Leda Mansour writes: Naguib Mahfouz… and Lebanon’s destroyed bridges

During the summer vacation, while I was far away, I was working on getting closer to what I knew, so I booked my trip from Paris to Beirut to meet my family and loved ones.However, my trip was canceled in July 2006 after Beirut airport was closed.

Under the principle of “isolating the theater of operations,” the Israeli army command decided to impose a blockade on ports and airports and attack fuel depots, with the aim of preventing the transfer of captured Israeli soldiers to northern Lebanon or Iran. From the first day of the Israeli attack, Lebanon was subjected to forty air strikes. Bridges, roads, airports, ports, factories, power stations, and fuel depots were targeted, and hundreds of facilities and infrastructure were destroyed. I will not add the number of victims or their ages, as a Google search will suffice.

With the destruction of the bridges, a psychological reaction spread among the Lebanese, manifested in the repetition of songs by Fairuz containing the word “bridge,” associated with the terrifying feeling of destruction. The bridge—which connects people to people, places to places, and the present to the future—was what all wars came down to: a severed link, a receding helping hand, diminished feelings, and tears of Leda that dried up and disappeared.

Why Naguib Mahfouz?

At the end of the July War, I heard the news of Naguib Mahfouz’s death on August 30, 2006. At the time, I had just begun reading his works, choosing The Trilogy as a stage on which to strip away most of the simplified, comparative, and simplistic critical works that purport to explain Mahfouz’s text, without actually analyzing and understanding it properly. It was as if I had started my own war to save the trilogy from what I had read in terms of rumors, political and social projections, socialist, philosophical, religious, revolutionary, traditional, and feminist interpretations (not the issue of women’s liberation). I adopted the study of “the human being when he speaks,” that is, the internal dialogue of the characters, as a space for freedom of expression unrestricted by the chains of shame, impositions, prohibitions, and modesty, and far removed from the recipes of the kitchen that sprinkle it with the “spices of realism.”

I asked myself then: what is the bridge that connects me to Naguib Mahfouz? Was it the liberation of Mahfouz from the superficiality of criticism? Or understanding the reasons for his winning the Nobel Prize? Or a whim related to my mother’s love for Egypt (cinema and history)? Or just a coincidence?

Most of the time, we don’t find the answer. And when the idea becomes clear, we find it too late, when the relationship has lost much of its charm and sweetness. During the five years of preparing my doctoral thesis, I read Mahfouz word for word and reread the text several times. Then I read parts of the trilogy over and over again and reread my analysis and understanding of it countless times. I didn’t sleep much at night and stopped traveling, like any novice researcher who longs for perfection. I never tired of rereading the same text, and this feeling of “not tiring” was in itself a bridge connecting me to Naguib Mahfouz, even though he was absent.

Don’t you tire of loving your child? This may be a natural and spontaneous combination, but my relationship with Mahfouz was never one of love and motherhood, so what is the secret of my tirelessness? The secret lies in the elements that attracted me to his works.

The Women of Naguib Mahfouz

Two years ago, my Arabic literature professor, Hussein Hamouda, encouraged me to write a short research paper on women in Mahfouz’s works. I was in a phase of silence towards the finished thesis and towards Mahfouz, who was also silent in my heart. At the time, I couldn’t write anything, not because I was tired, but because I was ashamed. Yes, I was ashamed to express my admiration and appreciation for just one woman!

This woman was not “Aida,” the model of the modern Egyptian bourgeois woman who lives in the beautiful palaces of Cairo, the woman who speaks French, plays sports, and travels to the pyramids with her brother and his friends, the woman whom Kamal loved so perfectly. After marrying a man from her own social circle and traveling to Europe, Aida was disappointed and returned to Egypt as an ordinary character with no distinctive voice in Naguib Mahfouz’s trilogy.

I did not like Aisha, from a middle-class family living in the old neighborhoods. The beautiful Aisha whom everyone admired, Aisha who loved a man she did not marry but accepted her father’s choice. Aisha, who lost her son to illness and lived out her last days, after returning to her parents’ house, alone and lost, listening to what others said without responding, as if she were unconscious, speaking only through her innermost feelings.

** **

The only woman I secretly admired was Yassin’s second wife, Zenobia: an oud player who belonged to the world of dancers. She was a woman who calmly and effortlessly entered the world of the bourgeois family. Zenobia decided to leave her nightlife behind and aspired to rise above her station through the only means available to her in her time and society: marriage. From being a “scholar” and a mistress to the father, Ahmed Abdel Jawad, then a mistress to the eldest son, she became Yassin’s official and legitimate second wife, despite the pressure the father tried to exert on his son.

Given that we are delving into a traditional world, Zenobia’s story is similar to that of Cinderella climbing the social ladder. It is a very modern love and marriage story, despite the traditional setting. Zenobia is not only a secretly free and strong woman, but she also rises in the narrator’s narrative by making her a mother who Leda her child on the same day that the death of a major political leader at the time, Saad Zaghloul, is announced. Thus, she reaches the status of “giver of life” in difficult times for the Egyptian people.

There is no one better than Zenobia to speak out loudly about the cause of women’s liberation. Naguib Mahfouz’s stance on women’s issues, in my opinion, defied all expectations. What could be more beautiful than a woman who has acquired a role, a persona, and the decision to “defy all expectations,” becoming a “Cinderella maid” princess who lives in palaces? Is this admiration and appreciation for Zenobia enough to justify my feelings of tirelessness in every situation in which I talk about Mahfouz, whether on the radio, in articles, or in front of a listener who asks me: Why Mahfouz? Admiration, like love, has no clear reasons, but we can at least find some motives.

The forbidden and the permissible

When I delved deeper into reading Mahfouz’s biography, I discovered that censorship had affected many of his works. I did not know that Mahfouz’s novels were constantly subjected to harsh censorship, in addition to harsh criticism from near and far, such as Youssef Idris, for example. What is halal and what is haram? These are topics familiar to Arab readers, writers, and people in general, but the only idea that stuck in my heart and mind was Mahfouz’s reaction. He was an elegant, calm, stubborn, patient, and steadfast man despite everything.

Where did he find such patience? Where did he find such determination? How was he able to accept censorship, continue writing, insist on publishing, and **“ignore”** the criticism and superficial readings of his work?

I remembered that when I sent my first novel to a publishing house, the rejection I received was like a bridge destroyed by Israel. I stopped writing and even stopped trying for years. As for Naguib Mahfouz, despite the knife at his throat after the assassination attempt, he continued and completed… He continued and completed his writing, and after a period of convalescence, he began to speak and recite words after his paralysis. I remembered him again when I was overcome with fear in front of the doctor when he told me this year about the symptoms of rheumatism in the fingers of my right hand, and I asked myself: “Should I stop writing or not?”

Until the last day of his life, Naguib Mahfouz wrote tirelessly and without fatigue.

Gratitude to the ancestors

Naguib Mahfouz became a role model and example for me to follow, and I feel grateful to him and to every person whose determination has not been dampened or shaken by adversity… We might expect or imagine that he suffered censorship in silence and oppression, but he did what many cannot do, which is to persevere, and he did not cut off the bridge of creativity, production, and publication. The question was: Are patience, humility, and perseverance the foundations of human freedom?

From there, I began to understand the meaning of “not tiring, wearying, or growing bored” in following Mahfouz’s works and news. As French writer Marguerite Duras said in one of her novels: “Love is not a relationship, but a ‘profession’,” following, reading, studying, and evoking Naguib Mahfouz is a profession in itself.

It is with this gratitude and appreciation that I remember him. In conclusion, I call on every Arab to remember Mahfouz and thank him today by remembering what they have heard about him, what they have read by him, and even what they have never read!

We must consider Mahfouz as the “great grandfather” who laid the foundation stones for his descendants to gain a sense of belonging and rise to the level of writings, novels, creations, ideas, actions, and free, modern, and determined life decisions. Finally, the saying of the ancestors is true: “What is old is new.”

Dr. Leda Mansour, researcher and writer from France