The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
All these loci are inseparable from their times in the narrative. The expansion of space accompanies the augmentation of time from one novel to the next, but this is ironically marked by the shrinking of narrative. Palace Walk covers two years in 533 Pages? Palace of Desire four years in 448 pages, and Sugar Street ten years in 330 pages. Palace Walk establishes the traditional time with its slow rhythm and static continuity, the rituals and daily chores mark the cyclical time. The eruption of the revolution that brings this first part to a close with the tragic death of Fahmy dislodges the eternal timelessness from its harmony, stability and static continuity.
Palace of Desire opens five years later with al-Sayyid 'extracting from his caftan the gold watch', the emblem of Chronometrie time, as a clear indication of a new perception. Sugar Street demonstrates how this new time and the vicissitudes of life have taken their toll on the old cohesive family, and is characterized by its fast pace of change and drama. This reflects the change from the pre-modern condition, with its timeless simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present, its slow rhythm and static rituals, to modern, heterogeneous, empty time, the time of dynamic transformation and rapid change. As Benedict Anderson convincingly argues in his Imagined Communities, this change in the concept of time is vital for the birth of the imagined community of the nation. The very structure of Mahfouz's narrative shows the dynamics and pains of this change in the life of both the family and the nation.
Whai Bakhtin called the chronotopic presentation of narrative creates constant interaction between time and space through out the text, which redefines relationships of power and develops its meaning and trajectories. The Trilogy starts with the mother, Amina, waking up at night and ends with her death, as though she were the raison d'etre of the narrative. In the first half of Palace Walk, she is inseparable from our perception of 1 he novel's time and space. Chronotopic dialectics permeate the texture of the narrative. The greater the gap between the time of the narrative and the present, the greater the need to employ detailed social codes in order to reproduce the socio-cultural milieu and make it vivid, authentic and lively. Hence the narrative needs more time and space to develop a sense of reality regarding the years between 1917-19 than it does for the more recent years of the 1940s.
Culinary and other social rituals punctuate life in the Jawad family household. At dawn, the day starts with the kneading of dough in the baking room on the ground floor. Although, chronologically, the kneading takes place after the mother performs the dawn prayer, narrative order reverses this, making it the marker of the beginning of the day. This change is reinforced by describing the kneading and the subsequent baking in detail while mentioning the prayer only in reported narrative. Another indication of Amina's importance is the narrative subversion of the established order. “The allocation of space in the house is hierarchically designated. The patriarch occupies the top floor, the mother and the rrale children the middle floor, the other females the ground floor, and the baking room is banished to the courtyard. But the temporal arrangement of the narrative brings the baking room, the domain of the mother and her domestic activities, forwar i. This narrative inversion of the realistic order subverts reality and rebalances a social hierarchy that diminishes the status of women by giving them narrative precedence over the world of men.
The elaborate description of the baking room, with its active females as the source of life and many of its delicious pleasures, gives it a highly significant role in punctuating the day and marking seasonal events, such as Ramadan, two annual feasts, and various other social occasions. No wonder, for it is also the kitchen and the incontestable realm of the mother where she reigns supreme over the domestic life of her family. The room is presented not only as the internal clock of the house, the source of its nourishment (it backs on to the larder and storeroom), but also as the testing ground for its women. It harbours special recipes for fattening birds and animals for domestic consumption, and women for prospective suitors. The warmth and intimacy of the room contrast with other areas of the house.
Once breakfast is prepared, the mother takes it on a brass tray to the dining room and oversees its serving and consumption. Here again Mahfouz uses food to communicate a host of significant messages. Breakfast is singled out because it is the only meal in which the boys eat with their father, the nearest thing to a family gathering. The dishes eaten reveal the social background of the family and even its national identity. Eggs, brown beans, cheese, pickled lemons and peppers and hot loaves of flat round bread for breakfast put the family into the upper stratum of the middle class, while the presence of fried beans makes it unmistakably Egyptian, for fried brown beans are as Egyptian as bacon and eggs are British. The eating of the meal on a low table around which cushions are placed for seating further identifies the social setting as one of a family rising to the upper level of the middle class rather than falling into it from a higher one. The latter would cling to a normal dining table and chairs. The interaction between the father and his three boys, the only members of the family allowed to eat with him, reveals further information about his character, his educational and cultural background and his relationship with his children.
Although the mother is not allowed to eat with them, her job does not end with the bringing of the breakfast tray. She stands in the room by the water jug waiting to obey any command. The mother who reigns supreme downstairs is reduced to a voiceless marginal existence upstairs. Yet her silent presence during the ritual confers on hsr a kind of hier-omancy which is not available to the other fe nale members of the family. The three boys, though famished, restrain themselves and wait until their father starts, then they follow in order of seniority: Yasin, Fahmy and then Kamal. This shows their highly formal response to paternal authority and the degree of hierarchical interaction within the family, which is reinforced when the author changes the narrative point of view and describes the progression of the meal fro n the standpoint of the youngest son, Kamal. He fears his fatr er the most, eats cautiously and nervously and is concerned about his inability to compete for his share of food with his two energetic elder brothers, particularly after his father leave:; the table. The departure of the father, followed by the mother, leads to the collapse of the eating order and transforms the formalized hierarchical space into a democratic one. New the three boys fight for the food in a completely different setting. This very transformation is a further indication of the inner dynamics of the family.
The early departure of the father prepares the reader for the finale of his breakfast, when he goes to his room and the mother follows him with a cup containing three raw eggs mixed with milk and honey. Here the narrative opens on the world of different concoctions and tonics; some are prepared for the father 1o stimulate his appetite or for their aDhrodisiac effect, while others are cooked for the daughters to make them plump and atlractive. It also introduces the reader to the two contrasting concerns of men and women in thi> domain. While the mother is versed in the dietary aspects o:' such tonics, the father introduces us, through his train of thought, to the narcotic variations on the theme.
There is another significant contrast between the family gathering over which the father prevails, the breakfast, and that oyer which the mother presides, the caffee hour, soon before sunset. In the latter, a democratic matriarchal interaction replaces the oppressive patriarchal order. Unlike breakfast, which takes place on the top floor and h confined to the male members of the family, the coffee hour takes place on the first floor and is open to everyone, bar the absent father who, after work, goes on his nocturnal exploits. Although not every member of the family is allowed to drink coffee, everyone plays a role in the social ritual, which brings them together and allows for the realization of their different needs. The breakfast scene with its rigidly hierarchic order is presented from a unitary viewpoint. When the author changes the narrative perspective to relate the rest of the scene from Kamal's point of view, this is done mainly to demonstrate the power
Family politics in the Trilogy are revealed in the daily rituals of eating and drinking coffee as well as in the symbolism of the distribution of space for each activity. The breakfast takes place on the top floor, which is the sole domain of the father. Everyone comes to his ground and behaves according to his rules. The same can be said about the ground floor, the incontestable kingdom of the mother, and even about the first floor during the coffee hour. But since time and change are the two invisible heroes of the Trilogy the ordering of space changes and with it the significance of meals and refreshments that take place there.
In Palace of Desire, the move of the coffee hour from the first floor to the ground floor after the death of Fahmy and the marriage of the two daughters shows how these two major blows to the mother's world have almost eradicated the main source of her social pleasure. The devastating blow to the harmony of this home comes from the counter-space of the Shaddad mansion. The trappings of modernity in Aida's house are as significant as the different food she brings to the picnic at the Pyramids, where secularism and pharaonicism are brought together. Food can clearly indicate social class, cultural background and even temporal changes in modes of behavior and taste, but it can also herald a conceptual change in Kamal's life.
In Sugar Street, the return of the coffee hour to the first floor is used as an indicator of a major relational change. The series of disasters afflicting the beautiful younger daughter, Aisha, gives her certain liberties earned through suffering, including smoking openly and participating fully in the coffee hour with the male members of the family. The coffee hour now brings the women from the ground floor to the first, hence establishing at least a quasi-parity between all members of the family. This is possible because of the deteriorating health of the patriarch, which forces him to come down from the top to the first floor. Now he eats his supper, which consists of yoghurt and an orange, at home. No longer can he partake of the delights of night parties and the food and drink assoc ated with them. When he becomes frail, al-Sayyid is brought down to the ground floor and ends up bedridden and totally dependent on his wife, thus completing his descent, while Amina stays in her first-floor room until the end. Later on the absence of the coffee hour becomes as significant as its presence.
The spatial rise of the mother is inseparable from the fall of the patriarch. While Amina appears to be submissive and docile her remarkable character and pragmatic conduct speak of a strong, practical woman. In contrast, al-Sayyid is an authoritarian man and a product of an authoritarian society. Ironically both the demonstration and concealment of his virility and debauchery are quintessential to his patriarchy. Hence his character is the locus for sharp contradiction:;, for he is honest and hypocritical, harsh and tender, stern and joyful, pious and libertine, strong and weak. The seeds of his downfall are carefully implanted in the narrative: from die early scene of Yasin's discovery of his lascivious activities; to Fahmy's refusal to pledge to sever his links with the patriotic movement; to Kamal's unwillingness to follow his advice end study law; to his humiliation by the British in front of his son; to Zanuba's rejection of his advances. Similarly, the rise of the mother is as carefully implanted in the text, from the time when the children plot to demand her return after she is banished from the house as a result of her egregious act of disobedience and visit to the shrine of al-Husayn, until the time she reigns suprerr e in her household.
In these examples concerning the daily rituals, the mundane and the quotidian, one glimpses certain aspects of the politics of narrative presentation which Mahfouz employs in the Trilogy, politics of gender and power. Simple rituals are depicted as repositories of cultural values and powei relationships as microcosms of political ones. We see how the life of the family is inseparable from the vicissitudes of the times and of politics in the country, and how spatial presentations shift to suit temporal changes. But nowhere in the Trilogy are the realistic and the allegorical so closely intertwined as in the central love story of the novel, that of Kamal and Ai'da.
The story is played out on several levels, the most significant of which is the allegorical one as an embodiment of the internal war of the body politic. When Kamal falls for Ai'da, it is not her class that attracts him, but her culture, European sensibility and secular orientation. She is unfettered by archaic tradition and is free to determine her future, qualities of the Egypt of his dreams. Ai'da could have been on his mind when he said of Egypt, “Has she dismissed the one man she could trust at a time when he was busy defending her rights?” As a result of seeing her in these terms, he sees himself vis-a-vis his rival as a sincere man accorded the unjust treatment given to Sa'd Zaghlul at the hands of his rival, Ziwar Pasha, who replaces Zaghlul as Prime Minister. The failure of KamaPs affair with Ai'da is seen as a betrayal, and heralds the end of the middle novel of the Trilogy with the cataclysmic historical event of the death of Zaghlul.
The Trilogy has an internal historical memory whereby certain repetitions demonstrate the impact of time and cruelty of change, and this widens the scope of its interpretation. It makes effective use of the narrative device of mirroring views, events and characters on each other as if one were continually in a hall of mirrors. Yasin's interest in Maryam echoes his late brother's desire to marry her. Al-Sayyid's lust for Zanuba recalls her past affair with his son, and her future marriage to Yasin is a constant reminder of this past. Kamal attempts to recapture his love for Ai'da by chasing her younger sister, Budur. Ahmad's short love affair with Alawiya Sabri conjures up KamaPs protracted passion for Ai'da, and contrasts with it at the same time. These all mirror the present in the past and demonstrate how things have changed.
We have seen how each house in the Trilogy has its opposite and its double. The same process extends to the main characters where a constant process of mirroring, of contrast and similarity takes place. Al-Sayyid has both Shaddad Bey as his complete opposite and his own friends Iffat and al-Far as his doubles. Amina has both Haniya, Yasin's moiher, and Bahija, Maryam's mother, as her opposites and her daughter Khadija and even Zanuba as her doubles. Kamal has Fuad al-Hamzawi as his opposite, has both similarity and contrast with his own brother, Yasin, and his friend, Riyad Qaldas, and has his nephew, Ahmad, as his double. Kamal, a Hamlet-like figure who is perfectly at home with radicalism arid conservatism, has long been interpreted as bearing many autobiographical elemenls of Mahfouz's persona, but the author has as many autobiographical affinities with Kamal as with his nephew Ahniad
Mahfouz has said that his narrative is concerned more with architecture and less with interior decoration. The Trilogy succeeds in becoming both a political allegory and a reservoir of social customs, folk tales and songs, popular tunes, common proverbs and the whole undercurrent of urban culture in Egypt in the first half of this century. It reflects the cultural and pol itical development of a society in tu rmoil under the pressures of the British occupation, and draws a highly detailed map of Egypt's political orientations. As a family saga it succeeds in enshrining major social 8668 of relationships, emotions and role-playing to the exteit that itshero, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, has become the Egyptian patriarch par excellence. Even today, when the Trilogy is serialized on television, both men and women throughout the Arab world view this archetypal and larger-than-life patric rch with melancholic nostalgia and admiration. This is so because the author portrayed him with similar sentiments for he was based on Mahfouz's own father. It is ironic that the riost memorable patriarch in modern Arabic literature is the one who portrays the decline of patriarchy and its distinction and stature.
The novel also has its prophetic vision and warning for the future. Every novel in the Trilogy ends witl a death and a birth, but the death and birth of the final novel, Sugar Street, are orac ular. The novel ends with the death of Amina, and the imprisonment of her two grandchildren Ahrr ad and Abd al-Mun'im, the Communist and the Muslim B Other. The two expone
Sabry Hafez
Sabry Hafez is Professor of modern Arabic and comparative literature in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has known Mahfouz since 1960 and published numerous articles and two books on him in Arabic. He has written extensively on modern Arabic literature and literary theory in both Arabic and English. His most recent book in English is The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
This bibliography is confined to works available ir English.
MEHAHEM MiLSON, JVaguib Mahfouz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo, St Martin Press, New York, 1998.
Rasheed el-enany, Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning, Routledge, London and New York, 1993.
MICHAEI, beard and ad nan haydar, eds^ Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1993. trevor le gassick, ed., Critical Perspectives on JVagrib Mahfouz, Three Continents Press, Washington DC, 1991.
Haim Gordon, JVaguib Mahfouz's Egypt: Existential Themes in his Writings, Greenwood Press, New York, 1990.
M.M. ena.ni, ed., Egyptian Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz: A Collection of Critical Essays, General Egyptian Book Organization, Cairo, 1989. mattityahu peled, Religion My Own: the Literary Works of Najib Mahfuz, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1983.