As Arabs, we are used to writing elegiacally about authors when they die. It’s an old custom especially found in Arabic poetry. We tend to forget about great writers and only remember them after they die. Sometimes we mourn their death for a while and then forget them. I believe that great writers are never to be elegized but their work ought to be taught and studied especially if the laureate we’re talking about is Naguib Mahfouz.
Mahfouz was a famous Egyptian novelist and the only Arab to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Louis Goldman said that Mahfouz is a novelist who was able to write and present his working class roots. In fact, he could be considered to be the mouthpiece of the Egyptian working class.
Mahfouz was born and raised in a working class Egyptian neighborhood and was witness to all happenings there. The community that Mahfouz had grown up in was something that, starting at the age of eight, he had the full capability of comprehending and understanding.
Because of a change in government in Egypt, this working class group faced certain difficulties. Their existence became even more difficult when the working class political party Hizb Al-Wafd was excluded from government. Hizb Al-Wafd ruled for only 12 years since 1923 when the Democratic Egyptian constitution was in place. Following a military coup in 1952, democracy came to an end and supporters of the Hizb Al-Wafd were marginalized.
The working class was soon pushed to the edges of society and forced to live in areas such as Fatimiah in Cairo, Al-Husain, Al-Ghouria and Al-Abassya. It was these areas that finally became the setting of many of Mahfouz’s novels and became the scene depicting the reality of an unseen Egypt. Even though Mahfouz, in the later phases of his life, lived in Al-Ajoza (an upper class suburb) his spirit never left Al-Husain and that’s why his death wish remained for his coffin to depart from Al-Husain.
These old districts or areas are where the true essence and heart of Egypt lies. Even Alexandria doesn’t represent anything of Egypt’s past history. Mahfouz’s writings colorfully reflect the historical flavor of Egypt and the country’s conscience. Mahfouz was witness to the elimination of the working class society that led to the elimination of old and noble values.
