The Dreams by Naguib Mahfouz
Among those who continually find new life in Mahfouz’s Dreams is one of his greatest intellectual influences, Shaykh Mustafa Abd al-Raziq (1885–1947), whom Mahfouz served as parliamentary secretary when the moderate Muslim cleric was Minister of Religious Endowments in the late 1930s and early ‘40s. Abd al-Raziq, a lucid, French-educated littérateur who later became head of al-Azhar, appears in Dream 155, asserting the superiority of science-based faith over superstition.
Eternal patriotism, with roots in Pharaonic Egypt that continue to flourish today, is the theme of Dream 146. The “golden statue of the nation’s reawakening” is undoubtedly Mahmoud Mukhtar’s renowned sculpture, “The Awakening of Egypt” (1920), which now sits by the Nile near the entrance to Cairo University. (Though not fashioned in gold, it shows a reclining sphinx next to a standing woman in traditional peasant dress.) The serpent, of course, is the uraeus cobra, the goddess Wadjet, symbol (and guardian) of pharaonic power. But the fear that the nation’s “historic treasures” might be stolen perhaps reflects the obsession of modern Egyptian intellectuals (and many others) that globalization has brought “cultural invasion”—a concept that Mahfouz himself rejected.23
More than anything, however, The Dreams is a monument to the women that Mahfouz loved early in life, and whose images never left him. Though happily married from 195424 until his death, two of these now-distant bewitchings particularly possess him here, as in many other of his works. One is the “enchantress of Crimson Lane” (in Arabic, Darb Qirmiz, the narrow street in front of his first boyhood home in the old Islamic quarter of Gamaliya), in Dream 83. She has many incarnations throughout Mahfouz’s vast oeuvre, as in his 1987 story, “Umm Ahmad” (“Mother of Ahmad”):
Crimson Lane has high stone walls; its doors are locked upon its secrets; there is no revealing of its mysteries without seeing them from within. There one sees a quarter for the poor folk and beggars gathered in the spot for their housework and to take care of their daily needs; and one sees a paradise singing with gardens, with a hall to receive visitors, and a harem for the ladies. And from the little high window just before the qabw [a vaulted passage connecting the lane to its continuation beyond], sometimes appears a face luminous like the moon; I see it from the window of my little house which looks out over the hara and I wander, despite my infancy, in the magic of its beauty. I hear its melodious voice while it banters greetings with my mother when she passes out of the alley, and perhaps this is what impressed in my soul the love of song; Fatima al-Umari, the unknown dream of childhood.… 25
Just as unforgettable—to the reader as well as to Mahfouz himself—is the creature who stays ethereally out of reach to the writer, not only in Dreams 14, 84, and 85, but also elsewhere, particularly in his most celebrated work, The Cairo Trilogy. In the second volume, Palace of Desire, Mahfouz’s admittedly autobiographical character, Kamal Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is fatefully smitten (and ultimately rejected) by an aristocratic neighbor in Abbasiya—the same district to which Mahfouz’s family moved from Gamaliya when he was about age ten. Mahfouz has said that the trauma of the actual lost teen romance upon which this was based afflicted him severely for about ten years—and remained vivid within him more than seventy years later. (That his feelings were probably never reciprocated—as in the Trilogy—means that Mahfouz, in reality, had been dreaming about a dream.)26
In Dream 104 it seems that the dreamer invites this person’s apparition to a meeting with a mutual friend, now long dead, in a place where all were happy in days of yore. Her name, the “Lady Eye” as translated, is actually the spelling of the guttural Arabic letter ‘ayn—(also meaning “eye”), and at the same time is the first letter of the name of Kamal’s impossible love object in the Trilogy, Aïda Shaddad. The man she is brought to meet is identified only as “il-mi’allim,” a dialect word meaning anything from shop owner, to top thug in a neighborhood, to head of a small business. One person it most could have fit in the Fishawi Café in the midst of Cairo’s Khan al-Khalili bazaar, where the dream ends, is a man who used to sell Mahfouz books there—who also happened to be sightless. Perhaps the blindness of love is at work here—and yet the woman whose very name signifies vision is the one scolded for failing to see.
No doubt the most painful to the author of all the dreams presented here, and the one that finally exposes the identity of the woman who was “Lady Eye,” did not appear in Nisf al-dunya. Instead it was published in al-Ahram, the third in a group of six carried in the daily (whose parent company also owns the magazine) on December 9, 2005, shortly before his ninety-fourth birthday (which sadly would be his last). In this dream, Mahfouz recounts a conversation with his sister in which she tells him that the woman he loves—whose name is Ayn—has died in Cairo’s Maternity Hospital. Based on my own research, the woman—who is the same “Ayn” found in Dream 10427—is actually Atiyah Shadid, one of Mahfouz’s neighbors in Abbasiyah—who died giving birth to her first child in Cairo’s Maternity Hospital in 1940. This is the real person whom he called Aïda Shaddad in the Trilogy—the great, unrequited love of his admittedly autobiographical character, Kamal Abd al-Jawad, and his own, as well—and who has many incarnations suffused throughout his fiction. (“Ayn” is also the name of the guttural first letter of both “Aïda” and “Atiya” in Arabic.)
Aïda’s father, Abdel Hamid Shaddad, guilelessly mirrors the actual Abdel Hamid Shadid, father of Atiya—both served as personal secretary to Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, ruler of Egypt from 1892–1914, even following him into exile in Europe after he was deposed by the British early in World War I. And in real life, Atiya had a sister named Aïda, and another called Budur, also the name of Aïda Shaddad’s younger sibling in the Trilogy. Aïda Shaddad dies 1943 in the Trilogy of pneumonia, in the Coptic Hospital in Cairo, loosely fictionalizing the death of her real-life counterpart.28
The true identity of “Aïda Shaddad” remained strictly secret all of Mahfouz’s life. He confirmed that she was Atiyah Shadid when I came to discuss this dream with him, one of the most moving moments of all my experience working with this most discreet of human beings.29 If I hadn’t met members of the Shadid family in 1995—who themselves seemed not to know which of the sisters really represented Aïda Shaddad, though they thought it was probably their own Aïda—I wouldn’t have known how to interpret this dream. The author was surprised finally to see his most-speculated-upon secret discovered, yet was very emotional, and—to my own subjective gaze—seemed somehow relieved, as well. Only the fact that, eleven years earlier, her relatives mentioned that one of the Shadid sisters, Atiya, had died in childbirth in 1940, provided the crucial clue, but even that would not have been enough without this encoded literary revelation. Faced with its detection, he said to me in apparent shock, “You got all that from a dream?”
In Dream 188, Mahfouz encounters many of the most important musical figures in Egypt (among them Darwish) stretching over the whole of the century just ended. Above them all is Umm Kulthoum, “the Star of the Orient” (1904?–75), who keeps chanting a haunting line from the Persian poet Omar Khayyam that she popularized in song. At the end, the dreamer recites the Fatiha—the opening chapter of the Qur’an—commonly compared to the Lord’s Prayer, and often read over those who have abandoned our world.
Though he has now departed, Mahfouz has not abandoned us—for, among many other treasures, he has left us his dreams. These on the whole express the longings—and embody the bittersweet recollections—that Naguib Mahfouz enlisted in The Songs, his heartbreakingly adept exercise in preserving the best of nearly a century of fleeting years and emotions through the remembrance of the lyrics that capture them. The seventh and final section of The Songs, “Old Age,” is the most powerful. There may be no better way to close an afterword to a book of prose that in so many ways is truly poetry, than to offer these verses in English:30
When the evening comes …
How long ago were we here?
Old closeness from the beautiful past, if only you could r
She said, how Time has mocked you since our parting!
And I told her, I seek refuge in God, but it was you, not Time.
What’s gone is gone, O my heart …
Say goodbye to your passion—forget it, and forget me.
Time that has gone will not come back again …
I cannot forget you.
We lived a lot and we saw a lot—
And he who lives sees wonders.
NOTES
1 Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1966), p. 68.
2 After a swift and controversial military proceeding, two men were hanged and eleven others sent to prison for the attempt on Naguib Mahfouz’s life and for plotting against the State. See Raymond Stock, “How Islamist Militants Put Egypt on Trial” (London: The Financial Times, Weekend FT, March 4/5, 1995), p. III.
3 The title is taken from the classic compilation of early Arabic poetry called Kitab al-aghani (The Book of Songs) by Abu Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 967)—no doubt the direct inspiration for Mahfouz’s own work. For al-Isfahani, see Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 32.
4 Dream 206 is found in Naguib Mahfouz, Dreams of Departure, translated from the Arabic and with an Afterword by Raymond Stock (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2007), p. 111. The first volume appeared as The Dreams, translated from the Arabic and with an Introduction by Raymond Stock (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2004). A comprehensive Arabic edition of Mahfouz dreams published to date (including 204–30, which appeared after the author’s death) in Nisf al-dunya magazine and al-Ahram was brought out by Dar El-Shurouk in Cairo as Ahlam fatrat al-naqaha in 2007.
5 See Naguib Mahfouz, Ra’aytu fima yara al-na’im (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1982), pp. 119–52.
6 Fedwa Malti-Douglas, “Mahfouz’s Dreams” in Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition, ed. by Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 126–143. For more on the maqamat of Badi’ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani and Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham by Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, see Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 73. Allen’s translation with commentary of Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham has appeared as A Period of Time (Reading: Garnet, 1993).
7 George Makdisi, in History and Politics in 11th Century Baghdad (Aldershot, Hamps. and Broofield, VT: Variorum, 1990), pp. 35–36.
8 Ibid., pp. II/249–50.
9 Interview with Naguib Mahfouz, June 23, 2004.
10 As quoted by Ian Littlewood in The Rough Guide Chronicle: France (London: Rough Guides Ltd., 2002), p. 296. For an expansion on this theme, see Sarane Alexandrian, Le Surréalisme et le rêve (Paris: Gallimard, 1974).
11 Khufu’s Wisdom (translated by Raymond Stock), Rhadopis of Nubia (translated by Anthony Calderbank), and Kifah Tiba (translated by Humphrey Davies) were all published in hardback by the American University in Cairo Press in 2003, in paperback by Anchor Books in New York in 2005, and by Alfred A. Knopf in an omnibus Everyman’s Library hardcover edition, Three Novels of Ancient Egypt, introduced by Nadine Gordimer (New York, 2007).
12 For a summary and the statements cited, see “Egypt’s Nobel Winner Asks Islamists to Approve Book,” by David Hardaker in The Independent (London), January 28, 2006 (available online).
13 Mohamed Salmawy, “Wijhat Nazar: Hiwarat Najib Mahfuz,” al-Ahram, Cairo, January 23, 2003, p. 12. Mahfouz had expressed similar frustration in an earlier period, where he felt unable to remember his dreams to record them, to Salmawy in “Wijhat Nazar,” al-Ahram, September 12, 2002, p. 12.
14 Mahfouz later suffered at least two more falls, both also in his home—on January 22, 2006, which left a long gash in his forehead, and again on July 16, 2006, causing a cut requiring five stitches on the back of his head in the Police Authority Hospital next door, where he was then held for tests and observation. A few days later, he struck his head in his hospital room in unclear circumstances, after which his condition gradually deteriorated—though the role of this incident, if any, in his decease remains uncertain.
15 Youssef Rakha, “Dreaming On,” al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo, December 11–17, 2003, p. 16. Mahfouz told Rakha that he had written Dreams 1–97 with his own hand before turning to dictation.
16 Interview with al-Hagg Muhammad Sabri al-Sayyid, Cairo, September 1, 2006. Al-Hagg Sabri also confirmed something that Mahfouz had told me several times in his last months of life—that he had created more than three hundred dreams that were not yet published at the time of his death.
17 For a brief account of this prodigious figure’s life, see Arthur Goldschmidt, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt (The American University in Cairo Press, 2000), p. 57.
18 For more on the film, see Samir Farid, Naguib Mahfouz wa-al-sinima (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-’Amma li-Qusur al-Thaqafa, 1990), p. 18. For details of Rayya and Sakina’s crimes and their memorialization in a museum, see Rasha Sadeq, “The Other Citadel,” al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo, February 20, 2003.
19 See Goldschmidt, pp. 234–35.
20 Ibid., p. 47.
21 Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk, translated by William M. Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny (The American University in Cairo Press, 1989), p. 498.
22 For more on Reda Helal and his mysterious disappearance, and the latter’s depiction in Mahfouz’s Dream 151, see “The Forgotten Man,” report by Joel Campagna posted online by the New York–based Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/forgottenman), October 17, 2007.
23 Naguib Mahfouz (“Nagib Mahfus”) interviewed by Volkhard Windfuhr, (with Raymond Stock) “Wir müssen die Fenster öffnen” (“We Must Open the Windows”) in Der Spiegel (Hamburg: No. 8, 2006), pp. 106–07.
24 To Atiyatallah Ibrahim Rizq, twenty-five years his junior, who bore him two daughters—Umm Kulthoum and Fatema (who prefer to be known as Hoda and Faten respectively).
25 Naguib Mahfouz, “Umm Ahmad” in collection Sabah al-ward (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1987), p. 7. Passage translated by this writer.
26 That this evidently never-realized relationship was in effect a dream was the observation of Shirley Johnston, whose Egyptian Palaces and Villas: Pashas, Khedives and Kings (New York: Harry Abrams, 2006) deals with just the sort of houses owned by families such as the one to which Mahfouz’s unattainable Abbasiyan idol belonged.
27 N. Mahfouz, The Dreams, p. 122.
28 N. Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street, translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan, with an introduction by Sabry Hafez (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman’s Library, 2001); see death of Aïda Shaddad in Sugar Street, pp. 1288–94.
29 Interview with Naguib Mahfouz, Maadi, April 5, 2006. Aïda Shadid, Atiya’s oldest sister, died after a prolonged illness in Alexandria on September 11, 2001; she was apparently in her nineties.
30 Nisf al-Dunya magazine, Cairo, February 14, 1999. Translated by this writer.
Glossary
Azbakiya: The name of both a large park in central Cairo and the district surrounding it. Established ca. 1476 by a local dignitary, the Amir Azbak—after whom it is named—around a small lake, for nearly five centuries it remained one of the wealthiest and most desired quarters in Cairo. The lake disappeared in the early nineteenth century, and most of the area’s grandeur by the latter part of the twentieth.
Bayt al-Qadi Square: Naguib Mahfouz was born into a middle-class household at 8 Bayt al-Qadi Square (Judge’s House Square) at the corner of Darb Qirmiz (Crimson Lane) in the old Islamic quarter of Cairo on December 10, 1911. (The birth was not registered until the following day; hence he observed his birthday on December 11 each year.) The “judge’s house,” built some time before 1800, stands at the southwest edge of the square next to the ruins of the ornately decorated palace of the fifteenth-century amir Mamay. The name refers to its service as a courthouse during the last century of Ottoman rule in Egy
birth-feast of Husayn: Part of the popular Egyptian tradition of fêting the birthdays of holy persons, the largest one is that for the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn (Hussein). Many thousands gather around the Husayn Mosque (where it is claimed the saint’s head is kept) in al-Gamaliya for the occasion. The date of the celebration varies each year in accordance with the lunar-based Islamic calendar.
Christopher Village: Apparently an invention of Mahfouz’s mind, perhaps inspired by St. Christopher’s Village, a budget tourist hotel in London. Mahfouz had successful surgery in that city to remove an aneurism in his abdominal aorta in 1991, the first and only time he had been to the United Kingdom.
fuul: Broad beans—also known as horse beans—an indispensable part of the Egyptian diet, including the late author’s.
gallabiya: A long, loose garment commonly worn by Egyptians.
Ghuriya: Part of the main north–south thoroughfare in the Islamic district of Cairo, named for the surviving façades of a mosque and mausoleum built in 1504–05 by the Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri, who died in 1516 vainly resisting the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Levant, which inexorably followed in 1517.
al-Hagg Ali: “Pilgrim Ali,” a person known to Mahfouz in his native district of al-Gamaliya, who at least into the mid-1990s apparently owned much property in Bayt al-Qadi Square (see above).