"I Dream of the Day When. . .": Naguib Mahfouz in the Life of an Israeli Friend
Somekh, Sasson
EVEN AS A TEENAGER, I had been familiar with the name Naguib Mahfouz. I first heard of the Egyptian novelist in 1949 in Baghdad; he had recently completed two important novels, Khan al-Khalili...
...Some of them had stopped reviewing his new books altogether...
...Their claim was that the novel insults the Prophet Muhammad, as well as other prophets, by presenting them as crude, licentious thugs...
...Mahfouz and the veteran authors Tawfiq al-Hakim and Husayn Fawzi used such terms as "negotiations" and "peace" with reference to Israel...
...The novelist reiterated his opinion of what I had written about him in my English book, and this time he added, I thank you for your appraisal of the role I fulfilled in Arabic literature, but I hope you have not overstated my merits...
...The blind sheikh Omar Abdul al-Rahman, one of 82 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 CHRONICLES the most fanatic leaders of Egyptian fundamentalists and the mastermind behind the explosion in the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, had been seeking Mahfouz's blood since 1989...
...During my first years in Israel, I could not follow what was taking place in Arabic literature, including the great advance in Mahfouz's stature after the publication of The Cairo Trilogy and his winning the Egyptian National Prize...
...I bided my time back at the hotel, and when the phone rang I heard the velvety voice of Mahfouz...
...Suddenly the literary boycott was lifted, and hundreds of writers, journalists and public figures throughout the entire Arab world made a pilgrimage to Cairo to express their friendship and admiration...
...these attacks intensified in 1982 following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the brutal siege of Beirut...
...I did not see Mahfouz during the long months of recuperation and was able to visit him only a year later...
...Mahfouz had DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 83 CHRONICLES wanted to read one of Michael's novels, but only a few pages existed in Arabic translation...
...Yet I never wavered from my position because I believed that first and foremost it was in Egypt's and the Arabs' interest to achieve peace...
...Extremely cordial, just as I imagined through all the indirect contact I had with him up till now...
...After his death, Mahfouz said, his name began to slip somehow from the memory of the Egyptians, and it was anathema to many intellectuals who forgot that the man returned both honor and territory to his fatherland...
...When I mentioned that I was an Israeli, he responded, "Who asked you...
...Why in the world should we not seek peace...
...I was disappointed not to find a "positive hero" symbolizing the "world of tomorrow...
...Nor was I aware of the virulent attacks leveled against this work, even before the serialization was completed, in Islamic circles (especially by certain sheiks at alAzhar theological college...
...But, to my great sorrow, we have overchronicled the moments of conflict a hundred fold more than we have recorded long generations of friendship and partnership...
...Studying Mahfouz's works written at the zenith of the Nasserist years, I detected shadows of discontent and a sense of strangulation stemming from a profound distaste for any type of dictatorial rule and one-party government...
...His reply was, "I have viewed the conflict as a tragedy destructive to both sides...
...For a second, I thought that he did not hear the question, but after a brief silence he answered in a steady voice, "No, the desire to write comes to me the moment I sit at a table and hold a pen...
...He was unhappy about articles in the Egyptian press charging that the center was the vanguard of a "cultural invasion" or an offshoot of Israeli intelligence...
...It wasn't only Mahfouz's relations with Israelis or his undeviating support of peace that produced such wrath...
...On no account is this due to conceit or contempt, but because the urge to write, or the capability, has deserted him...
...Mahfouz spontaneously burst out laughing, "And how should I not be familiar with the association...
...Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, was a turning point in my life...
...British friends of mine who frequently traveled to Egypt were willing to relay some sort of message, but I resisted the temptation...
...This tempo is felt not only in the plot structure and the characters' personalities, but also in the language...
...As our meeting approached, I was overcome by apprehension...
...Once, though, he had promised that he would come if and when I became its director...
...The writer Naim Sabri, Mahfouz's escort that evening, announced that he had to drive Mahfouz home and would catch up with us later at the hotel...
...For someone trained in linguistics, I was attracted, indeed hypnotized, by this stylistic feature, namely the correlation between the rhythms of reality and the linguistic texture of the work...
...The Nobel Prize Committee had mentioned this forbidden novel in its rationale for granting him the award, which again brought the writer into the headlines and generated hundreds of hostile articles and several hate books against him...
...SASSON SOMEKH is professor emeritus of modern Arabic literature, Tel Aviv University...
...I sent my congratulations to Mahfouz, and received a reply typed on al-Ahram official stationery, for the newspaper now provided him with a private secretary...
...I cannot say that this novel excited my imagination...
...That condition, however, no longer exists...
...And what of "my" author, Naguib Mahfouz...
...I devoted many years to studying it...
...He fondly recalls the name of the late president, Sadat...
...The Arab leaders' sluggishness certainly encourages defeatist ideas like these...
...Some saw him as a serious novelist and an impressive "sociologist...
...For some reason he never received the book...
...On the other hand (and perhaps for the best) I was not called on to take part in any of the festivities...
...Only in early 1980, while I was on sabbatical in Oxford, did the long-awaited visa arrive...
...I learned about this from an interview between Mahfouz and the Egyptian novelist and journalist Gamal al-Ghitani, published in the Baghdadi newspaper al-Jumhuriyya: Recently, Professor Muhammad Yusuf Najm handed me a photocopied edition of a scholarly work by a lecturer from Tel-Aviv University named Sasson Somekh...
...Born in Israel, her family hailed from Egypt, and her novels and short stories often reflected her Egyptian background...
...When I asked whether his burgeoning contact with Israeli critics and writers would hurt him, he calmed me though he admitted that certain Egyptian and Arab literary critics who used to write about his works were now avoiding him because of the public praise he lavished on Israeli literary scholarship...
...Mahfouz survived the assassin's attack, but his health was ravaged from a severe wound in his neck, and the nerves in his right arm and hand were so badly hurt that he lost the ability to hold a pen...
...It is worth quoting a few sentences from Mahfouz's description of this remarkable episode, written twenty years after the event: " . . . war is not an option [I said...
...The Trilogy was to all intents and purposes a continuation of Mahfouz's "social" works on Cairo...
...Qaddafi replied: "We may forgive you for what you have just uttered...
...Her husband had gone out for his morning stroll but would call as soon as he returned...
...0 N SEPTEMBER 14, 1994, Mahfouz was brutally assaulted outside his house in Agouza by a Muslim fanatic, incited by men who wanted to punish Mahfouz for views they believed were contradictory to the essence of Islam...
...I sided with the detractors, even though I had not read his works...
...others dismissed him because they thought he was not modernist enough...
...I dream of the day when this region will be transformed through our mutual cooperation, [and become] a dwelling-place radiating the light of science, inspired by the highest divine principles...
...Local newspapers expressly noted that the Arab ambassadors would all participate...
...I asked myself...
...At the end of September 1979 I finally wrote to him...
...He was quiet and withdrawn, although he would occasionally surprise me with a sudden reappearance of his old vivacity...
...She was obviously very excited throughout the evening, especially as Mahfouz had received her with visible warmth...
...When we were left alone or in the presence of a close friend, he would start to reminisce about the years he was free to wander the sidewalks and sit in outdoor cafés on Tal'at Harb Street or on the banks of the Nile...
...The truth is that I was amazed at the researcher's accuracy and profound understanding...
...He called for a decisive focus on domestic, economic, and scientific development and charged that the "financial assets" available for this work were "piling up in foreign banks...
...For this reason, and out of a desire not to place him at risk (lest he be accused of contact with the enemy), I refrained from writing to ask him questions about his life and work...
...They naturally discussed the peace process with him, and heard him enumerate the great blessing that would emerge for the region's nations when peace finally reigned...
...My attitude towards negotiations was common knowledge even before Sadat came to power and before he accepted the principle of a diplomatic solution . . . . When I announced that we must initiate talks, I did anticipate being bitterly denounced...
...newspapers went hunting for material on an Egyptian writer of whom they had never heard...
...During the following years I often visited Mahfouz in Cairo...
...This has been the first time that I did not hear his deep, rolling laughter .. . In the new opera house writers, diplomats and ambassadors gathered to mark [his birthday...
...His body appears shrunken...
...On my return to the hotel I jotted down the following: January 14, 1980, 6 P.M.—Visited Naguib Mahfouz at his apartment...
...His wife answered and upon hearing my name welcomed me warmly...
...Michael, a prominent Israeli novelist, had translated Mahfouz's Trilogy into Hebrew...
...In 1995 an Arabic version of Michael's novel Victoria, appeared in Cairo, but by then it was too late...
...Once inside Badawi's modest office, my fears vanished...
...Although the Nobel Prize freed him from the venomous pens of those who opposed the peace process and despised Sadat, it nevertheless generated hysterical salvos from leading Islamic fundamentalists in his country...
...Why should he agree to accept me as one of his students in Arabic literature when my studies (in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem) had concentrated on Hebrew and general linguistics...
...I did not ask him about his work as a novelist...
...We find ourselves in a no-war-no-peace situation that has no parallel in history, and its consequences may be far more disastrous for us...
...In which lanDISSENT / Winter 2004 n 77 CHRONICLES guage should I converse with him: colloquial Arabic, formal Arabic, or English...
...During their visits to the al-Ahram building in Gala' Street, a few of them met Naguib Mahfouz in his small office on the fifth floor ("the writers' floor...
...These ideas were, and remained, permanent and unalterable components of Mahfouz's thinking...
...Here he portrayed the assassinated leader as a prince of war and a champion of peace, as opposed to Nasser, who is depicted as someone who implicated his homeland in needless wars and military adventures...
...He had to appear before television cameras and journalists' flashbulbs several times a day...
...Even the telephone was not a useful means of communicating with him because of his poor hearing...
...This was Matalon's first meeting with Mahfouz...
...I immersed myself in its two thousand pages...
...The Changing Rhythm was the title of my book on Naguib Mahfouz, based on my dissertation and published in Holland in 1973...
...but there is a Lebanese edition of it...
...But a Palestinian professor Xeroxed the entire book at the American University in Beirut and sent it to him...
...When I tried to address him he did not always hear me, at which point an Egyptian colleague would intervene and "translate" my words in a louder voice...
...Not very enthusiastically I promised to look into it, and then walked over to the library at the University's Oriental Institute to borrow the volumes of The Cairo Trilogy...
...The previous month he had been flown to London, almost forcibly, to undergo open-heart surgery...
...For months Mahfouz was caught up in the media circus that forced him to alter his quiet lifestyle...
...He apologized and explained that he could not visit Israel because he never traveled abroad...
...During one of my visits to Cairo in 1983, I invited Mahfouz to Israel to participate in a conference being held at Tel Aviv University upon the inauguration of a chair in Arabic literature...
...Several of these journalists were themselves well-known Israeli writers, for example the poet Haim Gouri and the novelists Aharon Megged and Yitzhak Ben-Ner...
...but it has deprived him of his joie de vivre...
...Still, one reader of Arab background wrote to the Washington Post complaining that even when the Arabs were finally awarded an international prize, the western media turned to an Israeli scholar...
...The operation apparently succeeded, but the patient did not completely recover...
...In this manner we renewed our friendship...
...After I arrived in Israel in 1951, I lost contact with Arabic literary life, and for the next few years I gleaned only tidbits of information about famous writers and major innovations...
...Prolonged military confrontation . . . will impoverish our resources and strength, while retarding our march to civilization by at least a hundred years...
...This is only a first meeting (I hope...
...Following the torrent of criticism directed against him, Mahfouz began softening his formulations, expressing himself in a way that would not offend his Arab readers, but neither did he alter the essence of his vision nor apologize for any of his statements...
...However, after several years, he was able to score a point when, in September 1996, the Jordanian writer and general secretary of the Arab Writers Association, Fakhri Qa'war, visited him in his office in the al-Ahram building...
...I had no knowledge of the publication of his allegorical novel Children of Our Alley, which was serialized in the Cairo daily alAhram in late 1959...
...The fact that during the last three years his works have been translated and published by some of the world's best publishing houses has left him, so it appeared, apathetic...
...Only after I had completed my doctoral thesis, and another catastrophic war had bloodied our two countries in 1973, did I begin receiving information about Mahfouz's "unorthodox" political views...
...It wove a tale around three generations extending from 1917 to 1943, the years in which Cairene society went through a staggering metamorphosis from a "medieval" patriarchal society to a new activism-oriented generation that included communists and Muslim radicals...
...Before long Ronit lost her somewhat tense look, and we all fell into a friendly discussion, with Mahfouz's laughter enlivening the atmosphere and dissipating the gloom that had engulfed him earlier that evening...
...The prize has forced the entire Arab world to recognize him as its greatest national writer...
...Every time he went out, he was chauffeured from his home and back by one of his close friends...
...84 n DISSENT / Winter 2004...
...The only subject that arouses a glint of excitement is the current peace talks between Israel and its neighbors...
...He would frequently ask me about the similarity between Hebrew and Arabic...
...but he himself refrained from actively participating in its events...
...He repeatedly explained to his friends that for seventy years he had worked by gripping a pen between his fingers, that was how he had written all his books, and he could not change his habits at such an advanced age...
...In my first year in Cairo, I did not even try to meet him for fear that a stray journalist might spot us together and report it, providing ammunition for fanatics and malcontents...
...I heard the announcement while I was at Princeton University in the United States...
...We didn't discuss political matters, but at one point I mentioned that I had always admired him for never having lapsed into a hatred of Israel, not even during the darkest hours of the conflict...
...viAHFOUZ WAS awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1988, at a moment of intense political harassment and literary ostracism...
...Later, Arab opponents of a settlement with Israel charged that his support of Sadat's peace initiative was in keeping with his "innate submissiveness," which prompted him to follow the leader, any leader, and give him support...
...From the moment he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, his wellsprings of creativity almost completely dried up...
...his voice is practically inaudible, and worst of all, his legs are too weak to support his delicate frame, which means he can no longer take his daily walks along the bustling Cairo sidewalks that he loves so much...
...In fact, it was Sadat who supported me...
...The scholar deals with the different critiDISSENT / Winter 2004 n 79 CHRONICLES cal appraisals regarding this work, and arrives at the conclusion that at the base [of the Trilogy] is Man versus Time...
...He suggested Mahfouz as a subject for my dissertation (modern Arabic poetry would have been my first choice...
...The Six-Day War erupted in June 1967, and in its aftermath Arab messianic nationalism, in its Nasserist 78 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 guise, began to wane (and in its place appeared Jewish messianic nationalism in its Gush Emunim or "Greater Israel" manifestations...
...A frail, dejected man, a veritable broken vessel...
...and I knew that the War of Attrition [between Egypt and Israel from 1968-1971] had been sheer nonsense...
...BETWEEN 1995 AND 1998 I lived in Cairo and served as director of the Israel Academic Center in that city...
...On my return to Israel from a longish sabbatical in the United States in December 1991, I stopped off in Egypt to celebrate his eightieth birthday, and I penned the following impression soon after: To be near Naguib Mahfouz these days [is] a DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 8 CHRONICLES trying experience...
...but in the middle of the twentieth century, so claimed his detractors, many decades after Joyce and Proust, there was nothing remarkable in writing realistic-psychological novels...
...Literary editors in U.S...
...He even claimed that had he moved against him immediately after publication of the novel in 1959, Salman Rushdie (who was also "sentenced" to death for his literary work) would never have dared to write his Satanic Verses...
...I began visiting Mahfouz at places not patronized by journalists, for example the Sofitel Hotel, where he would come on occasion to meet his friends at a designated hour in the evening...
...he was constantly accompanied by an armed bodyguard (for fear of another attempt on his life...
...The attack came as a delayed response to his novel Children of Our Alley that was published, it will be recalled, in serial form in al-Ahram at the end of 1959—in other words thirty-five years prior to the assault...
...The following comment appeared in an article published by a noted Egyptian novelist, Yusuf al-Qa`id, in the Cairo monthly al-Mawqif al-Arabi under the title "The Israeli Enemy Does Nothing But Perpetrate Aggression and Naguib Mahfouz Does Nothing But Congratulate the Enemy...
...He had willingly met with all of its previous heads and encouraged Egyptian writers to visit its premises...
...This infuriated Qaddafi, who apparently demanded an apology from Muhammad Hasanein Haykal, the editor of al-Ahram...
...We must choose a different path, the path of negotiations...
...Our two nations have known creative co-operation in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, and in the modern period, while the periods of conflict and dispute have been few and far between...
...I spoke with him for two hours on everything under the sun...
...From my left-wing perspective, Mahfouz was not much of a cultural hero...
...I was expelled from its membership...
...The world press received the announcement with surprise...
...But I found nothing to suggest that he actually opposed the Ra'is' policy vis-a-vis Israel...
...How would an Arab professor relate to an Israeli...
...The next morning I phoned Mahfouz at his home...
...He's been waiting for you for quite some time," she added...
...He would sit among his companions talking and joking although he could not hear everything being said...
...He did not seem upset by it, but he did express anger at Arab publishers, especially in CHRONICLES Lebanon, who had exploited the prohibition in order to churn out pirated editions of his novels...
...Forty years later, the novel has not come out in book form in Egypt...
...Haykal intervened in an attempt to change the subject .. . In a 1975 interview published in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas, Mahfouz expressed himself in an exceptionally outspoken manner...
...That was a sensitive issue now...
...However it seems that all these expectations were illusory, and the man is still gambling on the Israeli enemy, the nemesis of Egypt, the Arab world, one hundred million Arabs—yesterday's enemy, today's, and even tomorrow's...
...Over the next few days, I gave many media interviews...
...The first encounter with my future adviser, Dr...
...One of his statements that particularly enraged many in the Arab world's elite was that peace is more important than land, and that land could even be surrendered in exchange for peace...
...Let us pray together that the efforts being made today will be crowned with success, and that our two nations will return to the fruitful path of coexistence, as in days of old...
...He would recall mutual friends of ours who had passed away, such as the Israeli ex-general, Arabic scholar, and peace activist Matti Peled, who wrote about Mahfouz's works and knew him personally...
...My letter was dispatched via the Israeli journalist Aharon Barnea, who returned from Cairo with Mahfouz's reply—a lengthy, warm letter written on October 20, 1979...
...A volume of his collected autobiographic sketches, Baghdad, Yesterday (in Hebrew) is to appear soon in Israel...
...When I added that I had previously majored in linguistics and not in Arabic literature, Badawi replied with a twinkle in his eye, "Linguistics comes in handy...
...The letter was read during the ceremony in April 1983 and published in the newspapers...
...During one of our discussions I inquired about the ban the Arab League had placed on his work after he made public his support of the Middle East peace process...
...At that time, Mahfouz rarely expressed his views on political issues...
...But there are those who fear this and claim "If we have commercial relations with Israel, then she will overpower us...
...His support roused angry responses in Egypt...
...Does he not feel the urge to write...
...What is his attitude toward Israel and Israelis...
...Mahfouz described Egyptian society's lower and middle classes, identifying with the oppressed, but without pointing to the source of oppression—capitalist and colonialist exploitation...
...I was about sixteen years old...
...What are his political views...
...he had recently completed two important novels, Khan al-Khalili (1946) and Midaq Alley (1947), named after the colorful, ancient back streets of Fatamid Cairo...
...Occasionally he would interrupt a conversation, add something, and to our great surprise his response was always on target, even if it was obvious that many details of the conversation had eluded him...
...Qa'war asked Mahfouz, according to the al-Ahram reporter, if he was familiar with of the Arab Writers Association...
...He and his wife displayed unquestionable amity...
...and if Israel introduces her culture, she will destroy us...
...I met him every day during my week's stay in Cairo, and the topics of our conversations grew to include not only literary and political matters but also personal experiences...
...We spoke a mixture of English and Arabic...
...When I finished reading, I had found a topic...
...His last work, A False Dawn, which appeared two years ago, included nearly twenty marvelous stories, crystalclear and brimming with literary vigor, but all of them were written prior to 1988...
...But now, in 1995, I did not dare invite him...
...How would he react if he heard that an Israeli was doing research on his novels...
...But, he believed, this was only a temporary phenomenon...
...It comes as little surprise, then, that with the start of the peace process, after Anwar el-Sadat's sudden visit to Israel, and through the signing of the Camp David agreement, Mahfouz was counted among the most ardent proponents of these accords...
...As I held his swollen right hand, my wife ventured to ask him what I had not dared to...
...These are the ambassadors of countries that have boycotted and ostracized the Egyptian novelist in recent years for the sole reason that he supported peace and reconciliation with Israel...
...Why am I dealing in stylistic complexities and fictional meanderings, when in my homeland a violent conflict rages that for better or worse will determine our future...
...In 1955, I read Mahfouz's Beginning and End, which first appeared in Cairo in 1951 and was reprinted in Israel four years later...
...Toward the end of my term at the center, in July 1998, I made a farewell visit to the Sofitel...
...Even before the war, in April 1972, Mahfouz had participated in an al-Ahram sponsored symposium that included CHRONICLES Mu'ammar Qaddafi, then the young and irascible leader of Libya...
...I tried to evade political questions, restricting my comments to the essence of Mahfouz's works and his tremendous contribution to modern Arabic literature...
...A few hours later I was seated in his apartment in the Agouza quarter on the banks of the Nile...
...he invited us, the Israelis, to watch the game with him on a large screen in a downtown hotel...
...Among other things, Mahfouz . . . expressed a great liking for a story by Agnon, of all people...
...He ceased writing altogether and refused to either dictate his thoughts or try adjusting to a custom-made computer (until the attempt on his life, he wrote a weekly column in al-Ahram...
...I was nestled in a gray, drizzly English town studying the novels of an author who hailed from a country that my people were bitterly engaged in fighting, overpowering, and, to my dismay, humiliating...
...The Egyptian press was vitriolic about the cordial relations evolving between the great writer (partially banned) and his Israeli guests...
...This time two Israeli friends, Ronit Matalon and Sami Michael, accompanied me...
...A circle of very young Iraqi writers with whom I kept company back then was divided over the question of Mahfouz's place in Arabic literature...
...IN OCTOBER 1965 I was accepted as a doctoral candidate in the field of Arabic literature at Oxford University...
...among the invited guests were some of Mahfouz's harshest critics and detractors...
...WHILE I WAS WRITING my dissertation, the Middle East was shaken to its roots by a fierce storm...
...I felt that revolutionary passion was lacking in this novel...
...those were my final days in Baghdad...
...We got the message and bid Naguib Mahfouz farewell...
...Immediately following the Yom Kippur War, Mahfouz made an extraordinary declaration about war and peace that alAhram published...
...I say] these people have lost their sanity, their intellectual courage, and their self-confidence .. . IN 1973, when the English version of my study of Mahfouz appeared in Holland, I asked my publisher to send a copy to his address at al-Ahram...
...He is thin and fragile...
...Badawi had recently arrived in England from Alexandria, where he had lectured in English literature...
...This shows us the extent to which [the Israelis] are interested in what is happening on our side .. . IN 1977, FOLLOWING Sadat's historic flight to Jerusalem, Israeli journalists began visiting Egypt and meeting with politicians, artists, and writers...
...Founded in 1982, the center had been a topic of our conversations during the 1980s, and Mahfouz expressed support for its goal of nurturing cooperation between the Egyptian and Israeli academic communities...
...in the end he handed me a gift, his two latest books...
...In one of his fairly recent pronouncements he declared, If Israel has a literature, I will read it and judge for myself if it is good or bad...
...However, in the middle of 1996, a mutual friend told me that the novelist frequently asked about me, and would like to see me...
...When he did speak out, one could not differentiate him from other Arab intellectuals, none of whom desired, or dared, to challenge the nationalist tide...
...he had definitely not attained a place of honor in the pantheon of our literary idols, reserved for luminaries such as Gorky, Brecht, Anderson-Nexoe (the Dane), Aragon, Neruda, Hikmet, and so on...
...I caught a glimpse of the face of Mahfouz's bodyguard, pleading that we wind up our meeting so that he too could watch the game...
...This is by far the most serious research carried out on the Trilogy...
...Leading the list was the great Syrian poet, Adonis, who had been expelled from membership in the Arab Writers Association because he had once met with Israeli writers and public officials...
...We naively believed that Naguib Mahfouz had recovered from the Israeli disease, and we imagined that the man would now turn over a new leaf, and that we should help him inscribe the first word on this new page...
...Mahfouz was especially interested in my JewishArab background, my family's history in Baghdad, and the way I had mastered the Hebrew language after arriving in Israel...
...He was not free to choose where he could visit...
...My one great love then was modern poetry...
...The day after our conversation, however, Mahfouz handed me a congratulatory letter he had written on his own initiative, and he requested that I pass it on to Professor Moshe Mani, the president of my university...
...Mahfouz neither reminded his past detractors about the ban they had placed on him nor did he demand any apologies...
...Since the time of King Akhnaton, he adds, there has not been a leader of peace like him in Egypt, and history should remember him with veneration...
...I try to speak with him as usual about literature, but he exhibits no interest...
...but in contrast to his earlier novels, which I thought "static," the Trilogy flowed with pulsating energy...
...What am I doing here so far away...
...Nevertheless, he was also capable of vituperatively criticizing Israel during the war in Lebanon (1982) and the intifada...
...Mahfouz was unable to read it because of his weakened eyesight...
...What impressed me most was the cadence, the rhythm that speeded up the longer we accompanied the characters in time...
...I caught a night flight to Cairo...
...In defense, he replied, The reverse is true...
...Qa'war had been among the most radical defamers of "renegades," and numerous boycotts of other Arab writers could be chalked up to his "credit...
...Preparations were underway in Egypt for a series of celebrations...
...perhaps I had glanced through them, but I had not actually finished a single one...
...Many people, especially the Nasserites, were furious with him because of his high regard for Anwar el-Sadat, as expressed in his declarations and writing, especially in his book Facing the Throne (1983), which appeared after Sadat's death...
...Toward eight o'clock our good friend `Ali Salem, a well-known Egyptian playwright, arrived and reminded us that the final game of the World Soccer Cup would begin very shortly...
...In those days I was a true believer in literary commitment and even more strongly in revolutionary activity of the orthodox-Marxist sort...
...Peace with Israel was a fundamental principle from which Mahfouz would not budge, despite the ostracism and scathing condemnation he suffered for several years...
...At most, he would find time in the morning to listen to one of his friends read newspaper selections...
...But he remained unshaken in his dream of sound neighborly relations and in his criticism of those who dreaded peace...
...To a great extent the Trilogy resembled the family saga of western literature, especially Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, a book that undoubtedly influenced the author...
...His writing leaned toward nineteenth-century European naturalism...
...Likewise, the scores of articles written about him all over the world do not attract his interest...
...Since the assassination attempt, he had ceased going to "unsafe" places...
...80 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 I would have immediately packed up and left for Cairo to meet him, but entrance visas to Egypt were given primarily to diplomats and journalists, and I did not belong to either category...
Vol. 51 • January 2004 • No. 1
