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Sex and the
city, Egyptian-style
18 Feb 2007- Cairo, Egypt- In the hot evenings of autumn 2002,
Cairo's streetside cafes were packed with men, women and teenagers
riffling intently through the same pages. The readers were transfixed
not by the latest political scandal or account of parking violations (a
Cairene preoccupation), but by a straight-talking tale of sex, lies and
Islamism in the 'Mother of the World' - al Aswany's The Yacoubian
Building.
In the heavily regulated world of Egyptian publishing, where government
sheikhs patrol bookshops rooting out 'undesirable' material, al Aswany's
frank treatment of everything from homosexuality and corruption to
illegal abortion and police brutality was sensational. His book went on
to become the bestselling Arabic novel in recent history.
The controversy was sufficient to overcome even English-language
publishers' vast indifference to Arabic literature. And while his
(restrained) descriptions of gay sex may lose their exotic sheen in
translation, his promise to unveil the secret life of the Egyptian
capital remains enticing.
The Yacoubian Building takes a vertical slice through Egyptian society,
represented by the inhabitants of a once-splendid apartment block in
Cairo's crowded downtown. The building is a palimpsest of Egypt's
troubled 20th-century history: rooms once home to colonial grandees are
taken over by military officers swept to power in the 1952 revolution;
apartments vacated by middle-class families grown rich under Seventies
liberalisation are taken over by businesses; and the two-metre-square
storehouses on the roof are colonised by poor migrants from the
countryside.
In this crumbling doll's house, nobody, whatever their standing, is
happy. Zaki Bey el Dessouki, an elderly, wealthy engineer, and Hatim
Rasheed, elegant homosexual editor of a French-language paper, bemoan
the decay of Cairo's pre-revolutionary culture, manners and
sophistication. Abaskharon, Zaki's one-legged Copt servant, and his
brother Malak scheme to defraud Zaki of his apartment. Hagg Azzam, a
self-made millionaire and aspiring politician, falls foul of the
extortion and blackmail stemming ultimately, al Aswany hints, from the
'Big Man', President Mubarak himself.
At the novel's heart are the opposing trajectories of two young people
from the hidden community on the roof. Taha el Shazli, a doorkeeper's
son unfairly rejected from police officer training, seeks purpose and
self-respect in radical Islamism. Arrested and brutally abused by
police, he flees to a militants' training camp in the Fayoum oasis, only
to die pursuing a personal jihad against his former tormentors. His
erstwhile sweetheart Busayna, meanwhile, is forced to submit to her
employers' advances in order to support her family.
She finds an unexpected rescuer in Zaki; their marriage, which closes
the novel, binds together old and young, rich and poor, in a rare
episode of hope and tolerance. Al Aswany is excellent on the bitterness
young Egyptians feel towards a country where hard-won qualifications are
worthless unless backed with money or wasta (influence): 'You hate
Egypt?' Zaki asks Busayna. 'Of course,' she replies, shocked that he
needed to ask.
But The Yacoubian Building is more old-fashioned melodrama than snappy
sociopolitical critique. It has few formal or intellectual pretensions
and al Aswany's prose remains resolutely affectless - critics say 'flat'
- throughout. This is not a fashionable quality either here or in Egypt,
but it allows al Aswany to manoeuvre neatly through controversial
waters.
His description of Taha's encounters with religious extremism is
particularly effective. The student's joy at his 'new, powerful,
bounding spirit' and the 'fabulous, authentic and pure' atmosphere of
the mosque are rendered without sensationalism or irony, which is all
the more creditable given Islamists' fraught relations with liberal
Egyptian intellectuals such as al Aswany.
Not all his writing is this restrained - his conscientious focus on his
female characters' 'full, trembling breasts' and 'luscious backsides'
offers little compensation for their maltreatment at the hands of
society and he is prone to blithe statements about the 'sad, mysterious,
gloomy look that often haunts the faces of homosexuals'.
But his eye for details - the beggar woman seduced by Zaki who is so
poor she makes her underwear from sacking stamped 'Portland Cement: Tura'
- and sympathy for his characters create an absorbing portrait of the
struggle to survive in the Arab world's 'best friend of the West'.
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