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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Naguib Mahfouz's realistic treatment of his subject matter in Midaq Alley (Cairo, 1947) stands in sharp contrast to the symbolic mode of Tayeb Salih in Season of Migration to the North (Beirut, 1966). The style of Mahfouz here is simple, clear, and direct. His characters are common people who belong to the lower strata of life in Cairo and, more specifically, in the “Midaq Alley” of Cairo, this dark enclosed street which literally grinds down its inhabitants (as its Arabic name suggests), then carries on, indifferent to their plight.
Author's note: Parts of this paper were read at the Annual Conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America, held in Philadelphia on November 2–4, 1983.Google Scholar
1 Midaq Alley, trans. Le Gassick, Trevor (Beirut: Khayat Book & Publishing Co. S.A.L., 1966;London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1975);Google ScholarSeason of Migration to the North, trans. Johnson-Davies, Denys (London: 1969, 1970, 1976, 1978). Henceforth these will be mentioned as Midaq and Season; all page numbers in parentheses refer to the last editions of the above English translations.Google Scholar
2 As my colleague Professor Samir Seikaly suggested in a lecture on Midaq Alley given at the American University of Beirut.Google Scholar
3 See my previous article, “Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North: An Interpretation,” Arab Studies Quarterly II, 1 (Winter 1980), pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
4 As Frank, Joseph puts it, in his important essay, “Spacial Form in Modern Literature,” The Sewanee Review 53 (1945), pp. 221–40.Google Scholar
5 Sexual Politics (London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1969, 1971), pp. 23–25.Google Scholar
6 Mahfouz's use of Tell-el-Kebir adds an ironic level to the sociopolitical satire. A highly strategic point which controls the Suez Canal area, it became an important base for the British after they crushed the Nationalist Revolution of 1882 led by Colonel 'Arabi. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 “confined” British presence in Egypt to Tell-el-Kebir. Later, in July 1954, under Abdel Nasser, a phased evacuation of the British garrison occurred over a period of 20 months, quickly followed by the nationalization of the Canal. In Midaq, Tell-el-Kebir, symbol of national defeat and oppression, becomes a source of income for the poor people of Cairo (see for example pp. 10, 30, and 31)!Google Scholar
7 See Accad's, Evelyne summary of “The Social Position of Women in North Africa and the Arab World” in Chapter 2 of her enlightening book, Veil of Shame: The Role of Women in the Contemporary Fiction of North Africa and the Arab World (Sherbrook, Quebec: Editions Naaman, 1978), pp. 19–31.Google Scholar
8 As the Coptic philosopher René Habashi its it in a passage quoted by Berque, Jacques in his chapter on women in The Arabs: Their history and Future, trans. Stewart, Jean (New York, Washington: Praeger, 1964), pp. 172–189.Google Scholar
9 The reader should keep in mind that our paper focuses on the lower strata of society in Cairo and on village customs in the Sudan, i.e.. on the poor and traditional groups in both countries. The status of middle- and upper-class Arab women is influenced by education and economic life in ways not available to the social strata here studied.Google Scholar
10 In an interview Tayeb Salih gave around 1972, he appreciated Mahfouz's deep sympathy for the woman, as he puts it, and more precisely for the fallen woman one often encounters in his novels. “When concepts of shame and sin overload a culture,” Salih remarks, “society faces a huge problem.”Google Scholar Reprinted in Sālih, Al-Tayyib, 'Abqarat al-Riwāyī al-'Arabiyya, ed. Muhammadiyya, A. S. (Beirut: Dar al-'Awda, 1976), p. 214. Salih adds in later interviews given in 1976 and 1977, “Violence against the woman is violence against civilization and against life. … I am deeply compassionate towards the woman. … Some thought Season depicted the Sudanese village as unreal. Their evidence is that it is not realistic for a Sudanese woman to kill a man. But, I am not speaking of the actual murder. I speak of the charge of violence present in our temperament, in spite of the moderation of that temperament, and our noble morals.Google ScholarI have observed this tendency towards violence on a scope which is wider than that of the village.” Reprinted in Tayeb Sailh Speaks: Four Interviews with the Sudanese Novelist, trans. and ed. Berkley, C. E. and Ahmed, O. H., Sudanese Publication Series, No. 8 (Washington, D.C.: Offices of the Cultural Counsellor, Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan), pp. 21 and 30.Google Scholar
11 “Notes on Salih, Tayeb, Seasons of Migration to the North,” in Sudan Notes and Records IV (1974), pp. 46–54.Google Scholar
12 As Wilson, Edmund expresses it in Axel's Castle, A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930 (London: Scribner's, 1931), p. 67.Google Scholar
13 See my previous article, op. cit., pp. 13–14.Google Scholar
