Despite its depressing title, Hunger, written by the Egyptian-born Mohamed El-Bisatie, is a delightful book to read. It was published last year in Arabic under the title “Ju” and immediately translated into English by Denys Johnson Davies.
Johnson Davies has already translated a collection of Mohamed El-Bisatie’s short stories “A Last Glass of Tea and other Stories” and one of his novels “Houses Behind the Trees.”
He is one of the finest translators and he has also won last year’s Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Personality of the Year in the field of culture. Like many authors of his generation, El-Bisatie first wrote short stories which were published in 1968.
His style is remarkably fluid and devoid of the artifices so often present in other Arab writers. He does not dramatize or romanticize the situations, his descriptions are straightforward and his style remarkably lean and crisp. El-Bisatie’s exemplary use of a journalistic technique sets his work apart from other contemporary writers. He also excels in the way he manipulates the extraordinary richness of the Arabic spoken language.
Mohamed El-Bisatie was born in 1937 in El Gamalia bordering Lake Manzalah in the Nile Delta. He left his native village when he joined the faculty of commerce at the University of Cairo. It was not the college he wanted but he did not achieve good enough marks in his final exams to enter the college of his choice.
Like many Egyptian writers, El-Bisatie did not live off his writing. He wrote in his spare time and until his recent retirement, he was an accountancy inspector for the government. El-Bisatie is a member of the famous group of writers known as “Gallery 68.”
Gallery 68 is an avant-garde literary magazine which was the brainchild of a core group of about ten writers and artists. In reality, Gallery 68 included over 60 novelists, poets and critics whose work was published in the magazine’s eight issues.
Just like Naguib Mahfouz is universally famous for his regal descriptions of Cairene life, El-Bisatie is known for his vivid portrayals of the people living in the villages surrounding Lake Manzala in the north of the Nile Delta.
“One sometimes feels that the area of Lake Manzala remains for him almost a place created by his own imagination as a writer, that it no longer has any meaning for him other than as the inkwell into which to dip his pen. It is surely significant that he has not once been back since , as a young man, he left to go to university. No doubt, I told myself, he does not want to risk having the canvas he has painted for himself in any way distorted by reality,” writes Denys Johnson Davies. The heroes of El-Bisatie’s novels and short stories are simple peasants, small shopkeepers, schoolmasters and government officials. He entertains his readers with the petty dramas and comic situations of their daily lives.
Hunger is the story of a poor family, Zaghloul, the lazy father, too often out of work, his courageous wife, Sakeena and their two boys. They are constantly thinking about food not knowing what they will have to eat for their next meal. El-Bisatie manages to write about this serious topic with a touch of humor and poetry.
In the beginning of this short novel, he describes in the style for which he is famous, how hunger affects Zaghloul’s family at nighttime: “The night was quiet, the moon was out and there was not a sound. Everyone was asleep. Who but them in the lane was still up at this hour? Colic brought on by hunger keeps sleep away. It would only be an hour or so and their stomach would quieten down. Stomach cramps do not last, a twinge or two and they settle down.”
Despite the novel’s picturesque setting, its universal subject strikes a chord beyond Egypt. One can only hope that readers will appreciate this realistic portrait, part of a new literary trend, set off by the sensational worldwide success of Al Aswany ‘s bestseller, “The Yacoubian Building.”
Elias Khoury, author of Gates of the Sun, a novel about the Palestinian tragedy, admits that he does not want to be read because of the Arab elements in his work, but rather because his writing “speaks to you as a human being.” An increasing number of ground breaking Arab writers do not want to be read because their fiction fits a familiar stereotype, they want to be recognized as individual talents rather than standard-bearers of a language or culture.
