REVIEW GHAZI A. ALGHOSAIBI. an Apartment Called Freedom

REVIEW GHAZI A. ALGHOSAIBI.An Apartment Called Freedom. Translated from the Arabic by Leslie McLoughlin. London: Kegan Paul International, 1996. ix + 241 pp. At the very conclusion of this work, Fu'ad, one of its group of central characters, is indulging in one of the several interior monologues that the novel contains: "Why not write a novel about Cairo," he wonders. The hint seems not a little lacking in subtlety, since that is, of course, what Alghosaibi has himself done; this is merely one of the many ways in which the record of recent historical events impinges upon the course (and artistry) of this narrative. The author prefaces the text with what may be seen as the usual disclaimer concerning any attempt to challenge the fiction- ality of the account that this work provides of incidents and characters. That, of course, is -a crucial feature of the implicit contract with which the reader approaches any work of fiction. Indeed, one might go on to suggest that those authors who, like Alghosaibi, find it necessary to emphasize the fact by drawing particular attention to it may perhaps be telling us, at one level or another, something completely differ- ent. In the present case, it is difficult not to detect some autobiographical traces in the ways through which the narrator of this work uses a very monologic mode of discourse (in Bakhtinian terms) to depict the dilemmas of a group of students from the Gulf Region who come to study in Egypt during the turbulent post-revolutionary days of the 1950s and early 1960s. Time is the primary organizer of this narrative. Each chapter is given a time- frame as its title, from August 1956 for Chapter 1 to Sept.-Oct. 1961 for Chapter 21. The students from the Gulf who come to Cairo to study thus find themselves placed into a period of modem Egyptian history that covers the era of Nasser's heyday, beginning with the Suez debacle, passing through the creation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) between Egypt and Syria and the revolution in Iraq, to the disillu- sion and repercussions that followed the break-up of the UAR. All these events form part of the discussions among the members of the group and with their various Egyptian companions. The primary topics are those of politics and religion. One of the students, Ya`qub, becomes involved in a Communist cell and suffers the conse- quences of the repressive measures that the Egyptian secret police were taking against such people at the time; another, 'Abd al-Ra'uf, is linked to the activities of the Muslim Brethren. Fu'ad, the figure who admires Nasser greatly but who is also attracted to the ideas of the Ba'th Party (especially through the mediation of one of its female adherents), finds himself, like many others, disillusioned by many of the Egyptian president's policies, and is often caught in the middle of fierce argu- ments-a posture that is not resolved by the end of the narrative. Qasim represents in a most obvious way the other primary topic of the novel, and that is relationships with women. All of these students soon become very aware of the considerable difference in income between themselves and most of their Egyptian counterparts; for Qasim, the opportunities thus afforded become a cue for a life of "wine, women, 292 and song," a style that is only disrupted to a certain degree when important exam- inations loom. For all of these young men however, the large difference in attitudes towards women between their own homelands and Egypt, and, above all, the appar- ent ready availability of female company, lead all of them into sexual relationships of varying degrees of intensity and longevity. This concentration on time as an organizing principle, the discussion of actual political and social events and trends, and the use of characters to serve as mirrors of particular systems of political activity, these all call to mind, of course, that other great survey of Egyptian history, Najib Mahfuz's Trilogy of novels which covers the period from 1919-44. It will be recalled that, at the conclusion of the final volume, al-Sukkariyyah (1957; Sugar Street, 1992), the two grandsons of al-Sayyid 'Abd al- Jawwad are being taken to prison, one as a Communist, the other as a member of the Muslim Brethren. While Alghosaibi's novel "covers" a later period, it obviously cannot do so with the profundity and authenticity of Mahfuz's acknowledged masterpiece. It has to be said that Alghosaibi's work is in fact heavily overloaded with materials that put its plot into its historical context; the need to mention and, more often than not, to discuss a large number of these trends and events deprives the novel of a good deal of its artistic value. While it is an acknowledged feature of the epic mode that events tend to happen "up front," one really wonders whether it is necessary for so many actual persons to be drawn into the fabric of this narrative. One of the characters, for example, actually meets Nasser in person and there- after Michel 'Aflaq, founder of the Ba'th Party; the group learns of the presence in Cairo of a certain young member of the Iraqi Ba'th party named Saddam al-Tikriti. If we extend illustrations of this aspect of the novel to the literary sphere, we are confronted with something akin to a "who's who." There is Najib Mahfuz's weekly nadwah (p. 98)-along with a discussion of his views on novel- and short-story- writing ; an autograph is obtained from the famous musician, 'Abd al-Wahhab; there are interviews with Taha Husayn and 'Abbds Mahmud al-'Aqqad, and (during YaCqüb'ss absence from the country in Lebanon) a political discussion with the Palestinian writer, Ghass5n Kanafani, who helps persuade Nasser to allow YaCqüb to continue his studies. There is even a passing (and disparaging) reference to the late Professor Joseph Schacht of Columbia University whose writings on Islamic law had chal- lenged some of its bases of authentification (p. 233). While one or two of these encounters with real personalities might have been of some interest within a narrative such as this, the accumulation of so many emerges as a rather unsubtle and indeed unlikely process of name-dropping. While fiction has no required connections with any kind of reality (indeed, its failure to provide such connections may be regarded as its primary mode of definition), such a burden of "real" persons, places, and events as this work contains inevitably detracts from its qualities as fiction. It is not the techniques themselves that are at fault here, but merely the degree to which they are (over)used. As noted above, Alghosaibi's primary narrative mode is that of the omniscient, non-participatory narrator, able to orchestrate events, recount discussions, and reflect opinions and sentiments of his quartet of primary characters. He does also allow them to indulge in day-dreams, fantasies and dreams. More original still, he has two of the four, (Abd al-Ra'uf and Fu'ad, experiment with writing short stories, which are in turn a reflection of their authors' current feelings on personal and public mat- ters. However, these alternative text-types serve merely as intermittent commentaries on the continuing and inexorable march of time and events that organize and control the main narrative. .

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