Naguib Mahfouz, the egyptian people and civilization |
|
Collection title
Le cercle de minuit
First broadcast date
02/03/1997
Abstract
Extract of the program ‘The Circle of Midnight’: at home, in Cairo, interviewed by Laure Adler, the writer Naguib Mahfouz gives his definition of the Egyptian people: a mischievous and humourous spirit. He answers Laure Adler’s questions on the attraction exerted by the Egyptian history and civilization on Western people.
Audiovisual form
Interview
Primary theme
Languages and literatures
Secondary themes
- Historical heritages / Antiquity
- Historical heritages / Arab and muslim worlds
Map locations
- Egypt - Lower Egypt - Cairo
Context
Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian people and civilisation
Richard Jacquemond
Between 1988 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (see context for archive ERU00276 “Naguib Mahfouz”) and his death in 2006 at the age of 94, Naguib Mahfouz was, in the eyes of millions of Arab and foreign readers, the embodiment of an eternal Egypt whose core values are humour and civility, moderation and tolerance, a deep feeling for history and the universality of the message the country carries to other cultures and nations. In this interview for French television in 1997, the great writer is all the more at ease in this role of ambassador for an Eternal Egypt, “mother of the world” (umm ed-donya), as the country likes to be called, because Laure Adler's questions seem conceived to bring out this response in the form of immutable and consensual truths.
Counterpoint: this somewhat over-simplified, romantic image was seriously damaged in the 1990's by the violent confrontation between the regime and the most radical fringe of the Islamic opposition: 1997 was the year of the deadliest attack carried out by the latter (62 tourists killed near the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor on November 17th). Three years before, Mahfouz himself had been the target of an attempted murder (October 14th 1994) when two young Egyptians armed with knives tried to kill him, believing they were carrying out a fatwa of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, spiritual master of the Gama'a Islamiya, the most active radical Egyptian Islamic group – in 1989, after Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa calling every Muslim to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, Abdel-Rahman said: “Rushdie must be killed, and if Naguib Mahfouz had been given the same treatment when he wrote The Children of Gebelawi [1959], that would have been lesson for Rushdie and anyone else who speaks ill of Islam.” Since 1995 Abdel-Rahman has been in prison in the United States serving a life sentence.
The pleasant conversation between Laure Adler and Naguib Mahfouz ends with them talking about a sort of French Egypto-mania, the most prominent feature of the special bond between Egypt and France. Intending to colonize Egypt, and so bar the way to India for the English (Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, 1798-1801), the country's main creditor after the construction of the Suez Canal (opened in the presence of Napoleon III in 1869), France was “over-taken” by Britain, which occupied Egypt from 1882. However even during the British occupation (1882-1952), France retained a strong position, including control of Egyptian Antiquities – hence the strong French tradition of Egyptology. Under British occupation, the Egyptian elites often used France to counter perfidious Albion, out of which came a certain Egyptian-French complicity of which we catch an echo in Mahfouz' reply.
The idea of a continuity of the Egyptian people, surviving a series of invasions (“from Alexander to Napoleon” as Ms Adler says), changing language and religion but never losing their basic identity, going back to the thousand year occupation of the Nile Valley (N. Mahfouz), this idea is a thoroughly modern idea, despite perhaps being obvious to us today. It is the result of two hundred years of Egyptian nationalism, a nationalism which, throughout his novels, Naguib Mahfouz depicted and elaborated with the most consistency and delicacy.
Bibliography:
Florence Quentin (dir.), Le livre des Egyptes, savoirs et imaginaires, Paris, Robert Laffont (coll. Bouquins), 2012