Ṣunʻ Allāh Ibrāhīm

Sonallah Ibrahim is a well-known writer in his Homeland, Egypt, but very little of his work has been translated into English. Descriptions of his writing note its overtly political nature and his use of contemporary texts—news articles and similar items. The Turban and the Hat does make use of a contemporary text, but "contemporary" in this instance means Late 18th Century Cairo, and the text he's drawing from is Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti's record of the invasion and occupation of Cairo by the French as it occurred from 1798-1801. It's interesting to note that there are actually two different versions of the occupation written by al-Jabarti: the original version and a rewrite that was less critical of the Ottoman Turks who helped push the French out of Cairo—an example of the long history of political spin.

Ibrahim's central character is an imagined student of al-Jabarti. Early on, he travels about Cairo, observing happenings, then reporting these back to al-Jabarti. As the student observes what al-Jabarti includes and excludes from the account, he decides to write his own version of events. The narrator, who speaks some French, quickly gains a place among the French translating documents and occasional in-person interactions. As a result, he has contact with not just the French military, but also with the large corps of scholars and scientists who accompanied Napoleon's army.

One of the lessons here is about the nature of collaboration and exploitation. No matter which army controls Cairo, locals suffer through seizure of their goods, rising prices, and a brutal sort of "justice." Al-Jabarti, our narrator's teacher is one of these collaborators, though that isn't how he would depict himself. He would argue that his role on the Cairene council advising the French occupiers is one of strategic and subtle protection of the city and its residents. Near the novel's end, the narrator takes a step away from the pragmatic response of his teacher, writing and posting condemnations of the French.

Another lesson involves the brutality of war and the aggrandized reports sent from the front, depicting every skirmish,no matter how devastating, as a victory. The book notes that 40,000 troops arrived in Egypt with Napoleon; only 20,000 lived to return to France. War is only glorious in the abstract. In person, it is ugly, chaotic, and brutal as the narrator discovers.

The role of women in this novel is marginal and women are not treated as fully human. There are several brief references to honor killings. The narrator repeatedly rapes a household servant. Why? Because he can. He becomes involved with a French woman whose independence leaves him consternated. He assumes that engaging in sex essentially makes her his—and as she embraces other lovers he's at a loss to understand the logic of her world. These scenes are difficult to read, but seem true to the time period Ibrahim is exploring.

The Turban and the Hat is relatively brief at 200 pages and can make for a quick read, but it leaves the reader with a great deal to think about, particularly given the nature of armed conflict in our present world. Warfare has changed hugely and it has not changed at all. Factionalism is endless, and it is much easier to conquer than it is to lead a nation into a healthy post-war era.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own.… (meer)

The narrator of this novel is Shukri, an Egyptian historian doing postgraduate work at an Institute in Moscow. The action takes us through the year 1973 with a wealth of trivial detail about being a foreign student in Moscow: shopping, Brezhnev-era queues and shortages, cold weather, student parties, news reports, excursions, and the endlessly repeated pursuit of women.

It's one of those books where all the things the narrator is not telling you seem to matter more than the smokescreen of detail: we learn nothing of Shukri's past, his reasons for being in Moscow, the work he is doing at the Institute, his plans, his reactions to what he hears on the news (amongst other things, that his country is at war with Israel), or his real feelings about the women he's chasing or the other students he spends time with in the student hostel. And that nothing is clearly key, in some way. All he ever tells us about are objective facts and his own physical sensations (cold, pain, nausea, arousal, tiredness, etc.).

We have to spend a lot of time decoding and reading between the lines, and we can't be sure that we're guessing right. It seems, though, that Shukri has been damaged in some way by his previous life, and that it's that experience that is blocking him from achieving a meaningful connection either with the reader or with the people around him. Of course, if we bring in knowledge from outside the frame of the novel, in particular that the author spent five years as a political prisoner in Nasser's Egypt, that might give us a clue, and — amongst other things — explain Shukri's curious interest in the pile of old Egyptian newspapers he's obtained from a diplomat-friend.

An odd novel, which probably needs a bit more context from Ibrahim's earlier works and Egyptian literature generally to make sense of it properly, but an interesting and unusual point of view anyway.… (meer)

“In this novella, during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser, a young Egyptian writer who had been a political prisoner is released, and he takes a look at the street life in his country.” It has been called Egypt's first post modernist novel.

Like his protagonist, the author had been imprisoned in his native Egypt for five years. When political affiliations changed and Egypt befriended Russia, those imprisoned due to being communists were freed.

We follow the protagonist's first person stream of consciousness in this thankfully very short book as he also has been released from prison under very similar circumstances.

While he was imprisoned, his communist idealizations have become almost commonplace, so his burning drive for change has been removed.

He wanders the streets and neighborhoods of Cairo finding everything different but unchanged, the people unmotivated, uninterested and uninteresting.

“That smell” is the smell of a fart; unacknowledged by the people in the room, but still unavoidably there.

This book was banned and confiscated after the initial printing in Egypt for being “too sexual” although sex outside of masturbation never happens.

The “Notes From Prison” were very short notes that he had written on cigarette papers and had smuggled out. Some of these detail the books he read such as Hemingway and also his desire to become a writer.

This is probably going to be my least favorite novel of the year. Since it was part of a literature seminar, I slogged through.… (meer)