but as a plant you cannot notice with your naked eye.
I will grow day after day, to the sound of your singing and the rhythm of your breath at night. A small plant you will not notice at first, growing beneath your bed.
From door to bed, to bathroom to closet, standing or sitting against the mirror. Through all these acts, and to the sound of your humming, I will grow. A small green plant. With grand slim leaves sneaking out from beneath your bed.
I once read about plants that survive on light and prey on other creatures. With their glowing green leaves, they surround them and lure them in with a pleasing, lustful smell, then devour them. For hours and days and years, sucking on them. Sucking your toes one by one, making my way up.
What should I do with the bee? What should I tell the flower?
You become one with the flower. You grow up. You become a tree. While I remain a plant, in need of your humming, awaiting a song. A part of me is falling every morning, and I cannot catch it. A part of me flies off every time I lie in bed. But when I wake up I cannot remember what.
Sometimes I am reminded to look under the bed. But I don’t find the green plant. Nor do I find you.
Our family has a long history of disposing of books in various ways.
As a boy in Egypt, I remember the regular routine when, every so often, my father would open the cupboards and drawers and arrange his books, magazines, and notebooks. Most dear to him were the notebooks which contained his commentary and notes on dozens of books, most of them concerning Sufism, Islamic exigency, and political Islam, in addition to the writings of Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al-Banna, and various other Islamist leaders.
He arranged the books into bundles and then distributed them in various secret hiding places. Some were concealed in boxes on the roof next to the chicken coop. Others were left in the care of close relatives who did not take part in any political activities. Other books, the presence of which he believed jeopardized his and his family’s security, were burned. Assured he could attain other copies, these books would be thoroughly burned and their ashes discretely disposed of.
As a boy I did not take notice of this practice nor did I understand it, yet the ritual of collecting books and papers and setting them ablaze on the roof was seared into my memory forever. When I would ask my mother about it, she would fumble for the right words to explain to her child the politics at play, saying: “These books contain verses from the Qur’an and passages of our Lord and cannot be dumped in the waste, so it is best they are burned.”
My grandfather, who had been a security guard at a local factory, also had a huge library to his name. My father told me that there had been a time when my grandfather could not afford to buy a bed, so he piled together astronomy textbooks and poems of Ahmed Shawki—which he had memorized by heart—and made beds of them for his children sleep to on. However in the beginning of the 1980s, he slipped into a depression and gave away most of the contents of his library. Thereafter he contented himself with reading newspapers, poems of Al-Maʿarri, and books on astronomy. The latter of these was his greatest passion, and was what prompted him to name his eldest son Galileo. Yet after some convincing and admonishing based on the pretense that this was an un-Islamic name, he settled for Nagy, contenting himself by writing “Nagy Galileo” in huge letters on the wall of the house.
2
Unlike his own father, my father did not dispose of his books because of a sudden depression or deterioration in his capacity to read. Rather he did this so because these books could be used as evidence against him in the event he was arrested, and the house was raided. Directives to dispose of these books came down from senior Brotherhood leaders to protect its members. The letters of al-Banna or of Al-Manhaj Al-Haraki Lissira Al-Nabawiya could have been used as irrefutable evidence that my father was a member of a ‘banned organization.’
Thus during slow summer nights in Mansoura, back from our stays in Kuwait, there was nothing to do but read the books of Anis Mansour and Khalid Muhammad Khalid and the plays of Tawfiq al-Hakim. If ever state security forces were to have raided our home and found these books, they would in no way incriminate my father, and thus they were spared from being used as kindling in his ritual campfires. I personally had no need for al-Banna’s writings in order to understand the world of the Muslim Brotherhood, for I lived and breathed it every day of my life.
3
In Kuwait, just as in Egypt and more than a hundred other countries, the Muslim Brotherhood runs a social welfare network which not only provides for individuals, but entire families. I would attend weekly sessions with other boys who themselves were also from Egyptian families with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood residing in Kuwait.
At that time, the usual program for children my age, aside from reading the Qur’an and becoming acquainted with the Prophetic biography, consisted of regular recreational activities organized over weekends. As a boy suddenly transported from a village on the outskirts of Mansoura to a new environment such as Kuwait, these outings with the Brotherhood youth (or ‘cubs’ as they are known) were filled with adventure and new experiences that helped allay any feelings of homesickness.
4
Life in Egypt moved to a slightly different rhythm. In our village I was regarded as somewhat special because of my father’s prominent position as a doctor in the Brotherhood. He was a role model for many of the other ‘cubs’, something of which I had not been aware.
Reserved and taciturn by nature, my father spoke little of his past and never spoke at all about anything regarding the Muslim Brotherhood.
He recently told me of his colleagues’ surprise at the hospital, at which he has worked for the past eight years, when they learned only a few months ago that he is a Brother. They only became aware of this after he began attending union conferences held by the Brotherhood Doctors.
My mother was never comfortable with the “Sisters” and felt no urge to take part in Brotherhood activities. Before the revolution, some members of the Brotherhood leadership would coincidentally appear on the news, and she would utter a brief comment, such as, “He was a good friend of your father. They would come to visit and have dinner at your grandmother’s.”
The first thing Brothers in Mansoura and in our village would say upon meeting me was always, “So you are the son of Dr. Nagy Hegazy. You must be proud, God is good!”
5
Both in Kuwait and Egypt, I always attended private schools, the names of which always included the all-important words ‘Islamic’ and ‘Languages .’
The Guidance and Light School, in which I spent my third year of preparatory school after our return from Kuwait, was a Brotherhood school which my father helped establish. Since the 1980s, schooling and educational services had become a key aspect of Brotherhood activities and a means of proselytizing. We followed the same curriculum as the public schools, except that we took two additional courses twice per week; one was entitled ‘The Holy Quran’ and the other was a mixture of Islamic stories and proverbs. The only other change was that Music class was replaced with another class titled ‘Hymns.’
Except for drums and tambourines, musical instruments were banned and discouraged. Flyers and posters hung on the school’s walls warning about the dangers of listening to stringed instruments. The hymns which we were forced to memorize consisted of the most widely known nationalist melodies and songs except any mentions of ‘Egypt’ were replaced with ‘Islam.’ The school was of course populated with the children of local Muslim Brotherhood leaders in addition to other Muslim students of diverse backgrounds.
Only now do I realize that until the age of fourteen, I had never once met a Christian. I was in an exclusive world with its own moral values, worldviews, and perspectives on what it meant to be a good person.
6
Transitioning from the sheltered Brotherhood schools to the Taha Hussein Public High School was tantamount to setting foot on another planet. For the first time there were Christians in school, and the library contained books other than the standard morning and evening Islamic prayers.
The utopia free of insults and cursing in which Brothers moved about nibbling on siwak[1] and smiling warmly seemed far away. With the second intifada I became more active, and despite the fact that I was still in high school, I would attend meetings with the Brothers at university. I crafted the chants which were shouted in unison during the demonstrations following the killing of Muhammad al-Durrah. I had become an integral member of the Brotherhood group at al-Azhar University. Then Haidar Haidar happened.
7
A Brother brought several copies of the newspaper Elshaab and placed them beside him. Like any other meeting, that day’s session began with one Brother reciting from the Holy Quran, followed by a second interpreting a hadith, and a third explaining an aspect of Islamic jurisprudence. Then the Brother opened the newspaper and read it aloud to the group.
He read that the Egyptian Ministry of Culture had published a novel by the Syrian writer Haidar Haidar. Aside from sexual references, the novel contained heretical insults directed at God and the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). In response, preparations for public rallies were made which would protest the publication of the novel and demand it be burned!
Word for word, this is what the Brother demanded, and I instantly objected. At that time I was the group’s writer, and I refused to write any chants which called for the burning of this book or any other book for that matter.
To this day, I do not know what compelled me to take this firm stance.
I showed one of them some excerpts from Haidar Haidar’s novel which were published in Elshaab. From what I read, I found his writings ridiculous, but I insisted that this in no way justified it being burned. I entered into a long discussion with the Brothers which developed into shouting. The argument between me and the group’s leader grew increasingly sharp, and in an angry outburst he forbade me from taking such a stance. The argument grew even more hostile, and he told me, “Either give up these books you read and your stance on them, or do not meet with us!”
I left the room, and never went back.
[1] A small twig (the tip of which is softened by chewing) from the Salvadora persica tree used for cleaning teeth. It is widely held that the Prophet Mohammed recommended its use.
Using Life is a novel of Cairo, and of a younger generation of Egyptians struggling in a culture and society that is both extremely deeply-rooted (in history, tradition, etc.) and unmoored. The first chapter is nothing short of apocalyptic in its vision, first burying Cairo under a mountain of sand, then destroying half the city in an earthquake — in which the Great Pyramid itself: “was reduced o a pile of rubble”, and:
All that was left of our great heritage — our civilization, our architecture, our poetry and prose — would soon meet a fate even worse than that of the pyramids. Everything collapsed into the earth or was buried under oceans of sand.
The novel proper then is a look back to before the collapse, beginning with more or less present-day Cairo — the city and society already breaking down, yet still stumbling on, for now, in its familiar raucous, chaotic state. The narrator, Bassam Bahgat, describes his roaring twenties, when, after a stint working for a human rights organization, he got a job as a documentary filmmaker. Eventually he’s hired to make a series of films, basically on Cairo. He becomes involved with a ‘Society of Urbanists’, dedicated to a sort of very ambitious urban renewal, with a focus on architecture and city planning; eventually the Society reinvents itself as a global alliance of corporations — dozens, eventually — controlling sixty per cent of the world’s agriculture and a major player in all sorts of industries. There’s a look at the development of the old city — planned, but escaping those plans:
No city was meant to be like this. Cairo was supposed to be more intelligently designed, more precise, more efficient. […] What we need is a revolution.
The city dominates the book, defining for the characters — both as they are simply trying to get by, as well as working to upset various aspects of the contemporary order:
There’s nothing more difficult than making decisions in Cairo, since it’s Cairo that usually makes decisions for you.
Bassam crisscrosses both the familiar Cairo and a more fantastical, imagined one; whether led down its familiar streets or given a glimpse of more sensational recesses the city, and its experience, remain fundamental:
Cairo. The heat. The scowls, the sliminess, the sweat. The pain. The scream muffled inside. The streets that don’t let you laugh or smile, or even cry or shout out in pain.
Bassam — a young man: “worried about turning twenty-five without having a good story to tell” — describes his casual relationships and the lives and ambitions of those he interacts with, from the small-scale to the globally ambitious. Women figure in prominent and often powerful roles, in a novel that plays in many ways at subversiveness. Subversiveness extends to form as well, as the narrative is not limited to writing, either: a few sections are presented in cartoon-panel form, while a section on ‘The Animal of Cairo’ pairs illustration with brief description. (The artwork is by Ayman Al Zorkany.) Using Life crams many stories into the larger and dominant Society of Urbanists-conspiracy-tale, but it’s a jittery narrative, hopping all around like its protagonist who often feels he is without control. There are raw scenes here, too — including quite a bit of casual and incidental sex — presenting a welcome broader picture of Egyptian life and society, and the struggles of a younger generation in the contemporary world — convincingly twisted by Naji into his panoramic tale, but more impressive piece by separate piece than in the stuttering whole.
From Using Life @ Zorkany
A translation that feels somewhat stilted amplifies what surely is already in the original an aggressive prose challenging traditional narrative norms (especially of what (especially ‘Western’) readers seem to expect from Arabic fiction); Using Life is obviously not meant to be a smooth read — but winds up being a somewhat frustrating one in English.
This letter is at least three years overdue, but it’s better late than never.
On this day, the 7th of March, Three years ago, I was sentenced to two years in prison because of a novel I wrote. I was taken from the court to the police station where I spent three nights. During that time, my friends brought me some books to read in my imposed loneliness. Unfortunately, I was transported to prison and they took all the books, my clothes, and my pen.
In my first day in prison, the time passed so slowly. And time in prison is the ever-present executioner. But, I discovered that the only weapon inmates have to face time with, is reading.
Some of the prisoners I met with never opened a book in their lives but surrounded by boredom in prison, and the endless time, books are their only way to survive.
My reading material, however, was ever so scarce; I only found the memoirs of Jihan el Sadat, the wife of the ex-Egyptian president Anwar el- Sadat. I read the book in one night and had to endure its lack of depth and its triviality. I tried re-reading it, but reading it for a second time was more painful than boring.
I walked up and down my cell looking for something to do. A fellow inmate asked me whether I was fine. I told him that I am just looking for something to read because I can’t sleep. Another inmate heard me and said: “Someone I know has a really beautiful translated book with him.” So, I went to that person who had a book with a yellow and orange cover. It was the Arabic edition of your novel, Elling. He promised to give it to me the next day because he was still reading it. But, boredom almost killed me, so I kept on walking up and down the cell in front of him while looking at him persistently. I was convinced that I would be able to have him give it to me without saying a single word. In the end, he surrendered with a frown and gave me the novel.
I tore through your beautiful work in one night, and because we weren’t allowed to go out of the cell for two consecutive days, I reread it, and the second time, I read it slowly. I was surprised to discover later on, that a lot of my inmates had read it and liked it. Some of them, for some reason, imagined that the two protagonists of the novel were inmates as well, and because there are no prisons in Norway, both of them were put in that special house.
Personally, I was entranced with the poets in your novel and in my isolation among the other inmates, I found myself back to writing poetry after I stopped writing it for years.
Thank you for this exquisite novel, and for the smile, you put on my face and regards from me and from my fellow inmates in cell number 2/4, Zeraa’ ward, Torra prison Cairo.
تأخر هذا الخطاب ثلاث سنوات تقريباً. لكن أن تأتى متأخراً خيراً من ألا تأتى.
منذ ثلاث سنوات في مثل هذا اليوم تم الحكم علي بالسجن لمدة عامين بسبب رواية كتبتها، من المحكمة تم ترحيلى إلي قسم الشرطة حيث قضيت هناك ثلاث ليالى. أثناء وقتى هناك أحضر أصدقائي لى عدة كتب لقرائتها في عزلتى. لكنهم فجأة نقلونى من قسم الشرطة إلي السجن. وعلى باب السجن أخذوا منى الكتب التى كانت معى، وملابسي وأقلامى.
في أول يوم بالسجن، مضى الوقت بطيئاً جداً. والوقت هو جلاد المسجون الدائم الذي لا يفارقه، لكني اكتشفت أن السلاح الوحيد الذي يعتمد عليه المساجين لمواجهة الوقت هو القراءة. بعض المساجين الذين قابلتهم لم يفتح كتاباً في حياته، لكنه في السجن مُحَاطاً بالملل وغارقاً في الوقت اللانهائي لا يجد سوى الكتب والقراءة لتمضية الوقت.
غلاف رواية إلينج لانجفار
لم أجد أمامى سوى كتاب مذكرات جيهان السادات –زوجة رئيس الجمهورية السابق- قرأت الكتاب في ليلة واحدة رغم سطحيته وتفاهته، مر أول يوم ولم أجد كتاب أخر سوى كتاب السيدة الأولى السابقة، حاولت قرأته مرة ثانية لكن بدا الأمر مؤلماً أكثر من الملل.
أخذت أتمشى في الزنزانة بحثاً عما أفعله، سألنى زميل سجين ما إذا كنت بخير؟ قلت له فقط أبحث عما اقرأه لأنى لا استطيع النوم. سمعنى سجين آخر وقال لى “فيه كتاب أدب مترجم جميل اوى مع فلان؟”
ذهبت إلي فلان، أخرج كتاب بغلاف أصفر كانت روايتك “إلينج” باللغة العربية. رفض اعطائي الرواية قال أنه لم ينهها بعد وعلى الانتظار للغد. لكن الملل كان يقتلنى لذا ظللت طوال اليوم اتمشى في الزنزانة الضيقة أمامه وأنا انظر له صامتاً مقتنعاً بقدرتى في التأثير عليه دون أن اتكلم، حتى استسلم منزعجاً واعطانى الرواية.
ألتهمت روايتك البديعة “إلينج” في ليلة واحدة، وحيث أنه لم يسمح لنا بالخروج من الزنزانة ليومين بعدها. فقد أعدت قراءة الرواية مرتين بتمهل وتمعن. تفاجأت أن أكثر من سجين في الرواية كان معجباً بها وقرأها. بعضهم لسبب ما تخيل أن بطلى العمل كانا مسجونين، ولأنه في النرويج لا توجد سجون فقد وضعوهم في ذلك البيت الخاص. شخصياً سحرنى الشعراء في روايتك. وفي عزلتى وسط بقية المساجين وجدتنى أعود لكتابة الشعر بعد توقف دام لسنوات.
شكراً لك على هذه الرواية البديعة، وعلى الابتسامة التى منحتها لى، وتحياتى منى ومن الزملاء المساجين في زنزانة 4/2 بعنبر الزراعة طرة.
بكت ياسمين لأنها لم تستطع إرضاع ابنتنا، سينا، في اليوم الأول بعد ولادتها. بكت سينا أيضاً. ومحبوساً مع الاثنتين في غرفتنا في المستشفى، لم أعرف ماذا أفعل سوى الاستغاثة بالممرضات.
حضرت إحداهن وحاولت مساعدة ياسمين في الرضاعة، لكن بلا فائدة. لم يخرج الحليب، واستمر بكاء الرضيعة. اقترحت الممرضة إرضاع سينا حليباً جاهزاً مصمماً خصيصاً لحديثي الولادة، فزاد بكاء ياسمين، لأنها شعرت بالتقصير والعجز عن إرضاع وليدتها.
في يومها الأول كأمّ، تعرفت ياسمين على الجوهر الحقيقي للأمومة: الإحساس الدائم بالذنب.
طلبت مني الممرضة التوقيع على أوراق قانونية وإجرائية تؤكد موافقتنا على تقديم الحليب الصناعي لرضيعتنا الجائعة. فلكي تتدخل المستشفى في الرابطة الغذائية بين الرضيع والأم، تحتاج لموافقة الأم وهي في كامل قواها العقلية، وإلا اعتُبر هذا التدخل جريمة. بقوة البيولوجيا والقانون الحديث، تتحمل الأم وحدها مسؤولية إطعام الرضيع.
بعد أيام، جرى الحليب في صدر “ياسمين”، وفي كل مرة تُرضع ياسمين صغيرتنا، يُشرق وجهها بابتسامة السعادة رغم آلام الجسد. تحاول شرح إحساسها لكنها تعجز عن التعبير بالكلمات. تتحدث عن طاقة وشيء ما يمتد من داخلها مع الحليب إلى داخل سينا. يقال إن هذه هي رابطة الأمومة.
نولد عاجزين عن تناول أي طعام، بل نشرب فقط حليب أمهاتنا. وأولى علامات النضج في نمو الطفل البشري هي قدرته على صلب رأسه عمودياً حتى يتمكن من البلع، وبالتالي حينها يمكن تقديم الطعام له. ثاني علامات النضج هي الفطام، بتوقف المولود عن الرضاعة، ينتقل من كونه رضيعاً إلى طفل.
كلما كبرنا، كلما ابتعدنا عنها. نتوقف عن الرضاعة من صدر الماما، لنأكل ما تقدمه يداها. ذائقتنا الغذائية يشكلها طعام الأمهات، نقضي سنوات مقتنعين بأن أفضل طعام هو ما تطهوه الماما.
مهما كان مستوى طهو الأم سيئاً، فالأبناء لا يعرفون، بل يكون هذا هو الطعم الطبيعي والممتاز للطعام.
يطلق على هذا الثقافة الأم، وهي تمتد لتشمل ليس فقط مذاق طهو الوالدة، بل تقاليد الطعام التي تعلمنا اياها الماما. ثمة أمهات يربين أولادهن على ضرورة إنهاء طبقهم بالكامل، وآخرون تربيهم أمهاتهم على ضرورة ترك جزء صغير من الطعام في الطبق. في مصر يسمون هذا نصيب القطة، لكي تتوافر فضلات طعام للقطط والكلاب التي تأكل من النفايات.
تخبرنا الماما ما يجب أن نأكله وما لا يجب. منذ صغري، مثلاً، منعَت أمي دخول “النقانق أو السجق أو الهوت دوغ” إلى المنزل، وطوال طفولتي حذرتنا من أكله في الشارع.
نطيع الماما لأنها بالتأكيد تعرف معدتنا أكثر منّا. لكننا بمرور الزمن نكبر، نخرج من المنزل، نتمرد على ثقافة الأم. ونبدأ في استكشاف العالم والهوت دوغ.
وقعت في غرام النقانق بأشكالها كافة مع أول قضمة، وكان عمري 19 عاماً. عدت لأمي وسألتها لماذا منعت عنا “الهوت دوغ”. أخبرتني أنها حينما كانت صغيرة توقفت مرة أمام محل يبيع سندويشات السجق، ولسبب ما ضايقتها رائحة السجق على النار حتى أنها فقدت وعيها، ومن يومها وهي تكره السجق وكل ما يتعلق به. لم يكن المنع لسبب صحي إذاً، بل ذائقة شخصية للأم.
أجسادنا هي السجل الذي يوقع فيه الزمن، وهذا السجل المكوّن ظاهرياً من اللحم والدم والعظام، هو نتاج ما نأكله. الجسد وما يأكله يعكسان كل ما يشكل هويتنا.
نتولى زمام أنفسنا وإعادة تشكيل هويتنا حينما نتمرد على مطبخ الثقافة الأم. نبتعد عن مطبخ الماما، لنكتشف حقائق الحياة.
البعض لا يتقبل مذاق الحقيقة، يرفض تناول طعام لا يعرفه ويتمسك بالذائقة التي شكلها مطبخ الأم. البعض يستقبل كل جديد بفم مفتوح، يدرك أن أكل الماما ليس أفضل طهو بالتأكيد، لكن يظل مذاق النوستالجيا في طهو الماما ولا يمكن أن تجده في أي مكان آخر.
الذائقة مثل الهوية، ليست صورة مجمدة في الثلاجة، بل تتغير نتيجة أفعال الزمن في أجسادنا. حتى سن الـ28 لم أكن أطيق تناول السلطة أو الفاكهة. أتذكر سنوات كاملة مرت عليّ من دون أن اتناول أي فاكهة من أي نوع. فجأة، مع اقتراب الثلاثين، تغيرت الذائقة نتيجة تغير احتياجات الجسد وقدراته. الآن أبحث عن السلطة، بل يتكون بعض وجباتي بشكل كامل من السلطة والخضروات فقط.
في البداية كان الأمر نداء من مكان خفي في الجسد. تناول اللحوم والكربوهيدرات صار يجعل جسدي ثقيلاً، ويولد كسلاً وبطئاً في حركتي وتفكيري. ثم مع عبور الثلاثين، انفجرت المشاكل الصحية في جهازي الهضمى.
ذهبت للطبيب أشكو صعوبات في التبول، وآلام في الشرج. “شرخ شرجي” قال الطبيب، وهو يكتب لي وصفة مرهم مسكن ويخبرني بأن أفضل علاج هو تغيير النظام الغذائي، الابتعاد عن المعجنات، وتناول المزيد من الخضروات والفواكه.
أدركت حينها أن مرحلة جديدة من النضج والتقدم في السن قد بدأت، وهي المرحلة التي يصبح اختيارك لما تتناوله، لا بسبب ثقافتك الأم، أو ذائقتك الشخصية، بل بناء على تعليمات الطب واحتياجات جهازك الهضمي الذي سيبدأ في التداعي.
انتقلت منذ شهور للحياة في أميركا، بجهاز هضمي لا يتحمل اللحوم الوردية وملذات الطعام الأميركي بدهونه وسكّره كل يوم، لم يعد مسموحاً لي إلا بمقدار بسيط من ملذات الطعام.
أشعر بالذنب كلما غششت نظام غذائي، آكل البيتزا مستمتعاً بطعمها، مفكراً في الوقت ذاته في الألم الذي سأتحمله حينما أخرجها. وإذا تمكنت من إسكات ضميري، فطريقة عرض وتسويق الطعام هنا في أميركا مصممة أصلاً لكي تشعرك دائماً بالذنب مما تتناوله.
تدخل أي مطعم لتجد اسم الطبق، شرحاً لمكوناته، سعره، وعدد سعراته الحرارية. بدءاً من مطاعم الوجبات السريعة، وصولاً إلى المطاعم الفاخرة، كل شيء يحمل رقم السعرات الحرارية. وهكذا، حينما تختار ما تتناوله، لا تفكر في رائحة الطبق، أو مذاق الطعام، بل في عدد السعرات الحرارية التي ستدخل جسمك، وكيف ستخرجها. وإذا كان الطعام جيداً ولم تستطع أن تمنع نفسك من تناول المزيد، تظل تأكل وعدّاد السعرات الحرارية في راسك مستمر في الزيادة.
تنهي وجبتك وتحاول نسيان إحساسك بالذنب، والتمتع بدفء امتلاء المعدة، فتجد نفسك محاصراً بمقالات التوعية الغذائية، أو “بوستات” أصدقائك الذين يروجون لأنظمة غذائية مختلفة، كلها تهدف إلى إنقاص وزنك، تحت دعاوى الحفاظ على صحتك.
لم يعد للطعام مذاق، بل أصبح كالدواء تتناوله مجبراً للاستمرار في حياة بلا دهون، ولا سكّر، ولا طعم أو رائحة.
اللوحة ل Gustave Courbet
خلال يومين أو ثلاثة في الأسبوع، أطلق العنان لشهواتي الغذائية. آكل المعجنات بمختلف أنواعها، اتلذذ بتتبيل اللحم بنفسي وتناوله نصف ناضج، متسمتعاً باللون الأحمر للحمة. أطرب أذنى بصوت الزيت المقلي يحمر البطاطس وقطع الدجاج المغلفة بالدقيق والخلطة السرية. أما بقية أيام الأسبوع، فأتناول الحشائش والخضروات، مثل الأرانب. أراقب وزني، وأعاين بَولي.
أحاول الحفاظ على حد أدنى من اللياقة البدنية والصيانة الدورية للجهاز الهضمي، لا بهدف أن أحيا رشيقاً، أو أن أعيش حياة صحية طويلة، بل لأظل قادراً على التمتع بكل أنواع الطعام اللذيذ غير الصحي الى الأبد.
أكتب إليك بلا أمل، لأنى أعرف إن الأمل للمسجون عذاب. صحيح إن غياب الأمل يوقع المرء في ضلالات الوحدة والاكتئاب، يبذر الغضب والنقمة على العالم، لكن هذا ما نحتاجه جميعاً ألا ننسى ولا نغفر، حتى وإن تظاهرنا بالخضوع لسلطان الغول الذي يفتح فكيه على اتساع المدى مبتلعاً كل أحلامنا ومغامراتنا.
منذ أكثر من عشر سنوات كنت أنت من طاردت السراب في صحراء السعودية محاولاً تحويل الفن المعاصر في السعودية من مغامرات فردية إلى حراك متحرر. بأعمالك ومقالاتك ونشاطك التنظيمي ساهمت في التعريف بمشهد فنى مغاير من هناك.
أنت المولود في السعودية عشت عمرك كله هناك بلا جنسية.
الفلسطينى بلا انتماء لتنظيم سياسي يدافع عنك.
بلا قبيلة تطالب بالافراج عنك.
المسجون الآن بينما الفنانين الذين كنت تقدمهم من سنوات وتكتب عن أعمالهم وتنظم لهم المعارض ينطلقون الآن في فضاء العالمية على بساط مؤسسة “مسك” أحد أذرع الغول التي قبضت على المشهد الفنى المعاصر وحولته إلى وردة في جيب دشداشة الغول.
صورة للشاعر والفنان أشرف فياض
أكتب إليك بغضب، لكنى أمضغ غضبي في فمى بينما الشفاه تبتسم، لأن الغول الذي يسجنك في أحشائه، أذرعه في كل مكان وإن أراد قادر مهما ابتعدت على معاقبة كل من لا يبتسم له أو يصفق لبلاهته.
في السجن أحياناً كان غضبي ينفجر، في الزملاء المساجين مرة، وفي المخبرين السجانين مرة، وأحياناً ما حبست نفسي في الحمام وأخذت أصفع وجهى غاضباً من نفسي على سوء تقديري وأخطائي التي قادتني إلى هذا المكان. لكن خارج السجن هنا الآن لا يمكننى الغضب، بل أحمل الخوف كملاك على كتفي الأيسر، ابتسم للجميع سواء كان رفاق أو غيلان، واعبر لهم عن امتنانى لأني خارج السجن.
بعد نوبات الغضب في الحمام، غالباً ما كنت استمنى ثم استحم، وأخرج لانعزل في فراشي لساعات طويلة غارقاً في كتاب ضخم. رويداً رويداً، تعلمت توجيه غضبي نحو الفعل الصحيح، لا صفع الوجه أو ضرب الرأس أو الاستمناء بيأس بل بالقراءة ثم القراءة.
بالاستغراق في القراءة يمكنك الانعزال عن محيطك، أحياناً في بعض الكتب تزول حوائط السجن، لكن الأهم مهما كان مستوى الكتاب فهو يدفعك للتفكير، ينشغل ذهنك عن مأساتك، والأفضل من ذلك حينما تنام فتأتيك أحلام ليس فيها السجن، بل يتداخل هذيان الذاكرة بما تقرأها، ويشيد المخ في الحلم عالماً من السراب والضباب الملون.
لم ننس يا أشرف، رغم ضعفنا وقلة حيلتنا بل وانحنائنا للغول ومحاولة تفادى سلطانه، لم ننس ولم نغفر.
السجن عزلة، مثلما يستهدف عزلك عن المجتمع ومعاقبتك بتدمير نفسيتك، يستهدفنا نحن كذلك باجبارنا على نسيانك، بأن نتحول لسجانين. إن نعتاد غيابك. إن نعتاد سجن الشعراء والكتاب والفنانين. أن يكون الخوف خبزنا اليومى.
يحدث إن يعمى الغضب المرء عن رؤية العالم، شعرت أحياناً في ليالى السجن بأننى لن أخرج أبداً، بأننى حتى لو خرجت لن يغادرنى السجن، بأن تسممت تماماً، وتلك الحشرات التي عشت بصحبتها دخلت تحت جلدى ولن يمكننى التخلص منها أبداً. لكن كل هذا زال، وكل الكوابيس التي تحاصرك في جدران السجن ستزول، سيمضى كل هذا يا أشرف فوجه غضبك في المسار الصحيح، لا تجلد ذاتك، ولا تترك الغول يمسخك.
بأخوة الكتابة والأدب، بأواصر الفن والأحلام ينمو اتصالنا، حتى لو تقطعت سبل التواصل، فأتمنى إن تصلك محبتنا وأن تمدك بالطاقة على الحلم.
الآن اتكلم. شاهد على العصر افتح خزينة الأسرار واليوميات وكيف جري ما جري. كيف يتم تجنيد شباب الارهابيين داخل السجون؟ ما سر حجم القضيب الهيستيريا؟ من هى المرأة التى أكلت زوجها؟ ولماذا حكم القاضي عليّ بالسجن لمدة عامين؟ ومن هو وكيل النيابة الذي تسبب في هذه القضية؟ ما هى الكتب المسموح بها في السجن؟ لماذا أكل أبناء مصر بزاز مصر؟ ماذا تفعل بالمنفي؟ ماذا تصنع بالوردة وكيف تشم القنبلة؟ هو صحيح الهوى غلاب؟ كيف كانت الأيام مع علاء سيف؟ ما هو الغرض من الرقابة في مصر؟
كل هذه الأسئلة وأسئلة آخري تجدون إجابتها في ثلاث حلقات حوارية تشرفت أن أكون ضيفاً فيها في برنامج “عصير الكتب” مع بلال فضل على قناة العربي. أتمنى أن أكون ضيفاً خفيفاً
Multimodality is not new to Egyptian culture whose ancient sign system was the hieroglyph (Lambeens & Pint 240); correspondingly, ancient Egyptian two dimensional mural art was at times sequential, illustrated by hieroglyphic inscriptions. Moreover, a bas-relief dating to the Old Kingdom circa 2,000 BCE at Cairo Museum may be considered as the earliest pictorial cartoon, according to Afaf L. Margot. It bears political insinuations by depicting a conflicting relationship between the keeper and the sacred baboons in his charge (Margot 3). Later, Coptic and medieval Arabic manuscripts combined text and image (Coptic Museum). In modern times, Egyptian cartoons evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century with the founding of newspapers in 1870. Their political humor was strongly connected to the growing antagonism against rulers (Margot 2).
2Children’s comics in Arabic flourished in Egypt as early as 1923 with Al-Awlad (Children), an eight–pages–long black and white newspaper, to be followed by Katkot (Chick) with serialized comic strips that have developed, ever since (Nadim Damluji 2016). The emergence of the first graphic novel by Magdy El Shafee met great obstacles for being considered by the authorities as “infringing upon public decency.” It was banned under article 178 of the Egyptian penal code criminalizing such publications. Author and publisher were put to trial and had to pay a EGP 5000 fine. It was translated into English by Chris Rossetti (2012), and later reappeared in new Arabic editions. Censorship was growing apace during the Mubarak era, and graphic novels employed text and image to flout conventions by exposing the authorities despite the censored environment.
3Graphic novels have gained popularity with the 2011 uprising in Egypt. More graphic novels have appeared since, such as Ahmad Nādī, Ganzeer, and Donia Maher’s The Apartment at Bab El Louk (2014), winner of a Mahmoud Kahil Award. Bab El Louk is a Cairo district close to Tahrir Square where the Egyptian uprising took place. During the uprising, Tahrir Square turned into a “carnivalesque” performance stage intermediating aural, verbal, visual, and digital, blending media and performance, most of which had political insinuations. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms this would be considered as “carnival” upturning social hierarchies. Tahrir Square became more of a mūlid (folk fair) location, where performances became similar to the Bakhtinian marketplace, combining “loud cursing” and “organized show… imbued with the same atmosphere of freedom, frankness, and familiarity” (Bakhtin 1984a 154), thus balancing social differences.
4The carnivalesque blending of media and performance, the pairing of (temporal) language and (spatial) image brings us back to Bakhtin’s theory which examines the utterance within the genre; this has been related by some critics to the combination of media. Gunther Kress has argued for a semiotic dimension of genre systems as combining varied activities within a medium. He starts off by proposing language as a multimodal medium (Kress 185), and all texts as multimodal (Kress 187). This multimodal approach to all texts or forms of communication shows that different modes have various potentials and limitations, and are articulated in specific ways in different cultures.
5In a similar argument, Lars Ellestrom propounds that all “‘texts’ and ‘systems’ overlap,” being parts of material, sensorial, spatiotemporal and semiotic aspects,” which he calls “the four ‘modalities’ of media.” Subsequently, “all forms of art, media, languages, communication and messages have some characteristics in common,” allowing them to merge without dissolving (Ellestrom 10). Mark Evan Nelson and Glynda Hull have noted that Bakhtin’s theory on the multimodal “chronotopes,” the time-space conjunctions (Bakhtin 1981), may be considered as precursors to the interpretation of multimodality merging multifarious potentials in media. They have concluded that synthesizing several theories in a study within this scope enables a better understanding of a multimodal novel ( Nelson and Hull 416-417). Multimodality has challenged the borders separating media and has opened new forms of cultural practices and analysis that cross borders. It has promoted new strategies for collective engagement in a mediated world, creating a space for cosmopolitan repercussions.
6Departing from traditional trends, experimental fiction proliferates in a cultural context where several forms of sign systems and media overlap. The carnivalesque environment referred to earlier that evolved with the Egyptian uprising has brought together creators from different social and cultural communities. Ahmed Naji’s (1985) and Ayman Al Zorkany’s (later Zorkany, 1982) Istikhdāmal-Hayãt (2014, Using Life) is a multimodal novel challenging borderlines dividing classical and contemporary verbal narratives, comic strips, popular music, and film-making. It moves freely between the classical and the popular, as well as between world and local cultures (later referred to as UL). The popular has acquired global dimensions with the spread of information technologies, science fiction, and cyberpunk sub-genres, even among subcultural groups living at the margins. Verbal and visual overlap, enticing the reader to meander visual, verbal and musical rapport, communicating thematic connections on multiple levels simultaneously. Indeed, as Ellstrom argues, “intermediality is a precondition for all mediality” (Ellestrom 4).
7By transgressing boundaries, verbal narrative and visual text contest plot-line consistency, as well as sequential chronology in graphics, which problematizes a critical reading of the novel within a single theoretical methodology. Any critical approach has to be shaped with relevance to the experimental nature of the creative work within its cultural context. Subsequently, I will draw from several critics that range, among others, from Mikhail Bakhtin, to Thierry Groensteen, Gunther Kress and Pascal Lefévere.
8Naji writes and Zorkany draws. Both are experimenting with mainstream novels and comics conventions, subverting the role of the Western superhero as well as the popular Egyptian arch-villain to articulate a futuristically fantasized estranged world. The objective of this paper is to explore strategies of engagement in UsingLife, a multimodal narrative, combining fiction, non-fiction, graphics and lyrics. It will trace modes of going beyond standardized formal conventions, breaking away with habitual reading protocols of classical Arabic and mainstream Egyptian fiction to create a culture of dissent. Besides the informal practice in the verbal text, of blurring boundaries among various language registers in Egyptian everyday spoken language, it merges professional and amateur writing. Correspondingly, Zorkany’s comic strips break with the artistic hierarchy set by the College of Fine Arts since its establishment in Cairo in 1908. Unlike the aestheticism of Fine Arts, comic strips hold an oppositional potential interrogating habitual modes of viewing. Furthermore, Zorkany drifted away from the drawing styles commonly used in Egyptian comic artists. His comics have a wider range of drawing/shading style, and panel composition.
9Naji and Zorkany have closely collaborated to synthesize verbal and visual; they have welcomed readers’ critical interaction, as acknowledged at the end of their book. In fact, the visual and verbal narrative strategies used, subvert the expectations of readers habituated to mainstream fiction, and graphic novels pandering to traditional tastes. They had to face the challenge of appealing to a wider and more varied audience, a multiplicity of cultural sources, and a wider range of artistic styles, ranging from cartoons, illustrations, and graffiti to commercial ads. The far reaching economic and social changes in Egypt as a consequence of globalization policies have formed a pluricultural society. This has unsettled mainstream culture and valued principles of all cultural groups. Verbal language has been affected mostly, and the visual took precedence with the spread of communication technologies. Subsequently, this has introduced new potentials for engagement with the world.
10A society that is constantly disoriented as a result of rapid changes effected by unknown sources is in constant need to relate. Moreover, the proliferation of the graphic novel as a multimodal form came in response to an urge to engage with the world through an immersive form. According to Kress, multimodality brings to our notice that perception is the result of the human body’s engagement with the world through the senses. The fact that the senses coordinate together “guarantees the multimodality of our semiotic world” (Kress 184). For Pascal Lefévre, the sensual is experienced through form: “The first and foremost dynamic process of form is engaging the feelings of the reader” (Lefévre 5). The fact that the body provides the means of engagement with the material world, would relate multimodality to “the issue of subjectivity” (Kress 187), and ways of its engagement with the world. Multimodality may be thought of as an epistemological tool invoking the reader’s interaction in order to rethink complex local global relations ensuing from the clash between global technological politics and parochialism in an uneven world. Today’s reader is a global and local citizen located at the crossroads of cultural encounters, and contemporary writers worldwide have become aware of limitations inflicted by traditional artistic forms, as well as the difficulty in relating to a single national culture. Subsequently, multimodal creative works worldwide are hardly confined to one literary or artistic tradition. Such is the case with Using Life (2014; later UL), the work under study.
11The novel’s title, Using Life is an appropriation from the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus’s (c.99 CE-c.55 CE) poem, The Nature of Things: De Rerum Natura, which is based on Epicurean philosophy. An epigraph appropriated from Lucretius is quoted in the book’s front-matter pages. The epigraph quoted in Arabic translates as follows: “Birth-giving reccurs on and on; life is not given for possession but for use” (UL 5). Naji’s appropriation of an ancient western classic, his merging of the local with the global, his mix of establishment with popular cultural products, and placing events in a contemporary setting endow the novel with a cosmopolitan context. The narrative events take place in cosmopolitan Cairo, configured as an unreal/real City that may represent the monetizing hurly-burly of any metropolitan city. However, the narrative subverts the call for “using life,” advocated by the book’s title and the Lucretian epigraph by failing to affirm them. Unlike Lucretius’s poem resplendent with natural imagery and sensuality promoting intellectual pleasure, the preponderant imagery in the novel is that of a yellowish desert, sometimes orange at its best, and that of a ravaged Cairo razed to the ground.
12As opposed to Lucretius’s birth-giving nature, the events in the novel are stirred into action by a geographical catastrophe—a devastating desert tsunami inundating Cairo under a sand avalanche, along with a deadly massive earthquake causing streets and bridges to break down, land and ground to fall down and eventually, the collapse of the pyramids; Cairo is immersed in an overwhelming agony, a bewildering pathos. The language used to describe the tsunami appropriates that of the sacred texts, with phrases like “the wrath of god” and “Heavenly damnation,” relating the overwhelming situation. Again, as in The Nature of Things, the element of chance—not divine intervention—is persistent, however, paradoxically, disabling the natural use of life.
1 * Editor’s note: the graphic’s allusion seems to be to David’s “The Death of Marat.” A reference to (…)
13The presence of death in life initiated in the verbal narrative, is visually configured by a graphic design in a two-page spread with a caption appropriated from the Natasha Atlas’s lyric: “You’re looking for paradise, while it surrounds you” (UL 12-13). Instead of an enchanting landscape illustrating the lyric’s words, the graphic drawing is of a devastated bathroom. The drawing is in shades of grey and a predominantly obscure background. Streaks of light emanating from an unknown source make visible a toilet, a tub overflowing with a bloody liquid, sharp-cutting metal tools, and female underwear negligently thrown.1 The prevalence of decay is heightened by the use of stark chiaroscuro. The contrast of light and deep shades adds a claustrophobic noir atmosphere. The image may be viewed from another perspective as, to use Thierry Groensteen’s terms, a “tabular surface,” for spatial relationships, (Groensteen 13). The contrast between the white typography placed at the top of the drawing and the black background heightens the contradictory relationship between the meaning of the lyric and the visual affect. The sharp contrasts in shades, along with the deformed non-representational objects, function as tools to immerse the viewer in apprehensive emotions (Fig. 1).
14Subsequently, the graphic spread cannot be viewed as a comic strip; the textual code emerging from the obscure space is deliberately disrupted by the gloomy environment evoked by the grey shades and sharp contrasts. The visual function of the typography becomes more active than the textual code in the lyric. The graphic drawing plays a double function: its placement at the beginning of the novel anticipates traumatic forthcoming events. However, once retrieved by memory along the flow of events, it impacts retrospectively, especially towards the end. The opening graphic spread disrupts the code transmitted by Natasha Atlas’s lyric, subverting the embedded meaning. The comic strips that follow are not set in consecutive order to create an alternative narrative; nor are they used as illustrations to the verbal texts. Conversely, they are as disconnected as the narrative text, at times supplementing the inarticulate in verbal language. The sparing snatches of dialogue in the subsequent strips are by an anonymous narrator, who even disappears from several sequences. Unlike classical comics that impose verbal on visual, the panels are generally self-sufficient, following what Groensteen propounds as a “poetics of reticence, ambiguity, and indeterminacy” (Groensteen 30).
The third verbal text following the graphic spread is an entry on Ibn ‘Arūs, a medieval Upper Egyptian folk singer who turned from his life as a bandit to become a popular lyricist upon being jilted at the age of sixty by the young girl he loved. Ibn ‘Arūs’s lyrics are sung to this day at local fairs, or festive occasions in Upper Egyptian villages, by Shawqī Qenawī, a contemporary popular ballad singer, also mentioned in the entry on Ibn ‘Arūs. The dates and national origins of Ibn ‘Arūs are not definitive, as the narrator claims that information descending from ancestors and exchanged among contemporaries is liable to constant modification along the ages. The insertion of this entry pseudo-documenting the lives of both popular singers ji lted by their lover[s] function as commentary on the previous episode recounting Bassam Bahgat’s—the protagonist narrator—disappointment as a result of his partner’s betrayal; parallel situations in the novel intensify elements of indeterminacy and chance. The multimodal use of text, graphic design and popular music to map related private agonies among members of different social communities, enhances the sensation of “tsunami” morbidity on the local horizon. The second chapter extends this morbidity to the international horizon with texts and graphics critical of private and public Western modes of living. Enhancing sensations by the use of three modalities of media–verbal, visual and aural–simultaneously immerses the reader-viewer in the narrative experience.
16Instead of a chronological plot-line, a series of episodes are spread along ten chapters, alternating verbal narrative, graphics or comic strips, as well as popular musical extracts. As verbal narrative visual comics and musical excerpts do not proceed in sequential order, they are mutually interruptive. Shifting visual, verbal and musical effects requires a pause, which disrupts narrative time and space. The verbal and visual are not attributed meaning in isolation, but relative to their occurrence in the text, and depend on the connections made in the process of reading. Multimodality or the use of multifarious media as referred earlier, coincides with the time-space “chronotopes,” hence merging different historical temporalities and diverse locations.
17The novel evolves through multiple temporality, and plurality of cultural narratives. Narratives from Cairo’s past and present are related, to provide a background for ongoing events in the protagonists’ private lives. In one of his interviews, Naji rightly opines that, “Cairo is a museum holding a plethora of historical buildings” (Ali 2014). Cairo residents daily commute along different phases of history marked by distinct architectural constructions and monuments, at times merging with shanty towns and popular districts. Past and present are active in the everyday life of ordinary Cairo inhabitants. Along with the presence of the historical past, the present has provided technological devices introducing parallel realities. Subsequently, events in the novel alternate inadvertently along the protagonists’ private lived time and simulated reality. Correspondingly, Cairo’s surviving monumental architectural constructions provide a cultural context of lived pasts, surrounding commuters, along with mediated pasts diffused through the media. Within the private domain, there are lived, recounted, dreamed and simulated times. By the same paradigm, Cairo is being lived as embodied space, and as virtual space. Inadvertent shifts in experiencing material and virtual realities in private and collective memory are one of the strategies used to destabilize progressivist ideologies. The shifts are prompted by environmental degeneration, social instability, abjection, and failed projects. Contingent cultural transformations make it difficult to mobilize a narrative of private or collective history on a single axis, which explains the plurality of cultural narratives on Cairo and of its inhabitants. These narratives are inserted in the action as comments on ongoing situations linking Cairo’s past history to present actualities, in the same way protagonists reflect on their past lives in present sociopolitical situations.
18Cairo has taken on several faces; the cityscape has undergone several changes under successive rulers. This is also configured in the changing roles of Egyptian women acting as traditional veiled women (Fig. 2) or unveiled modernized funky women (Fig. 3). These seeming binaries come along a series of graphic drawings. In a chapter titled, “The Animals of Cairo,” a variety of male and female figures are featured combining grotesque human and animal features; they are named: “the Scoundrel,” “Stray Dogs,” “Dervishes,” “cockroaches,” among others. Verbal and visual text subverts these stereotypes by revealing their complexity, making it difficult to stigmatize them under one appellation. They configure an identity crisis incapable of coping with new demands from the altered social and economic changes. Both veiled (UL 90) and unveiled women (UL 92) fail to find a balance between developing their distinctiveness while still fitting in. Unlike former graphics combining visual and verbal in one panel, in this series, the verbal and visual are split into different panels to be read and viewed separately.
19Identity in crisis is a consequence of the persistent tradition/modernity conflict predominating the history of Cairo’s architecture, cultural heritage, as well as social relations, and has been configured in different strips. This conflict has never been resolved either in Cairo’s urban planning, or in the lives of its residents. The tradition/modernity conflict is further developed towards the end of the novel; a sequential panel features a televised story of a worker at a printing press, who abandons his wife after becoming emotionally attached to the printing machine he works on, and fantasizes about having a sexual relationship with it (UL 156-161). It is a humorous strip with multiple cultural specific connotations. Most of the panels are in a grotesque style, merging reality with fantasy; they convey a visual metaphor, alluding to inability in managing technological advancement to meet habitual living, or difficulties in reconciling rationality and affect. It may read as a tragicomic sequence, which adds to the ambiguity of the situation instead of clarifying it.
20The disconnected segments configure a lurking catastrophe which the reader/viewer apprehends as early as the opening chapters, especially that the opening episodes, graphics and musical extracts manifest the end of Cairo, the sad finale, before starting the narrative leading to this end. The reader is gradually led to sense a double risk lurking in the urban, ecological and sociopolitical environments. While the sociopolitical and environmental conditions of Cairo predict an inevitable disaster, later configured as a sand tsunami, its geopolitics is being manipulated by an economic strategy planned by the International Architects Association. This multinational Association is planning to sweep off Cairo City to have it replaced by a New Cairo. Cairo has always been designed by successive rulers to become the center of power. Moving the center of power from historic Cairo to a “New Cairo” by an international association of architects is of significance. The Association is a “global player,” an “outsider” economic and a political actor and not the choice of local inhabitants. Its political activity beyond governmental control has increased the vulnerability of the system, which brings about Cairo’s devastated condition. The latest previewed transformation by the Architectural Association claiming to have worked with reference to stored archived material lacks solid credentials, and their work turns out to be drawing a virtual map of New Cairo, a map that, “precedes the territory–precession of simulacra–that engenders the territory […]” (Baudrillard, from “The Precession of Simulacra,” 1981). Environmental degeneration and globalizing capitalism work concurrently. Towards the closure, global capitalism overlaps with crime increasing the threat, which is marked by a series of mishaps. Inadvertent events occur, such as the mysterious disappearance of Maud, one of the protagonists, the discovery of traces of a crime in the Association underground offices, and the frozen human flesh discovered by Bassam in Moonie Moon’s refrigerator. The horrendous verbal images recuperate the prelude graphic spread featuring a tub floating with a bloody liquid in an abandoned bathroom. On one level, the closing events relate to the queries raised by the opening spread; on another level they raise additional questions as to the identity of the assassins and their intentions; together these reiterate the limitations of verbal and visual language to be fully articulate. The ambiguity of both verbal and visual languages, their inability to articulate a consistent plot-line configures Cairo’s devastated condition as well as the chaotic condition of its inhabitants.
From Using Life @ Zorkany
21The speculative architectural project of New Cairo undertaken by the International Architects Association, created in response to a capitalist transnational scheme, intertwines with the fictional narrative (Plesch 145) recounting the interment of Cairo as a consequence of a devastating sand tsunami. The environmental disorder configures degenerating social relations, chaotic governmental policies and lack of governance. The verbal and architectural narratives critique centralized planning, cultural globalization, digitalization and monetization. This is rendered in the third sequential panel (Chapter 3), featuring Bahgat’s first encounter with two members of the International Architects Association, who commission him to make a film on Cairo’s architecture (UL 37-41). The different postures of standing outsider and seated insider, commissioner and commissioned, self-assuredness and incertitude are rendered by focusing on posture and facial expressions. While Bassam’s posture conveys helplessness, his eyes reveal anxiety and negative affect (Fig. 4). Conversely, the Association members’ blank eyes shaped in straight, circular and interwoven lines convey a tunnel vision (Fig. 5). This blank look creates a gap revealing the complexity of the relationship, whereby one party’s inner emotions remains ambiguous; in that sense the images become performative as they immerse readers in the action.
22The presence of Ihab Hassan (1925-2015), the U.S.-American-Egyptian postmodernist critic, as a member of the International Architects Association is an implicit subversion of the postmodernism Hassan advocates. The construction of a New Cairo according to a simulated map designed by an international association, is totally divorced from Cairo’s cultural history, and marks the failure of a postmodernist approach claiming its inclusiveness of cultural difference. Conversely, Bassam Bahgat, protagonist-narrator and his friends, contest the Association’s rationalized globalizing scheme by leading the life of the flaneur. This mode of living also challenges the popular—turned—elitist postmodernist approach which had initially subverted rationalized modernization, but has later turned into theorization. The turn from live experience in an old Cairo throbbing with life, to the theorization and simulation of a “New Cairo” that replaces the old impedes the natural process of living. Subsequently, this explains Cairo’s eventual devastation by an unprecedented sand tsunami.
23However, the life of the flaneur does not promote the natural process of living either. Frustration with the flaneur’s mode of living is rendered in the fourth comic strip (UL 71-78), configuring the impact of hasheesh on Bassam, the protagonist-narrator in the spatial graphic mode. Bassam is rendered in a condition of temporary amnesia that dissociates him from material reality, carries him afloat a paper boat sailing on a sea of dreams. The journey proceeds along downfalls and lifts, sinking in the sea, and flying in an air balloon, until he finally lands on a desolate location. The strip is made of a series of single images most of which are without captions, or with onomatopoeic sounds like the “crack” of the collapsing paper boat (Fig. 6). One does not view the panels in terms of before and after; the reader draws the meaning by reconstructing a simultaneous relationship connecting different images. Bassam’s distraught condition materializes with the sudden appearance of an unknown person giving him back his lost purse. Instead of thanking him, Bassam resents the stranger’s help, and responds with abusive language. Bassam subverts the superhero image; his life as flaneur indulges him in half- accomplished pleasures. However, his indulgences cannot be classified as negative affect, as they are among the few choices offered in a censored environment.
24The Bassam Bahgat-Ihab Hassan dis/alliance renders the paradoxical relationship dis/ connecting dissenting intellectuals from the masses. Hassan’s presence is reminiscent of similar politico-cultural circumstances that have, with variation, previously taken place in Cairo’s history. Ihab Hassan emigrated to the United States in 1946, when Cairo was metamorphosed by Khedive Ismail to become “part of Europe,” engendering a cosmopolitan cultural environment. These were times when Egyptian Surrealists were at the peak of their performance; while closely connected to the International Surrealist movement, Egyptian Surrealists failed to achieve some of their aspirations in a cultural climate torn between modernists and conservatives (Kane 10-12). Similarly, Hassan, the postmodernist critic, while fully integrated into the American culture was totally divorced from the local culture to which he was related by birth. Most contemporary subversive youth movements as of the 1970s have appropriated the Egyptian Surrealists’ modes of contesting the establishment. However, Naji and Zorkany push “degenerate” or “decadent” art a bit further. Naji’s use of explicit language that almost verges on porno, his challenging description of sexual and gender relationships contest the growing social bigotry. Consequently, he has been unjustly persecuted and had to spend two years in jail in retribution (Koerber 2016). Ironically, this has increased the sales of the novel to over two million copies, a sign of wide reception, and the success of his strategy to debunk political repression and social inhibitions. The political establishment’s unequal war against Naji’s “decadent” fiction has contributed to the revival of political awareness, and augmented public resentment. Jacques Rancière defines “policing” not as “disciplining” of bodies” rather as a rule governing their appearing.” Conversely, Rancière argues that, “politics […] is antagonistic to policing.” “Politics runs up against the police everywhere” (Rancière 29, 30).
25The subversion of formal genre conventions of the realistic novel, such as the absence of chronological temporality, of superheroes, of a conclusive message, as well as the lack of explicit language frustrates the habitual expectations of mainstream Arabic novel readers. In the same vein, Zorkany’s subversion of formal comics conventions–the want of interpretive aids, the grotesque morbidity of his hybrid figures, unidentified mysterious location, heightened mood of existential estrangement in the fictional narrative–dramatically diverges his work from the commercial comics tradition. Furthermore, instead if using one style throughout, Zorkany experiments with a wide range of graphic styles. His comics production combines sequences of abstract drawings, as in the “You are looking for paradise,” panel and drawings with figurative elements, which do not form a coherent narrative. Thierry Groensteen calls this graphic mode: “infranarrative comics” (Groensteen 10). In addition to the absence of a sequence linking the panels, occasionally, the panels and plot-line are not logically related. These visual strategies disorient the reader and make it difficult to infer a single interpretation, opening multiple semiotic possibilities.
26Although the final strip (Chapter 9) is sequential, it requires decoding the various layers of signification. It is a parody of horror comics, critical of Western assumed power based on technological advancement; simultaneously, the panels ironically convey the vulnerability of folk heroism. The strip configures an invasion by monstrous figures spurred on by Paprika and Madame Dawlat, both Architects Association members, along with the escape of the perpetrators who may belong to the Architects Association members. The monstrous unidentified figures in the strip are drawn in a “rhizomatic style” in contrast to Paprika (Fig. 7). Paprika is drawn in a dynamic line whereas the hooded figures appear as a sprouting rhizome. Bassam and Hassan are identified in the panels in the act of invoking forces of resistance; in a diagonal layout, Hassan uses a spray can to fend off the monster’s assault, and is seen in the act of escaping with a bag. Conversely, Bassam is the only one to stand his stead, while he scares the assaulters by the use of explicit language–Hassan arms himself with technology, while Bassam relies on his innate forces (Fig. 9). The friction between two styles of drawing gives it a vital agility (UL 215-224).
27The protagonists’ figures are not represented in the same way all through; although they are recognizable they remain unrealistic. Drawings figuring Ihab Hassan have undergone an erasure (Fig. 8); Zorkany has previously caricatured “Ihab Hassan,” the postmodernist icon, as an aristocratic snob (UL 116). In the final strip (UL 222), Hassan appears holding a spray can–lower left panel–to scare off the monstrous figures. The image comes with a caption that translates into English as, “God has deemed this to be fair” ( Fig. 10). The word “fair” in Arabic translates as “hassan,” the surname of the American critic, posturing as one of the protagonists in the novel. This caption, which is appropriated from a sacred text, may serve as a commentary on the whole situation, expressing satisfaction with the break in the Association’s bond, and considering it as a blessed supernatural intervention.
The final comics strip disrupts the reader’s expectations of knowing the victor in the fantastic/real battle featured, and the strip sequence ends with no resolution. An unidentified monstrous figure sits blowing arrows; his crane reveals a conspiratorial scheme aiming at the destruction of Cairo’s architectural constructions (Fig. 9). The sequence configures the verbal narrative line that has assumedly occurred before the events of the novel begins. It also relates to an earlier entry about Hanafī Ahmed Hassan, another well-known singer of popular lyrics. His most reputed ballad is ShafīqaandMetwalī an old popular ballad about the shame killing of Shafīqa, upon the denouncement of her secret love bond with Metwalī. This entry preludes the series of killings taking place among the Association’s members towards the close of the novel. It enhances the element of betrayal, denouncement, and distress. Distress is sensed on the local and international levels.
29The prelude included the morbid graphic spread, ironically captioned “You’re looking for paradise while it surrounds you”; a chapter titled “Music’s Cemetery,” recounting betrayals and disappointments; the finale’s prelude–an episode also titled, “Music’s Cemetery,” alluding to the decline of harmonious living. In the finale is the announced death of music acts as a commentary on Paprika’s schemes, a leading member of the Architects Association, who along with her accomplices are proceeding with their atrocious plan–the mutilation of Cairo’s architectural and cultural history. The chapter evokes a dolorous tempo of a musical piece, and sounds the dissonance of the chaotic events. This noise, the concoction of a medley of fraudulent plans and horrendous events is allied to the constant denouncement of listeners to old musical pieces as inhibited individuals devoid of the joy of life. This sad prelude commences a series of upcoming disasters, along with a grotesque sequential panel.
The episodes at the closure render mysterious events, marking the sudden disappearance of protagonists, either by departure, death, escape, or floating away in a hot air balloon. The mystery is intensified by the narrator-protagonist’s self-reflexive awareness that he may merely be an idea, an image, a simulacrum the way Cairo City has always been (UL 196, 198). In line with this indeterminacy, the recognizable figures in Zorkany’s drawings are never repeated in the same style; they acquire new attributes with the changing situations, never becoming attached to an archetype, or reduced to a referent. By analogy, the mysteries are not resolved by magical resolutions; unresolvedness is a strategy inducing the reader to become aware of the constructedness of all narratives related to the self, Cairo, or a single global cultural history. By subverting readers’ expectations the verbal visual narrative affirms its dissidence, its opposition to ideologically charged generic and formal conventions established by mainstream literature or art. The use of spatio-temporal strategies offers empowering alternatives that are more engaging to local and global readers alike by opening up spaces for different points of view, engaging them in identifying conflicting perspectives.
31It is no wonder that novels that are graphic in part or whole are finding better chances to be translated despite their limited number. Jaqueline Brendt has postulated in her introduction to Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale (2010) that bande dessinée, manga and manhau, historietas, beeldverhalen and fanzines “share the inclination toward escaping the ‘national’” (Brendt 5). UsingLife crosses borders by appropriating classical global and local multimodal sources across historical periods. It shifts inadvertently between Lucretius, classical and popular Arabic sources, global and local singers’ lyrics, high stylized classical Arabic language, everyday Egyptian dialects, and obscene language; all speech registers used are mutually unintelligible. Likewise, the graphic images toggle between various design layouts, inspired by various artistic styles unlimitedly.
32UsingLife transgresses boundaries among visual, verbal, and aural—mainstream and popular, and tends to be transcultural. Both Naji and Zorkany declined claims for national particularities, and this is evident in their joint work. Naji has broken with the classical Arabic tradition and mainstream culture that claim objectivity through “the signifying units of a language […] that are impersonal” (Bakhtin 1986, 95). Their creative work is in Bakhtinian terms a heteroglossia of languages, acknowledging a multifarious community of addressees, along with a changing relationship between speaker and addressee(s) that can never come to a standstill. The use of different speech registers is a technique of engagement, immersing the readers from disparate communities by providing them with space to become “actively responsive” (Bakhtin 1986, 95), by allowing “various social ‘languages’ […] to interact with one another” (Bakhtin 1992, 282).
33Correspondingly, Zorkany broke away with classical art training at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in Cairo, as well as with comics styles used by emerging Egyptian comics artists’ inspired by American and European comics. His drawings are aimed at trained and untrained viewers belonging to varied social communities. His visual language is in different styles since they are not reaching out for a fixed code, rather engaging viewers outside the framework of social conventions in order to establish a familiarity reaching their sensations. Familiar speech and unofficial art styles can “play a positive role in destroying the official medieval picture of the world,” Bakhtin postulates, giving examples from literary history (Bakhtin 1986, 97). Naji and Zorkany both aimed at a new strategy for engagement by opening fiction and graphics to “layers of language that had previously been under speech constraint” (Bakhtin 1986, 97). This is made clear in an interview Naji had with Mona Kareem, where he expressed his belief that the traditional novel is “nearing extinction […] and images continue to take over the human consciousness, leaving us with a new language” (Kareem 2014 npn).
34Along the same lines, Groensteen postulates that towards the end of the twentieth century comics are “becoming literature,” or what we call the graphic novel. He quotes Alain Berland, that a comics author should engage “in multiple hybridization with other artistic disciplines” (Groensten 175). Groensteen does not see that this would lead to an “artist’s book.” Naji’s and Zorkany’s joint book shows that the need to hybridize is an urge to run counter to the mainstream. Their multimodal text belongs to a worldwide emerging youth subculture seeking uninhibited means of communication to engage addressees by touching on their sensations, while being indifferent to cultural legitimacy. Lambeens and Pint argue that an: “intelligent combination of code and sensation in fact reveals the distinctive possibilities of the comic genre in comparison to other more established genres like film, literature or painting” (Lambeens and Pint 255). Comics have opened new possibilities for Egyptian writers and artists, and the word “komix” has become a loanword appropriated in Egyptian dialect. Subsequently, komix calls for a cross-cultural method of research that resists compartmentalization within one critical scholarship.
BAKHTIN, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981; 1992).
. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984a.
. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. Mcgee. Ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: Texas University Press, 1981; 1986; 10th edition 2006.
BRENDT, Jaqueline, (ed.). “Introduction: attempts at cross-cultural comic studies.” Comic Worlds and the World ofComics:TowardsScholarshiponaGlobalScale. (Series, Global Manga Studies, vol. 1). International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University, 2010. The Coptic Museum, Cairo. http://www.coptic-cairo.com/museum/selection/manuscript/manuscript.html
El SHAFEE, Magdy. Metro. Cairo: Mohammed El Sharqawy, 2008. Translated by Chip Rosetti. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012.
ELLESTROM, Lars (ed.). Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Hampshire: Macmillan, 2010. Palgrave, 10.1057/9780230275201
FATHI, Ibrahīm. Kumīdyaal-Hukumal-Shumūliyy . [The comedy of totalitarian regimes.] Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1991.
GROENSTEEN, Thierry. ComicsandNarration. Translated by Ann Miller. Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press, 2013.
KANE, Patrick. “Art Education and the Emergence of Radical Art Movements in Egypt: The Surrealists and the Contemporary Arts Group, 1938-1951.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 44: 4 (Winter) 2010: 95-119.
LAMBEENS, Tom and Kris PINT. “The Interaction of Text and Image in Modern Comics.” Texts,Transmissions, Receptions: Modern Approaches to Narratives. Eds. André Lardinois, Sophie Levie, Hans Hoeken and Christoph Lüthy. Readout Studies in Humanities, Vol. 1. chapter 14. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014.. Accessed 09/12/2016. http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004270848
LEFÉVRE, Pascal. “Recovering Sensuality in Comic Theory.” International Journal of Comic Art. 1, (1999): 140-149.
LUCRETIUS CARUS, Titus. The Nature of Things: De Rerum Natura. Trans. from Latin by William Ellery Leonard. July 31, 2008 [Gutenberg EBook # 785]. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785
MARGOT Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid. “The Cartoon in Egypt.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. 13: 1 (Jan. 1971): 2-15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178195. Accessed: 17-01-2016 17:14 UTC.
NAJI Ahmed, and Ayman EL ZORKANY. Istikhdām al-hayāt. Cairo , Beirut & Tunis: Dar al-tanwīr, 2014. In English, Using Life. Trans. from Arabic by Benjamin Koerber. Austin: Texas University Press, forthcoming 2017. Awarded PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, New York, 2016.
NELSON, Mark Evan, Glynda HULL and Jeeva ROCHE-SMITH. “Challenges of Multimedia Self-Presentation: Taking, and Mistaking, the Show on the Road.” Written Communication. 25: 4 (October 2008); 415- 440. DOI: 10.1177/0741088308322552. http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/25/4/415
PINT, Kris. “The Avatar as a Methodological Tool for the Embodied Exploration of Virtual Environments.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14:3 (2012): http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2037. Accessed 09/11/2016.
PLESCH, Veronique. “Literary Spaces.” In Once Upon a Place: Architecture & Fiction. Ed. Pedro Gadanho and Susana Oliveira. Lisbon: Caleidoscópio (2013): 145-47.
RANCIÈRE, Jacques. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Mineapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
وسع خيالك 