MANSOURA Ez Eldin’s first novel, “Maryam’s Maze,” is enigmatic, mysterious and, at times, inscrutable. Born in 1976 in a small village in the Egyptian Delta, Mansoura Ez Eldin, one of the most promising authors of a new generation of Egyptian writers, graduated in journalism from Cairo University in 1998. Her first short stories were published in the Arab press when she was 21. A collection of the stories was released in Cairo in 2001. At present she works for the renowned Egyptian literary magazine “Akhbar Al-Adab” (News of Literature).
Maryam’s Maze was first published in Arabic in 2004 as “Matabat Maryam.” The novel is written in the same enigmatic and dreamlike style that characterizes Mansoura’s short stories. The author acknowledges that she is “fascinated by the relation between dreams and reality” and she also feels that dreams or nightmares enrich reality. The narrative is imbued with the writer’s preoccupation with the influence of the past on the present.
“The objects and memories that seem to be receding, as they fade further and further into the background, are not really far away. On the contrary, they penetrate us as they are absorbed by our blood, mingling with every atom to such an extent that they succeed in deceiving us. They make us think that our memory has completely wiped them out, until we are surprised when they suddenly burst forth like scattered fragments, to form a total state with no clear details, a state that moves us to sadness or nostalgia, or to exhilaration whose source we cannot fathom,” writes Ez Eldin.
This eerie novel relates the strange story of Maryam who wakes up one morning in unfamiliar surroundings. She subsequently finds out that she is unable to contact her friends who have vanished. Everyone she has known has disappeared and she is thrown into a void. She is tempted to think that they have simply been replaced by different creatures who are trying to imitate them so the truth remains uncovered and “everyone could remain in his own private maze.”
Kara Kellar Bell who reviewed Ez Eldin’s short stories published in “Unbuttoning The Violin” explains that Ez-Eldin’s style is at times “less magic realism than irrealism where dreamlike actions and images are not fully explained and characters are sketched in sparse but memorable prose.”
Throughout the novel, we follow the heroine struggling through a maze of dreams and memories to find out what is happening to her. The constant play between Maryam’s present and former state often leaves the reader confused, frustrated and anxious to understand the truth behind the story. Like Maryam, we end up with a maze of unanswered questions. It seems as if Mansoura Ez Eldin were purposely creating this confusion, leaving everyone free to make up his or her own mind. The author has deliberately chosen not to give her novel an obvious meaning, hoping the reader will accept the ambiguous open end. Her readiness to take risks with her readers shows that Arab women writers are spearheading a literary revival in the Middle East.
“Arab women authors are nowadays writing with more audacity than ever before, especially in Egypt. They are writing about the female body and religious and political issues in a much more open way. In fact they are the most daring group of writers, having the most impact on the new writing scene” explains Ez Eldin.
“Maryam’s Maze” is not an easy novel to read. Despite its shortness, finishing it was a tedious challenge. Mansoura is currently working on her second book. Her writing skills and her vivid imagination are unquestionable but I can only hope her new novel will prove more pleasurable.
