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Naguib Mahfoud
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3 September 2006 03:17
I know that many of us if not all of us at one point in our life read something written by Naguib Mahfoud. This great writer with style and imagination larger than the Nile itself left week ago or so.
Allis wal kilaab, Al qaahiraa al jadidah, kgan al khalili, Zeqaq al medaq, Assaraab, Miramar and Tartara fawqa annil, these were some of my favorites books during teen years. Thanks to moul ezzarria frass Ederb who rented them to us for rial or jouje derial if we promise to bring them back in two days, we dived and lived great moments with characters still alive in our memory today. Mahfoud was good in making the good characters in his writing very good you want to meet them or become one of them, and was also good in making the bad ones so evil you want then so dead and hated them. he made us smell Cairo and hear the Adaan from its mosques. He made us taste the foul medammes even though we had no idea what it looked like. many of us walked in the streets of our douars looking for Hamidah, the beautiful girl in the Zouqaq Al Midaq story. no one cares she was poor any more, we just want a girlfriend like her, and we dread at the same time to be Abbass, her lover, killed by the occupation. Mahfoud was that good in his writing, he’ll depress you and make you smile on the same page, dress you like a king or starve you on the next.
Tarnished, as you know, for his stand on the Camp David accord, he never seem to recover. He lost his place amongst Arabs intellectuals as one standing against the occupation, but remained nonetheless, a great writer who left us with real wealth. for those who can't read arabic, many of his books are available in French and English. worth reading, money back guarantee.thumbs up

May Allah yerahmou.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2006 06:59 by Almot.
Almot
Y
3 September 2006 06:41
HI almot and all,

Here's a peice in his memory. I learned it immediately after he passed away following an injury resulting from a fall...May he rest in peace. The source of the piece is included at the end.

Obituary: Naguib Mahfouz
By: Lee Keith

CAIRO, Egypt -- Naguib Mahfouz, who became the first Arab writer to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels depicting modern Egyptian life in his
beloved, millennium-old corner of Islamic Cairo, died Wednesday, his doctor
said. He was 94.
Mahfouz, who was accused of blasphemy by an Islamic militant and survived a
stabbing attack 12 years ago, was admitted to the hospital last month after
falling in his home and injuring his head. He died Wednesday morning after his
health declined sharply, said Dr. Hossam Mowafi, head of a medical team
supervising his treatment at the Police Hospital.
"His wife last night was whispering on his ears and he was smiling and
nodding," Mowafi said.
The Nobel Prize, awarded to Mahfouz in 1988, brought international acclaim to
the author, even though he had already established himself as one of the
Middle East's finest and most beloved writers and a strong voice for moderation
and religious tolerance. But fame had its perils.
In 1994, an attacker inspired by a militant cleric's ruling that a Mahfouz
novel written decades before was blasphemous stabbed the then-82-year-old
author as he left his Cairo home.
Mahfouz survived, but the attack damaged nerves leading to his right arm,
seriously impairing his ability to write. A man who had once worked for hours at
a time _ writing in longhand _ found it a struggle to "form legible words
running in more or less straight lines," he wrote in the aftermath.
"Mahfouz was a cultural light ... who brought Arab literature to the world,"
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in a statement. "He expressed with his
creativity the values shared by all, the values of enlightenment and
tolerance that reject extremism."
Mahfouz maintained a busy schedule well into his 90s. In his final years, he
would go out six nights a week to meet friends at Cairo's literary watering
holes, trading jokes, ideas for stories and news of the day.
He continued to work, producing short stories, sometimes only a few
paragraphs long, dictating each day to a friend who would also read him the
newspapers. His final published major work came in 2005 _ a collection of stories
about the afterlife entitled "The Seventh Heaven."
"I wrote 'The Seventh Heaven' because I want to believe something good will
happen to me after death," the wispy-bearded writer told The Associated Press
at his 94th birthday in December 2005. "Spirituality for me is of high
importance and continuously provides inspiration for me."
Across the span of 34 novels, hundreds of short stories and essays, dozens of
movie scripts and five plays, Mahfouz depicted with startling realism the
Egyptian "Everyman" balancing between tradition and the modern world. Often the
scene of the novels did not stretch beyond a few familiar blocks of Islamic
Cairo, the 1,000-year-old quarter of the capital where Mahfouz was born.
The crowded neighborhood of alleys and centuries-old mosques is the setting
for his masterpiece "Cairo Trilogy." The trilogy _ "Palace Walk," "Palace of
Desire" and "Sugar Street," all of which were published in the 1950s _ details
the adventures and misadventures of a Muslim merchant family not unlike
Mahfouz's own.
The trilogy introduced a character who became an icon in Egyptian culture:
Si-Sayed, the domineering father who lords his authority over his wives and
daughters but holds the family together _ a character Mahfouz drew from his own
father.
It was his 1959 novel "Children of Our Alley," or "Children of Gebelawi,"
that brought him the most controversy. The book was an allegory for the series
of prophets that Islam believes includes Jesus and Moses _ Eissa and Moussa in
Arabic _ and culminates in the Prophet Mohammed.
First serialized in Egyptian newspapers in 1959, it caused an uproar much
like Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's "The Last Temptation of Christ," published
a year later.
Egyptian religious authorities banned it from being published in book form,
but it was published in Lebanon and later translated into English.
The controversy resurfaced when Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered
the death of British writer Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses"
in a 1989 fatwa, or religious verdict.
In a copycat fatwa the same year, Egyptian radical Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman _
later convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, including the
United Nations _ said Mahfouz deserved to die for "Children of Gebelawi."
The writer's attacker five years later was inspired by the fatwa.
In late 2005, an Egyptian monthly magazine tried to publish the novel.
Mahfouz said he wouldn't agree to republishing it without the consent of Al-Azhar,
the prestigious Sunni Muslim clerical institution in Cairo. His position
raised an outcry among many novelists who said he was bending to religious
censorship _ but it reflected his non-confrontational style and desire to see
consensus.
"Children of Gebelawi" will be republished along with all Mahfouz's other
works next year, his publisher said. "We had agreed with Mahfouz to celebrate
his upcoming 95 birthday by publishing all his works without exception,"
Ibrahim el-Moallem, told AP on Wednesday.
Mahfouz spent most of his adult life working for the government, writing on
the sidelines even as he grew more successful. He was a great defender of the
Palestinian right to an independent state and a critic of U.S. foreign policy
in the region, including the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But unlike the majority of Egypt's artists, Mahfouz has supported his
country's peace treaty with Israel since it was signed in 1979.
Mahfouz moved easily between genres. His works of social realism painted
Egypt's 20th century upheavals: promising young men die fighting British
colonial rule, revolutions inspire and then bitterly disappoint, women strain
against religious and traditional restrictions, gracious old manners surrender to
modern ways.
"It has to do with the plight of humanity as a whole," said Fatma Moussa, a
renowned Egyptian critic and writer. "He has presented it from the local
angle, but it's not really local at all. It's kind of a microcosm of the whole
world, a little image of the fate of man."
A military funeral will be held for Mahfouz on Thursday at a Cairo mosque,
with his coffin covered with an Egyptian flag and carried by caisson. Mahfouz
was survived by his wife, Attiyatullah, and two daughters, Fatima and Umm
Kulthoum.
Associated Press writer Paul Garwood contributed to this report.
>From The Associated Press, August 30, 2006
 
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