Town and Country in Modern Arabic Literature

TOWN AND COUNTRY IN MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE

by Robin Ostle

Dr. Robin Ostle, rapporteur for civilization. Not the least of these the recent UFSI conference on achievements was that of literature, "Town and Country in Modern for in the Islamic period Arabic liter- Arabic Literature," has written a ature has always been bourgeois in the strictly literal sense of the word. UFSI Report summarizing the It depended very much on city discussion. A videotape of a par- cultures for its patronage and appre- ticipants' discussion of the main ciation, finding there those milieux conference themes is also avail- in which it could perform certain able. time-honored functions. Naturally the tensions which sur- round the relations between cities and their hinterlands are in no sense confined to the Near and Middle Ibn Khaldun is the most notable East, either now or at any other time authority to have indicated in a com- in history. But in this area they have plete and convincing manner that always appeared particularly acute. much of the history of the Near and If one drives out of Cairo in the Middle East revolves around the re- direction of the Pyramids one can lationships between urban centers experience a sense of shock at the and their hinterlands.1 lslam itself suddenness of the transition from was born in an urban setting and town to hinterland, and this is only sought subsequently to assert its one example of many. Throughout control over the surrounding desert the region, desert or semidesert fre- environment. The early centuries of quently reach into the very perim- Islamic civilization saw, on the one eters of the middle eastern town. As hand, the rejuvenation of old cities brusque and as rapid as the topo- such as Jerusalem, Damascus, or graphical changes are the stark Alexandria; but much more dra- contrasts in the life styles of the matically they also witnessed the people as one moves out of the rise of flourishing new centers of urban center into the hinterland. It urban civilization: Kufa, Basra, all looks like a very precarious re- Oayrawan, and those two most lationship consisting more of oppo- brilliant examples of medieval Arab sitions and polarities than dovetailed city culture, Baghdad and Cairo. interdependence. One can draw a These were the oases which sought, map of the Islamic world in 1000 often unsuccessfully, to impose A.D. in the form of an organi- administration and taxation upon gramme, that means of expression their hinterlands. These were the so beloved of French bureaucracies. centers of scholarship and religious The dominant features of this chart learning where "official" lslam often would be concatenations of towns took forms very different from the and cities linked by lengthy, tenuous practice and organization of its non- trade routes extending as far west urban varieties. They were the focal as Fez and Marrakesh and as far points of commercial activity, and east as Bukhara, Samargand, and the stages on which the wealthy beyond. It looks like a structure sections of society could display the which is fragile and brittle, and this remarkable achievements of their was often the case. The system could work only if the urban centers European roads will have cut Mubarak notes how the narrow were strong enough to control the through at right angles the dusty streets of old Cairo represent a stage hinterlands in order to protect the and mute old town which now in urban development associated trade routes. Only then could the peacefully collapses on the poor with insecurity and crime: the flow of commercial commodities fella hs." narrow streets, which could be and taxes be maintained, without These external transformations of guarded by gates closed at night, which the power of the urban were the best protection against the centers would collapse. the urban scene are accompanied by equally extraordinary trends in thieves who prowled the dark unlit The traditional dichotomy of Town internal decor and furnishing. De areas. and Country has a long history of Nerval gives scathing descriptions With progress, the old city is gradu- representation in the literary tra- of the interiors of Muhammad Ali's ally transformed into wide avenues, ditions of ~uro~e,~but in the Near palaces: squares, gardens and public parks, and Middle East in the premodern furnished in the style of provincial all bathed in the new security of period this type of dichotomy modern street lighting. Thus the appears as Town and Desert. Thus it social circles, with mahogany couches and armchairs, billiard very shape of the city is the symbol is the desert which is the setting for of a society progressing from dark- those values of chivalry by which tables.. . and portraits in oils of his sons dressed in artillery officers' ness and insecurity, into a new era notables and potentates dignify of modernity represented by open their persons and their positions, it is uniform. The whole ideal of the spaces and light. 6 the desert which provides the wide country bourgeois. 4 open spaces for the nostalgic imagi- These are signs of a process which Just as the topography and struc- nations of the cloistered city was to gather impetus as the nine- ture of certain areas of Egyptian dwellers, and this is the background teenth century progressed. Cities society were being changed so against which the poet's amorous such as Algiers, Tunis, Alexandria, radically, so literature experienced fantasies are played out in their and Cairo became more and more its own versions of external trans- most widely appreciated forms. It is islands unto themselves in relation formation: the old maqama form true that poets such as Bashshar, to their hinterlands. To a certain gave way to the modern burgher Abu Nuwas, or Ibn al-Rumi sang to extent this had always been the epic, the novel, and the late nine- powerful effect of the pleasures of case, but now the degree of rupture teenth century saw the rise of those urban living, and they described the and dislocation became exagger- other literary categories new to the delights of civilized, manmade forms ated, verging on the ludicrous. area, the drama and the short story. of nature, but they and those who These external and internal trans- These external transformations go wrote like them did not displace the formations of urban space went alongside vitally significant thematic predominant position of the arche- very much together with the transitions. The old dichotomy in typal desert motifs in Arabic poetry modernization of the army, the Arabic literature between Town and which persisted well into the twen- wholesale translation of technical Desert gradually changes until it tieth century.3 manuals, the reorganization of the resembles more the Town-Country bureaucracies, and perhaps most antithesis with which we are familiar These remarks are designed to rein- in Western literature. The desert force the point that the relationships crucial of all, the radical reorienta- tion of educational systems. motifs do not disappear, but they between city and hinterland in the cede pride of place to something Near and Middle East have long In the case of Egypt, while these which has much more in common been fraught with tensions and am- processes were certainly reinforced with the countryside in the Euro- biguities: the tensions are an inevi- by the colonial experience, they pean sense. table result of each milieu seeking to were initiated by the ruling circles of In Egyptian literature the publication dominate the other, and the Muhammad Ali and his successors, of Haykal's novel Zaynab in 1913 ambiguities result from one milieu long before the British Occupation. (usually the city) investing the other In the Ottoman context as exempli- was a crucial landmark. With this (the desert) with ideological values, fied by the city of Istanbul, the types book, the fellah, after almost con- despite the fact that the two are of transformation which began to sistent neglect throughout the mutually incompatible, culturally affect the external shape of Cairo Arabic literary tradition,' assumes and economically. In the nineteenth and to mold its interiors in the nine- positively heroic dimensions and and twentieth centuries, both before teenth century, in the case of becomes the embodiment of virtues. and during the colonial period Istanbul extend well back into the It is no longer the desert but the rif proper, additional dimensions are eighteenth century. 5 which is to become one of the domi- added to the ambiguities and con- nant motifs in Arabic literature. tradictions. M. Gilsenan quotes the It is reasonable to suggest that the There is a ready explanation for this sense of deception felt by Gerard de ruling classes in Egypt in the nine- radical shift of emphasis: political Nerval faced by the transformations teenth century saw in the very power had passed away from the being imposed on the old city of shapes and symbols adopted by the court circles and the Turko-Egyptian Cairo. Writing to Theophile Gautier modern European city yet another aristocracy, into the hands of the in 1843, de Nerval comments: aspect of that civilization which had to be transplanted into European The spirit and needs of the modern soil, if their country was to emulate "Translations of technical terms and world have triumphed over the city the achievements of Europe. So the titles in the order they appear can be like death. In ten years time the town planner and engineer Ali found on p. 8. RO- 1 -'82/3 liberal bourgeoisie, the new profes- for the subsequent development of sight of the peasants bent over their sional groups of doctors, lawyers, literature in Egypt and other Arab labors with hoe and sickle, sweating engineers, and administrators, many countries in and around the Fertile in the heat of the day, the women of whom were involved in the en- Crescent: these were the pastoral or working alongside them. Here were thusiastic political activities of the natural idyll, and satire, and together disadvantaged fellow human beings early decades of the twentieth they expressed the aspirations and whom the narrator is soon to exhort century in Egypt. Haykal himself revulsions of Haykal's generation. In to seize their destinies in their own was totally typical of this class. Zaynab it is the first which predomi- hands in order to throw off the While many of them came from nates: the long sustained passages chains of their rural poverty and wealthy families whose position was of idyllic description of scenes of the degradation. The noble sentiments based on land ownership, they were Egyptian countryside and the heroic are cut brutally short when the essentially products of the New dimensions of the rural characters narrator's friend, an absentee land- Cairo. They were graduates of represent the author's dream visions lord, tells him not to be so childish secular educational institutions, and of his society. The second element, and sentimental, for the fellahin are many, like Haykal, completed their that of satire, is somewhat muted treacherous as wolves and cunning educations in France and England. but it is undeniably present: there is as foxes. The narrator continues to Haykal and his contemporaries were a sufficient grasp of the realities of allow the images and sounds of the dedicated to creating a sense of life in rural Egypt to give one a rif to play upon his mind and his national community in order to strong sense of how severely cir- emotions, and when the tones of a combat the colonial presence and to cumscribed are the possibilities for reed pipe begin to waft their melan- construct a springboard from which individual freedom and liberty. Thus choly and haunting tune over the the new nation state, aspiring to Ibrahim, whom Zaynab loves, is night air, Lashin creates a parody of freedom and independence, would unable to avoid military service the liberal romantic in the country- leap into a new and exciting future. because of his humble social situa- side. The conflicting attitudes and Where did Haykal and those of like tion, and he is driven from the scenes of mutual incomprehension mind find the material from which to village and the girl he loves. Zaynab are interspersed with suggestive create the living symbols of such pines away and dies in final scenes symbols of light and shade: as the abstract ideas as "the homeland," of intense sentimental emotional- narrator ponders on the painful "the people," "the nation"? Not in ism. The double-edged message of mysteries of the countryside, the the desert, but of course in that Rousseau, that of natural idyll and scene is engulfed by the thickening milieu which contains the vast social critique, is now firmly shades of approaching darkness; majority of Egypt's population-the established in modern Arabic fiction. once the fellahin and their champion aryaf. Town and Country are the dominant the Sheikh have gained the moral Yet this whole situation is wracked motifs through which the message victory over the two city dwellers, they move off into the darkness with contradictions. Never had the will be conveyed. leaving the light with the two dislocation between city and hinter- friends. land been more acute than that The brilliant short story by Mahmud Tahir Lashin entitled Hadith al-Qarya between New Cairo and the aryaf. The incompatibility of Town and At the same time the aryaf and its (1927)'is a perfect illustration of the dilemma which was coming in- Country in the Egyptian setting inhabitants became crucially impor- broods throughout the whole story. tant to Egyptian writers and poli- creasingly to haunt much of the Arab World: how could the "civi- The major element of representation ticians, the products of the New is the countryside and the fellahin, Cairo, as they struggled to construct lized" elite relate the theories and visions of their liberal educations while the presence of the town is new social and political identities for expressed, paradoxically, by an their community. The countryside (obtained in their capital cities or in Europe) to the situation of their absence of detail. It is the narrator was now a vital ideological necessity who through his reactions and pious as a source of imagery for national country as a whole, which had little or no point of contact with their hopes personifies the values of that authenticity. Yet rarely can the urban-based Egyptian elite who political and intellectual elite of the "culture." The story treats a situa- tion laden with contradictions, and sought to apply the ideals of their period have been less well equipped education and political aspirations to come to terms with the country- appropriately its structure depends on a series of brusque contrasts and to the realities of the aryaf, largely side. They were prisoners of their unsuccessfuIly. intellectual formations, and on the polarities. Foremost among these is whole quite unwitting conspirators the representation of the country- in that network of international side as seen through the eyes of the In the case of poetry, between the strategy which held Egypt in its toils. narrator on the one hand, and as two world wars emphasis was They had to face the contradiction portrayed through the speech placed primarily on the pastoral that for them, the countryside was patterns and descriptions of the representation of nature which was the haven of traditional values and fellahin on the other. The city- the most frequent refuge of virtues, and at the same time the dwelling narrator observes the romantic poets. Taking their cue countryside in the classical manner refuge of ignorance and stagnation. from the Utopian escapist writings In this labyrinth of ambiguity and of the liberal bourgeois: he reacts to of their leader Khalil Jibran, the unease, literature came into its own. the endless vistas of verdure and mahjar (emigration) poets of North natural beauty with intense senti- America saw in the symbol of the Haykal's Zaynab introduced the two mental identification: at the same forest (a/-ghab)a means of retreat elements which were to be seminal time he is cut to the quick by the from the "civilized" world to a haven of purity which was con- It is as though the career of this in- As one moves further away in time trasted implicitly or explicitly with dividual, wracked by the most des- from Haykal's Zaynab, so the ele- the corruption of the city.* The perate physical and spiritual crises ment of satire and social critique in Arab romantic poets sought idyllic as al-Shabbi was, became a symbol literature becomes stronger, and the natural scenes in which they went for the sufferings and aspirations countryside becomes less of a through the novel experiences of being lived by the majority of his source of idyllic idealization. The heady lyrical subjectivity, a trend in contemporaries in Tunisia. One may novels of Tawfiq al-Hakim provide literature which was one of the side hazard the suggestion that al-Shabbi an appropriate example of this effects of placing greater stress on was the most politicized of those process: he had written his own the significance of the individual in poets who are usually thought of as version in novel form of the mood of his or her social and political Romantics, despite the fact that romantic nationalism which led to context. Much of this romantic very little of his verse treats overtly the 1919 Revolution, namely Awdat verse produced in the mahjar and in political themes. It is the sum total al-Ruh (19341, but it was with the Arab World was escapist and of the poet's life and experience Yawmiy yat Na'ib fi'l-Aryaf ( 1937) self-indulgent, and it was rare to find which one can relate symbolically that he returned to the recurrent a voice such as that of llya Abu and allusively to the state of his obsession of Egyptian prose writers Madi recognizing the ultimate nation: the body politic was in a with the countryside. Now the idyll futility of the flight into Arcadia. palsied state, just as his own body is considerably muted, and is over- was in the grip of a fatal heart shadowed by biting satire against Life in the wilderness has taught me disease. Yet small groups of the folly of applying laws to that I am everywhere bound to Tunisian nationalists still had faith peasants who have no understand- the earth, and visions which transcended de- ing of the meaning of the laws or of And 1 shall remain all my days in a pressing, actual reality, just as their administration. Between the prison of cla y, a slave to wishes, a al-Shabbi put constant trust in court officials and the fellahin there prisoner of desires. resurrection and new dawns. are worlds of difference in their I thought myself alone in the wilder- codes of honor and their cultural ness, but found / had borne the One of his most famous poems, mythologies. The contradiction that whole world with me. "Will to Live,"loillustrates the sustains the book is symbolized by extent to which his use of nature the character of the peasant girl At its worst this poetry descended relies more on vast elemental forces Rim. She is portrayed with great or features of creation, rather than to facile subjective escapism in poetic sensitivity, a figure who which nebulous concepts such as specific parochial scenes. Much of reflects beauty and suggestive the poem consists of dialogue with at-majhul(theunknown) and at-ghab mystery, but all this is overshadowed the wind, the earth, the darkness, were accorded significance which by her unnatural muteness. It is not the forest, and avoids becoming too they did not always deserve, and in that she cannot speak but that she abstract through the rich variety of which the theme of cultural aliena- cannot communicate. She is quite atmosphere and onomatopaeia. inarticulate, and a natural victim of tion was cultivated consciously. Yet, After a long winter in which the in the hands of the Egyptian poet the maze of justice which surrounds seeds remain locked beneath layers Abd al-Rahman Shukri (d. 1958) it her. Through the portrayal of Rim, of fog, ice, and clay, when even the al-Hakim reveals that he himself is could be a splendid artistic exten- sky seems to be extinguished, the sion of the dilemmas which gripped no nearer to solving the dilemma the earth is riven by the life, power, and countryside posed for writers and not just individuals but whole light of spring. The long period societies. for Egypt as a whole. He is essen- spent dreaming of light and life-it tially an outsider, observing the The Tunisian poet Abu'l-Oasim may have been a season or it may aryaf across the chasm which has al-Shabbi (d. 1934) was one of the have been generations-finally is been created by his own cultural most exceptional of the Arab rewarded with glorious fulfillment. formation and experiences: while romantics. He was influenced The end of the poem is a devotional the angle at which al-Hakim refracts profoundly both by the mahjar poets incantation as the awakening seeds his visions of rural reality is now and by the Apollo group in Egypt, are blessed for their constant faith much narrower than it had been in and his work depends heavily on and rewarded with the earth and the the work of Haykal, he still is using nature symbols among which the heavens and everything in them. the countryside as a source of Jibranian ghab is particularly promi- This poem looks forward to the symbolism to express the cultural nent. On the whole his sense of work of al-Sayyab and Adonis in the alienation of his intellectual genera- place is much more general than 1950s, particularly when they make tion. specific, and his nature symbols use of myths of fertility rites as such as the forest, the mountains, symbols for the death and resurrec- The period under discussion thus far the dawn, and the night, usually tion of their societies. al-Shabbi was covers the approximate chrono- have the function more of abstract no less than an impassioned prophet logical span 1914-1939. In Egypt it ideas than specific places or times. of eschatalogical visions with much was an age of idealism in the most While his verse is intensely personal in common with the Tammuz poets literal and least constructive sense and subjective, it is rarely poetry of of later generations. Had he lived he of the word. It was a time when the withdrawal; rather, it has a strong would no doubt have come to know realities of situations were quite element of external validity rooted in the same disillusion and disenchant- subordinate to the ideas which his society at that particular time in ment which have blighted the people formed about them. This its destiny. majority of their hopes. was certainly true of the political theories developed among the quite devoid of anything which are so degrading as to preclude their circles of secular liberalism in Egypt, might suggest grandeur or the lending any dimensions of grandeur and also true of the political institu- heroic. Urban life had formed the or heroism to the characters in- tions that developed fairly directly background of novels by al-'Aqqad volved. Hilary Kilpatrick observes in from them in the years after World and al-Mazini, and of Tawfiq al- a study of Zuqaq al-Midaqq, "only War I. With hindsight it is now Hakim's 'Awdatal-Ruh, but in these the dead have anything material to easier to appreciate the complex novels it was clearly subordinate to steal," 11 a fact recognized by Dr. problematical nature of the colo- the authors' real preoccupations: Bushi, the dentist who steals den- nialist-colonized experience, and to humor, romantic nationalism, ex- tures from the corpses in the ceme- foresee the difficulties which would plorations of different types of rela- tery before selling them to his inevitably follow the transposition of tionship between the sexes. City life, patients. The lengths to which a cultural heritage from Western particularly among the lower sec- people would go to eke out the most Europe to a small, educated, govern- tions of society, plays a much more pitiful of existences is illustrated by ing elite in a country such as Egypt. direct role in the short story writing the ghoulish profession of Zita in the Those who tried to realize the of Yahya Haqqi, and this leads (via same novel, the deliberate mutilation visions of state and society as they Millim al-Akbar by Adil Kamil) fairly of the bodies of poor people who were conceived by Ahmad Lutfi directly to the drug addiction, will then be able to become beggars. al-Sayyid and his disciples were pimps, prostitutes, and poverty of prophets rather than pragmatists. the world of Neguib Mahfuz. If the The protagonists of Mahfuz' books This was the fatal difference be- real hero of Zaynab had been the go to desperate and exaggerated tween these bourgeois liberals in idealized visions of the Egyptian lengths to transform their existences, Egypt and their intellectual idols aryaf, then in the novels of Mahfuz and the end results mock the from Britain and France in the in the 1940s and 1950s it is Cairo pathetic results of their endeavors. eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. which is the protagonist. The titles So Mahjub 'Abd al-Daim inal-Qahira Whether in literature, social thought themselves are an indication of this: al-Jadida begins with lofty ambitions or political theory, in Western al-Qahira al-Jadida (New Cairo), and in the end can only gain a Europe, if in some cases ideas had Khan al-Khalili, Zuqaq al-Midaqq position in a ministry by marrying not developed directly from events, (Midaqq Alley). The human charac- Ihsan, who is in fact the mistress of at least ideas and events experi- ters here are dominated by a milieu one of the higher officials, Qasim enced some form of interaction. which is all-embracing, and while Bey. Needless to say the marriage is There was an organic relationship not strictly malevolent, it is a milieu merely a convenient means of between such things as art or the which usually denies fulfillment to having lhsan maintained, while history of ideas, and wider social the characters. The sort of romantic Qasim's association with her con- and economic realities. This type of happy ending by which Dickens tinues. In Khan al-Khalili, Ahmad relationship between art and society used to transform many of his Akif is a symbol of those who have existed in the Arab Islamic world novels is unthinkable in the Cairene been persecuted and victimized by before the advent of colonialism. scenes created by Mahfuz. the lack of any opportunity for The colonial experience falsified the genuine social advancement. The relationship to a considerable extent, The city during the classical period hopes and ambitions he had or at least led to some exaggerated of the novel in Europe in the nurtured in his youth give way to the dislocations within it. A crucial nineteenth century was a traditional depressing reality of a lowly bureau- factor in the distortion of the rela- symbol and setting for chronicles of crat who has no future to look tionship was the New City which tremendous social mobility. The forward to in his professional life or developed both before and during drama and rapidity of the progress in his personal relationships. Zuqaq the colonial period. The New City and rise of the heroes of Dickens or al-Midaqq chronicles the growing was the focal point of symbols and Balzac is paralleled only by the frustration of Hamida with her life in aspirations which could have grandiose dimensions of their fall, the alley and her determination to meaning and fulfillment only for a which may entail a strong sense of avoid the mundane fate which minute section of society. The con- tragedy or divine justice. So at the would be hers if she remained there. sequent sense of betrayal and dis- end of Le P2re Goriot Rastignac, the The only means of transformation enchantment was not slow to make archetype of the parvenu, can throw available to someone in her position itself felt in literature. down the gauntlet to the whole of lay in the possibilities of sexual Paris, as the city lies at his feet, exploitation. As she gambles with The ultimate transition from dreams there to be conquered. this, her only asset, she comes of romantic symbolism to night- under the control of lbrahim Faraj, marish visions of social reality is One will look in vain for a com- the pimp who runs a brothel patron- illustrated most graphically in novels parable career in the world of ized mainly by foreign soldiers. based on scenes of urban life. In the Mahfur, despite the fact that all the 1940s, particularly in Egyptian litera- classic elements are there: avarice, a One might think that the three ture, the city becomes the predomi- desperate obsession with money, volumes of the Trilogy would pro- nant setting for Arabic literature's and a willingness to embrace all vide more than sufficient scope to versions of the "modern burgher manner of immorality to achieve present spectacular events which epic" according to Hegel's defi- upward social mobility. The fatal might have occurred in the life of a nition, but the only epic dimension difference is that the means of lower middle-class family in a period in these novels is the size and scale achieving this mobility are patheti- extending from 1917-1944. However, of some of them. Otherwise they are cally limited, and such as do exist although changes naturally do take place, none leads to any radical Old Cairo has played such a part in his short story Arkhas Layali transformations in the fortunes or the formative years of Ibrahim, the (1954):14he is the prisoner of a the lifestyle of the family. Indeed, if hero, that it leads ultimately to his situation dominated by poverty and one follows the progress of a spiritual reconversion after a period overpopulation. He is perfectly well character such as Kamal, the son of in which he had relied entirely on a aware of the causes of his misery, al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawwad, scientific, rationalist philosophy. but far from being able to take any one is struck by the barrenness and Here the city is an extremely positive action to do something about these the monotony that follow his all too symbol, and Haqqi provides one of causes, his existence is so restricted brief flush of youth. Students of the few examples in modern Arabic that he can only contribute further Mahfuz have often commented on of an urban character in the most to them. Abd al-Karim is the typical the role played by fate as a deus ex complete sense: one who identifies literary hero of the postwar period of machina device by which the so strongly with the city that his decolonization. Despite his frustra- sequence of events and the actions whole being and personality fuse tion, he is definitely a member of a of characters are regulated. It is with the noises, smells, movements, community and therefore experi- almost as though the author is and very fabric of Old Cairo. ences a certain solidarity in his suggesting that any significant poverty. Because the problem has change in the course of events or in The Cairene novels of Neguib been clearly stated and defined, the the lives of the people in this envi- Mahfuz correspond to the end of a future is not entirely without hope. ronment is brought about more by particular political phase in the divine providence than by any modern history of Egypt, namely the Although the countryside is effec- human agency. experiment in "liberal democracy" tively deromanticized by the 1950s, that ended in total failure. During it continues to be a focal point of The city, the classic setting for many the years following World War II, in idealization: romantic Liberalism is of the great novels of Europe, was a Egypt and in other Arab countries replaced by romantic Marxism, and symbol of social mobility, and in the the systems that had prevailed in the the aryaf and the villages remain the European context as a symbol it was interwar period -the constitutions guardians of values and virtues in no sense divorced from social and a>ndtheir monarchies, the mandates, which are the imagined antithesis of economic reality. Great Expecta- the protectorates-began to dis- the sin and corruption of the City. In tions could be realized. In the appear with remarkable rapidity, fact the City is a highly appropriate modern Arab world, the city is no Algeria being a tragic exception to scapegoat for the wreckage of yet less a symbol of social mobility and the swiftness of this process. In another phase of shattered hopes a focal point for ambitions and most of these countries the transition and political impasse. aspirations: it is the center of urban to independence was accompanied For most Arab countries the political culture and education which has by new political ideologies and reality that emerged after the long- been the terminal point of constant slogans which revolved around awaited emancipation from colonial drift from the countryside as rural derived forms of socialism and Arab regimes was dtatism rather than dwellers went there often thinking unity. Many writers welcomed the socialism. A new era of Mamluk- they were doing so more for the new political departures with en- type government begins as indige- sake of their children'? future than thusiasm, and sought to distinguish nous armies become the means to for any immediate expectations of their work from that of the previous achieve and to maintain political their own. But in this case the ex- discredited generations. A clear power. The liberties of individuals tremely powerful symbols are not result of this tendency was a delib- are quite subordinate to what the supported by reality for the vast erate attempt to deromanticize por- regime decides are the needs of the majority of people. The means traits of life in the countryside. state. The necessary institutions and whereby they may transform their a/-Ard (1954) by al-Sharqawi is the bureaucracies are developed to circumstances according to their postwar equivalent of Haykal's insure that control shall be as expectations simply do not exist.12 Zaynab, and it makes strenuous absolute as possible. The news- Cities from Cairo to Casablanca are attempts to avoid the natural idyll papers and periodicals which were symbols of social mobility, but they which was such a powerful motif for once the mouthpieces of nationalist are monuments to immobilisme for Haykal's contemporaries. But just as movements maneuvering or large numbers of their inhabitants. the fellahin in Zaynab were in many struggling for independence, now Most of Mahfuz's Cairene novels ways larger than life as they inspired have become the strictly controlled leave one with a strong sense of the author's romantic dream-visions, propaganda media of the regimes of being blocked. It is impossible to so the fellahin in a/-Ard are invested the postwar Arab World, massively transform one's fate by normal with positively heroic dimensions. reinforced by radio and television. endeavor and action, and even They are full of drive, initiative, and As literacy rates have increased over abnormal striving ends in disaster progressive intentions, and above all the past 30 years, so there have and perdition. Ambition and reality they display an extremely strong been increasing attempts to control are incompatible. sense of class solidarity. To this what is written and what is read. extent they are just as much Frenzied attempts are made to There is one notable exception in symbols of an ideology as were their coerce the natural institution of the prose literature of this period counterparts in Zaynab. literature to conform to a type of where the city is not the setting for institution which is part of the state nightmarish representations of un- Artistically much more convincing is machinery. The City has provided pleasant reality. This is Qindil Umm the creation by Yusif ldris of the both the setting and the means for Hashim (1944) by Yahya Haqqi.13 peasant character Abd al-Karim in this coercion of literature. At the same time it has been greatly which have been created by Middle but the extent to which they invest extending its control over the Eastern cities (in this case Beirut), their symbols with idealism tells one various categories of non-urban and the manner in which they have much about the fundamental aliena- space within the nation state. fostered tawdry secondhand ideas tion of these authors from the aryaf and images which have led to night- and the fellahin. The city is rarely, if The revenge exacted by literature mares of despair: ever, idealized, but appears as the can hardly be described as sweet malevolent agent of the evil forces but it has been devastating in the We are from Beirut; we were born a that dominate society. Modern intensity of its indictment. Badr tragedy Arabic literature has very little to say Shakir al-Sayyab of Iraq, perhaps with borrowed faces and minds; of genuine interaction and the greatest Arab poet of the post- the "idea" is born a whore in the rapprochement between the two war period, presents the City as the marketplace settings. A notable exception to this stage of an oppressive social and and spends its life looking for vir- political order. Scenes of abject general situation is Ayyam al-lnsan ginity. 18 al-Sab'a (1968) by the Egyptian poverty, drunkenness, all manner of novelist Abd al-Hakim Oasim. The immorality and exploitation of The Syrian poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad hero Abd al-Aziz is a genuinely human beings also include the Sa'id) proclaims the fate of Sodom transitional character in that he agents of political tyranny-the and Gomorrah on the author and bridges the gap between the edu- spies, secret police, and the jailers. agent of the ills which afflict his cated townsman and the illiterate On the other hand his native village, world, although implicit in the de- fellah. The son of a peasant him- Jaikur, surely the most famous struction is a process of purification self, he has gone to study in the place-name in modern Arabic which will lead to a resurrection: city (Tanta, not Cairo!) and then poetry, is nothing less than Paradise subsequently returns to the village Lost.15 In the words of one critic, Our fire is advancing towards the to support his family after the death "Jaikur, his home village which he city of his father. He can no longer has immortalized, appears on the To demolish the bed of the city. accept all the most traditional scene in its verdant and sad beauty, not as the simple, one-dimensional We shall demolish the bed of the aspects of life in the village, many of which fill him with disgust and symbol of the village versus the City, city scorn; nor can he break away from but as a deeper and more complex We shall live and cross through the village to which he feels tied by symbol of unattainable love, se- arrows curity, and fertility, versus the pre- Into a land of perplexed trans- genuine feelings of love and loyalty. vailing oppression, alienation and parent y He begins to frequent the village cafe, the point at which the urban barrenness in City life."'6 The work Behind that mask hanging from the influences are most prominent of the Egyptian Ahmad al-Mu'ti rock through the radio and the endless Hijazi is an elegy for all the victims of Which turns around the whirlpool of discussions of political issues. rural-urban drift, who found ulti- terror Almost in spite of himself Abd mate deception and betrayal in the Around the echo and the chatter. al-Aziz becomes part of a social seductive symbols of the metropolis. We shall wash the stomach of day, scene which is full of frustration and In place of promise and fulfillment, its entrails and its foetus, they found only loneliness, aliena- And burn that existence patched a sense of deception. His speech degenerates into harshness and tion, and a form of death in life: with the name of the city, We shall reverse the face of cursing on the same level as the When I see men and women going presence other clients of the cafe. There has out silently been a degree of coalescence After spending two hours in front of between the city and the village, but me during which the result is bitterness and lack of We did not exchange looks or see And burn that existence patched fulfillment. different scenes, with the name of the city, When I see that life has no madness We shall reverse the face of In the final analysis one may suggest And the bird of quietness flutters presence that the Countryside is taking over everybody And the land of distances in the revenge on the City in the Near and I feel as if 1 am really dead and lying eyes of the city. Middle East to the satisfaction of silently watching this dying neither. Cairo is the largest urban world. 17 Our fire is advancing and grass is agglomeration of the region. In the born in the rebellious ember, nineteenth century its dramatic For Khalil Hawi of Lebanon the City Our fire is advancing towards the topographical transformations pro- is indubitably the villain which has claimed its role as a New City which city. 19 portrayed and misled his society, would lead its society to take its and his accusations of the crimes The majority of the works discussed rightful place in the ranks of committed by the City reach a have created representations of progress, modernity, and economic strident pitch rarely approached by rural and urban space in terms of well-being. In the Nasser era, further his contemporaries. It is clear that antitheses and polarities. The coun- phases of topographical transforma- for him the City is the end of civiliza- tryside is viewed by those who are tion took place as this capital city tion rather than its ultimate achieve- essentially outsiders and who asserted its leading role in Arab ment. Above all else he castigates struggle to come to terms with it. socialism and in the global sphere of the bastardized forms of culture They use it as a source of symbolism Afro-Asian affairs. These proud, concrete symbols of successive The pall of pollution hangs heavy in luxury hotels along the Nile water- ideological phases now have a the air. On public holidays the front, from which tourists can gaze crumbling, careworn air about them. streets, squares, and parks disappear at "the Third World" in insulated The city heaves under the impact of under the crush of thousands of comfort, cleanliness, and air- millions of people it cannot employ, people: the dress and general life- conditioning. Is this indeed a City in house, feed, transport, and whose style of many of them belong more anything but name? effluent it cannot dispose of. Human to the aryaf than to the medina. The beings squat in cemeteries making most recent dramatic transforma- (December 1982) their homes in the cities of the dead. tions of Cairo's topography are the

Translations of Titles and Technical Terms in order as they appear in the Text

Fellah Peasant a/-Qahira (New Cairo), novel published 1946 by a/-Jadida Neguib Mahfuz Magama A traditional Arabic prose genre written in rhyming prose Khan a/-Khalili A famous quarter of Old Cairo, and title of a novel published by Neguib Mahfuz in Rif Countryside 1945. Hadith al-Qarya (Village Story), Short story published 1927, Zuqaqal-Midaqq (Midaqq Alley), novel published by Neguib by Mahmud Tahir Lashin Mahfuz in 1947 MahJar Emigration. The name given to a group of The Trilogy Title of a series of three novels, published by Syro-Lebanese poets active in parts of Neguib Mahfuz 1956-57 North and South America in the early twentieth century Qindil Umm (The Saint's Lamp), novella by Yahya Haqqi, Hashim published in 1944 al-ghab The Forest a/-Ard (The Earth). Novel by Abd al-Rahman al- a/-Majhul The Unknown Sharqawi, published in 1954 Awdatal-Rub (Return of the Spirit), novel published 1934, Arkhas Layali (The Cheapest Nights), Short Story Collec- by Tawfiq al-Hakim tion by Yusif Idris, published in 1954. YawmiyyatNa'ib (Diary of a Country Lawyer), novel pub- A yyam a/-lnsan (The Seven Ages of Man), novel by Abd al- fi'l-Aryaf lished in 1937 by Tawfiq al-Hakim a/-Sab'a Hakim Qasim, published in 1968

Millim al-Akbar (The Great Millim), novel published 1944, by Medina City Adil Kamil

NOTES 1. Ibn Khaldun: The Muqaddimah 7. From the collection entitled Yuhka 14. This is the title story of the collect- (Trans. Franz Rosenthal), London 1958, Anna.. ., first published in 1929. tion. Vol. I, pp. 249ff. 8. See the poem "al-Mawakib" in 15. See al-Sayyab's poem "Jaikur 2. See, for example, The Country and Jibran Khalil Jibran, a/-Majmu'a al- wa'l-Medina," Diwan Badr Shakir al- The City by Raymond Williams, St. Kamila, Beirut 1964, pp. 353-364. There Sayyab, Beirut 1971, p. 419. Albans, Paladin 1975. was a flourishing school of Arabic poetry based in New York from about 16. S. K. al-Jayyusi, "Some Aspects of 3. S. Moreh: "Town and Country in 1913-1930. These mahjar poets had the Sense of Place in Modern Arabic Modern Arabic Poetry from Shawqi to come to the U.S. mainly from Syria and Poetry," p. 26. Paper presented to the al-Sayyab," pp. 1-5. Paper presented to Lebanon. AUFS colloquium on "Town and Coun- AUFS Colloquium on "Town and try in Modern Arabic Literature," Rome, Country in Modern Arabic Literature," 9. llya Abu Madi, "Fi'l-Qafr," al- October 1980. Rome, October 1980. Jadawil, New York 1927, pp. 29-31. 17. From the poem "al-Mawt Fuj'a," in 4. M. Gilsenan, "Town and Country: 10. Abu'l-Qasim al-Shabbi, Aghani al- the collection Lam Yabqa illa'l-l'tiraf, Representations and Realities," pp. 1-2. Hayat, Tunis 1966, pp. 240-244. Beirut 1965, p. 11 1. Translation by I. J. Paper presented to the AUFS Collo- Boullata, Modern Arab Poets 7950-7975, 11. H. Kilpatrick, The Modern Egyptian Washington 1976, pp. 97-98. quium on "Town and Country in Modern Novel, London 1974, p. 79. Arabic Literature," Rome, October 1980. 18. From the poem "al-Majus fi See also Gilsenan's recent book, 12. See the account by M. M. Badawi Urubba," in the collection Nahr Recognizing Islam, London 1982, p. 197. of Mahfuz's novel Bidaya wa Nihaya a/-Ramad, Beirut 1962, p. 114, quoted in (1949) presented as an appendix to his S.K. al-Jayyusi, "Some Aspects of the 5. B. Lewis, The Emergence of paper "The City in Modern Egyptian Sense of Place.. . ," p. 31. Modern Turkey. R.I.I.A./Oxford Univer- Literature," delivered to the AUFS sity Press 1961, pp. 46-53. colloquium on "Town and Country in 19. From the poem "al-Medina" in al- Modern Arabic Literature," Rome, Athar al-Kamila, Beirut 1971, Vol. I, 6. B. Musallam, "Ah Mubarak and the October 1980. p. 482. Making of New Cairo," pp. 15-18. Paper presented to AUFS Colloquium on 13. Translated as The Saint's Lamp and "Town and Country in Modern Arabic Other Stories, Brill, Leiden, 1973, by Literature," Rome, October 1980. ,M. M. Badawi.