DESIRE AND DENIAL:
SACRED AND PROFANE SPACES IN ʿABD AL-ḤAMĪD JAWDAT AL-SAḤḤĀR’S
NOVEL
IN THE CARAVAN OF TIME
Throughout
the 20th century contributions of Egyptian writers have been instrumental in the processes
of mapping, or remapping, the world. Through their writings they have
contributed to the production of rural, urban, and national
spaces. This paper scrutinizes the narrated spaces in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd
Jawdat al-Saḥḥār’s realist novel In the Caravan of Time. The study analyses the position of al-Saḥḥār’s
work within Egyptian literary discourse. Drawing on anthropological theories,
it shows how the novel’s protagonist experiences the negotiation of spaces and
their boundaries during the transition to modernity. Furthermore the study
demonstrates that this transition takes on the form of an initiation of which
the underlying force is desire. It turns out that desire and its repression are
essential factors which contribute both to the redefinition of the self and the
Other and to the remapping of the world.
“Space
in general does not belong to the properties or realities of the things in
themselves, which would necessarily have to admit of reduction to objective
concepts, but belongs merely to the subjective form of our sensible intuition
of things or relations, which must remain wholly unknown to us as regards what
they may be in themselves.”[1]
Introduction
The purpose of this study is to analyze
the narrated spaces in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Jawdat al-Saḥḥār’s
novel In the Caravan of Time.[2]
I will focus on the spaces as imagined by the novel’s main characters and the
representations of how their boundaries are renegotiated during transition to
modernity. The [76] study shows how the novel’s hero experiences the
transition to modernity, which takes the form of an initiation process through
which the self becomes formulated. A further focus of the study is the impact
of desire on the transitional process.
In
the Caravan of Time is
generally accepted to be one of the first realist family sagas in Egyptian
literature, preceding the celebrated trilogy of Najīb Maḥfūẓ.
It was published in 1947,[3]
after Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s famous Shajarat al-buʾs.[4]
According to the classifications of Arab critics, al-Saḥḥār
belongs to Maḥfūẓ’s generation. He first wrote a historical
novel in the Pharaonic mood of his time, and then shifted to Islamic topics in
the mid-thirties. Al-Saḥḥār claims that In the Caravan of Time was his first attempt to write a
contemporary novel.[5] Although
his numerous books are widely read and still in print, contemporary criticism
rarely discusses his contribution to Arabic and Egyptian literature. One of the
reasons for the present neglect of his work seems to me to be the choice of
texts agreed upon as canonical. If we follow Mary Louise Pratt, who emphasizes
that “literature” is a normative notion,[6]
and consider Richard Terdiman’s thesis that literature is a dominant discourse
which “is granted the structural privilege of appearing to be unaware of the very question of its own legitimacy” and
thus “go[es] without saying,”[7]
we inevitably have to question such canonical generalizations. In this case, we
can bring into the focus of study those “marginalized” literary discourses on
which the hegemonical discourses rely, without
perpetuating the essentialist dichotomy of
canonical versus noncanonical literature. In order to scrutinize the underlying mechanisms of the hegemonical discourse’s [77]
self-positioning, Reuven Snir suggests—drawing on Itamar Even-Zohar’s
polysystem theory—a “historical-functional-dynamic model” for the study of
interrelations between and reciprocities of different systems of Arabic
literature, which either compete against or sustain the central and dominant
system of “canonical” literature. This approach takes into consideration
various genres generally “excluded from the canon,” such as translated literature,
children’s literature, detective stories, religious literature, and the like,
which are equally important for the development of literature.[8]
ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Jawdat al-Saḥḥār and his
critics
In regard to al-Saḥḥār’s
oeuvre in general and the novel to be discussed in particular, a quick
examination of its contemporary critiques may suffice to explain the mechanisms of exclusion of “marginalized
literature.” In his memoirs, the author cites an anonymous critic who enthusiastically
welcomed the novel soon after its publishing, praising In the Caravan of Time as being an
important Egyptian contribution to world literature; yet when submitted to a
literary contest in Egypt the novel did not receive an award because “it was not
a novel (qiṣṣa), since it
contains neither a thread nor a hero, but merely consists of an assortment of
panoramic views and practices.” [9]
Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm sees the
novel’s value in its portrayal of society during a certain stage of its
development.[10] In his
influential work The Egyptian Novel and
its Main Trends from 1913 to 1952,
Hamdi Sakkut denigrates the book’s qualities, writing that “its principal
weakness is that the reader feels the
different parts of the work unbalanced,” and that the “account of the
love affair of Muṣṭafā . . . takes up so great a
part of the novel.” In admitting that the work is “worth reading for its vivid
representation of social customs prevalent in
[79] It is easy to deduce from the above account that
established critical discourse allocates writings such as al-Saḥḥār’s
In the Caravan of Time to the realm
of popular or petit bourgeois culture and sees it as a mere fictionalization of
religious topics or, as already mentioned, reduces it to a source for
ethnography, a process which results in its successful exclusion from the canon
of literature to which aesthetic value is assigned.
Opposing these judgments, other critics
value al-Saḥḥār’s contribution to Egyptian literature. In ʿAbd
al-Munʿim Ṣubḥī’s survey of al-Saḥḥār’s
various works, the author hints at the similarities between In the Caravan of Time, al-Saḥḥār’s
first realist novel, and Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s later trilogy
with regard to the setting, the choice of characters and the chosen time.[17]
Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ al-Muwāfī praises al-Saḥḥār’s
ability to portray the novel’s characters with vividness.[18]
Ṣafwat Yūsuf Zayd reads al-Saḥḥār’s oeuvre from a
religious perspective.[19]
After discerning a secular and an Islamic trend in Egyptian literature—al-Saḥḥār
belongs to the latter—he holds the anticolonial and moral characteristics of
al-Saḥḥār’s work criticized by
others in high esteem; he sees them as virtues deriving from Islamic
concepts such as qiwāma,[20]
and as demonstrations of a superiority of spiritual to materialistic world-views.[21]
In the eyes of Ṣafwat Yūsuf Zayd these virtues in turn receive their
aesthetic value from being related to divine revelation, to the sublime. In
order to understand these divergent judgments it is worth noting Pnina Werbner’s
remark about religious aesthetics: “We need to consider further the passionate
commitment and empowering potency of religion as a form of aesthetics for
distinct—and sometimes opposed—aesthetic communities.”[22] Drawing on Clifford Geertz,[23] she states that aesthetic [80]
communities share a set of “both cultural conventions and quotidian knowledge.”
[24]
Hence it is easy to assume that the somehow ambiguous evaluation of al-Saḥḥār’s
work relies on modes of perception charged with divergent, that is, religious
versus nonreligious aesthetic concepts. If we consider that al-Saḥḥār’s
work was and is widely read in
Realism, autobiography, and ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd
Jawdat al-Saḥḥār
In
the Caravan of Time stands
at the threshold of the realistic trend in the Egyptian novel. Lotman and
Piatigorsky point out that the function of a text is “its social role, its
capacity to serve certain demands of the community which creates the text.”[27]
It is a widely acknowledged fact that realism serves as a literary strategy to
respond to a cultural crisis. Realist novels struggle with the culture of
modernity and contribute to it “in their cautious effort to map its parameters.”[28]
Concerning the West, Franco Moretti, when discussing European
nineteenth-century realism, and in particular educational novels, presumes that
“
Comparing al-Saḥḥār’s
novel to his autobiography Hādhihi ḥayātī,
[32] one finds
many similarities in his portrayal of the characters. Even the stories and events selected in both works—at
least those which concern the autobiography’s narrator and the protagonist’s
life—concur in many cases.[33]
This holds true as well for the author’s narrative strategies. The novel starts
in 1900 and the autobiography opens with the birth of al-Saḥḥār
in 1913. Both works end in 1937, thus covering almost the same period. Without
going into details, the two works seem to assign a similar meaning to their
respective protagonists’ lives.[34]
Therefore it would be useful to keep in mind some elements of the author’s
biography.[35]
Al-Saḥḥār was born into
a merchant family in Bāb al-Shaʿrīya in
The house: boundaries, spaces, and the sacred.
According to the Bakhtinian concept of
chronotope, spatial and temporal signs melt in a work of art to a meaningful
and concrete whole.[47]
Changes in time and place affect each other reciprocally. My analysis will
center on the development of spatial imaginations as they appear in the text.
Spaces and their respective boundaries cannot be understood as fixed
topographic entities, but rather as individual
and collective imaginations. Hence spaces and boundaries are subject to
permanent processes of negotiation and renegotiation through speech and action,
which, for instance, lead to their materialization or mappings as in
architecture or literature, which can be seen as the lingering trace of the
discourses’ underlying power structures. With respect
to al-Saḥḥār’s novel, one notices that the title
metaphorically spatializes time with the juxtaposition of caravan and time and thus gives space precedence over time.
Spatially, most of the events in In the Caravan of Time take place in the
family’s houses, which are referred to in the text as either dār or bayt. The family house is by nature a human being’s first space,
and its functions and boundaries become inscribed into his or her spatial
imagination.[48]
Therefore it will be useful to refer to Juan Eduardo Campo’s explorations into
the semiotics of the house in
Essential here are the concepts of ḥurma and sharaf. Ḥurma
denotes the house’s sacredness and the woman’s position in it. At the same
time, the notion and its derivatives connote the sacred spaces of a mosque and
the holiest places of Islam,
Although it is tempting to apply a
dichotomy such as private vs. public in order to describe female
domestic and male nondomestic spaces and their respective boundaries,[62]
I will not apply this distinction for two reasons. Firstly, the private/public
dichotomy as used in gender-specific spaces emerged as a result of a European
concept developed by the nineteenth-century middle class.[63]
Secondly, the sacred mapping that indeed assigns certain spaces to either women
or men does not necessarily exclude women from spaces that a European concept
might describe as public. Indeed, female and male spaces partially overlap,
especially in confrontation with the sacred.[64]
Bearing in mind the link between the sacred and the female body and its relationship to the concepts of ḥurma and sharaf, one might assume that these concepts intrinsically affect
renegotiations of boundaries and spaces in the novel.
Exposition of spaces in al-Saḥḥār’s
novel
The first chapter of In the Caravan of Time opens with a
panoramic view of the silhouette of
The narrative
focuses on al-Ḥājj
Asʿad in his house as he awakes and starts
his day, preparing himself for the dawn prayer.[68]
As the patriarch of the family, he looks back upon a successful career as a
merchant. His life is divided into the hours he spends working in his shop,
located in a nearby street, and the time he spends with his family. The novel
explicitly describes how discourse and social action fill his house with
blessings and avert evil. The house is referred to as dār and bayt, those who dwell in it are called ahl al-dār. Al-Ḥājj Asʿad’s
and his wife’s pilgrimage, his only travel outside his quarter mentioned in the
text, establish the family’s and the house’s relation to the sacred. An
anecdote about his successful defense of their tent against a Bedouin thug during the pilgrimage testifies to his
abilities to protect his family.[69]
He represents the embodiment of sharaf.
The house, in turn, embodies the
boundaries surrounding ḥurma,
translating them into mortar and bricks. It is the realm of the female members
of his family; their outer universe comprises mosques and shrines, which are
considered pure.[70] Leaving
these spaces, however, leads to severe punishment, as in the case of Sakīna, a granddaughter of al-Ḥājj
Asʿad, who secretly visits a mawlid
in the quarter.[71]
Especially at night, the space outside is populated
with spirits (ʿafārīt)
and evil people. Characters such as Umm ʿAbbās—a
professional mourner—who are related to death and thus threaten the house’s
blessings are disliked, and they do not own dwelling places.[72]
While talking about a murder victim, al-Ḥājj Asʿad closes the
window in [87] fear of the victim’s ghost, which is likely to sneak into
the house.[73] When Aḥmad,
one of the sons of al-Ḥājj Asʿad, decides to build a new house
outside the al-Ḥusaynīya gate, his plan is severely criticized
during discussion in the nightly family gatherings. How could he live outside
of the city gates? Sakīna expresses her anxieties about the place he has
chosen when she asks him whether he would not be afraid of afreets living in such a remote area. Aḥmad, however, is
convinced of the future of the area, which is located just some yards outside
the city gate.[74] In the
mind of most of the family members, settling outside the traditional quarter
implies a loss of sacredness and will expose the new house to evil.[75]
The spatial imaginations represented at the onset of the novel appear to be in
harmony with the given situation. Individuals are able to deal with disturbing
elements relying on a repertoire of social discourse and action in order to
maintain the dwelling’s relation to the sacred.
Apocalyptic visions: the window shut
A crucial episode narrated at the
beginning of the novel, however, announces
upcoming intrusive changes. Al-Ḥājj Asʿad is sitting
reading a book. At that moment his fourteen-year-old granddaughter Zakīya
enters the room. She notices that something has upset him extremely and asks
what is the matter. In tears he complains, “Times will come when women will
leave their houses naked, walking around with bare faces and low necklines.”[76]
“How can men allow that?” the girl asks, and fails to comprehend her
grandfather’s vision. When he continues, “And iron will talk,”[77]
she stares at the closed windows unable to imagine its iron bars speaking. Asʿad
adds that “these will be the signs of the last hour,” thus framing his vision
of women who disclose signs of sexuality outside of the domestic space in
religious imagery. The spatial arrangement of the scene, however, heralds the
onset of a process of renegotiation of spaces. The girl’s gaze does not reach
the extradomestic space in which al-Ḥājj Asʿad’s vision will
become reality, but it prepares us for the
window’s future function as an opening connecting different spaces.
Furthermore, the enigma of “talking iron,” which is explained [88] when
a relative brings a phonograph into the house,[78]
prepares us for the coming of acoustic openings which have their own impact on
spaces and their boundaries, and which compete with the traditional space’s
acoustic signs, such as the call to prayer, the dominant audible sign
highlighted at the beginning of the novel.
Rationality is the first means exploited
to question the narrated universe’s mapping towards the sacred. When a group of
children observe the murals on a pilgrim’s house, the narrator imparts to us
that they would very much like to travel by train and ship, as the owner of the
house did when he went to the
The end of the novel’s expositional part
concurs with the death of al-Ḥājj Asʿad,[81]
while the birth of the protagonist, Muṣṭafā, marks the onset
of the new era.[82] As
previously mentioned, this almost coincides with the outbreak of World War I.
Narrated time increasingly becomes structured by formalized time and political
events, and, geographically, politics maps the world. Continued British colonial
expansion, the break-up of the
On a microlevel, the presence of the
British army as such violates the existing order of spaces. British soldiers
are said to flirt in the streets with Egyptian girls, who in turn lift their
veils.[85]
More disturbing, however, are rumors about English soldiers who violate “safe
houses” (al-dūr
al-amīna), searching for women. Consequently Ḥasan, a
grandson of Asʿad and the father of Muṣṭafā places new locks on the door and buys knives for
self-defense.[86] Aḥmad,
another relative, experiences a traumatic encounter with two British soldiers,
who come to his shop in order to buy some food. This episode, again presented
with a certain irony through the eyes of the omniscient narrator, shows how the
concepts of ḥurma and sharaf heavily influence the individual.
When the soldiers want to pay, Aḥmad suspects that they will attack him
and starts a battle in which he chases them out of the shop. The English
soldier here is a powerful stereotype and is thus stamped as Other as a
representative of a foreign occupying force and a sexual aggressor—which naturally
implies a violation of ḥurma.
Because of this, the general political situation and the microlevel heavily
overlap. Therefore Aḥmad cannot but regard the soldiers’ visit as an act
of aggression. However his son, a cousin of Muṣṭafā, sells
goods to English soldiers and makes friends with them when he takes over his
father’s place in the shop after the latter anxiously hides away in the house,
afraid that the English will seek revenge.
The son even tells the soldiers the way to the family’s house. It becomes
clear that he is able to assign a place to the soldiers, seeing them for what
they are in the particular context: possible purchasers of his merchandise and
individuals who could be friends. When the soldiers come for a visit, their
arrival causes severe worries in the family, so Aḥmad’s son does not let
them in. Rather he leaves the house in order to meet them at another place.
Obviously, the action and discourse maintained by the family around the house
do not provide a space for these Others. Aḥmad finally forbids his [90]
son to fraternize with the enemy. [87]
Muṣṭafā: the hero’s
spaces
Muṣṭafā’s first realm
is naturally the house. Episodes of his youth show how he experiences the boundaries
of the domestic space and grows into the discourse surrounding it. His first
encounters with the outside world, however,
are embodied in his friendship with Umm ʿAbbās, the professional mourner who lives in a
nearby dwelling resembling a cave. As mentioned above, she pursues a profession
connected to the antidomestic space, since she benefits from death.[88]
It is not surprising that she has a bad influence on the little boy, exploiting
him by inducing him to steal and bring her sugar, coffee, and other expensive
foods from his mother’s kitchen in exchange for a little dog. Muṣṭafā
is consequently forbidden to have further contact with Umm ʿAbbās.[89]
Most interesting, however, are those
passages referring to the purchase or construction of new houses. A rather
brief episode reports how Muṣṭafā and his siblings explore the
new house that their grandfather Muḥammad had bought. Although the new
house is located far from their old quarter, they seem very fond of the
building, which is larger than the old one and decorated with yellow and red
stripes, thus resembling a mosque.[90]
It is obvious that such a decor underscores the place’s sacredness. On the
other hand, the new house provides new spaces such as balconies and a big
courtyard.[91] This is
of particular importance, because the children’s pastimes increasingly engender
conflicts with the rules of the house. For example, the boys are sent outside
when guests arrive.[92]
Now they acquire new spaces, which, although outside the domestic realm and its
rules, are still attached to the central space of the family.
It is, however, the house Ḥasan
intends to build that will become the location of the most insightful scenes
related to the negotiation of the domestic space. Muṣṭafā and his siblings, already on the edge of
adolescence, take [91] part in the discussion in which the new
home for the family is being planned. Mamdūḥ, Muṣṭafā’s
elder brother, wishes the house to be built soon. He needs an apartment of his
own as his marriage is already arranged. Muṣṭafā maintains
that the house should be located close to the soccer field, while Asʿad
and Salīm in turn want a place close to
the cinema. Obviously, the three boys relate the domestic space to newly
introduced escapist spaces, which provide an alternative to hitherto known
surroundings.[93] The
grandmother, however, insists on the place being close to the cemetery, because
her main purpose in life is visiting graves there
each Thursday. In order to please his mother and to
meet the needs of his profession, Ḥasan finally decides to buy a
piece of ground in their old quarter.[94]
A builder (muhandis)
takes over the building design and when drawing the plans, Salīm insists
on adjoining a selamlik to the house.
“There is no need for such a room,” the builder replies. Asʿad maintains
that “it is necessary to build a selamlik
in order to welcome guests there, instead of letting them enter the ḥarīm.”[95]
Ḥasan reluctantly complies with the
proposal. Although a selamlik[96]
was not a new phenomenon in the design of Egyptian houses, it is clear that
both Ḥasan and the builder feel no need for such a space. However the
younger generation demands this restructuring of the domestic design, which
would create an interstitial space and which would allow them to pursue their
own interests without coming into conflict with the existing spatial
boundaries, that is, to invite persons not members of the family, or
foreigners, such as British soldiers.
Concomitantly, a shift in meaning
becomes obvious during the renegotiation process of the domestic spaces.
Generally the text refers to the house using the term dār. Introducing the selamlik
semioticizes the remaining parts of the house anew, as can be seen in Asʿad’s
usage of the word ḥarīm in
[92] order to describe the inner parts of the house. Obviously, societal
changes affecting the space outside, such as new kinds of personal
relationships, political events, and the introduction of other spaces like
cinemas, have an impact on the interior, and thus lead to a more sophisticated
arrangement of domestic spaces. Keeping in mind the connotations of ḥarīm,[97]
this implies a more severe binding of the inner parts of the house both to the
holy and to the female body. Furthermore, the new sophisticated arrangement of
the domestic spaces involves endowing them with gender. In the course of the
novel, the selamlik indeed becomes an
almost entirely male realm.
After the construction of the first
floors is finished, Ḥasan enters the house reciting dhikr litanies and his friends join him for common prayer. “He is
eager that the name of God be the first thing mentioned in the new house,” the text comments on his action, which
sacralizes the new building.[98]
After the family moves in, the upcoming marriage of Mamdūḥ causes
new conflicts, which have an impact on the domestic space. Mukhtār, the
father of Mamdūḥ’s fiancʾe ʿIṣmat and brother of Ḥasan,
orders the most luxurious pieces of furniture and parades them through the
streets of the quarter to the house in order to expose them to the eyes of the
neighbors as a sign of domestic blessing. Proud of having purchased such
prestigious furnishings, he plans to organize the marriage ceremony with
similar ostentation. He gains much support from the female side of the family.
To Ḥasan’s dismay—he would prefer a humble celebration within the family—Mukhtār
carries out his plans and does not spare any effort. It is at first quite
difficult to decide which singer should be invited for the entertainment of the
guests, since most singers do not perform without being served alcoholic
beverages.[99] Finally
the family agrees upon ʿAlī Maḥmūd, who is known for his
piety.
Even though a marriage adds to the house’s
blessing[100]
because the house must be opened and the bride made visible, albeit protected
by the “space of appearance,”[101]
the ceremony causes some inconveniences. Zakīya watches [93] the
women arriving and disapproves of their being unveiled and dressed in a manner
which exposes their arms and chests, which reminds her of al-Ḥājj Asʿad’s vision.[102] Likewise, the appearance of the barely dressed
dancer Bambah Kishk fills Ḥasan
with consternation.[103]
Muṣṭafā is not pleased when, during the dukhla ceremony, the groom takes his place in the midst of the
women next to the bride, which exposes him to their laughter. Muṣṭafā
intends never to become the object of women’s ridicule. The next morning Ḥasan
reviews the whole event, murmuring: “How stupid!”[104]
Each of these three
characters perceives the
wedding festivities, although they take place according to tradition, as being
exaggerated and wholly void of sense, thus intruding upon domestic blessing
rather than asserting it. They consider the rites and traditions by which the “space
of appearance” is created as impure.
Therefore the “space of appearance” loses its protective power and the
events violate ḥurma. Although
they do not seem to be able to alter the ceremony, their disapproval paves the
way for coming changes.
Spaces of desire
After Muṣṭafā enters
secondary school, he falls in love with a Jewish girl named Rachel (Rāshīl), who lives close by his house.[105]
The romance has a most crucial impact on his personal development, as well as
on his spatial imagination. Their first encounter takes place when Muṣṭafā
is waiting for friends near the entrance of the house. He observes her while
she sits opposite him on the balcony of her parents’ apartment, reading a book.
It soon [94] becomes obvious that both are aware of a mutual attraction.
At her place on the balcony, Rachel seems to him to be within a liminal space,
located at a borderline that, due to its
ambiguity, allows permeability to either the domestic or the
extradomestic space. Contacting Muṣṭafā from such a place
seems easier, since the ambivalent space enables both of them to avoid a
transgression of the boundaries that demarcate gender segregation. She
addresses him and—pretending that she does not know the Arabic alphabet—asks
him to read a love song. This acutely embarrasses Muṣṭafā. Shyly
he misreads the text at several points, which makes Rachel intervene to correct
his pronunciation.[106]
His flawed rendition, however, mirrors the crossing of spatial boundaries in
the realm of language. Although poetry is the literary genre par excellence for
communicating emotions, gender segregation taboos a direct approach to the
beloved through language. By making him read the song, Rachel tries to give him
access to the linguistically tabooed emotional realm.[107]
Muṣṭafā’s first
encounters with Rachel are in contrast to the portrayal of the gatherings in
the selamlik. As usual in the
evening, the male family members, including Muṣṭafā and his
siblings, as well as Ḥasan’s friends, gather for the nightly session. The
ritual opening of the meetings consists of a recital of history books. It is no
coincidence that this night’s reading is devoted to the ridda wars and the figure of Ḍirār b. al-Azwar, the
commander who led the small faction of the Banū
Asad that remained loyal to the state of Medina during the rebellion after the
Prophet Muḥammad’s death and reconquered the lost territories of the
Medinan state, thus reinforcing and extending the boundaries of the emerging
Islamic empire.[108]
When one considers [95] the colonial situation of interwar
Muṣṭafā, out of touch
with the others at the gathering, cannot wait to see Rachel, who is supposed to
arrive at the nearby tram station after she finishes work. When asked to read
the night’s section of the text, he is caught off guard. Filled with desire and
anticipation, he cannot concentrate on the text.[111]
Finally he leaves the house in order to wait for her. When she arrives, he is barely able to say “Good evening,” let
alone pronounce her name,[112]
which constitutes a true sign of his fear of linguistically transgressing the
limits of the taboo. He silently walks her back to her house. Filled with
happiness, he returns to the selamlik, where he tries to listen to the stories
about Ḍirār b. al-Azwar. However, the noisy atmosphere of the selamlik disturbs his mood, he retreats
to his grandmother’s apartment upstairs and enters the room opposite where
Rachel lives.
Muṣṭafā’s view from the
window: Desire and liminal spaces
From the window, Muṣṭafā
watches how Rachel opens the balcony door and sits outside, listening to a
record of Sayyid Darwīsh, who chants, “I’m falling in love.”[113]
In this manner al-Ḥājj Asʿad’s vision is completed. Although Muṣṭafā’s
feelings differ from Asʿad’s and Zakīya’s, the novel’s initial
episode overshadows his situation as a recurring theme. The similar spatial
situation offers him the epiphany of the object of his desire. However, his
position as detached spectator implies an unbridgeable distance, which results
in a relationship lacking reciprocity. He is confined to the domestic [96]
space, the meanings of which are rooted in the traditional discourse around the house. Owing to the impact of the
traditional discourses, the domestic space related to the sacred does not
provide a place for his desire and its erotic implementation.[114]
His feelings cause isolation from his group and its discourse, and he
consequently seeks solitude. As Georges Bataille says, the erotic experience
induces solitude, while the sacred, because it is communicable, results in
community.[115]
Desire sets off the wish to transgress
boundaries. Thus the individual whose self has been shaped in a condition of
discontinuity dissolves into continuity, thereby destroying the structure of
his normal state.[116]
Moreover, as Jacques Lacan puts it, desire is always desire for the Other,
which is outside of the self and separated by mutual absence.[117]
Absence, in turn, “is the empty space in which desire and the Other coexist,
but in which they are never allowed to make contact with each other.”[118]
Thus the view from the window unites Rachel and Muṣṭafā’s
desire in an “empty space of absence,” which
questions and threatens the traditional order of spaces. This scene is
acoustically accompanied by the sounds of “talking iron.” Apart from merely seeing Rachel, “the expressive sound [of
Sayyid Darwīsh’s song] reaches Muṣṭafā’s
heart, striking
a responsive chord.”[119] Although Muṣṭafā’s physical position discloses his relation to
discontinuity, both vision and music underscore his inward movement towards
continuity. [97] Hence the
vision fills him with happiness, while the words of Darwīsh’s song
give expression to his feelings. As he listens to the phrase “I’m falling in
love,” the omniscient narrator imparts to the reader that Muṣṭafā
indeed “feels love.”[120] Consequently, he expresses his feelings in
mystical language: “His heart widens until it encloses the whole world.”[121]
A main characteristic of the “space of absence”
is its ambiguity, which reflects the intrinsic paradox of desire. Desire “is an
Other which is at the same time the Same,” and the self may “exist positively
by virtue of its negation and limitation.”[122]
A shift to this space entails a passage to a liminal state where existing boundaries recede. Considering that Muṣṭafā’s
romance and, as we will see further on, its conclusion, delimit his
adolescence, his shift resembles the separation phase of a rite de passage and denotes an initiation process.[123]
Desire moves the figure into the liminal state by which the second phase of a rite de passage is characterized; and
this liminal state is necessarily ambiguous, since the individual in this state
remains apart from the traditional net of classifications defining his states
and positions in the cultural realm.[124]
On a metaphorical level, in the novel’s leitmotif of the view from the window
the appearance of women connotes the advance of modernity. Although the advance
of modernity is disguised by Muṣṭafā’s erotically charged
encounter with Rachel, it becomes clear that desire for modernity is the
underlying power of the transitional process, which takes a form structurally
resembling a rite de passage.[125]
Contrary to rites de passage, which ritually frame the crossing or
transgression of boundaries and contact with taboo, the experiences of Muṣṭafā
do not follow a rite sanctioned by his society. Therefore his desire sets off
an interior battle between desire and interdiction which aims at solving the
arising contradictions in a cathartic process by which the self and the Other
become limited and redefined. Thus, the episodes of Muṣṭafā’s
encounters with Rachel are charged with a sense of the [98] interior
battle through which the self and the Other emerge.
Driven by his desire for Rachel, Muṣṭafā
walks through the streets of the city, the only place where he is able to meet
her. Each time he leaves the house for a rendezvous he feels a “free breeze,”[126]
which heralds his entering an ambiguous space, leaving behind him the domestic
space with its fixed boundaries. However, even seeing her outside the house he
feels uncomfortable. Each night he waits at the tram station for Rachel to
arrive from work. After her arrival they walk back to her house, where he drops
her off. She obviously expects him to talk about his love. However Muṣṭafā
lacks the language to express his feelings, since that would imply a violation
of taboo. After their meeting, he returns to the house. The return denotes his
movement back to the sacred, where he recuperates from his attempt to cross
boundaries.
One evening, Rachel gives Muṣṭafā
some expensive perfume as a present. At first
he tries to reject a gift charged with such erotic meanings, since
bringing a sign of his erotic engagement into the house, besides being a
material proof of his transgression of boundaries, would implicitly violate the
house’s sacredness. After Rachel threatens to leave him, however, he accepts and hides the bottle in his closet.[127]
But Rachel’s gift triggers another
development in Muṣṭafā. He perceives her attempt to express
her affection through material things as a violation of the sincerity of their
mutual love.[128]
Later, as he is walking through the
streets, he notices a picture in the window of a photographer’s studio. He
recognizes Rachel and, to his dismay, in the
picture she appears “almost nude,” wearing a dress with a plunging
neckline.[129] Muṣṭafā’s
extreme reaction to the picture becomes completely obvious when visits her
family and her father proudly presents exactly this portrait. Seeing it
disgusts Muṣṭafā and forces him to leave.[130]
He cannot understand how her father can accept exposing his daughter to the
view of foreigners.
Yet again the text associates Rachel
with the vision seen by al-Ḥājj Asʿad. The spaces of their
encounters become associated with sexuality and are thus profaned. Muṣṭafā
is torn between desire and interdiction. Each time he is [99] confronted
with Rachel’s sexuality, he indulges in endless inner monologues about how his
pure love overcomes his sexual desires. Thus he idealizes his purity in the
face of Rachel’s, in his view, merely carnal desires. Frequently the narrative
describes his internal battle as mujāhada,[131]
a term which connotes struggle against evil.
Although he considers ending their relationship more than once, his desire
still prevails and he continues to meet her. But after each interior battle he
takes refuge in the domestic space. Even when his repressed desires reemerge
during an erotic dream––she lies alongside him, hugs him, passionately kisses
him, and strokes his hair––the power of interdiction has such an impact on him
that he wakes up filled with horror, since he totally
rejects the possibility of touching her.[132]
Seeing that Muṣṭafā
does not respond to her advances, Rachel
agrees to an engagement arranged by her family. After the engagement fails, Muṣṭafā
and Rachel take up their relationship again. She has separated from her fiancʾ
because of financial problems he has experienced,[133]
which for Muṣṭafā is only more proof that her approach to relationships is purely materialistic. He
furthermore embellishes his stereotyping of Rachel by adding a religious
dimension to the process. At one point he flees when she tries to seduce
him during a visit to her house,[134]
an episode whose spatial setting recalls the Koranic story of Joseph’s
temptation by the wife of the Egyptian official who had purchased him. Rachel’s
meeting Muṣṭafā on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and kissing him “to ease the fasting,” he perceives as
a violation of the day’s sacredness.[135]
In the course of his conflict between
interdiction and desire, Rachel increasingly becomes demonized. By ascribing
his repressed wishes to her, he constructs an Other who begins to threaten him.
This circular movement leads him to refer more and more to traditional
definitions and narratives, which in turn strengthen his sense of self in the
face of the Other.
Among the episodes intersecting the love
story, one in particular sheds light on how the appearance of women in the
extradomestic space leads to an external
battle against the Other, resulting in violence. It is no coincidence
[100] that the episode follows the scenes when Muṣṭafā
meets Rachel for the first time. The protagonist meets one of his friends, Rātib. Upset, Rātib
reports seeing a poster that advertises a new film and displays a “naked woman.”[136]
They walk together to the cinema, where Rātib tears down the controversial placard. Of
course this action does not pass unnoticed, and a policeman comes up. When
asked about his motives Rātib replies, “We
are Orientals (sharqīyūn) and have honor (sharaf).
We do not accept such shamelessness (tahattuk).”
As the policeman places him under arrest, he maintains
that he is obviously the only one in the country who still possesses honor. [137]
When Rātib identifies himself as an
“Oriental,” a character in the text for the first time defines himself in
relation to the West. At the same time, Rātib’s Orientalizing himself
assigns blame for the profanation of the extradomestic space to Western
influences. In this way the threatening antispace, which traditionally is
construed as the demonic realm of spirits, darkness, and evil, here becomes
remapped as the essentialized West. Since the connotations of tahattuk include “tearing down a woman’s
veil,” it is clear that the poster violates ḥurma.
Taking into consideration the close binding of sacred spaces and the female
body described above, the spaces whose ḥurma
is threatened need the power that protects ḥurma, that is to say, sharaf,
in order to reestablish their sacredness. Construing the West as the Other,
however, is only possible because of its absent presence.[138]
The narrative does not provide us with the motives for Rātib’s action.
Unlike Muṣṭafā, Rātib’s internal process of defining the
self and the Other seems to be finalized, and he directs his actions towards
the extradomestic realm. What he does, discloses further that his violence
results from a generalization of his concepts of ḥurma and sharaf.
His statement that he “is the only one in the country possessing honor” reveals
that he applies these concepts to the nation-state.
The violent “purifying” of space from
the traces of the Other (here mainly sexually semioticized) in order to assert
the self often gains the quality of a symbolic initiation into an activist’s
fight against the Other’s representatives, which here obviously include the
local authorities. Rātib’s action
represents a trope that frequently accompanies the commencement of the
struggles of Muslim activists, as for instance in the case of Ḥasan
al-Bannāʾ. [101] In his youth, the famous leader of the Muslim
Brethren, to reassert morality, demanded the removal of a nude statue attached
to a ship on the
Desire, the self and the Other
After Rachel finally
leaves Muṣṭafā,
and after his short-term romance with another
Jewish neighbor, Mary, it is his relationship to Kawthar, a Muslim
neighbor, which accelerates Muṣṭafā’s initiation process. Muṣṭafā
meets Kawthar after she completes her education at a French college in
With a Western education and blindly
emulating the seductive MacDonald’s dress,
while at the same time adoring “silly” songs with sexual contents, Kawthar appears to Muṣṭafā
as typically Westernized. His desire
translates him again into the battle between desire and interdiction. The stereotypes
resulting from his previous internal battles now become assigned to Kawthar:
the Other is enriched through relating it to the West. Al-Ḥājj Asʿad’s apocalyptic initial vision now takes
on an additional metaphoric meaning: the view from the window turns out
to be an opening to what becomes defined as the antispace, and through this
opening the anitispace’s intrusive impact transgresses boundaries related to
the sacred. Furthermore, if we compare Muṣṭafā’s view from the
window to the spatial arrangement of al-Ḥājj Asʿad’s vision, we
can discern a crucial difference concerning control and maintenance of
boundaries.
Formerly the only means to gaze into the
antispace was written texts, which naturally were available to literate people,
mainly men, who at the same time controlled boundaries. As a woman, Zakīya
could not even peer through the window. Intrusive impacts on the domestic space
could be handled reliably through the accepted repertoire of discourse and
action. Now female characters appear outside the domestic space, and ubiquitous
mass media facilitate the antispace’s transgressing impact, all of this
implying a loss of control. This loss of control is a result of the ambiguous
characteristics of the newly arising Other—its opacity, its absence and
presence, its floating and shifting, and its sexual promises, which arouse
desire and an urge for power that cannot be channeled. The mechanisms of
control, that is, the definition of boundaries, have to be renegotiated and
readjusted. Another element discernible in the further development of the leitmotif underlines the same loss of
control. Muṣṭafā takes on the female perspectives of
Zakīya and [103] his grandmother. The hero becomes effeminate,
objectified, and vulnerable when condemned to
passivity. The linkage between the house and “the human—especially
female—body and sexual relations”[146]
implies that subjectivity and spaces are congruent.
The definition of the self requires a
reestablishment of order which at the same time defines the boundaries of both
space and body and thus protects them both from violation. An attempt to
control boundaries can been seen in the violent actions of Rātib, when he “purified”
the “national” space of intruding factors. Muṣṭafā, however,
refrains from such violent solutions. One of his attempts at regaining control
is his rational analytical approach in dismissing what is in his eyes Kawthar’s
“blind” adoration and emulation of Western culture. However, the battle between
desire and interdiction overshadows his attempt to remain within the bounds of
rationality. The stronger his desire grows, the more repeatedly the Other has
to be demonized. This in turn explains the text’s recurrent descriptions of Muṣṭafā’s
unfortunate encounters with the opposite sex. The repeated inward demonization
of the Other serves as a powerful means in Muṣṭafā’s search
for and subsequent maintenance of his identity and self.
As a result of his failure in coping
with the Other, Muṣṭafā increasingly refers to traditionally
semioticized boundaries. In the street of his quarter he casually overhears
Kawthar speaking French to a friend. This greatly annoys him, and he is
suddenly reminded that his family, in accordance with tradition, considers both
a woman’s voice and her name as ʿawra,
that is, something shameful, when audible or mentioned in the extradomestic
space.[147]
The last meeting between Kawthar and Muṣṭafā
takes place in
It is noteworthy that Muṣṭafā’s most traumatic and
therefore most decisive encounters with both Rachel and Kawthar take place
inside buildings. The two main episodes, Rachel’s effort to seduce him in her
bedroom and Kawthar’s dance with the stranger in the casino, not only violate
the ḥurma of domestic space,
but also imply an inversion of the space’s meaning, more precisely, its conversion
into an antispace.
Leaving the liminal space
Traumatized by his
experiences during the visit to the “antispace,” Muṣṭafā returns
to
At night, however, he strolls alone
through the city. Now the streets are illuminated, and when he walks on Fuʾād
al-Awwal Street, he finds it crowded with people. He sees the gleaming lights
and looks up at the high-rise buildings. The nocturnal walk inverts the initial
panoramic view of the city. Instead of the towering minarets that used to guard
the sleeping city, tall buildings dominate
the metropolitan night life.[153] The initial sacred [105] frame has
given way to dehumanized, profane, and thus “empty” markers of time and space.
Given the linkage of body and space, this imagery exemplifies the violation of
the boundaries of both. Since he is no longer a lover, Muṣṭafā
feels lonely and alienated when walking through the streets in the midst of the
masses. The very places that comprised the ambiguous liminal space, the very
scenes of his internal struggle, through which the spaces have become profaned,
now reject him and cause him discomfort. In an attempt to recover, he tries to
meet Rachel again. But when he discovers another young man waiting for her, he
restricts his life to the house.[154]
Muṣṭafā subsequently yields to his grandmother’s
arrangements and agrees to marry his cousin Fatḥīya, since
this will enshrine his superiority.[155]
Superiority in this context involves a reestablishing of control, and removes
Muṣṭafā from his passive, effeminate position in which he is
subject to vulnerability and pain to a position in which he regains comfort and
confidence.
During the preparations for the
marriage, Muṣṭafā tries to avoid an opulent ceremony. When the
bride is paraded to the house, he feels embarrassed and exposed to the ridicule
of the women. Listening to their noisy zaghārīd,
he is bathed in sweat.[156]
Muṣṭafā tries to intervene when the family creates the “space
of appearance,” exposing the event to the view of neighborhood and friends. He
looks at the bride and dislikes her white dress. When the women want to make up
the bride’s face for the zafāf,
the bridal procession, Muṣṭafā intervenes and announces that
he will wash her face afterwards.[157]
While Rātib
tried to cleanse all signs of sexuality from the extradomestic space, Muṣṭafā
intends to purge the erotic bridal symbols from the traditional discourse which
determines the discourse of marriage ceremonies and particularly the bridal
procession. After his painful interior battle, in which erotic signs have been
transferred to figures related to the antispace or the profane, he cannot help
but remove them from his future wife, whose space will be the domestic. He
dislikes the joyful laughter of the women and wants their voices to be
silenced. By means of a ruse, he succeeds in chasing the women out of the room,
thus preventing them from decorating the bride and continuing their rites.[158]
[106] The marriage heralds the end of Muṣṭafā’s
process of initiation. He leaves the spaces
determined by liminality and ambiguity. The key names
the author chooses for his characters
obviously emphasize the importance of that process: Muṣṭafā denotes not only “the chosen one” but also
contains within the root the sense of
cleansing and catharsis.[159]
Fatḥīya, on the other
hand, connotes opening, mystical enlightenment at a high level of awareness, as
well as the entering of a new realm, namely, ḥaqīqa (“truth”). Once again it is a woman who marks the final
stage of initiation, reincorporating the initiate into the social order.
Rachel, who first set in motion the process of his
separation, in the course of Muṣṭafā’s painful inward
battle, had become stereotyped as the antiwoman. This underscores the crucial position of
women in the discourse on modernity.[160]
While his marriage with Fatḥīya
serves as a catalyst for the final stage of his initiation, the death of his
father provides Muṣṭafā with a guide. Ḥasan’s death
throws Muṣṭafā into
depression and loneliness. As we have seen above, his father embodied
the virtues of tradition. Feeling orphaned through his death, Muṣṭafā, even on the days people normally do not go to their family
graves, regularly visits his father’s tomb, where he calls out to him in
desperation.[161]
Moreover, he attends supererogatory prayers at the mosque of al-Ḥusayn. Performing the prayer where his father used to
pray increases his sadness. One night his father appears to him in a dream
wearing white clothing and addresses him, saying: “I am not buried in your
graves. I am buried in the mosque of al-Sayyida Zaynab. If you want to visit
me, go there.” The next day Muṣṭafā visits al-Sayyida Zaynab
and talks to his father’s spirit.[162]
This remarkable breach of realism,
shifting into the magical, extends the development of spaces into spheres of
the supernatural. Not only does Ḥasan appear in Muṣṭafā’s
dream, but he maintains that his grave is located in al-[107] Sayyida Zaynab’s mosque, thus reinstating the
sacred semiotics of the domestic space. The grave, being a kind of
domestic space for the afterlife until the Day of Judgment, spatially
represents the ḥurma of the
deceased’s body.[163]
It furthermore unites past and present generations.[164]
Ḥasan’s posthumous translation to the mosque containing the relics of the daughter of the Imām ʿAlī and
granddaughter of the Prophet through Fāṭima, besides
elevating him to the rank of a saint, associates the family’s past with a
female member of the Prophet’s family, thus reinforcing the sacredness of the
house of the living. Due to the competing and overlapping imaginations that are
imposed on the space by modernity, the spaces themselves become cramped. Thus when the narrative shifts to magic realism, it emphasizes
the supernatural ontological level of the domestic space. This shift
contradicts the initial rationalism, which served to criticize the magic
reality of the premodern characters. It is only after Muṣṭafā’s
vision that the family, which was previously scattered in several dwellings,
reunites in the “big house” of Muṣṭafā’s youth. The end of the
novel is the commencement of Muṣṭafā’s postadolescent life,
when the family, after the birth of his first child, begins to raise a new
generation.[165]
Conclusion
Examining
the process of the hero’s initiation, we have seen
how Muṣṭafā’s
cathartic experiences influenced his spatial imaginations. Considering the
development of the hero, one notices that traditional rites de passage scarcely occur in the narrative. The same holds
true for other tropes of initiation, such as education, vocational training, or
political engagement, the driving force of which
is mainly ambition and which are well known from literature dealing with
initiation (such as the educational novel). The impact of desire, which sets
off and accompanies Muṣṭafā’s crucial process of redefining
boundaries, seems to replace even such rites
de passage as circumcision or marriage. Thus his initiation has become an
almost entirely individual endeavor, since there are neither ready-made
paradigms to follow, nor a mentor or a communitas
to guide the hero. The process presented in the novel focuses on the inward
battle caused by Muṣṭafā’s desire. Desire is the crucial starting point, which throws the hero into
the space of liminality. Owing to the new social configurations that
arise with modernity (visible in [108] the appearance of the Other), the
individual, driven by desire, attempts to master competing and oscillating
systems of signs in a fragmented world, the traditional spatial imaginations of
which are at stake.
Richard Terdiman states that in the
nineteenth-century educational novel of the middle class, “the power over which
control was sought turns out to be power
over those who seek power.”[166]
This holds true for the hero of In the
Caravan of Time. As we have seen, Muṣṭafā’s effeminate
position shows metaphorically how he becomes objectified when he tries to gain
power. In order to regain his subjectivity, he must reaffirm the indigenous
discourse on boundaries and spaces. However there is no return to what Victor Turner
describes as “normative structures.”[167]
When Muṣṭafā dissociates himself from the Other, the Other is
charged with the repressed aspects of his former self. His newly acquired self
can only be reformulated through relating it to the Other and defining
it in opposition to it.
The way the character becomes an object
in the midst of a complexity of contradictory
signs is in conformity with experiences narrated in other Egyptian
texts. By means of realism, authors have tried to scrutinize the discourses
which objectified them, and which they failed to master. Reflecting on the self
through realist narratives implies an objectification of the self,[168]
a true sign of a heightened self-consciousness and modernization.[169]
Furthermore, the disclosure of intimate emotions such as desire through the
means of a novel, the “only entirely social art form,”[170]
evidently links this highly individual experience to society as a whole.
The fate of al-Saḥḥār’s
liminal hero, whose attempt at mastery is set off by desire, resembles the
destiny of many other figures created by contemporary Egyptian and Arab
writers. When ambition is understood as a socialized form of desire specific to
capitalism,[171] we
find that heroes such as Kamāl in [109]
Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s trilogy,[172]
as well as many other characters in realist novels, share the destiny of al-Saḥḥār’s
hero.[173] Many
of these texts combine the initiation
process of the individual with a process which exposes him or her to a new set
of signs and, more importantly, to the complexity resulting from encounters
with the West with a spatial movement from the countryside to the city. In
these texts the experience of desire has an intrinsic impact on the process of defining identities. Texts of writers
like Ṭāhā Ḥusayn in
his autobiography, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm in his ʿUṣfūr min al-sharq, or
Suhayl Idrīs in al-Ḥayy
al-lātīnī[174]
link the transitional process to journeys to the metropolitan centers of the
West, where the heroes’ respective world views and identities become formed. In
their texts, which like many postcolonial narratives give precedence to place
over time, the liminal space remains outside the heroes’ natural habitat, a point on which the works of these authors differ
crucially from al-Saḥḥār’s novel. These initiation
movements into liminal space unquestionably deserve to be studied in a broader
context.
[1] Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,
trans., with introduction and essay,
James Ellington (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), pp. 23–24.
[2] ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Jawdat al-Saḥḥār, Fī qāfilat al-zamān,
[3] Al-Saḥḥār mentions that he published the novel in
1945 (al-Qiṣṣa min
khilāl tajāribī al-dhātīya [
[4] Cf., for example, Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, A Short History of Modern Arabic Literature (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992), p. 150 (hereafter cited as Badawi); Hamdi Sakkut The Egyptian Novel and Its Main Trends from 1913 to 1952 (Cairo: American
University of Cairo Press, 1971), pp. 67–71 (hereafter cited as Sakkut).
[5] Qiṣṣa, p. 25.
[6] Mary Louise Pratt, Toward a
Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1977), p. 123.
[7] Richard Terdiman, Discourses/Counterdiscourses:
The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century
[8] Cf. Reuven Snir, “ha-Sifrut ha-ʿarvit be-meʾa ha-ʿésrim: model hisṭori funḳtsiyonali-dinami,” in ha-Mizraḥ he-ḥadash, vol. 36 (issue devoted to the
Middle East and Islam in the twentieth century), ed. Jacob M. Landau (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1994), pp. 49–80; see also Snir’s English version of the article: “Synchronic
and Diachronic Dynamics in Modern Arabic Literature,” in Studies in Canonical and Popular Arabic Literature, ed. Shimon Ballas and Reuven Snir (Toronto: York Press, 1998), pp. 87–121.
[9] Qiṣṣa, p. 27.
[10] Qiṣṣa, p. 42.
[11] Sakkut, p. 112.
[12] Ghālī Shukrī, Azmat
al-jins fī ʾl- qiṣṣa al-ʿarabīya
(Cairo, al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Taʾlīf
wa-l-Nashr, 1971), pp. 216–38, esp. p. 238.
[13] Rotraud Wielandt, Das Bild der Europäer in der Modernen Arabischen Erzähl- und
Theaterliteratur, Beiruter Texte und Studien, 23 (Beirut, 1980), pp. 523–25; see also the index s.v. al-Saḥḥār. (Hereafter cited as Wielandt.)
[14] Cf. Ernst Bannerth and Régis Morelon, “Al-Saḥḥār, Témoin de la Vie Populaire,” Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales du
Caire 13 (1977): 5–32. (Hereafter
cited as Bannerth/Morelon.)
[15] Bannerth/Morelon, p. 19.
[16] “Writers such as ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ʿAbdallāh, Amīn Yūsuf al-Ghurāb, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Gūdat al-Saḥḥār, let alone Yūsuf al-Sibāʿī, were competent in their own small way. It is, however, interesting to trace in their writings the
preoccupations, worries, frustrations and
anxieties of the little men they portrayed.” Edwar al-Kharrat, “The Mashriq,” in Modern
Literature in the Near and Middle East 1850–1970, ed. Robin Ostle (London:
Routledge, 1991), p. 182.
[17] ʿAbd al-Munʿim Ṣubḥī, Al-Saḥḥār, mufakkiran
wa-adīban wa-sīnamāʾīyan (Cairo, al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya
al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1975), pp. 34–37. (Hereafter cited as Ṣubḥī.)
[18] Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ al-Muwāfī, al-Qiṣṣa ʿinda ʿAbd
al-Ḥamīd Jawdat al-Saḥḥār:
naqd wa-taḥlīl (Jidda: Maktabat ʿUkāẓ, 1981),
pp. 63–68. (Hereafter cited as al-Muwāfī.)
[19] Ṣafwat Yūsuf Zayd, al-Tayyār
al-islāmī fī qiṣaṣ ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd
Jawdat al-Saḥḥār,
[20] Zayd, p. 143. Qiwāma
in Koran 4:34 is usually interpreted as referring to the inferiority of women
to men, or to men’s responsibility for women.
[21] Zayd, pp. 162–86.
[22] Pnina Werbner, “Allegories of Sacred Imperfection: Magic,
Hermeneutics and Passion in The Satanic
Verses,” Current Anthropology, vol. 37,
Supplement, February 1996, pp. 56ff. (Hereafter cited as Werbner.)
[23] Clifford Geertz, Local
Knowledge (London, Fontana, 1983), chap. 5.
[24] Werbner, p. 57.
[25] Unfortunately studies on
readership in
[26] Snir also calls for a reexamination of the legitimacy of the
scarcely reflected aesthetics
with which the critical discourse is charged. Cf. “Synchronic and Diachronic Dynamics,” pp. 90ff.
[27] Quoted in Terdiman, pp. 90–91.
[28] Elena Eva Coundouriotis, Reading
Realism as Historical Method: Balzac, Eliot and Postcolonial Narratives,
[29] Franco Moretti, The Way of
the World. The Bildungsroman in
European Culture (London: Verso, 1987), p. 5. It is certainly worth
discussing whether Moretti’s assumption holds true for Egyptian culture in the
first half of the twentieth century. Cf., e.g., the
discussions about autochthonous enlightenment and indigenous concepts of modernity in Islamic cultures in Werbner, esp. p. 57, and
Reinhard Schulze, “Was ist islamische Aufklärung,” Die Welt des Islams 36 (1996): 276–317.
[30] Coundouriotis compares
nineteenth-century French realism to postcolonial
[31] Terdiman, p. 91.
[32] al-Saḥḥār,
Hādhihi ḥayātī,
[33] Al-Saḥḥār himself states that the characters portrayed
in Fī qāfilat al-zamān are
almost entirely inspired by his family. Cf. Qiṣṣa,
pp. 26–27.
[34] Karl J. Weintraub describes
the endeavor of autobiographical writing as “guided by a
desire to discern and to assign meaning to a life.” Karl J. Weintraub “Autobiography
and Historical Consciousness,” Critical
Inquiry 1 (1974/5): 824.
[35] Besides Ḥayātī
and Qiṣṣa, Ṣubḥī and Maʾmūn Gharīb (al-Saḥḥār . . .
wa-l-fikr al-islāmī,
[36] Zayd, p. 31
[37] Ḥayātī, p. 5.
[38] Ḥayātī, p. 33.
[39] Ḥayātī, p. 31.
[40] Ḥayātī, pp. 84–85.
[41] Zayd, p. 32.
[42] Ḥayātī, pp.
113–18, 124.
[43] For a bibliography of his
novels and short stories, see Zayd, pp. 23, 75, 81; Qiṣṣa;
Gharīb; Ṣubḥī; and al-Muwāfī.
[44] Ḥayātī, p.
241.
[45] Zayd, pp. 36–39.
[46] Zayd, p. 40.
[47] Cf. Michail M. Bachtin, Untersuchungen zur Poetik und Theorie des
Romans, ed. Edward Kowalski and Michael Wegner (Berlin:
Aufbau Verlag, 1986), p. 464.
[48] “But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically
inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits.” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas
(New York: Orion, 1964), pp. 14–15.
[49] Juan Eduardo Campo, The Other Sides of Paradise: Explorations
into the Religious Meanings of Domestic Space in
[50] Campo, p. 12.
[51] Campo, pp. 12–15.
[52] Campo, p. 15.
[53] Cf. Birgit Krawietz Die Ḥurma: Schariatsrechtlicher Schutz vor
Eingriffen in die Körperliche Unversehrtheit
nach Arabischen Fatwas des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin:
Duncker and Humblot, 1991), pp. 74–75. (Hereafter cited as Krawietz.)
[54] Campo, pp. 20 ff.
[55] “Domestications of Islam in Modern
[56] Campo, pp. 98ff.
[57] Campo, p. 99.
[58] Campo, pp. 99–100.
[59] Campo, chap. 6.
[60] Campo, pp. 103ff.
[61] Cf. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p.
32. (Hereafter cited as Eickelman and Piscatori.)
[62] Cf., for the problems
arising from an application of the dichotomy private/public to Muslim societies, Eickelman and Piscatori, pp. 81ff.
[63] Cf., for example, Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
English Middle Class, 1780–1850,
[64] There is no gender segregation during the pilgrimage to
[65] Qāfila, p. 3
[66] Sawtu dhālika l-rajuli
lladhī yajūbu l-ṭuruqāti idhā mā lāḥa
l-fajru l-kadhib, wa-fī yadihi miṣbāḥuhu, murattilan
fī ṣawtin jahūrīyin akhkhādhin yahuzzu al-mashāʿir, “al-ṣalāh,
yā muʾminīn, al-ṣalāh,
al-ṣalāh khayrun mina l-nawm.” Qāfila, pp. 3–4.
[67] Qāfila, pp. 3–4.
[68] Qāfila, p. 4.
[69] Qāfila, p. 46.
[70] Compare the episode in which Amīna gives birth to her first
child and her sister Zakīya fetches the
key of the nearby mosque, the blessing of which eases the delivery (Qāfila, pp. 19–22),
or Zakīya’s visits to several shrines where she hopes to be healed of her
infertility (Qāfila, p. 110).
[71] Qāfila, pp. 62–64.
[72] Qāfila, pp. 17; 34–35.
[73] Qāfila, p. 43.
[74] Qāfila, pp. 78–79.
[75] Cf. Campo, p. 15.
[76] Qāfila, pp. 6–7.
[77] Qāfila, p. 6.
[78] Qāfila, p. 68.
[79] Qāfila, p. 44.
[80] Qāfila, pp. 45–46.
[81] Qāfila, p. 94.
[82] Qāfila, pp. 97–98.
[83] Anthony Giddens, The
Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), p. 174.
(Hereafter cited as Giddens.)
[84] Giddens, pp. 18–19.
[85] Qāfila, p. 112.
[86] Qāfila, p. 112.
[87] Qāfila, p. 116.
[88] Cf. Campo, pp. 114 ff.
[89] Qāfila, p. 118–21.
[90] In his autobiography al-Saḥḥār remarks that the new house was being decorated in the style of contemporary mosques. Cf. Ḥayātī, p. 27.
[91] Qāfila, pp. 143–44.
[92] Muṣṭafā’s mother, Amīna, bribes him with two millīms to make him go away when
female guests arrive (Qāfila, p.
122).
[93] For escapism as a social phenomenon in reaction to the advance of
modernity in Muslim societies, see Jamal Malik, “Muslim Identities Suspended
between Tradition and Modernity,” Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
[94] Qāfila, pp. 217–18.
[95] Qāfila, pp. 220–21.
[96]
[97] Cf. for ḥarīm Campo, pp. 20–22.
[98] Qāfila, p. 223.
[99] Qāfila, pp. 238–39.
[100] For the relation of marriage and
the sacredness of the domestic space, cf. Campo, pp. 105–117.
[101] Cf. Campo, p. 110. Campo, draws upon Hannah Arendt’s notion of “the
space of appearance,” which human beings create through action. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition: A Study of the Central
Dilemmas Facing Modern Man (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), pp.
177ff. (Hereafter cited as Arendt.)
[102] Qāfila, p. 240.
[103] Qāfila, pp. 241–42.
[104] Qāfila, p. 244.
[105] It is not surprising that Muṣṭafā is in contact
with Jewish neighbors, since the Cairene Jewish quarter (ḥārat al-yahūd) is located in the
Gamālīya district, which is, although not explicitly referred to by
the novel, the setting of the events. Jews, especially the Karaites, were
regarded as an important part of Cairene society during the interwar period.
Mainly the lower strata of Cairene Jews populated the ḥārat al-yahūd. Although the text mentions that
Rachel is Jewish, it describes neither her nor other Jewish characters as
foreigners. Cf. Joel Beinin, “Egyptian Jewish Identities: Communitarianisms, Nationalisms, Nostalgias,” Stanford Electronic Humanities Review 5, 1 (1996), Contested
Polities, 27 Feb. 1996, <http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/beinin.html>, section “The
Karaites: An Arab-Jewish Community” (10 Aug. 1998), and
Gudrun Krämer, The Jews of Modern
[106] Qāfila, pp. 255–57.
[107] Language usually reflects taboos in society. When discussing Asya
Djebar’s works, Patricia Geesey points out that “French language empowered
[Asya] Djebar’s cousins by allowing them to a written
discourse in which they could act out their defiance of a tradition,
. . . it enabled two of her cloistered cousins to engage in a secret correspondence with male pen pals from all over the (French-speaking) Arab world.” Cf.
Patricia Geesey, Writing the Decolonized
Self: Autobiographical Narrative from the
[108] Qāfila, pp. 261ff.
Cf. for the figure of Ḍirār b. al-Azwar, Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981),
chap. 6, conclusions.
[109] Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon hold that colonized intellectuals
construct a “positive historical and cultural heritage in response to the
denigration against indigenous institutions by the colonizer.” Quoted in
Geesey, p. 125.
[110] For the metaphorical levels of dār,
cf. Campo, pp. 12–15.
[111] Qāfila, p. 266.
[112] Qāfila, p. 266.
[113] Āh, anā hawayt. Qāfila, p. 267.
[114] For how meanings of spaces impact the individual see Marilyn Frye,
who suggests “that the possibilities
for behaving in particular ways depend on the meaning given
to femininity—to Woman—in patriarchal discourse and that those meanings are
grounded in physical spaces.” (The same holds true
for men as well.) Marilyn Frye,
The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg, NY:
Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 93–94. Quoted in Writing
Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies, ed. Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), p. 2.
[115] Georges Bataille, “Heiligkeit, Erotik und Einsamkeit,” in Der Heilige Eros, ed. and
trans. Max
Hölzer (Frankfurt: Luchterhand, 1969), p. 329. (Hereafter cited as
Bataille.)
[116] Cf. Bataille, pp. 18–20.
[117] Jacques Lacan, Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 1987),
pp. 804–5, 814.
[118] Carlo Testa, Desire and the Devil: Demonic Contracts in
French and European Literature,
[119] Qāfila, p. 267.
[120] Qāfila, p. 268.
[121] Qāfila, p. 268.
[122] Testa, pp. 7–8.
[123] On the liminal state as a stage of rites de passage, cf. Victor Turner, Das Ritual. Struktur und Antistruktur, trans. Sylvia M. Schomburg-Scherff
(Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1989), pp. 94ff. (Hereafter
cited as Turner.)
[124] Turner, p. 95.
[125] Hamdi Sakkut, as likewise
Bannerth and Morelon, obviously did not discern any meaning
in the love story. See above.
[126] Cf., for example, “He got
up, . . . reached the iron door [of the selamlik], where a free breeze stroked him”
(Qāfila, p. 262). See also pp. 278, 354–56.
[127] Qāfila, p. 284.
[128] Qāfila, p. 284.
[129] Qāfila, p. 296.
[130] Qāfila, p. 298.
[131] Innahā lā tafqihu illā ḥubba ʾl-jasad,
wa-qad daʿatka ilā nafsika mirāran, wa-lākinnaka jāhadta [emphasis mine] li-tabqā ʿalā ḥubbika,
wa-hiya in nālatka nabadhatka. Qāfila,
p. 296.
[132] Qāfila, p. 304.
[133] Qāfila, p. 315.
[134] Qāfila, p. 324.
[135] Qāfila, p. 326
[136] Qāfila, p. 270.
[137] Qāfila, p. 271.
[138] Anthony Giddens describes
this as one of the main characteristics of modernity. Giddens,
pp. 18–19.
[139] Cf. Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ, Mudhakkirāt
al-daʿwa
wa-l-dāʿiya (Cairo: Dār al-Tawzīʿ wa-l-Nashr al-Islāmīya, 1986),
p.16. This motif, carrying a symbolism of initiation into political activism,
can be found in many other Muslim activists’ memoirs and autobiographies.
[140] Qāfila, p. 365–66.
[141] Qāfila, p. 375.
[142] The American actress Jeanette MacDonald (1903–1965) used to wear
sophisticated and seductive dresses in her films produced between 1929 and the
end of the forties. Cf. Eleanor Knowles Dugan, “Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson
Eddy: A Tribute,” 31 Jan. 2000, <http://www.dandugan.com/maytime/>
(1 Feb. 2000).
[143] Qāfila, p. 378.
Unfortunately, we do not learn which movie they watched.
[144] Qāfila, p. 381. Carmen Miranda (1909–1955) was a
Brazilian born singer and actress who became especially famous in the
[145] Qāfila, p. 382.
[146] Cf. Campo, p. 15.
[147] Qāfila, p. 386.
[148] Qāfila, p. 388.
[149] Qāfila, pp. 388–89
[150] Qāfila, pp. 390–92.
[151] Qāfila, p. 393.
[152] Qāfila, p. 394.
[153] The text uses the adjective shāmikha for both the towering minarets described at the beginning of the novel (Qāfila, p. 4) and the towering buildings that overshadow Muṣṭafā’s
walk (Qāfila, p. 395).
[154] Qāfila, pp. 395–96.
[155] Qāfila, pp. 398–99.
[156] Qāfila, p. 405.
[157] Qāfila, p. 406.
[158] Qāfila, p. 408.
[159] Al-Qāmūs al-muḥīt
defines the verb iṣṭafā
as “he took the pure of it and chose it (akhadha
minhu ṣafwahu wa-khtārahu)” Cf. Majd al-Dīn Muḥammad
b. Yaʿqūb al-Fīrūzābādī, al-Qāmūs al-muḥīt
(Damascus, Muʾassasat al-Nūrī, 1408/1987) IV, p. 352, s.v. ṣafā.
[160] Cf., for example, the role of the writings of Qāsim Amīn
and many other reformers in
[161] Qāfila, pp. 416–17.
[162] Qāfila, p. 417.
[163] Krawietz, p. 74.
[164] Cf. Campo, pp. 122–23.
[165] Qāfila, p. 419.
[166] Terdiman, p. 107.
[167] Victor Turner, The
[168] Cf., for the objectification of consciousness as an intrinsic
process of modernization in Muslim societies, Eickelman and Piscatori, pp. 37–45.
[169] Rotraud Wielandt, for
example, maintains that, although ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd
Jawdat al-Saḥḥār and Yūsuf Idrīs lived in the same
period, their respective world-views refer to different eras (Wielandt, p.
428).
[170] Arendt, p. 36.
[171] Cf. Terdiman, p. 107.
[172] Cf., e.g., Christian Szyska, “Liminality, Structure, and
Anti-Structure in Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Cairo Trilogy,” in Understanding Near Eastern Literatures,
ed. Verena Klemm and Beatrice
Gruendler (Mainz: Reichert Verlag, in press).
[173] Education is the crucial means for
opening up the hero’s way into society in novels like Najīb al-Kīlānī’s al-Ṭarīq al-ṭawīl,
Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s al-Qāhira al-jadīda, Sayyid
Quṭb’s Ṭifl
min al-qarya, and others.
[174] Cf. Wielandt, p. 527–37.