه كل الحاجات من غير ما أشارك فيها كلها: شفت الكيوف وكل اختلافاتها، وما يوازيها من اختلافات طبقية ومزاجية عند الذين يأخذونها، والذي تعمله فيهم وفي حياتهم؛ شفت الرجال الذين يفضلون النوم مع الرجال والنساء اللائي مثلهم، ثم عالماً كاملاً مركزه وسط البلد عبارة عن عواجيز أجانب وشباب ضاربه السلك ينام معهم مقابل أشياء مختلفة أوضحها – وأندرها – الفلوس. شفت أنواعاً من الحبيبات: المرأة التي تريدك مكتئباً وفاشلاً لكي تنتشلك من براثن اليأس؛ المرأة التي تحب حبك لها دونما تحبك؛ المرأة التي اختزلتك من أول يوم إلى أداة ضمن أدوات كثيرة متاحة لمتعة جسدها؛ المرأة التي تعتقد أنها تخدعك؛ المرأة التي تغيظ بك رجلاً أو أباً أو مرأة غيرها؛ المرأة التي يشعرها وجودك بأنها عظيمة ورائعة؛ المرأة التي تريد مالك؛ المرأة التي تريد وقتك؛ وأخيراً، المرأة التي تريدك كابينيه لغائط تاريخها العائلي. شفت الناس الذين يتكلمون في السياسة ويؤمنون بالأيديولوجيا مثلما يؤمن أمجد صلاح الآن بالإسلام السلفي فيسمون نفسهم مثقفين؛ شفت الأجانب الذين يستأجرون الشقق ليعملوها مساكن أو گاليريهات ويتبادلون في حفلاتهم عبارات التحسر على ما يحصل في البلد، وشعراء الأقاليم الذين يقعدون على القهاوي باستمرار مريب، والكتاب الذين يطاردون الصحفيين، والكاتبات اللائي يعملن علاقات مع النقاد مثل بنات الكومبارس المستعدات دائماً لمضاجعة المخرجين؛ شفت جرائم قتل قليلة، وانهيارات عصبية تستتبع ولا تستتبع الذهاب إلى مستشفيات، مظاهرات وخناقات في الشوارع، وممثلين يضربون حقناً في حمامات البارات، ومحترفات دعارة محجبات، وأطفالاً يعزمون على بعضهم بالبنزين… كل هذا، وأكثر، شفته لما انفتح باب ميدان الإسعاف. الآن يخطر لي هذا الأمر بعيداً عن الإحساس بانهدام الدنيا والأشياء الجنونية التي تحصل لي بصدد إعادة البناء. لن يقترن بالغيظ وشعور أن قوى مجهولة تعاقبني إلا لاحقاً… هذا على رغم أن مشهد طلوع الميتين من قبورههم (دليل انهدام الدنيا) يجيء على أوضح صورة وأنا نازل من جنب يافطة عمرو خالد إلى قلب الميدان.

بحث بوابة المتولي والحركة الوطنية

سأعتبر كون الإسعاف نقطة انطلاقي إلى الدنيا الواسعة مجرد خاطر، وسأضحك – وأنا أعمل أسخف يوتِرن من عند مستشفى الهلال الأحمر مروراً بأحد أكبر جوامع السلفيين إلى دوامة تقاطع الترجمان – من التسمية الجديدة التي ألّفتُها له بلا تفكير: باب الدنيا. من أين جاءت عبارة مثل هذي – يعني أليست مبالغة قليلاً؟ فأتذكر باب النصر حيث زيزو بتاع السجق وباب الفتوح المجاور له – أيهما قصاد زيزو مباشرة؟ ثم ممر الخيامية المعتم المؤدي إلى باب زويلة. أبواب القاهرة الفاطمية ألهمتني التسمية إذن؛ لا شك أن باب زويلة أقربها إلى الذاكرة، كذلك. وسأضحك وأنا أسترجع، بأسى فكاهي، حادثة شنق طومان باي آخر حاكم مملوكي وتعليقه هناك. لأول مرة من سنين يرجع لي منظر مدرس التاريخ اللي حكى لنا الحادثة في إعدادي وكأن طومان باي أبوه والسلطان سليم العثماني زوج أمه. ما اسمه يا ربي… الأستاذ متولي؟ أظن كان اسمه الأستاذ متولي… بالصديري الصوف والبنطلون المرفوع لحد الصدر والشعر الهائش حول صلعة كأنها بيضة نعامة، كان أكثر واحد أنتيكا في المدرسة: من غير ما يعمل حاجة، كان الأستاذ متولي يثير الضحك. هذا برغم حاجات كثيرة تضحك كان يعملها أثناء الحصة، كأن يقرفص فجأة في منتصف جملة يقرأها ويرجع يفطّ مثل عفريت العلبة على سبيل تأكيد فكرة معينة، أو تسلسل. وما كان يعبأ باستهزائنا الضاحك ونحن ننظر إليه.

كان مهووساً بأشياء مختلفة يدرجها كلها تحت اسم الحركة الوطنية – أنا لم أفهم، من وقتها، ما هي هذي الحركة الوطنية بالضبط – حيث طومان باي، بالنسبة له، أحد أبطالها الشهداء. يعني صحيح أن المماليك كان لهم زمن في مصر واختلطوا أكثر بالفلاحين (من هنا جاءت كلمة أولاد الناس، إشارة إلى المقيمين لهم أجيال من الحكام والمؤرخين)، لكن طومان وعمه قنصوه الغوري چراكسة أصلهم من شمال القوقاز بينما آل عثمان تركمان من رومليا، شمال اليونان وغرب الأناضول، فماذا يجعل هؤلاء أبطالاً وطنيين وأولئك محتلين غرباء – ولدرجة تحويل باب زويلة، بالتالي، إلى بوابة ولي الله المتولي (هل سُمي على اسمها الأستاذ؟) هذا أيضاً، لغاية الوقت، لم أتمكن من فهمه… وإن كنت سأعرف وقتما أقرأ في كتاب ابن إياس أن اثنين فقط من حكام مصر المماليك كانوا روماً ممن سُميت الجبنة الرومي على اسمهم – يعني من قبائل التركمان سالفة الذكر بعدما ورثت السلاجقة، موالي الخلافة العباسية اسماً والمتصرفين فيها فعلاً، التي تسنترت جماعة منهم في قونية لما قضى المغول على سطوتهم في إيران والعراق فانتقلوا إلى أراضي روما الشرقية/بيزنطة، وكانت ضربت فيهم عروق الفرس واليونان^* – أحد هذين الاثنين اسمه الظاهر خُشقدم… ساعتها فهمت كمان لأي سبب يُكتب اسم حارة حوش قدم في الغورية بالقاف مع أنه يُنطق حوش آدم، وماذا جعل مولانا جلال الدين البلخي هو الثاني رومياً.

«فلما كانت سنة تسع وستين وخمسمائة… انتدب [صلاح الدين] لعمل السور الطواشي بهاء الدين قراقوش الأسدي… وقصد أن يجعل على القاهرة ومصر [القديمة]والقلعة سوراً واحداً» - المقريزي

من قبل حتى ما يمسك السلاجقة بالمقاليد، في بغداد، والأتراك عندنا يحكمون: في الأول أحمد ابن طولون وبعدين الإخشيد (ذاك الذي همشه الخصي كافور بتاع المتنبي). حتى الأيوبيين من نسل صلاح الدين كان أصلهم يشتغلون عند نور الدين زنكي عدو اللاتين (الصليبيين) المغير على ممالكهم الفلسطينية المسماة أوترمير (وراء البحار)^*: الكردي الأذربيجاني الذي جاء بآخر الفاطميين واسترد القدس من اللاتين بعد معركة حطين وبنى القلعة وسورها الذي وصل بين قاهرة المعز ومصر القديمة – فسطاط عمرو وجزيرة الروضة وأعمال الطولونيين – حتى هو، يوسف ابن نجم الدين أيوب، أقول، مثله مثل أبيه نجم الدين وعمه الذي جاء معه، أسد الدين شيركوه، كان في تعليمه وثقافته تركياً. بعد مئة سنة تقريباً على سقوط الفاطميين – الوحيدين العرب، عملياً، منذ نشأة الدولة العباسية – وكان متزامناً مع نزوح السلاجقة إلى رومليا^*، سيشيّع هولاگو بغداد بلف الخليفة المستعصم في سجادة ثمينة لتدهسه الخيول المدربة ثم يستمر في الزحف غرباً على ديار المسلمين حتى يوقفه المظفر قطز في عين جالوت – لم يوقفه، الحقيقة، لكنه هزم كتيبة تافهة تركها الحفيد الأشهر لجنكيز خان^* في الخليل بعدما اضطر للعودة إلى إيران – وساعتها ستنتقل الخلافة، تحت رعاية المماليك، إلى القاهرة… درس تاريخ هو؟ ما علينا.

«لهفي على سلطان مصر كيف قد، ولّى وزال كأنه لن يذكرا/ شنقوه ظلماً فوق باب زويلة، ولقد أذاقوه الوبال الأكبرا» - ابن إياس

يومها كان الأستاذ متولي يحكي بتأثر لدرجة أنه لما قرفص للمرة الثانية بدل ما يفط كعادته وقع على ظهره باكياً. والذي طبع الحادثة في ذاكرتي أننا لم نر الأستاذ متولي أبداً بعد الحصة دي، سمعنا أن الكيل طفح بإدارة المدرسة من غرابة أطواره فرفتوه نهائياً نتيجة المسخرة اللي عملها في الفصل. وكم حزنت، لما سمعت بوفاته، على سوء طالع الأستاذ متولي… أظنه كان يقرأ من بدائع الزهور رغم أنه ليس مقرراً علينا ولا ابن إياس (اللي هو كمان چركسي) في المنهج من أصله. هذا الخاطر خطر لي يوم الأحد، ثاني يوم على خروجي من شقة الزوجية. ولعلني استشعرت في اجترار حزني على الأستاذ متولي متعة معينة. وأنا راجع م المكتب طلع في دماغي أني لازم ألاقي نص الكلام الذي كان يقرأه لنا، وصممت على الموضوع بعناد فكرني بمنظر امرأتي وهي قاعدة في الأرض تفنّط أكوام الصور والأوراق وأشياء صغيرة ذات قيمة عاطفية مبهمة. ساعات أحس أنها ما كانت تعيش حقيقة إلا وهي تعمل كده. (امرأتي من النوع اللي يحتفظ بكل شيء، ويمضي وقتاً في الحفاظ على شيء يرمز لواقعة ما أكثر مما يأخذ ويؤدي مع هذه الواقعة. حتى أوراق الشجر تحطها بين صفحتي كتاب وتزعل زعلاً بجد لو تهشمت من الواحد وهو يقرأ. نظرية الطرشي في ممارسة الحياة، باختصار: بدل ما تأكل الشيء، تعمل على أن تخلله…) لأن عَنَت الإحساس بضرورة عمل حاجة فارغة – أن ألاقي نصاً يذكرني بإعدادي – والتحمس لاجترار أحزان قديمة من ضمن الملامح القليلة الواضحة في امرأتي: لما وجدت نفسي أتعامل بهذا المنطق تذكرتها. ما هو حنين بالضبط، لكن التماهي مع هذا النوع من الجنون يعوضني مؤقتاً عن إحساس الفقد. كأني، هكذا، أقبض على الشراكة التي راوغتني عاماً كاملاً ونحن تحت سقف.

ثم أنا عارف أنه ليس طبعي ولا خوف من تطبيق دائم لنظرية الطرشي.

«وغبر الشيء يغبر أي بقي. والغابر: الباقي. والغابر: الماضي. وهو من الأضداد.» – لسان العرب

في بلكونة الصالة المطلة على داير الناحية والشارع معاً – مكان ما كنت أربي الحمام والأرانب؛ لحد الوقت كثيراً ما أتفكر حمامتي المقلوظة التي تطير وترجع لي، والأرنب المضطرب نفسياً الذي تمكن من اعتلاء السور وانتحر – ذكريات مخلوطة بخناقات جيراننا الشلق وانتظار مجيء أمي من الشغل أو من رحلة يوم واحد إلى بورسعيد تجلب لي معها محطة بنزين على مقاس عرباتي اللي الواحدة منها حجم علبة الكبريت. لحد الوقت، كلما أطلع البلكونة، تمر لحظة أنسى أنها بقيت دولاب حيطة يتسع، بصعوبة، لجسد إنسان يقلّب في أكوام الكتب المتعلقة بأبي. لما كثرت كانت أمي ستبيعها بالكيلو لولا اتفاقية التعايش السلمي التي عقداها معاً – «أهو ع الأقل نرتاح من دوشة السوقيين اللي تحت،» قالت أمي – والتمت الكتب المتشردة هناك. الأحد، بعد المغرب. وأنا أتحرك كأنما بالتصوير البطيء. «إيه يابني اللي هيدخلك هناك دلوقتي بس» – عويل ماما يتبعني – «طب اقفل وراك عشان التراب!» حاجة غريبة يا أخي: كأن الطريق من السفرة إلى مدخل البلكونة وراء مكتب أبي طال، أو كأنه تحول إلى قناة فضائية تربط كوكبين منفصلين: أمي – على السفرة – في كوكب، ودولاب الكتب في كوكب؛ وأنا طائر من الواحد للثاني، وكلما قربت من البلكونة كلما خفت صوت أمي وبقي غريباً، وكلما بعدت عن السفرة كلما لبستني روح طفل يداعب حمامة. حمامتي المقلوظة لون القشدة البقري وفي عينيها – زري القميص – حنين لبلاد لم أزرها، منقارها بين إصبعي كاللبة أكاد أقزقزه، تخدع بين راحتي حتى أفلتها فيخفق جناحاها وتبص لي. تطير بعيداً بعيداً، لكن يتهيأ لي أنها كل مدة ترجع تلف وتبص لي قبلما تكمل طريقها وهي طائرة… أفقت على الغبار. ويدي تدور على مفتاح النور بينما أنحني لأني أطول شوية م السقف وأعتدل لأقفل الباب. غبار ممزوج برائحة الورق القديم وإحساس مكمكم مثل المجال الجوي المحيط بأبي. شيء بين القهوة وسگاير ماركة كِنْتْ وروب درداري نحل وبره… المكان ظلمة. لمبة واحدة تتدلى من خرم في الخشب، عملياً. الظاهر احترقت: فيه بصيص باهت – لأن الباب موارب – خلّاني أجرّب السويتش.

ذكر نص كلام ابن إياس

في الآخر رحت أجيء بشمعة وكبريت من درج النملية. ومع أني قفلت الباب ورائي وأمي مازالت تعول، لغاية ما رجعت ودخلت البلكونة/الدولاب – المرة هذي لم أترك الباب موارباً – فضل الإحساس أني دخلت كوكباً ثانياً. يعني ما عدت طفلاً يلاعب حمامة بريش سمني لكن حاسس أني منفصل كلياً عن هذا المكان وهذا الزمن. بلدي قبو خشب فيه أسرار خطيرة لازم أدور عليها بين الكتب المرصوصة لأنها – الأسرار – مطبوعة على ورق. حتى رائحة الزيت، في المطبخ، ما عملت تغييراً في الإحساس بأني في الكوكب الثاني. كنت كأني واحد مغترب في الطريق لبيتهم. أنا فاكر: ما إن قفلت الباب بالكامل، حتى حبوت. يعني أنت ممكن تقف، محني الرأس، جوة القبو الذي تحولت إليه بلكونة الصالة. لكن أنا لما بقيت في الظلمة تذكرت حلماً غريباً يتكرر – طول حياتي – بأشكال مختلفة: أني وقعت في حفرة واسعة كأنها عالم بأسره، وفي قعرها شيء كالسحاب امتص الصدمة – والسحاب المرة دي عبارة عن غبار متراكم وورق: أكوام عميقة من الغبار يغطس فيها كف يدك، وأغلفة ستبدو – في ضوء الشمعة اللي ثبّتها بين رجليّ – لون روب أبي، الحز المحفور وراء الحز… وأنا خارج الدنيا أحبو على هذا الشيء، أغطس وأقب في الطراوة الدردارية وكلما أحس بالتعب أرقد على ظهري وأتطلع لفوق. الوقت تهيأ لي أني في الحفرة إياها، لسبب غير مفهوم – أني بالانتقال من كوكب أمي إلى كوكب كتب أبي إنما سافرت إلى هذا الحلم ومن غير ما أدري، والشمعة في يدي، بقيت أحبو. أحتضن الكتب وأدفعها عني، أشدها وأغوص في الفجوات القليلة بينها. أهرام ومراتب ومخدات من الكتب وأنا في الماء. لك أن تتصور الضوء المرتعش بعدما قرفصت أخيراً وولعت الشمعة: درجات الأصفر والرمادي في ذاك التابوت المعدول، وأنا مثل الله يرحمه الأستاذ متولي تماماً، يداي تقلبان في المخلوقات الورقية الطالعة عليّ مخلوقاً وراء الثاني وكأنها تتنفس…

لا أعرف كم مضّيت وسط الكتب والغبار. نسيت امرأتي فعلاً. نسيت حتى أبي. لا أعرف متى صار الكتاب في يدي، ولا كيف وصلت إلى الصفحة التي أبحث عنها. ماذا جعل الكلام يلتصق برأسي وكأني حفظته؟ وإلى أين اختفى الكتاب لما انتهيت؟

مجرد خمس دقائق، برّة الزمن، وكأن المخلوقات الورقية تواطأت على العودة إلى الحياة لإيداع الكلام في رأسي قبلما تهجع إلى قبرها من جديد. هكذا:

«فلما أتوا إلى باب زويلة، أنزلوه عن فرسه وأرخوا له الحبال، ووقفت حوله العثمانية بالسيوف مسلولة. فلما تحقق أنه يشنق (وهنا قرفص الأستاذ متولي أول مرة)، وقف على أقدامه على باب زويلة، وقال للناس الذين حوله: اقرأوا لي الفاتحة ثلاث مرات. ثم بسط يده (الأستاذ متولي يقاوم الدموع) وقرأ الفاتحة ثلاث مرات، وقرأت الناس معه. ثم قال للمشاعلي (الفطة التي لم تكتمل) اعمل شغلك! فلما وضع الخية في رقبته ورفعوا الحبل، انقطع به فسقط على عتبة باب زويلة (هنا وقع الأستاذ متولي، لكنه لم يكف عن القراءة)، وقيل: انقطع به الحبل مرتين، وهو يقع على الأرض ثم يعلقونه وهو مكشوف الرأس. فلما شنق وطلعت روحه، صرخت عليه الناس صرخة عظيمة، وكثر عليه الحزن والأسف… (كل هذا مختلط بالبكاء).»

كأنّ الأستاذ متولي قدامي يردد الكلام، أو كأني – أنا – بقيت الأستاذ متولي. فقط مقرفص وأفقّر على ضوء الشمعة. ثم بقيت في الصالة وأمي تقول التراب – «ادخل ع الحمام ادخل!» – والكوكب الثاني فص ملح وذاب. ما بقي شيء منه غير نص كلام ابن إياس. وكأني لم أدخل البلكونة، رجعت إلى السفرة حيث أمي جالسة: انهيار زواجي ونبوءة فستق والرحلة المصيرية م المعادي للدقي، ثم الرحلة التي تتكرر كل يوم، م الدقي للإسعاف. في شارع الجلاء سطوة المنادين وخناقات أصحاب العربات، حتى الزملاء منهم، وإحساس متزايد كل يوم أننا فعلاً شعب بهائم والحكومة ما لها ذنب في شيء.

«وأما أرض مصر، فأرض قوراء غوراء ديار الفراعنة ومنازل الجبابرة، تفضل بنيلها، وذمها أكثر من مدحها… في أهلها مكر ورياء، وخبث ودهاء، وخديعة…» – المسعودي

المهم: طوال هذا الأسبوع الأول، أذهب إلى المكتب بنفس حلوة فألاقيهم ينبرون في الأخلاق. الناس في مصر أخلاقيون جداً، لكن دوافعهم كلها قلة أدب ونفاق. بين الطموح والموات رجعية وافتراء. الشىء الوحيد المثير في يلدز: إذا غمزت لها تهتاج. لكني بقيت أشخبط لأنتقم – هكذا كنت أصنع طوال الأسبوع الأول – وأنا أريد أن أحكي دون انتقام. يمكن، يغيظني الزملاء لأني أخبط فيهم في المكتب، وما عاد عندي غيرهم إلا أودتي الخاوية. سواء يلدز أو ميشيل فستق، البنت المخطوبة للولد أو أمجد صلاح. رحلتي اليومية أن أعيد اكتشاف جنون كل واحد فيهم. وكلما تكلمت مع واحد بالنهار، أمضيت الليل أنخور في دوافعه. وكلما ألاحظ تناقضاً في واحد أشتم، بيني وبين نفسي، في الجميع؛ مع الوقت بقيت أستخلص نتائج عمومية تشعرني أني وحدي أكثر فأكثر. فأحتار وأغتاظ وأفقّر لغاية ما يسكتني الخوف. ومن جديد أفكر في ضرورة الالتزام بمخطط يومي محكم يحافظ على سير العمل والمظهر الاجتماعي ورضا الوالدين، لا؟

خبر البنت المخطوبة للولد

دعني أرجع للتسلسل: ليلة الإثنين، بعدما رسمت رحلتي مرتين وانتبهت من غير ضحك لزميلنا الفقي وحيد الدين، صحوت مفزوعاً على سقوط القساوسة في المياه. ولما رجعت نمت رأيت بقية المنام. ما هذا؟ الوقت قبلما أقرأ في كتاب ابن إياس يوم الثلاثاء، كنت ألعب سباق المركبة الطائشة وأحرر مقالاً عن مزايا التعديلات الدستورية بالتناوب لما جاءت البنت المخطوبة للولد عندي لتدخن. هذا، بالمناسبة، لا علاقة مباشرة له بالحدوته التي أحكيها لك – سوى أني أشتغل في قفص أبلكاش جوة إحدى الحجرات الكبيرة. ميزته أن فيه شباكاً يجلب نور ربنا بالنهار – يعني، صحيح أن الشباك يطل على سطوح أبو العلا الفقيرة فيفكر الناظر بغم البلاد، لكن حتى القمامة والجير والأشياء هذي لها جمالها في النهار – وفيه باب يقفل من جوة الحجرة فتحس أنك حر بمعزل عن الزملاء. لذلك تجيء عندي دون غيري كلما تهفها نفسها على الدخان: تقعد في الركن ويدها بالسِيگارة وراء الكرسي. يجب أن يظل الموضوع سراً على خطيبها الذي يعمل معنا؛ لا يخطر ببالها أن الارتباط يستوجب مصارحة. هي لا تشرب سگاير، فقط تستمتع بالتجاوز في وجود لطخ يخرجها مسافة سنتي من دائرة العيب. تحت تأثير زميلتنا السمراء الضائعة، على الأرجح. ومن غير اللطخ ما يعلم. أي تجاوز، مع ذلك؟ ما أظنها تعاني لحظة شك في أن الدائرة التي نصبها أبوها حواليها محتمل أن تكون أوقفت نموها الطبيعي. لا غيظ ولا فضول. الكتالوگ كامل المعاني ولا شيء يشتغل. ولا كلمة. الذي يدهشني أن الأشياء لا تُقال. مثل هذي الأسرة ملايين مملينة. كيف يزرعون في بناتهم قناعات سقيمة من غير كلام؟ الكليشيهات تقتل في صمت. «لا يمكن أعمل حاجة تزعلهم» – هكذا تقول عن أهلها، وتبربش – «أصل ليه…» أبوها يعرف مصلحتها، باختصار.

وأبوها موافق على زواجها بالولد شرط أن يضمن حقوقها. كل التفاصيل المادية لحياتهما معاً يحددها أبوها. وهي معه على طول الخط، لا؟ المشكلة أن الشقة اللي عند الولد ليست على مستوى. يعني، مقابل غشاء بكارة، شقة على مستوى. زائد توقيع على قائمة منقولات ومؤخر صداق. زائد مهر ومصاغ وماذا أيضاً. وغشاء بكارتها لا يساوي عندي قزازة بيرة، الصراحة. لكن الولد يريد أن يبني أسرة بالفعل. من استطاع منكم الباءة. كفاءة وأخلاق. السمراء رأيها أنه أحسن مني لأنه يحفظ القرآن، فألوم يلدز. الشقة ضمان الاستقرار، كده الكلام. دور رب الفاميلي المصونة توفيرها. «كده ولّا إييييه؟» (وكم عايرتني حماتي بأني لا أملك شقة. حتى مُزَّتي اللي اخترتها لأنها لا تفكر بالفلوس، بقيت لا تحس بالأمان في سكن الإيجار. فجأة. حماتي تقول لأمي إنهم تعجلوا في الموافقة على الزواج قبلما يتوفر سكن مضمون. كل ده لأني قررت أن أجرب العيشة مع مزة قابلتها؟ كل ده لمجرد أن تحبل وتلد؟) السمراء لابسة من غير هدوم وكأنها غير منتبهة لعريها. أقرب حاجة في حياتي لامرأة أريدها. فجأة ترفع ساقاً من فوق ساق:

«طاب أنا رايحة أصلي بقى.»

نعم يا روح أمك؟

بحث في القيم المتصلة بالعمل والحياة

يومها فكرت في البنت والولد كثيراً. المفروض أنها تحبه؛ المفروض أنه يحبها. كلاهما فوق الخامسة والعشرين ولم يعرف جسداً. وكلاهما مستعد أن يستانى الشقة حتى يعرف جسد الآخر – يعني هو يدفع ليضاجع، وهي يُدفع لها: سنة أو أكثر سينتظران، ولا يشعر أي منهما بأي شيء غلط، ولا يتأثر غرامهما المفصل على المقاس – ومن بعده، لا يعرف أي جسد آخر حتى يموت، لا؟ هو يراجع مفرداته الإنگليزية وهي تدخن من ورائه. ومن لم يستطع فعليه بالصوم. أسوق المركبة الطائشة على الشاشة وأظل أفكر. يعني شركة إنتاج صبيان وبنات تفتقر إلى أبسط شروط الثقة بالشريك. والأشطر يكسب… تركت الشاشة إلى الشباك… هذه ناس؟ ومع ذلك، علق بذهني موضوع ارتباط البنت المخطوبة بالسمراء. في رأسي منظرهما وهما يتوجهان إلى المصلى، الواحدة في إثر الأخرى: قفص آخر في الحجرة الخارجية، بالكاد يسع جسدين، تحجبه ستارة دونما يكون له باب. يجمعهما أكثر من توجه في الحقيقة، وعلى الرغم من كل الاختلافات الظاهرة. فكأن محبة البنت المخطوبة لأهلها هي صورة اضطرابات السمراء العائلية في المرآة، أو كأن انعدام الوعي الجنسي والمبالغة في استغلاله وجهان لعملة واحدة. الشيء المشترك بوضوح هو اشمئزازهما من الاتصال الجسدي. يعني أجسام الرجال. لحد الوقت أنا رأيي أن المسألة مناظر تقليدية للتأكيد على البراءة من منظور أخلاقي، وكما تشكو السمراء بلا توقف من التحرش الجنسي، كما تسميه، مع أنها لا تقدر أن تصمد عشر دقائق على بعضها من غير ما تلفت انتباه رجل لجسمها أينما كانت، يظل اصطناع الاشمئزاز تكراراً مريضاً لقيم مجتمع يدعي أنه محافظ وهو لا يعدو أن يكون مغلقاً… مع الغيظ الهادر كان لابد أن أشغل نفسي بحاجة ثانية. وقررت أن أضع الموضوع على جنب مؤقتاً.

«إنتي يا بت/ عاملة إيه/ إبّوس إبّوس/ إحّضن إحّضن…» - محمد سعد في فيلم اللمبي(إنتاج 2002، إخراج وائل إحسان)

يمكن، يغيظني الولد والبنت لأن لي أياماً أشاهد أفلاماً كوميدية ساقطة. وفي كل فيلم قصة حب: البطلة بكر، وصمود البطل في مغامراته المضحكة من أجل أن يفض بكارتها – غير ممكن بلا عقد شرعي. أحياناً يعقد عليها قبلما يمر بالمغامرت، لكن شراً محدقاً يمنع حصول الدخلة. نادراً ما أضحك من قلبي لكن الأفلام تصنع جلبة في الأودة. يساعدني ذلك في تشغيل الفراغ المعطّل. يتأكد لي أن الدنيا التي انهدمت ممكن إلحاقها بكل رفات العوالم السابقة. لم أعد أستبقي الدلائل المادية على أني كنت هناك – هكذا صنعت صغيراً – فالمهم أن أواصل. الجديد بلا خوف. وقتما يشتغل الفراغ سترجع جرأتي على الشهوة. شيئاً فشيئاً. كل الحاجات تدفعنا أن نكون رهباناً. ضروري أن أبعث في جسمي الرغبة. الليلة فعلاً سأستحم. سأجمع أغراضي لأكون جاهزاً للسفر. شهوتي للبلاد. سأدور في الدنيا كالأبله، وحين أجد ضالتي لن أتزوجها تحت أي ظرف. لا شيء يخرجني من أتوبيس سفر يمشي على مئة وسبعين كيلو باتجاه مجهول. بعد أذان الفجر أتلهى بفكرة خوض مغامرات كوميدية حتى أفض بكارة عذراء أحبها. أعرف أن هذا لن يحصل أبداً. عذراء تعمل لي القهوة وتسيبني في حالي.

تسعدها فكرة أنها ملكي، أصنع بها ما أشاء.

حدث

الثلاثاء جاءت البنت المخطوبة للولد، والأربعاء جد شيء في موضوع الانفصال. ليس حدثاً بمعنى أنه غير متوقع، يعني، لكنه قلّل الترقب دونما يزيل الحيرة: أقل من أسبوع على الخروج من المعادي وامرأتي أجهضت نفسها. جاءني إيميل منها يخبرني أنها لا تريد أن ترى خلقة قاتل مثلي – «مِردِرر،» كتبت – وأنها صحبت أمها إلى الشقة لتسترد الجهاز. فطلبتُ من أمي أن تذهب وتأخذ حاجتي هي، المهمة التي نفذتها بعد الويك إند مباشرة، وأنا قاعد أفقّر في المكتب. يعني – هذا ما كنت أحسه وقتها – أنا سأختبئ في المكتب ريثما تُفرغ الشقة أمعاءها. سيكون في رأسي نوبات القيء التي تصيب امرأتي، وسكين نافذ لأني تركتها تتقيأ. تتقيأ وتتقيأ حتى يخرج ولدنا مع قيئها. وقتها سأحس أنها لا تعمل كده لوحدها. إنما الشقة وفرحتنا كذلك – الدنيا كلها تتقيأ. حتى قبل الإجهاض، يعني، يخرج سائل بني غليظ رائحته تستدعي الموت، فأبكي أبي. زيادة على ست سنين مرت على موته وأنا أبكيه الآن؟

فصل

لكن مثلما أقول لك – باستثناء هذا الإيميل وما سيترتب عليه من قعاد في المكتب بينما الأشياء تتبختر من المعادي إلى الدقي في أثري: هكذا تخيلتها، على ظهر جمل بهودج – لم يحدث شيء غير الحلم طوال أسبوع أمضيته في أودتي القديمة وهي خاوية. بيني وبين نفسي – هذا كل شيء – بدأت أتكلم عن باب الدنيا كلما قصدت ميدان الإسعاف. ومثلما أقول لك، بعد الثلاثين – الذي لاحظته وأنا أرجع أتعود على الأودة – بقيت تعوضني الكتب عن الأفلام الساقطة. مواظبتي تدهشني، كذلك اختياري للمواضيع. قرأت كتاباً طويلاً عن أمريكي في الصين: وضع لنفسه شرط أن يصل هناك ويعبر البلد كلها بالقطار؛ لم يعرف امرأة طوال سنة. أريد أن أصنع مثله. هو حياته كما ينبغي. لا شيء انهدم. وليس مضطراً للدوام على العمل. فقط أريد أن أستقل قطاراً لا يقف – أنظر إلى الآخرين إن لم أكلمهم – ثم أنزل مكاناً بعيداً ولا أفكر في الرجوع. سهرت أقرأ كتاباً آخر عن الصين. إذا سافرت سآخذه معي. فنان تشكيلي من أهل البلد يبلغ الثلاثين – أنا بلغتها قبل زواجي بأسابيع – الدنيا انهدمت من حوله فعقد العزم وخلع. يدور بأوراق مزورة في أنحاء الصين. لا أحتاج أوراقاً مزورة. وضعي بين الصيني والأمريكي. الفرق الكبير في الوقت. كل منهما عنده سنة أو أكثر. أنا بالكاد أتحصل على ثلاثة أيام – ما يهم شيء. احتمال تحصل حاجة ولا أرجع. دائماً أفكر هكذا في السفر. أن أنام وأدخن كما يحلو لي، وأشخبط في هذا الدفتر: حتى بدون سفر هذه الأشياء تجعل النهاية أخف. عشرة أيام، باختصار، وأنا أقرأ وأمكث بلا داعٍ في المكتب. عَرَض دوري، هذا المكوث، يحصل عادة في غياب امرأة. وفي غياب امرأة – صدفة هذه الأيام – المكتب يخلو. (للأمر علاقة بمسائل سياسية لم يرق لي الاهتمام بها: في المكتب كما في البلد كلها قيم كالذبان ولا شيء يحدث، ولا إنتاج.) تذهب في ذروة العمل الأسبوعي ولا أحد. الكل مهتاج على الانتهاء من مهماته في أسرع وقت. أتسول صحبة الخائبين. بالتدريج بقيت أنظر إلى ذوي العلاقات المنتظمة مثل واحد أسقط جوال خراء من فوق رأسه يتطلع إلى أجولة الآخرين. الخراء يبظ منها. لم أعد أصدق نبل أخلاق رفاق دربي السابقين. ومع ذلك، لحد ما بدأت الأحداث الغريبة اللي دفعتني لتسجيل هذي الحدوتة من أولها – في الأسبوع الثاني – ظليت، بفضول يحدوه الغيظ، أعيد اكتشاف هلع وتخبط الزملاء.

جيئة وذهاباً أحللهم.

«وفي الحديث: قصوا الشوارب وأعفوا اللحى.» - المعجم الوجيز

بعدما بحثت في ملابسات انضمام صديقي السكير الهائج أمجد صلاح عبد الجليل إلى حجافل السُنيين، مثلاً – تأكد لي، حال حصول التحول قبلما أترك شقة المعادي بشهرين تقريباً، أن المسألة ليس فيها إسلام سياسي: يعني لا جهاد ولا سلاح ولا حتى نزعة ثورية. أساساً أمجد ليس عنده طاقة ذهنية تسمح بحاجة من دي؛ اختيار فردي، إذن – خطر لي أن التحول مستحيل يكون مجرد لوثة مؤقتة أو تنويعاً على تيمة الرجعية بغباء. يعني: شيء عادي أن يتدين البني آدم ولكن لأي سبب يربي ذقناً كالتي يركبها الإرهابيون في المسلسلات أو يفرح وقتما يناديه الجهلة «يا شيخ»؟ وفكرت أن شيئاً مس دماغه – طرف من شبكة واسعة الانتشار، لا شك أنها متواطئة مع ناس هدفهم هلاك المسلمين: لمصلحة مَن غير ناس مثل هؤلاء أن تبقى الديانة تخلفاً والهوية انتحاراً؟ – بدليل أنه ينفذ مخططاً محكماً من غير ما تتأثر شخصيته. يعني يبقى ترساً في ماكينة السلفية والتأسلم – وفي يوم، بفضل ملايين مثله، نتحول إلى طالبان، نذبح في بعضنا على أساس الدين أو الطائفة، وتأتي طيارات تُسقط علينا قنابل، وصواريخ دقيقة التوجيه تقتل عيالنا وتهد بوتنا بالغلط – إنما جوهر أمجد، تفاهته وعقده، حبه للجهجهة والضحك، لا شيء من هذا تغير قيد ظفر حتى. (الاختلاف الوحيد في اللحية والزبيبة وعدد لانهائي من المحرمات. إضافة إلى الشعائر كلها. وما دخْل هذا في شخصية أمجد؟) وكنت أفكر أن الهلع والتخبط هو الذي يخلّي الناس تروساً… تنفذ مخططات شبكات متواطئة… ودونما تتغير شخصياتها.

فصل في أسماء أحياء القاهرة

الخميس ما حصل شيء.

فكرت في الحلم وأنا مازلت أحلل. ليس عندي أي فكرة من يكون ذلك السلطان الشاب المسمى بالفاتح، ولا أين الكنيسة البيزنطية التي صلّى جواها، أو في أي عصر. وزي ما عملت الأربعاء والثلاثاء وبقية الأيام، صحوت مبكراً تحممت وأفطرت ودعكت أسناني. أجلت أول سِيگارة لحد ما وصلت المكتب، وهناك شربتها مع القهوة واشتغلت ست ساعات متواصلة.

«وعلم آدم الأسماء كلها» – سورة البقرة، 31

كل هذا يوم الخميس.

دلوقت أنت عارف أني من وقت ما سبت المعادي وفي رأسي خريطة للقاهرة أريد أن أرسمها. كنت جلبت معي شنتة كتب من المعادي فضلت أسابيع في العربة أثناء الانفصالات المؤقتة. ليلتها بعد العشاء أخرجت ثلاثة منها كان فيها خرائط قديمة، وفرشت الورق والأقلام على ترابيزة السفرة لأجرّب. أبتدئ، بطبيعة الحال، من النيل. ثم أحاول أن أركّب الأحياء على جانبيه. خمس أو ست مرات أشطب الذي عملته وأبدأ من جديد؛ وكل مرة تكون الرسمة أبسط بخطوط أرفع ومساحات بيضاء أوسع. بودي شيء سلس ومجرد مثل لوحة تجريدية – لوحة خط عربي، مثلاً – فجرّدت النيل من جزيرتيه وقصرت الأحياء على الدقي والمعادي، والإسعاف. تجاهلت الشوارع والكباري.

خمسة أو ستة خطوط لكل حي فاكتمل الرسم كما أردته. فاضل الأسماء: من غير مجهود كنت سميت وسط البلد كلها باب الدنيا. الوقت قعدت أفكر: إذا كان الإسعاف نقطة انطلاق ففي الدقي – حيث كوبري الدقي ومرسى النيل الناشف: نعم، لقيت نفسي أسمي كوبري أكتوبر النيل الناشف، فيما صارت مطالعه ومنازله مراسي – السرير الذي يمنحني أحلاماً. خل الدقي (ومعه المهندسين والعجوزة والجامعة) جسر… أيوه… جسر المنام. وقضيت أكثر من ساعة أقدح زناد كل حاجة عن أسماء مناسبة لبقية الأحياء. المعادي شارع صغير فيه كلاب هند رستم، كلبة بنت صاحبة البيت – «ساندييييييي!» – والكلب الذي تبنته بنت شعبان البواب، هذا إضافة إلى عدد كبير من الكلاب الشريدة تجيء وتمشي طول اليوم. خلني أسميه… درب، بالضبط: درب الكلب. وبما أن فيه سراً وراء ذهابي، صحبة صديقي السني أمجد صلاح عبد الجليل، إلى كارفور الطريق الصحراوي دون غيره من كل الأماكن التي ممكن نذهب إليها – سر حتى أنا لا أعرفه – يجب أن تكون في اسم هذا المكان كلمة سر. باب زويلة فكرني بخان الخليلي. الخان سوق مسقوف بطرق متداخلة تصطف على جانبيه الدكاكين، يعني مول مثل كارفور. طبيعي أن يكون كارفور هو… خان السر.

كتبت الأسماء في أماكنها. ورسمت خطوطاً بينها تبين الرحلات التي قمت بها داخل القاهرة الكبرى منذ مولد النبي سنة 1428 هجرية: من درب الكلب إلى جسر المنام؛ من جسر المنام إلى باب الدنيا (وبالعكس)؛ و(على اعتبار ما سيكون، مثلما أنا عارف، آجلاً أو عاجلاً) من باب الدنيا إلى خان السر.

ثم جاء في بالي أن فيه أماكن مهمة لا تظهر في الخريطة، اخترت منها أربعة بدت أساسية في حياتي: مكان ما أذهب للتفرج على حيواني المفضل، ومكان ما أغادر البلاد وأرجع إليها، ومكان ما اكتشفت النكاح يابانياً ع البحر (يعني في شقة مطلة على النيل) حيث جاءتني أيضاً نبوءة فستق. على ورقة جديدة رسمت جملاً وطيارة وشجرة ونقلت شارة نادي الجزيرة من بطاقة قديمة كانت عند ماما ولوگو كارفور من شنتة پلاستك ثم كتبت تحت كل صورة الاسم الجديد للمكان: برقاش/مينا الرمل؛ المطار/حوش طيارة؛ الزمالك/بحر اليابان؛ والمقطم (حيث بيت أهل يلدز في حتة هادئة مشجرة من الهضبة الوسطى): كوم شجر. هكذا:

يعني. كنت أعرف أن هذه مجرد بداية وأني سأرسم الخريطة من جديد. لكن سعدت بالذي عملته مرحلياً. ولما انتهيت قلمت الورقتين ولصقتهما في الدفتر. ما كان عندي شغل وحسيت أني عملت إنجازاً. من هنا ورائح، وهذه الخريطة تحت عيني، سأستلهم دائرة الرحلة الأولى – بعد التعديل – لأعمل تصوراً جغرافياً لكل رحلة أقوم بها، أرسمه بعينين مغمضين أفتحهما دورياً لأراجع تقدمي في الرسم وضبط المسافات. وهكذا أكوّن زخيرة رسومات مبدأية للإنجاز النهائي… لم أتحمم. على نصف الليل استمنيت ورحت في النوم. أحلامي تافهة كما كانت… صباح الجمعة فوجئت بالإجازة.

«ثم غلبته عينه بعد ذلك فرأى فيما يرى النائم كأن القيامة قد قامت.» - ركن الدين الوهراني

أول ويك إند على إقامتي في جسر المنام – الأودة مازالت خاوية – ولم أدرِ ماذا أصنع بنفسي فسقت كعادتي إلى باب الدنيا. (لم تعد تدهشني أو تضحكني الأسماء الجديدة.) مرسى النيل الناشف مثل نهاية العالم على أذان العصر (ابتسامة عمرو خالد زي ما هي على يميني). أنا ركنت في مكاني المعتاد في شارع الجلاء ورجعت عبر سوق التوفيقية على رجلي. لفيت من جنب مقهى الأمريكين وعبر سينما أوديون إلى شارع شمپليون ورجعت من رمسيس مروراً بدار القضاء العالي اللي يشبه المعبد الروماني. بعد الوقوف قليلاً عند نصبة الجرائد تسلقت إلى سطح عمارة لا أعرفها. صوت هتافات يأتي من نقابة الصحفيين. مظاهرة أخرى؟ ثم تفكرت: فيه استفتاء على شيء يسمونه التعديلات الدستورية. الأسبوع القادم؟ من هنا لا أرى غير سينما ريڤولي. خلف دار القضاء مباني كالتراب تبتلع الشمس. في شارع شمپليون المقهى مضيء وشاغر. امرأة تنتحب فوق سور واطئ. الدمار والهلاك.

خبر تحقق المنام

للحظة – وأنا على السطح – تهيأ لي أني رجعت إلى المدينة العجيبة حيث المياه والخضرة والفرس الأبيض. أنا عارف أني في القاهرة ولا مجال للتداخل – فيه يُفَط وأكشاك وأرصفة؛ لا خشب ولا زهور، ولا نهاية لعدد العربات؛ حتى الضوء أكثر صفرة وتباينه أشد – لكن شاباً أشقر كأنه نسخة من الفاتح كان يظهر لي كل بضعة أمتار أثناء تمشيتي إلى هنا. وكل مرة يكون على هيئة شكل: ماسح أحذية قاعد قدام الأمريكين، بواب عمارة في معروف، سواق تاكسي راكن عند محطة المترو...

وكل مرة أكون على وشك أن أتوجه إليه وأقول له:

«حضرتك السلطان؟»

ثم أمتنع في آخر لحظة.

فكرت أني متأثر بالحلم وجوعان نوم وأهلوس، وأن الأنقاض التي خلّفتها في درب الكلب تركتني حائراً وحزيناً. حتى لو كان ظهور الفاتح بالطريقة هذي مجرد هلوسة، مع ذلك، فيه إحساس باطني أني مازلت أعيش الحلم، وعلى الرغم من أنه لم يتكرر. السير في شوارع القاهرة إعادة إنتاج لحالة المدينة العجيبة لحظة وجودي هناك. كأن زمناً كاملاً ينتهي وآخر يبدأ، كما حسيت في أول يوم على رجوعي إلى جسر المنام من درب الكلب: وقفتي هذه أو نظرة الجنرال الأخيرة علامة انتهاء زمن بأسره. زمن كانت المدينة التي هي الدنيا لها كرامة أو طعم، وبداية زمن ثانٍ من الذل والغياب، لا مكان فيه لا لي ولا لك ولا للناس الذين نتعاطف معهم… نعم. وفيه مكان أوسع للمتطرفين دينياً والرائحين مع أمريكا أو ضدها واللائي هن – على أحدث صيحة – محجبات… كل ده… مع أن دلالات الفكرة أوضح في الحلم بكثير – وأنا الشاهد الوحيد. هكذا سأرسم الاستغراب على وجهي ليلتها:

الموضوع أكبر بكثير من التعديلات الدستورية: صوت الهتافات نفسه يؤكد الإيحاء بأن الدنيا كما نعرفها تنهار. كذلك أحذية الأمن المركزي الصلدة تدب على الأسفلت – لا أكاد أسمعها، الحقيقة، لكنها ترن في أذني – وشمس العصاري تزحف ببطء ناحية الغرب. لما لمحت ثلاثة قساوسة يمدون باتجاه الإسعاف – حجمهم صغير جداً من بعيد وعلى ارتفاع، لكنهم قساوسة بلا شك – تذكرت إحساسي ليلة ما كنت مع فستق على قهوة العروبة وللحظة تيقنت أني، من يومها، على طريق. صحيح، لا أعرف أين يوصلني، لا أعرف حتى أي محطات سأتوقف عليها على شان أرتاح أو أتبين وجهتي. وستأتي أيام يغلب الخوف الفرحة بالخطر. الذي طمأنني قليلاً أن انهدام الدنيا لم يكن مجرد عبث. يعني أنا ودعت امرأتي لأبتدئ رحلة ضرورية يوم ميلاد النبي – وأن إعادة بنائها تقترن، بشكل أو بآخر، مع الحركة التي أصبو إليها من يوم ما عافت نفسي الزواج. لازم السفر.

فصل في الذهاب إلى خان السر

من ناحية أبسط، خلال أول ويك إند على خروجي من درب الكلب، تأكد لي لأول مرة منذ ليلة الإثنين أن الحلم – عكس الأحلام التافهة وحتى أحلامي بأبي – له معنى سيتحقق. أنا لم أصدق، عمري، في دلالت الأحلام، ولو أني أستبشر بقصة النبي يوسف مفسرها. الوقت كل شيء يتغير. طبعاً لا أعرف ما هو ذلك المعنى بالتحديد. فزع كمسمار ثلج في صدري جعلني أعود أدراجي نزولاً من على سطح العمارة من غير ما أكف عن التفكير. وكدت أشعر بالامتنان لفستق لأنه أعطاني جواز المرور. لا يجب أن يكون الحب اختبار قوة احتمال. إذن لا مفر من التمحيص في المجتمع المحيط – فكرت – أو الاستمرار في تحليل الزملاء. كل شيء له معنى، كل شيء متصل ببقية الأشياء. الصواب فعلاً أن أعمل على إعادة بناء دنياي – أعيد بناءها بالحركة رغم الغيظ – ومن خلال الحركة أتعرف على وجهتي. فهل ألاقي ابني – أو بنتي – على محطة قادمة؟ ثم تذكرت أن امرأتي أجهضت نفسها، أني لما بطلت زوجاً راحت فرصتي في الأبوة… وفضلت سرحان حتى سقطت في حارة جانبية. سبعة أولاد يركلون عجوزاً عارياً. يعمل صوتاً حاداً كالمواء. «نزعت الرغبة من قلبي جردت الحب من الشهوة سربت فرحتنا عند أول ناصية مثل قطة مسكينة ضجر أصحاب البيت بوجودها، حتى شقة المعادي جعلتها مكاناً حزيناً… ثم قعدت تحملني هم اكتئابها، ولا ترضى لي أن أنام». بعد جولة ثانية في معروف عدت أدراجي إلى العربة في شارع الجلاء. من جديد أسوق بلا هدف، شمالاً ناحية حوش طيارة. عشر دقائق ثم ألف وأرجع. أود لو يكون أحد معي لكني أنفر من كل الاحتمالات: طقم العوانس والمطلقات، ميشيل فستق، ياسمين العراقية أو ياسمين الفلسطينية. فيه غير ذلك صديق أو اثنان ويمكن ثلاثة صحفيين من جرائد أخرى. من كمان؟ لن أبحث في ذاكرة الموبايل، وبما أني توصلت لتوي إلى نتائج خطيرة في موضوعه، سأكلم أمجد صلاح: سفر قصير – مبدأياً – إلى الطريق الصحراوي. عادة وقتما نخرج أسوق به إلى هناك. نلف شوية في خان السر ثم نختار مقهى ونقعد. القهوة والگاتو. بعيداً – كما يحب أن يقول – عن الحضر. سفر غير الرحلة اليومية وقرفها. بعد الثلاثين، أمجد صلاح يثبت لي أني أنسجم أكثر مع غير المثقفين. ما الذي زوجني واحدة مثقفة؟ ميتين أم الثقافة – ثلاثة ميتين أم الزواج! أن تحس بإمكانية التفاعل الإنساني بدون أسئلة فلسفية. السكن بمعنييه. الواحد محتاج وجبة ساخنة في البيت. ولو مرة في الأسبوع. وجبة لا يضطر إلى إعدادها شخصياً. الملل القاتل مودة ورحمة. أريد أنساً بريئاً وشهوانية مطلقة.

أن تبني فقط، لا يفرق كيف. مع أمجد صلاح تبني وأنت قاعد. لي سنوات أقنع نفسي أني أستمتع بصحبته. في حضوره مخي يروح في النوم. نتخاطب وكأننا موظفا أرشيف حكومي سنة حاجة وأربعين. نقول لا شيء. أحب جلجلة ضحكته. جهله ووحدته وكونه يقاوم. بالتدريج تبين لي أن الذي يجمعنا في الحقيقة هو القلق وقابلية الشك في الآخرين: بمعزل عن أي تفكير نبقى سوياً. منذ قُضي مشروع زواجه مزاجه رائق. يسيب نفسه شويّة. يحكي في الأكل والجنس الحلال. لكن للمرة المئة، في عرض النيل الناشف، لقيت نفسي أتساءل لأي شيء خان السر، ولأي شيء الخان الذي على أول الطريق الصحراوي بالذات. غرب النيل دائماً مريح أكثر. وبعد كده، عندك إيحاء الرحلة: كأنك ذاهب إلى الإسكندرية؛ فرحة البداية بلا عناء محبط. ثم كل المشتريات في مكان واحد. تسوق مسافة طويلة وتخرج حاملاً حاجات. وأنت تعرف أنك ستسوقها مرة ثانية. القهوة بعيداً عن الحضر لا توتر. قرب الصحراء، وخلو الجو من مثيرات الذكرى. كأنك على سطح القمر. صحبة سني أزعر هناك. وسط ممرات البضائع، والناس تتدافع كالبهائم، تحس أنك على وفاق مع الطبقة التي تنتمي إليها. لو لم تصبك نوبة وجودية، على الأقل، تحس من بعيد جداً أنك ممكن أن تكون على وفاق. في خان السر – بعد الخروج من درب الكلب ومنام السلطان الذي تحقق – تحدث ثالث نقلة في الحدوتة وآخر خطوة واسعة قبلما ندخل في الغميق. الوقت وأنا أتفكر، يخطر لي أننا لو ما كنا اتفقنا، كانت الحدوتة كلها راحت في داهية وما كنت مريت بشيء من هذا الجنون. للحظات أقتنع أن هكذا أحسن لي – يعني الحياة من غير حدوتة أحسن لي – لكني أرجع وأحس أنها كانت محتومة باتفاقنا أنا وأمجد صلاح أو من غيره.

لازم أروح خان السر بعد تحقق المنام.

The tughra of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire. It reads Mahmud Khan son of Abdülhamid is forever victorious. Written out:
- محمود خان بن عبدالحميد مظفر دائماً

A tughra (Ottoman Turkish: طغراء; Ṭuğrā) is a calligraphic seal or signature of an Ottoman sultan that was affixed to all official documents and correspondence. It was also carved on his seal and stamped on the coins minted during his reign.

The tughra was designed at the beginning of the sultan’s reign and drawn by the court calligrapher or nişancı on written documents. The first tughra belonged to Orhan I (1284-1359), the second ruler of the Ottoman Empire and it evolved until it reached the classical form in the tughra of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1596).

Tughras served a purpose similar to the cartouche in ancient Egypt or the Royal Cypher of British monarchs. Every Ottoman sultan had his own individual tughra.

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خريف 2000

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سُرقت شقة شحاتة، وأنا في الآستانه: لم يقل لي أحد. وعندما عدت كانت الحملة الفرنسية تقوم في رأس أبي. فكرت أن المماليك دائماً ما يرجعون، وأنه طالما هناك وافدون من غير أولاد الناس، لا أحد يخلصنا من الاستعمار الأوروبي أبداً.

لا أعرف ما الذي دفعني للتفكير في عمل واحد أو اثنين مع الآنسة قشحويري، نفس الآنسة التي كان يهابها صديقي. ففرحت عندما تلفنت لي، لكنني تعاملت معها ببرود مبالغ.

واستنتجت أنني كنت مشغولاً عنها بأوضاع المنطقة: إن كان الباب العالي يسترد صحته دون أن يلبي نداء مصطفى كامل (الوطني) بإعادة الاستحواذ على أراضيه المصرية، كما ادعى أبي، فإنما يفعل ذلك بناء على التجارة بالهوية وتغيير الخط. ومع هذا، كنت أكن لمصطفى كمال (أتاترك) إجلالاً داخلياً لا أستطيع أن أنكره، وأعتقد أنني إذا ما كنت مكانه لفعلت نفس الشيء.

راح من شحاتة تلفزيون وفيديو ومروحة، كذلك كاميرا حلوة وألفا جنيه. فحسدت الآستانه على استقرارها.

وفي المعمعة الدائرة ما بين عمارة مدبولي (صاحب المكتبة) والدور الخامس من قصر العيني الفرنساوي (حيث رسا الأسطول الاستعماري أول ما رسا)، اكتشفت:

أن شيئاً لا يجذبني إلى الآنسة قشحويري سوى أن صديقي يهابها؛

أن أولاد الكلب أصبحوا متآمرين، وأنهم، ضاربين عرض الحائط بأراضيهم المصرية، سينضمون للاتحاد الأوروبي على آخر الزمن؛

أن أبي بصدد واحد أو اثنين لن يستطيع أن يعملهما مع الممرضة الشقراء؛

وأن شيئاً من هذا كله لا يعنيني مطلقاً.

في الطريق إلى مقهى سأقابل شحاتة على عتبته، فكرت أننا هنا، وعلى الرغم من كل محاولات التجارة بالهوية، لن نتمكن أبداً من تغيير الخط

Grass-roots night life in Cairo is photogenic in a unique way. While some may think its charm is in its exotic qualities, the truth is that such sights, to the wandering Cairene, are more or less commonplace.

It is their strange, gritty beauty that you are after – a beauty in which you tend to recognize less visible aspects of yourself, your ancestry, the collective memory of your society.

The whole process is always rewarding enough so long as something of the character of the subjects comes through: the ancient electric fan keeping shisha coals aglow, for example, typifies the small downtown hideaway of a café in which it was taken in a particular, immediate way.

So does the smile of Karam, that café’s amiable ahwagy, a character worthy of a book-length photo essay in his own right.

Many have commented that the picture of the tea house, taken in Gamaleya, not far from Bait Al-Sehiemi, towards the end of 2002, looks like it belongs to a bygone age, an age before electricity. In fact the only light source in the picture was a 60-watt tungsten bulb located above the central figure’s head outside the frame.

(cairolive.com)

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