Voices From the Other World by Naguib Mahfouz
I saw this calm darkness ignite with an all-encompassing light, as the faint, fading beams that pulsated in each brain, which by themselves were weak and dying, all clung to each other in one cohesive mass, emanating a powerful, dazzling incandescence. I saw in its radiance a gleaming truth, a pure goodness, and a luminous beauty, and my wonder and bewilderment returned. O Lord, no matter how the soul suffers and is tortured, it goes on inventing and creating just the same. And Lord, Taw-ty has seen glorious things and will see yet more glorious and awesome things. I became convinced that this light that glowed upon me was but a mere speck of the heaven to which I would ascend. I looked away and turned my back to the world, to find myself once again in the Sacred Chamber for embalming—and a divine ecstasy imbued my spirit that cannot be conveyed.
The seventy days of embalming were done. The men came again. They removed my body from the trough and wrapped it in layers of cloth. They brought with them a sarcophagus, upon which an image of the youthful Taw-ty was most flatteringly engraved, and placed the body inside it. Then they hoisted it upon the back of their necks and filed outside, where they met my family and my neighbors, who struck their faces and wailed. Their shrieks were worse than those on the day my death was announced. They proceeded to the Nile and embarked on a huge boat, which bore them to the City of Immortality on the West Bank. They jostled about the sarcophagus, calling out and howling, “My tears will not dry, my heart knows no peace after you, Taw-ty!” while my wife entreated aloud, “O my husband, why was I condemned to live after you?”
The Prince’s chamberlain declared, “O glorious writer, Taw-ty, you have left your place empty!”
For a long while I watched with these eyes that had forgotten their past, as if there were no ties that bound me to this world, nor with these humans. The boat pulled up to the shore, and they hoisted up the sarcophagus once more. From there they marched with it to the mausoleum—on which I had spent the best part of my treasure—and set it down in its intended place. During all this, a band of priests intoned some verses from the Book of the Dead, lecturing me on how to behave in the afterlife! Then they began to withdraw, one after another, until the tomb was deserted. There was nothing left to hear but the sound of distant mourning. The doors were sealed and sand shoveled over them. Thus perished all relations between the world that I had bid good-bye, and the world that I now greet. . . .
Note: Here the hieroglyphic text breaks off. Perhaps the period of waiting to which the writer referred at the start of this document had ended, and his voyage into Eternity had begun. There he would be diverted from his much-loved pen—and from all things.
1 Roger Allen, “The Mummy Awakens,” The Worlds of Muslim Imagination, ed. Alamgir Hashmi (Islamabad: Gulhomar, 1986), pp. 15–33, commentary, pp. 212–15.
2 Richard B. Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940–1640 BC (Oxford University Press, 1997).
Glossary
al-Arna’uti: In Arabic, “the Albanian”—an allusion to the origins of the then-regnant Muhammad ‘Ali dynasty, installed nominally under the Ottomans as rulers of Egypt in 1805. Much of the Egyptian aristocracy was subsequently of mixed Turkish–Albanian blood. The pasha in “The Mummy Awakens” is most likely based upon Mohamed Mahmoud Bey Khalil (1877–1953), a millionaire Francophile collector of art who was attacked in the Egyptian press in the late 1930s for saying he wanted to will his large private gallery of mainly French paintings to the Louvre. It is now housed in his former mansion in Giza in a museum bearing his name.
Aswan: A city at the Nile’s first cataract in Upper (southern) Egypt. Mahfouz here uses the pharaonic Egyptian name Abu (actually Elephantine Island at Aswan), which was the country’s southernmost outpost on the border with ancient Nubia. The historical Userkaf’s capital was at Mennufer (Memphis) close to present-day Cairo, rather than Aswan, though the royal annals of the Old Kingdom recorded on the Palermo Stone show that he kept a per (house, estate) at Abu. His only known pyramid— quarried into rubble in antiquity—was built near there, in northern Saqqara, rather than at Aswan.
Broad beans: Also called horse beans (and known as ful in Arabic), these are an indispensable part of the Egyptian diet.
Fuad I University: Named for King Ahmad Fuad I (r. 1917–36), who, as a prince, was one of its founders in 1908. The institution was renamed Cairo University after the Free Officers coup of 1952. Naguib Mahfouz earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy there in 1934 (when it was then called the Egyptian University), where he briefly did postgraduate work and served in the school’s administration until 1939. During this time, he occasionally attended lectures in Egyptology, some of which were likely given by Prof. Etienne Marie-Felix Drioton (1889–1961), then head of Egypt’s Department of Antiquities—and a probable model for Prof. Dorian in the story, “The Mummy Awakens.”
‘Id al-adha: The “Feast of Sacrifice,” which commemorates Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram in place of his son Isma‘il, as related in the Qur’an. Muslims celebrate this several-day event (also known as Greater Bairam) by slaughtering animals on the first dawn of the feast, often distributing the meat to the poor.
Ka: In the complex system of pharaonic-era beliefs, when someone died, their ka, or spiritual essence, would come to visit the deceased. The ka brought with it the ba, the dead person’s soul, depicted as a human-headed bird in mortuary reliefs, often sculpted sitting on the mummy. Strictly speaking, it was Hor’s ba, not his ka, that was represented by the sparrow. Yet the ka was generally seen in the ancient religion as the agent for revenge against tomb intruders—which certainly fits “The Mummy Awakens.”
Kameni: A Fourth Dynasty high priest of the early vulture goddess Nekhbet in her temple at al-Kab on the Nile opposite Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, ca. 2560 BC.
Khnum: Depicted as a man with the head of a ram, Khnum was the creator-god of Elephantine (ancient Abu at Aswan).
Punt: Hailed as “God’s land” by the ancient Egyptians, Punt was probably located on the Red Sea in eastern Sudan or Ethiopia, or perhaps in northern Somalia. Egyptians apparently began traveling there during the late Fourth Dynasty (ca. 2649–2513 BC).
Qadesh: A city on the Orontes River in present-day Syria that served as a base for the Hittites against their rivals, the Egyptians, especially during the New Kingdom.
Qaqimna: The Arabic name for Kagemni, a famous Sixth Dynasty vizier. The Teaching for Kagemni, a Middle Kingdom text concerned mainly with the rules of gracious conduct, was putatively addressed to Kagemni. The Teaching itself, however, puts Kagemni in the Fourth Dynasty.
Sa‘idi: An Upper Egyptian; the word for the southern part of the country—from which the Nile flows down to the North and the sea—is al-Sa‘id, “the elevated land.” Sa‘idis are commonly seen as physically resembling the ancient Egyptians.
Zahi: Also rendered “Sahi” or “Djahi,” in ancient Egyptian this refers to the area of roughly modern Israel, Palestine, and Syria, plus parts of Iraq on both sides of the Euphrates, in addition to Lebanon (Phoenicia) and Cyprus.
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ
Voices from the Other World
Naguib Mahfouz is the most prominent author of Arabic fiction today. He was born in 1911 in Cairo and began writing at the age of seventeen. His first novel was published in 1939. Since then he has written nearly forty novel-length works and hundreds of short stories. In 1988 Mr. Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in the Cairo suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters.
Raymond Stock (translator), a doctoral student in Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania, is writing a biography of Naguib Mahfouz. He is the translator of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Khufu’s Wisdom.
THE FOLLOWING TITLES BY NAGUIB MAHFOUZ ARE ALSO PUBLISHED BY ANCHOR BOOKS:
The Beggar*
The Thief and the Dogs*
Autumn Quail*
The Beginning and the End
Wedding Song†
Respected Sir†
The Search†
Midaq Alley
The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
Miramar
Adrift on the Nile
The Harafish
Arabian Nights and Days
Children of the Alley
Echoes of an Autobiography
The Day the Leader Was Killed
Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth
The Cairo Trilogy:
Palace Walk
Palace of Desire
Sugar Street
*†published as omnibus editions
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 2004
Copyright © 1936, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1945 by Naguib Mahfouz
English translation copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 by Raymond Stock
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
“Evil Adored” was first published in Arabic in al-Majalla al-Jadida al-Usbu‘iya
in 1936 as “al-Sharr al-ma‘bud,” and in revised form in al-Riwaya in 1939.
“King Userkaf’s Forgiveness” was first published in Arabic in al-Riwaya in
1938 as “ ‘Afw al-malik Usirkaf: uqsusa misriya”; this translation first
appeared in KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Fall 2002.
“The Mummy Awakens” was first published in Arabic in al-Riwaya in 1939
as “Yaqzat al-mumiya’ ”; this translation first appeared in The Massachusetts
Review, Winter 2001/2002.
“The Return of Sinuhe” was first published in Arabic in al-Thaqafa in 1941
as “ ‘Awdat Sinuhi.”
“A Voice from the Other World” was first published in Arabic in al-Risala
in 1945 as “Sawt min al-‘alam al-akhar”; this translation first appeared in
The Kenyon Review and Stand Magazine, Spring 2001.
Protected under the Berne Convention
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
www.anchorbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43007-6
v3.0
Naguib Mahfouz, Voices From the Other World