I finished, yeah!

I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I set it aside multiple times before finally picking it up and committing to read at least two chapters a day until finished. This doesn’t sound like an endorsement but I found appreciation in Mahfouz’s writing of everyday things and familial interactions.

I think two things weighed on my attempts. First, it starts slowly. Very, very slowly. Secondly, I was put off by al Sayyid Ahmad’s strictness and treatment of his wife and children – plus his hypocrisy gnawed at me.

Mahfouz wraps the nuances of the day around Egypt’s awakening for independence from Great Britan. In his writing, Mahfouz takes us into the thoughts, hopes, and fears of this family. That writing brings the characters to life. He excels in bringing to the forefront the mundaneness of life and one’s struggle to break free. The family’s evolution mirrors that of Egyptian evolution from British colony to independence with dissatisfaction and control transforming to self-awareness and self-government. Both, ultimately, pay the price of that struggle.

A slow start but once I got a rhythm, I read more than my minimum chapter count and by the end I relished in the familial interactions. Three point five stars; penalized by the early glacial pace.

This trilogy narrates the rise and fall of the family of al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, a tyrannical hypocrite who oppresses his wife, terrorizes his children and leads a life of debauchery on the sly. Although he may be the ruler of the family, the one who enables it to function from day to day is his hard-working, slavishly docile and incredibly submissive wife, Amina. His wife and children use different strategies to wriggle out from beneath the iron fist of their husband and father, not all of them in good ways. The various members of this family weather the storms of Egyptian history during the first half of the twentieth century. They go through colonialist rule, revolutions, and two world wars. They find their own ways to cope with the political, cultural and religious upheaval.

I am somewhat at a loss to know how to review this work, as I think that to really understand it, you need to know something about Egyptian history and Islamic culture. And there are a lot of allusions to popular songs and political figures of the day which might seem familiar to someone who is part of the culture and cryptic to someone who is not. So as a Western, Christian reader, I am at a disadvantage. Some of the things that impressed me however, were the following.

Even though some people rebel against their religion and culture, they cannot get away from them entirely because they are so steeped in them. This can be seen in such minor details as the religious phrases used as part of everyday conversation even by prostitutes and hedonists. Several of the characters renounce marriage but they are constantly bombarded from within and without by the traditional idea that the best way to be happy is to get married (to someone the family approves of), settle down and start a family of one's own. The best career for men is one in politics or law, while the best thing for women to do is to get married. And so on...

Another thing is the attitude of the author toward his characters. Mahfouz ironically exposes the vices and even the foibles of the cast members of this vast drama. Thus, the father is a tyrant, the mother is ignorant, one daughter teases mercilessly, her sister is sweet but a bit spoiled, etc. Even so, Mahfouz still manages to make us feel some sympathy for these people.

From a literary point of view, Mahfouz sometimes ornaments his narrative rather self-consciously with similes and metaphors. While they are not exactly "purple prose," for my feeling, some of them do distract occasionally from the story. But this may have something to do with stylistic habits in Arabic literature, so I don't want to comment too much or make any judgment on this until I have had a chance to read more widely and make some proper comparisons.

I read Palace Walk, which does give an intimate and searching portrait of the workings of one Cairo household at the end of World War I, but there is no structured story; it's more like reading someone's diary, and it just comes to an end without resolving anything or meaning anything in particular.

فى الجزء الأول ظهرت عبقرية نجيب محفوظ وظهر فيها الجزء المُفضل لى وهو صورة الرجل الشرقى وطريقة تصوره لمعالم مصر القديم التى تمنيت دوماَ أن أرهآ فمثل عبدالجواد المتجسد ف الرجل الشرقى الغيور المُحب للفن والموسيقى وفهمى المثالى الشغوف بواطنة وبالحماس الذى ينتاب مرحلته الجامعية وياسين اللعوب الإبن الأكبر كما هو الحآل ،
ولكن ما جذبنى أكثر هو الجزء الثالث "السُكريه" :
هذا الجزء هو الأكثرُ شجناً للعواطف بمرور الزمن عائشه والمعاناه التى لحقت بهآ رغم ما أُعطى لها من جمال ،، وكمآل وأزمة الشك ف كُل شئ أعتقد أن محفوظ نفسه مر بهذه الأزمه التى مر بهآ كمال ، أظن أن محفوظ هو كمال قبل أن يستقر للحـآل الللذى إستقر عليه كمآل ....
وأحمد وعبد المنعم وجهان لعمله واحده ،،
.. أحببت أن أبدء ف هذا good reads . بهذه الروايه لأنى بعد قرائتهآ أصبحتُ أقول أنى الآن قائاً للأدب

n  n

تعتبر شخصيات الرواية الأساسية أشهر الشخصيات الدرامية السينمائية والتلفزيونية على الإطلاق
تم أعتبار الثلاثية أفضل رواية عربية في أكثر من تصنيف أدبي
الفكرة العامة والاحداث الرئيسية للرواية تقريبا معروفة حتى لمن لم يشاهد الفيلم او المسلسل

كلها تحديات بتواجه قرار قراءة وأكتشاف أهم عمل أدبي عربي وتأجيل قراءته حتى وقت متأخر جدا
ورغم أنبهاري بالجزء الأول والثاني وإعادة أكتشاف عالم الثلاثية بشكل مختلف تماما في الرواية ورغم أن السكرية في رأي هي أقل الاجزاء فنيا إلا انه أكثر جزء استمتعت لأني لم أشاهد الفيلم او المسلسل الخاص بهذا الجزء وكنت حريصة دايما على البعد عن اي معلومة تحرقه او تحرق نهاية الرواية

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في أحد الاجازات الصيفية السعيدة -في أبتدائي طبعا لا اتذكر اي سنة بالظبط- شاهدت مسلسل بين القصيرين لاول مرة بموسيقى مقدمة مميزة وأداء مهيب للرائع محمود مرسي من التفاصيل الغريبة التي مازلت اتذكرها ولا أعرف السبب هو أن المسلسل تم تصويره بدبي مع أدراك ان المسلسل بيتناول حقبة زمنية سابقة كلها امور خلقت جو عام اسطوري وكأن المسلسل خارج سياق الزمان والمكان على الرغم من ان القصة اجتماعية واقعية

كل مستويات التلقي المختلفة لعالم الثلاثية الساحر خلقت انطباعات وافكار مسبقة عن الرواية في اللاوعي اصبح فكرة قراءة الرواية والتفاعل معاها تجربة مختلفة عن اي رواية اخرى
وكأنك تعيد أكتشاف جار لك تدخل بيته لأول مرة وتتعرف على تفاصيل شخصيته عن قرب بعيد عن الصورة الضبابية التي اعتدت رؤيتها وانطبعت في ذهنك من بعيد على امتداد سنوات عمرك
كانت الرواية بالنسبة لي فعلا مفاجأ عل جميع المستويات
فالجزء الأول بين القصيرين كان معجزة أدبية في تقنيات رسم الشخصيات بكل بتوليفة ساحرة وحسوبة من السرد العادي للأحداث والتفاصيل والوصف والحوار والحوار الداخلي الاكثر من رائع أجمل حوار داخلي قرأته لنجيب محفوظ ربما كان ذلك يرجع للمساحة الكبيرة التي اتيحت له
الجزء التاني وحيرة الانسان والتساؤلات اللانهائية ليست فقط الخاصة بكمال لكن كمال هو النموذج الأوضح لكن باقي الشخصيات بلا استثناء كلا لديه حيرته وتساؤلاته الخاصة
في الجزء الاخير حاول نجيب محفوظ غلق كل الملفات المفتوحة بطريقة تجعل القارئ يوقن أنه لا اجابة شافية على اي من التساؤلات ولا خلاص ولا طريق بعينه هو الطريق الصحيح كل التوجهات تقريبا تم تمثيلها بشكل ربما يعيب عليه المباشرة وان كان مقبول في جزء من اجزاء عمل رائع بشكل عام الاشتراكية الاصولية التحرر الفكري التحرر الديني التحرر الاخلاقي المثلية الجنسية الاستسلام للغريزة والشهوة الترفع عنها كل الافكار والتوجهات تم تمثيلها والرمز اليها بشكل اوباخر
قبل قراءة الثلاثية كنت اعتبر الحرافيش افضل عمل لنجيب محفوظ وافضل عمل ادبي قراءته في المطلق لكن بعد قراءة الثلاثية اكتشفت أن كل عوامل تمييز الحرافيش توفرت في الثلاثية لكن بشكل ابسط واكثر واقعية وقرب للوعي والثقافة العربية

Egyptian Culture, Human Nature, Comedy and Tragedy, Politics and Art, and Great Writing

My husband took
A second wife
When wedding
henna still
Was fresh
Upon my hands.
The day he brought
Her home, her
Presence
Seared my
Flesh.

Characters in Naguib Mahfouz’s The Cairo Trilogy (1956-58) sometimes sing popular songs like that. The Egyptian Nobel Prize winning author’s work is a semi-autobiographical look at vivid and intense moments in the lives of the members of a Cairene family living in the old part of the city in the first half of the 20th century, when Egypt was struggling for independence from England.

The middle-aged patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad 'Abd al-Jawad is a terrifying tyrant at home. He makes his sons wait to eat till he leaves the table, refuses to let his wife Amina leave the house, and decides who his children marry: “I’m a man. I’m the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept any criticism of my behavior. All I ask of you is to obey me. Don’t force me to discipline you.” Although Al-Sayyid is a humorless, pious Muslim man at home, when out partying with his cronies he is a pleasure seeking, joke telling, tambourine playing, song singing, alcohol abusing, womanizing playboy. Amina, who when not cooking and cleaning and supporting her children stands in her rooftop garden gazing longingly at the minarets of the mosques she can never visit, is the heart of the family. Eldest son Yasin has inherited his father’s sensual appetites without any of his self-control; middle son Fahmy is a naive law student devoted to Egyptian nationalist-independence; youngest son Kamal (based partly on Mahfouz) is a lively, loving, imaginative boy. Eldest daughter Khadija has an acerbic tongue that often makes fun of people. Youngest daughter Aisha is fair, beautiful, and unworldly.

The trilogy depicts the family aging as their country changes. In the first book, Palace Walk (1956), which covers the years 1917-19, Al-Sayyid rules at home and plays outside, Amina takes care of her family while trying to visit the mosque of Al-Husayn, Yasin fails to control his lusts and discovers his father’s dual nature, Aisha and Khadija get involved in matrimony, Fahmy gets involved in revolution, and Kamal tries to understand his changing family.

The second book, Palace of Desire (1957), taking place from 1924 to 1927, focuses on the now teenaged Kamal, particularly on his quest to find truth, goodness, and beauty by studying world philosophy while doubting everything in life and on his one-sided idealized love for Aida, an older girl from a wealthy family. “It seemed he had fallen in love in order to master the dictionary of pain.” Acting as a foil to Kamal’s love are the comical sexual misadventures of Yasin, who marries the wrong women for the wrong reasons, and of Al-Sayyid, who gets back in the adultery game after a five-year hiatus.

Though just as funny as the first two, the third novel, Sugar Street (1958), covering 1935-44, is sadder than the first two. Here the family is really aging, especially the once vigorous patriarch and his long-suffering wife, and there is much death. “It was sad to watch a family age.” The story centers on Kamal’s “infernal vacillation” as to whether or not to marry, on his new friendship with a kindred-spirit writer, and on his his nephews, Abd, who joins the new Muslim Brotherhood, grows a beard, and becomes quite the fundamentalist, and Ahmad, who joins a Marxist magazine and becomes quite the atheist.

Throughout the trilogy Mahfouz writes interesting details about Egyptian family life in the big city in the first half of the 20th century, as well as about the education and class systems, wedding, marriage, divorce, death, funeral, and religious customs, café and brothel culture, gender roles, and politics. He relishes the Egyptian tendency to spice up life and defuse stress with irony. “If our houses are destroyed [in an air raid], they’ll have the honor of being demolished by the most advanced inventions of modern science.” And the Egyptian (or Arabic?) tendency whenever too happy or proud or sad etc. to say something like, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” (The translation of the trilogy is fine, though I sometimes wished the translator would have rendered “God” and “Lord” as Allah.)

In addition to particular details of Egyptian culture, Mahfouz writes about universal aspects of human nature, as in the following quotable lines: “Patriotism’s a virtue, if it’s not tainted by xenophobia”; and “People need confidential advice, consolation, joy, guidance, light, and journeys to all regions of the inhabited world and of the soul. That’s what art is.”

He leads us into the heads and hearts of his characters, as in the following emotional lines: “In this manner he was afforded an opportunity to feel what a dead man might if still conscious,” “His secret flowed out of him like blood from a wound,” and “Watching her eat pastries was even sweeter than eating them himself.”

He also writes wonderful similes with original, surprising, and perfectly apt vehicles, like: “His eyes ran over her body as quickly and greedily as a mouse on a sack of rice looking for a place to get in,” “There were pure white billows resembling pools of light over the Qala’un and Barquq minarets,” and “She was nothing but a symbol, like a deserted ruin that evokes exalted historic memories.”

He also writes many humorously cynical lines, like “Ridwan was so proud they were there that his pride almost obscured his grief,” and “But life is full of prostitutes of various types. Some are cabinet ministers and others authors.”

The Cairo Trilogy is 1323 pages long. Sometimes my attention waned. But it is full of great scenes, fine writing, authentic people, Cairene culture, human nature, ironic humor, devastating tragedy, and all sorts of interesting ideas about love, families, religion, politics, philosophy, life, and death. Readers fond of classic world literature should like it.

I'd love to give this less stars, but I can't. I absolutely hated the father of the family, I think I never hated a character in a book that much. At some point I even threw the book against a wall, which just isn't me. However, that's a sign that the story has completely caught you, and that the book is great.

عظيم إني بختم 2018 بثلاثية القاهرة

ثلاثيه السرد فوق الافاق تاره كانك في مسح جوي اعلي القاهره وتاره في قلب القاهره بنكهه الحضاره التفرد في ومضات تاريخيه جغرافيه سلوكيه ثقافيه تراثيه في كل حوار حتي لو كانت الشخصيه لاتقرا ولاتكذب
كم انت عظيم يا عم نجيب

A beautiful story which encompasses all of life: joy and hardship, philosophy and reality, humor and gravity, politics, history, and family life -- across time and culture. Gorgeous writing with a phenomenal translation. Complex, real-life characters with deep flaws, but for whom the reader can't help but gain a sense of empathy. As a reader, you completely enter the lives of this family. I've read this trilogy three times and will likely read it many more. This is the kind of story that you can come back to over and over, and learn something new every time. Mahfouz manages to address misogyny, sexism, classism, racism, and homophobia without being heavy-handed. Probably my favorite piece of writing ever.

3.5

Wonderful! painful to see that Egyptian life continues to repeat old patterns, through the later 20th century...and on into the 21st. For me, this trilogy epitomizes what I look for and, in fact crave, in historical fiction. Nahfouz has placed people within families and families within their own parts of society in Cairo during three distinct times during the first half of the 20th century. He has embroiled them in social, religious and political events, as passive and active participants. So the reader is able to be the proverbial fly on the wall, able to get a glimpse of many machinations as they may have played out behind the scenes, in peoples' lives.

I made the decision to read all three books at one go, using a generous reading schedule. This proved to be a wise choice as the first book, Palace Walk, sets the stage for the other two by introducing the major players, setting the stage for the unrest in Egypt and in Cairo itself, under the power of British rule early in the 20th century. The contrast between religious and less observant Muslims becomes obvious and begins to set both family and societal stories in motion. The very human presence of hypocrisy, addictions, etc shows a human story. There is familial love, but socially sanctioned extreme male dominance. At the same time, not all families operate in this same way. So there are contrasts, just as we see today. The world is full of contradictions, as are these very human characters.

In Palace of Desire and Sugar Street, the action moves forward first to the the many family and societal changes of the 1920s and then to the many developments on all levels during World War II. So much happens here to several families, to the city of Cairo and the country of Egypt, to hints of the world at large. And in these changes we readers can see the bases of things that occurred during Arab Spring in Tabir Square, and since. The past is never really gone and this trilogy shows the truth of this maxim for Cairo... and for us. There is much for us to learn from, absorb as we do from any good fiction depicting other cultures.

I highly recommend this trilogy and also suggest the books be read as closely together as possible to maximize the effectiveness of the writing.