Malfuf wa Malik : Cairo to Chicago via the Middle Ground

Listen to Cheb Hasni, a Rai musician from Algeria, popular across North Africa, but as was usual for his time, more popular abroad than at home. He performed at concerts in US, France, Japan, Morocco and Tunisia. He was murdered for his music - fundamentalists disapproved of some of his controversial lyrics on taboo subjects like sex and alcohol. A tragic loss.  He was just 26!

The den of thieves

From the minute we made the move public I heard nothing good about it.

“You’ll get terribly bored,” an expat neighbour said, “very few Indians there, and no desi daal, flour or spices available.” Another guy said that it was a “den of thieves.” The more I heard, the more my mind rebelled against this easy, dismissive scoffing.

To be honest, Cairo wasn’t a completely unknown entity, we had visited shortly after we came to Bahrain. Egypt had been checked off early, long before we reached Dubai, though at the time our entire attention was consumed by the Pharaonic side of things.  Now I knew a bit more. Sure, there were tacky tourist-traps, like in all countries, but looking beyond that it was a deeply rich culture and country to explore – what was not to love? No amount of snidecracks or the lack of Indian spices was going to put me off, phooh!

But visiting a country on vacation and living there are two vastly different things. It’s not my intention to write about that here. Except to relate one incident that happened shortly after we arrived. My husband dropped his wallet on a Thursday afternoon, without any Egyptian IDs in it because his new visiting cards were still at the printers. We spent a horribly anxious weekend. Meanwhile, the gentleman who chanced upon it, rang up the Dubai numbers he found in there and was told we had left for good. Instead of giving up, he then proceeded to track down our current whereabouts on the slimmest lead possible, located and rang my husband at work sharp on Monday. The wallet was restored to him untouched. So much for the “den of thieves!”

Into Yacoubian and on to Chicago

‘Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads’ so goes the old Middle Eastern adage, and I came into Cairo expecting riches. While the bookshops in Dubai were better and broader than Bahrain, they catered largely for a non-Arab expat clientele. I expected Cairo to be different, a deeper and wider well into Arabs and Arabic. What turned out even more important from my POV, Cairo doesn’t just write, she also translates. There is a very active effort by the AUC Press in Cairo to translate Arabic literary works into English and make them available to a non-Arabic readership. Manna from heaven.

The first writer I encountered was Alaa al Aswany, in his second book - The Yacoubian Building, a novel told through a pastiche of the intertwined lives of characters connected to a once-plush building in Downtown Cairo. The Yacoubian Building was published in the early 2000’s and was a runaway best-seller, made subsequently into a film and a TV series.  Set during the 1990 Gulf war it is a scathing commentary of a nation that has squandered its youth and its potential. Here was a very different elegance from Mahfouz, an eminently readable, eloquent page turner that was also a serious, introspective and – given the taboos on sexuality – a very courageous portrait of a declining society. I quickly found some of his other books – Chicago, Friendly Fire, but neither of these had the same weight or charisma as the Yacoubian.

Aswany also wrote about political issues in essays published in the Arabic and international press, some of which have been collected into books. Alaa al Aswany has been the recipient of multiple awards and also been translated world-wide.  A political activist of note, his voice is reckoned to be one of the topmost among influential Arabs.

The map of the middle ground

Somewhere between YB and Chicago, I picked up my first Ahdaf Soueif, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground – a collection of essays written in English.

We saw ourselves as occupying a ground common to both Arab and Western culture, Russian culture was in there too, and Indian, and a lot of South America. The question of identity as something that needed to be defined and defended did not occupy us. We were not looking inward at ourselves but outward at the world. We knew who we were. Or thought we did… Looking back, I imagine our Sixties identity as a spacious meeting point, a common ground with avenues into the rich hinterland of many traditions.

It is from the excitement and the security of this territory that my first stories and my first articles were written.

This territory, this ground valued precisely for being a meeting point for many cultures and traditions – let’s call it ‘Mezzaterra’ – was not invented or discovered by my generation. But we were the first to be born into it, to inhabit it as of right. It was a territory imagined, created even, by Arab thinkers and reformers starting in the middle of the nineteenth century when Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt first sent students to the West and they came back inspired by the best of what they saw on offer. Generations of Arabs protected it through the dark times of colonialism…My parents’ generation are still around to tell how they held on to their admiration for the thought and discipline of the West, its literature and music, while working for an end to the West’s occupation of their lands…true appreciation and enjoyment of English literature is not possible unless you are free of British colonialism and can engage with the culture on an equal footing.

~ Mezzaterra, Ahdaf Soueif.

And because I grew up straddling two parallel worlds, learning to be my own middle ground, I was hooked from the start. I read her short fiction next – I Think of You and the hook went deeper. Her fiction felt delicate, evocative, fresh and fluid, but also very relatable. By the time I’d arrived at her Booker shortlisted novel The Map of Love, I had totally fallen under her spell.

Things fall apart and into place; and not always a comfortable place

I’d never thought about him till he died

without public drama at eighty two;
I’d carried his books tucked into my side
and flicked the pages as schoolgirls will do
and puzzled a little over the context
the abstruse climate and customs portrayed
and nothing in it bluster or defensive
a firm outline to the ancient and complex -
or so I chose to hear, so the teachers said
and it was enough to pass the exam, and live.

 

Sometime during the years that he wrote

I stopped being a schoolgirl, and I grew
my hair out, and even more remote
from nuances, and the immediate milieu.
The books stayed thrust somewhere aside
their pages rarely handled and splayed open
their spines slow faded, tight, still intact
their seeping fame spread slowly worldwide;
but the connect snapped with them way back then
and beyond that no memories, no impact.

 

It takes many random years to gauge

the words of a writer read in early youth
to reckon the deadweight of an unturned page
of letting a book dissolve in its own truth,
lie dusty and forgotten on the shelf.
The news streams its way around the world
and death is a sudden spike of interest
stabbing time, a leap across the wide gulfs
of my understanding, sharpening what’s dulled
but little point now that his hand's at rest.









 

Tagore and Bollywood and me

 

 

Well, Tagore did have a lot to say

about injustice. And also the Pathan.

For sure he would have enjoyed Ray.

Because Teen Kanya and Ghare Baire

are Tagore’s own. But suppose

he’d been given a chance at both highs and lows -

like Bollywood, and My Name Is Khan?

 

He’d probably be able to fuse the views

in a nonchalant “Question” that answers itself.

He’d probably say, “My girl, don’t lose

your cool or perspective, we each choose

different routes, but then each arrives

in the end to the same screening. Stereotypes

are just a simplified way to help.”

 

And I of course would be rendered speechless

if the man himself were to speak to me

but let’s suppose I’m more than I am, or less

aware of his works and greatness

and I’d find my tongue and endlessly argue

“How can you, Sir?! Promote this view

that Bollywood is all there is to see?”

 

“There’s so much more to us than the syrup,

the frosted fairy tales, glitzy but shallow

that Bollywood routinely dishes up.”

He’d say, “The truth, my child, is always tough.

A part is always taken to mean the whole -

See, I’ve become the sole poet, the soul

of Bengal, and every poet stands in this shadow.”

 

And I’d argue back, “But that’s right and good”

(we’ll persist with the pretence of my cheek and nerve)

“anyone would choose you, I know they would

because you are very different from Bollywood

Those films, what they portray is all wrong

Our lives are not just catchy song-

and-dance numbers, and pretty curves.”

 

He’d smile a tired smile, the old easily tire

he’d say, fed up of the arguments

“Listen woman, just hold your fire

We never sing solo, it’s always a choir

though one voice may seem louder. A stereotype,

a snatch of song, may serve to whet the appetite

and lure in viewers to other songs, other events.”

 

“What do you call him? this chap SRK

seems to have got an interesting review,

and yes K Jo is certainly no Ray

but then should he be? A million ways

to sing and live, that’s what we’re about

the audience will realise that beyond a doubt

someday soon, and so my girl, will you.”

 

 

 

 

Over the last decade or so, Bollywood films have been feted and celebrated in the West. They have always had a very admiring audience across Africa and the Middle East, and many Indian actors have a fan following among these countries to rival those at home. I enjoy a good Bollywood masala movie as much as the next person, but I am a little bemused at the increasing typecasting of Bollywood movies as the representative of all Indian films, and extending that further to Indian culture as a whole. India produces films in Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali, and many other languages; and in regional film studios away from the big money and muscles of the Mumbai film industry; it has a growing and vibrant parallel cinema where film makers of great talent showcase a different India from what is depicted in most Bollywood movies. But these are not as widely known let alone celebrated.

Tagore died while the Indian film industry was still taking baby steps, before many of his stories/novels were made into films, his songs used to augment many film scores.  Tagore was a polymath, not just a poet.  He justifiably casts a long shadow on Bengali literature, so much so that very few of the subsequent writers/poets are known to other communities in India or outside of it.  "Question" (Prashna in Bengali) is one of his poems, written after the Jallianwala bagh massacre.
SRK - Shah Rukh Khan is a very popular Indian actor, and K Jo  refers to Karan Johar, a director and  TV celebrity host.  Satyajit Ray was a world famous Bengali film director with many foreign  awards to his name.  He made some of Tagore's works into films.

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