Before the Throne by Naguib Mahfouz
“Your interest in Arab unity was higher than your interest in Egypt’s integrity,” bemoaned Menes, “for you even removed her immortal name with one stroke of the pen. You compelled many of her sons to migrate abroad, such as happened only in fleeting moments of subjugation.”
“I am not to blame if some Egyptians see Arab unity as a catastrophe for themselves,” disputed Abdel-Nasser, “nor if I accomplish majestic things that those who came before me were too weak to achieve. For in truth, Egyptian history really began on July 23, 1952.”
A hubbub arose among those present, continuing to build until Osiris called out, “Order in the court! Ladies and gentlemen, you must allow everyone to express their opinion freely.”
“Permit me to hail you in my capacity as the first revolutionary among Egypt’s poor,” began Abnum. “I want to testify that the wretched did not enjoy such security in any age—after my own—as they did in yours. I can only fault you for one thing: for insisting that your revolution be stainless, when in fact the blood should have run in rivers!”
“What is that butcher raving about now?” objected Khufu, scowling.
“Do not forget that you are no longer sitting upon your throne,” Osiris berated him. “Say you are sorry.”
“I am sorry,” said Khufu sheepishly.
“Despite your martial upbringing,” Thutmose III lectured Abdel-Nasser, “and though you have proven your outstanding ability in many other fields, none of them were military. Nor were you a military leader in any serious sense of the term.”
“One must forgive my defeat by an army equipped by the most powerful state on the face of the earth!”
“Your duty was to avoid war and to refrain from provoking superior powers!” Imhotep, vizier to King Djoser, rebuked him.
“That conflicted with my goals, while I was deceived more than once!” Abdel-Nasser complained.
“An excuse worse than the offense,” snapped Ptahhotep.
“You attempted to blot my name from existence, along with the name of Egypt,” said Saad Zaghloul. “You said about me that I rose on the crest of the 1919 Revolution. Let me tell you about the meaning of leadership. Leadership is a divine gift and a popular instinct. It does not come to a person either by blind luck or chance. The Egyptian leader is the one to whom all Egyptians pledge their allegiance, regardless of their differing faiths—or he will never be leader of the Egyptians. He may also be an Arab or Islamic leader—for which, in any case, I don’t reject your claim. I consider your slander against me but a youthful indiscretion, that perhaps could be tolerated in view of the glorious services you have rendered. The Urabi Revolution was a noble struggle that was thwarted most painfully. The 1919 Revolution was one of the great exploits bestowed by history, but its enemies grew more and more numerous until it was wiped out with the burning of Cairo. Then your revolution came, and you put paid to its enemies as you completed the message of the two earlier uprisings. And though it began as a military coup, the people nonetheless blessed it and gave it their loyalty. It was in your power to build its base among them and to establish an enlightened, democratic form of government. But your delusive impulses toward autocracy were responsible for all the drawbacks and disasters of your rule.”
“We needed a period of transition to fix the foundations of our revolution,” Abdel-Nasser asserted.
“That is a feeble dictatorial claim that we always hear from the nation’s enemies,” Mustafa al-Nahhas, Zaghloul’s successor as head of the Wafd Party, retorted scornfully. “You had at your disposal a popular Wafdist fundament which you crushed with your tanks. You were incapable of creating an alternative to it, and the country suffered in a vacuum instead. You stretched out your hand to the criminals of the land, falling into an unfortunate contradiction between a reforming project whose spirit had come from the Wafd, and a style of rule inspired by the king and the privileged elites—until this way of running things frustrated all your fairest designs.”
“True democracy to me,” swore Abdel-Nasser, “meant the liberation of the Egyptians from colonialism, exploitation, and poverty.”
“You were heedless of liberty and human rights,” al-Nahhas resumed his attack. “While I don’t deny that you kept faith with the poor, you were a curse upon political writers and intellectuals, who are the vanguard of the nation’s children. You cracked down on them with arrest and imprisonment, with hanging and killing, until you had degraded their dignity and humiliated their humanity, until you had had eradicated their optimism and smashed the formation of their personalities—and only God knows when their proper formation shall return. Those who launched the 1919 Revolution were people of initiative and innovation in the various fields of politics, economics and culture. How your high-handedness spoiled your most pristine depths! See how education was vitiated, how the public sector grew depraved! How your defiance of the world’s powers led you to horrendous losses and shameful defeats! You never sought the benefit of another person’s opinion, nor learned from the lessons of Muhammad Ali’s experience. And what was the result? Clamor and cacophony, and an empty mythology—all heaped on a pile of rubble.”
“I moved my country from one condition to another, just as I shifted the Arabs and the course of helpless nations. The problems will be treated until they disappear. In time, they will be forgotten, while what was helpful to humanity will remain. Then the people will affirm my true grandeur.”
“If only you had been more modest in your ambitions, if only you had stuck to reforming your nation and had opened the windows of progress to her in all areas of civilization. The development of the Egyptian village was more important than the world’s revolutions. Encouraging scientific research was more urgent than the campaign in Yemen. Combating illiteracy was more imperative than confronting global imperialism. Unfortunately, you wasted an opportunity that had never appeared to the country before. For the first time, a native son ruled the land, without contention from king or colonizer. Yet rather than curing the disease-ridden citizen, he drove him into a competition for the world championship when he was hobbled by illness. The outcome was that the citizen lost the race, and himself, as well.”
Here Isis had her say.
“My joy at the return of the throne to one of my children cannot be contained!” she exclaimed. “His magnificent accomplishments would need all the walls of the temples in order to record them. As for his faults, I do not know how to defend them.”
Osiris then announced his verdict.
“If our trial here had the last word in your judgment,” he declared, “we would be compelled to give long and difficult consideration to arrive at justice. Certainly, few have performed so many services to their country as you have for yours, nor brought down so many evils upon it as you have, as well. However, in your case, being the first of Egypt’s sons to occupy her throne since olden times, and the first to devote himself to the laboring people’s welfare, we will suffer you to sit with the Immortals until this tribunal ends. Afterward, you shall go to your final trial with an appropriate recommendation.”
63
HORUS HERALDED, “Muhammad Anwar Sadat!”
A trim, dark-complected man of middling stature came in. He continued on his way until he stood before the throne.
Osiris invited him to address the court.
“I was born in the village of Mit Abul-Kom,” Sadat began, “and raised in a poor family. There I met with many daunting hardships during my studies. Filled with patriotic passion since I was small, I took part in Wafdist demonstrations. I was able to enroll in the War College, which opened its doors to people of lowly backgrounds like mine after the treaty of 1936. From the time of my graduation, I was appalled that the army was under the control of the British military. Seized by the idea of armed revolution against the English, I created the first secret apparatus in the army in 1939. I contacted the Muslim Brotherhood and was much impressed by their activities; during the war, I also tried to be in touch with the Germans. For that I
“At that time, Gamal Abdel-Nasser contacted me and recruited me to his organization. When the 1952 Revolution occurred, events kept cascading one after another until Abdel-Nasser died, and I succeeded him as president in a moment of acute crisis. I was well aware of the negatives that decayed the greatness of the Nasser era, so I launched a new revolution to save the nation from imminent doom. I smashed the centers of power, then moved slowly toward establishing security and democratic rule. On October 6, 1973, I surprised not only the occupying enemy, but the whole world with an unforeseen victory. I achieved a triumph that saved the Arab soul from despair as it redeemed honor from shame, before embarking on another adventure by boldly entering the enemy’s land to call for a settlement between us using words rather than weapons. My long quest ended with the accords at Camp David. I launched the great opening, al-Infitah, to rescue the nation’s economy, and made new advances toward representative government. Yet I was hindered by obstacles that I had not taken into account, for the opposition deviated from the true path, as the fanatic religious tendency suddenly began to menace the nation with violence. In the face of all these challenges, I adopted a resolute position from which there could be no retreat—but matters ended in my assassination on the anniversary of the day on which I had brought my country the pride of victory.”
Akhenaten was first to reply to Sadat’s speech.
“I hail you as a fellow apostle of peace,” he told him. “Nor am I astonished at your opponents’ accusing you of treason. They made the same charge against me, and for the same reason.”
“Your victory reminds me of that of Ramesses II, which culminated in a pact of peace and the marriage of his son to the daughter of the Hittite king,” said Thutmose III.
“A ruler is responsible first and foremost for the life of his people,” added Ramesses II. “From this starting point, he resorts to war or turns toward peace.”
“I sincerely believed in the futility of continuing a war policy,” said Anwar Sadat.
“How much you resemble me, Mr. President,” Amenhotep III admitted, “in your love of the good life for your people and yourself. Both of us reveled in pageantry and ease, in grandeur and palaces. Yet my age allowed me to bask in luxury without vexation, while in yours you tasted the bitter with the sweet. Permit me to express to you my sympathy and my affection.”
“You ruled in circumstances similar in some respects to those which confronted me during my first reign,” Horemheb said, “after the death of the aged King Aya. I concede that you performed truly noble deeds, and that you took some beneficial steps. Yet you were so lax in combating corruption and corrupt people, that it seemed your victories were turned into defeats.”
“I labored to encourage civil servants to strike off the hands of corrupt officials,” swore Anwar Sadat.
“No nation can exist without discipline and morals,” proclaimed Horemheb.
Then Gamal Abdel-Nasser asked Sadat, “How could it have been so easy for you to distort my memory so treacherously?”
“I was forced to take the position that I did, for the essence of my policy was to correct the mistakes I inherited from your rule,” rebutted Sadat.
“Yet didn’t I delegate power to you in order to satisfy you, encourage you, and treat you as a friend?”
“How tyrannical to judge a human being for a stand taken in a time of black terror, when fathers fear their sons and brothers fear each other!” shot back Sadat.
“And what was the victory that you won but the fruit of my long preparations for it!” bellowed Abdel-Nasser.
“A defeated man like you did not score such a triumph,” retorted Sadat. “Rather, I returned to the people their freedom and their dignity, then led them to an undeniable victory.”
“And you gave away everything for the sake of an ignominious peace,” bristled Abdel-Nasser, “dealing Arab unity a fatal thrust, condemning Egypt to exclusion and isolation.”
“From you I inherited a nation tottering on the abyss of annihilation,” countered Sadat. “The Arabs would neither offer a friendly hand in aid, nor did they wish us to die, nor to be strong. Rather, they wanted us to remain on our knees at their mercy. And so I did not hesitate to take my decision.”
“You exchanged a giant that had always stood by us for one who had always opposed us!” Abdel-Nasser upbraided him.
“I went to the giant who held the solution in his hand,” pointed out Sadat. “Since then, events have confirmed that my thoughts were correct.”
“Then you rushed into the Infitah until the country was drowning in a wave of inflation and corruption,” Abdel-Nasser asserted, pressing his indictment. To the degree it was possible, in my time the poor were secure, while in yours, only the rich and the thieves were safe.”
“I worked for the well-being of Egypt, while the opportunists pounced behind my back,” lamented Sadat.
“You tried to murder me, and, if not for Divine Providence, you would have succeeded,” said Mustafa al-Nahhas. “Yet you lost your own life as the result of assassination. Do you still believe in that method?”
“We need to live twice to acquire true wisdom,” pleaded Sadat.
“I have heard of your call for democracy, and I was astonished,” al-Nahhas continued. “Then it became clear to me that you wanted democratic rule in which the leader has dictatorial authority.”
“I wanted a democracy that would return the village to its traditional manners, and bring back respect for the father,” said Sadat.
“This is tribal democracy,” al-Nahhas replied.
“That is true,” said Saad Zaghloul. “Yet, though true democracy is taken, not given, there is no call to blame him unreasonably.”
“The travails of the people grew worse and worse,” resumed Mustafa al-Nahhas. “What happened is what usually transpires in such conditions, when one avoids dealing with strife and extremism. You let things get out of control as if you didn’t care. Then suddenly you exploded and threw everyone in prison, enraging both Muslims and Christians, moderates and extremists alike. Finally things culminated in the tragedy at the reviewing stand.”
“I found that there was no other option but a decisive blow to control the chaos,” Sadat said defiantly, “for it seemed the country was about to erupt into full-blown civil war.”
“When the ruler usurps the rights of his people, he makes an enemy out of them,” adjudged Saad Zaghloul. “When that happens, the political strength of the country is squandered in internal conflict, rather than in doing what should be done.”
Isis then uttered her summation.
“Thanks to this son,” she said, “the spirit returned to the homeland. Egypt regained her complete independence, as it had been before the Persian incursion. He erred as others too have erred, while accomplishing more good than others have done.”
Osiris then turned toward Anwar Sadat.
“I welcome you as one of the Immortals among the sons of Egypt,” he told him. “You shall proceed to your other tribunal with a testimonial bestowing honor from ours.”
64
OSIRIS DIRECTED HIS GAZE toward the Immortals.
“Thus has the life of Egypt passed before you in all its joys and sorrows,” he intoned, “from the time that Menes brought forth her unity, until she regained her independence at the hand of Sadat. Perhaps, then, some of you have reflections that you would wish to mention now?”
King Akhenaten sought leave to speak.
“I appeal to you to hold to the worship of the One God,” he called out, “for the sake of truth, immortality, and liberation from the idolatry of earthly things.”
“Be zealous for the unity of the land and the people,” admonished Menes, “for disaster only comes when this unity is ruptured.”
“Egypt must believe in labor,” declared Khufu, “for with it I erected the Great Pyramid, and by it all things are built.”
“And in wisdom and literature,” seconded the Sage Ptahhotep, “to savor the vitality of life and to imbibe its nectar.”
“And she must believe in the people and in revolution,” preached Abnum, “to propel her destiny toward completion.”
“And believe in might,” said Thutmose III, “that cannot be achieved before she has grappled with her neighbors in battle.”
“And that government be of the people and for the people,” exhorted Saad Zaghloul.
“And that relations between people be based on absolute social justice,” demanded Gamal Abdel-Nasser.
“And that her goal be civilization and peace, as well,” added Anwar Sadat.
“May the Divinity be implored,” Isis sighed hopefully, “to invest the folk of Egypt with the wisdom and the power to remain for all time a lighthouse of right guidance, and of beauty.”
All opened their palms in supplication, absorbed in prayer.
Translator’s Afterword
BEFORE THE THRONE IS NOT MERELY a book about olden times. This is a tableau of all Egypt’s history, from the remotest past to practically the present, and the rulers who led her through it—each judged by the Osiris Court, which in the ancient religion decided the fate of the soul after death. Moreover, its author insisted that this work (published as Amam al-’arsh in 1983), was not fiction. When pressed on the matter, Naguib Mahfouz, whose own life (1911–2006) spanned nearly a century, replied simply, “It is history.”1
But if so, it is history of a peculiar kind. Though based on many years of research and a lifetime of reflection on Egypt’s past, the setting is imaginary and the dialog invented. And far from being conventional historical fiction, or even romance, like his first three published novels (all of which were set in ancient Egypt), this is actually a kind of theatrical conversation between characters, with scant stage directions and the barest of scenery, though we are told that the décor is all of solid gold.