Naguib Mahfouz's Alley |
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Collection title
ERTU collection
Abstract
Documentary about the alley where the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz grew up. That is an occasion to present Egyptian folklore, the habits of the inhabitants of the area who meet in cafés...
Broadcaster
ERTU - Channel 2
Audiovisual form
Documentary
Primary theme
Languages and literatures
Secondary themes
- Society and way of life / Public areas and social issues
Map locations
- Egypt - Lower Egypt - Cairo
Context
Naguib Mahfouz's Alley
Richard Jacquemond
This date of this short film for Egyptian television is not specified, but it was probably made shortly after Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1988, since that is referred to at beginning of the film, and certainly before 1994 when he was attacked by men with knives, impairing his physical faculties. The subject of the film is much broader than its title suggests: in less than 20 minutes, it paints an accurate portrait of the writer filmed in intimate surroundings, something seldom seen: at home, in the office staff, with his wife. A self-portrait, since essentially it is Mahfouz who speaks: about his childhood in the old city of Cairo, about the inspiration he has drawn from that, about his famous routine, about the circle of his closest friends (al-harafich “beggars”) and about his commitment to Egypt. Listening to him we realise the writer was a major contributor to his own myth. The images used in this short film to illustrate his life – for the most part not archival footage but extracts of Egyptian films – help to build up this myth.
The highlight of the film is in the middle, when Mahfouz gives us the key to his mythical depiction of social reality which is such a hallmark of his novels (too often wrongly described as an Egyptian version of the naturalistic realism of Dickens or Zola).
Two words are central here: hara and fetewwa. The hara,badly translated here as “alley” (ruelle in French) in fact means a small district, neighbourhood or block – terms often chosen by translators, better but still only approximate. In the old city of Cairo the hara is a small enclosed area, centred on one street and opening onto narrow alleyways and dead-end passages, a bit like the central vein and ribs of a leaf. This particular urban configuration lent itself perfectly to what Mahfouz wanted to express in his novels: the hara becomes a social microcosm, a small model and symbol either of the Egyptian nation or of humanity as a whole in The Children of Gebelawi (original title Awlad haret-na – the children of our district).
During his childhood, Mahfouz saw the last fetewwa: in Stories from our Neighbourhood he describes them as a kind of easily-offended swaggering tough, ready to die for trifles, a picturesque survival from the time when people could not count on the state to protect them so each hara relied on its fetewwa and his acolytes for protection – naturally for a fee. And just as he made the hara the symbol of the whole of Egypt (or any human society), Mahfouz makes the fetewwa the symbol of the leader, using this character to convey his political philosophy and his criticism of men power. This was particularly true under Nasser. Educated in the liberal, colonial Egypt of the inter-war years, Mahfouz remained faithful throughout his life to the humanistic values and ideals of his youth, which he expresses eloquently at the end of this short film. He would certainly have been pleased to learn that the Egyptian people with whom he identified so closely chose the year of his centenary (2011) to rise up against the fetewwa who oppressed it.
Bibliography:
Naguib Mahfouz, our storiesneighborhood,Arles, Actes Sud (Babel), 1999, and the son of themedina,Actes Sud (Babel), 2003
André Raymond,Cairo,Paris, Fayard, 1993
May Telmissany, The Hara in Egyptian cinema. Neighborhood and nationalidentity,Saarbrücken, European University Editions, 2011