Children Of Gebelawi – Naguib Mahfouz

His parents returned to the alley as they had left it, but still more worried. Tongues wagged over his disappearance, especially after he had been away several days. He became a joke in the café and in Jasmine’s place and all over Gebel’s quarter. Everyone made fun of his parents’ fears. Omme B’Khatirha and Gewaad were perhaps the only ones who shared the parents’ sorrow. Gewaad said: ‘Where’s the boy gone? He’s not that kind of boy; if he was, we wouldn’t have worried.’

Batikha shouted one time when he was drunk: ‘Oyez, oyez! A child is lost; oyez!’ Everyone laughed over this and the boys went about repeating it. Abda grieved so much that she fell ill, and Shafey worked in his shop with his mind elsewhere and with eyes feverish from loss of sleep.

Zakia, the wife of Khonfis, broke off her visits to Abda and cut her dead in the street. One day Shafey was bending over, sawing a piece of wood, when Jasmine, on her way back from an outing, shouted: “Mr Shafey … look!’ He found she was pointing at the end of the alley by the desert. He left the shop with the saw in his hand to see what she was pointing at, and he saw his son Rifaa, coming shamefaced towards the houses.

Shafey dropped his saw in front of the shop and hurried towards his son, gazing at him in a daze. Then he took him by the arms and said: ‘Rifaa! Where’ve you been? Don’t you know what your absence has meant for us — for your poor mother who is almost dying of grief?’ The young man said nothing. His father saw how thin he was and asked: ‘Have you been ill?’ ‘No, no! Let me see mother.’ Jasmine came up to them and asked Rifaa suspiciously: ‘But where’ve you been?’

He did not look at her. Some boys collected round him, and his father took him home. They were soon followed by Gewaad and Omme B’Khatirha. When his mother saw him she leapt out of bed and hugged him to herself, saying in a weak voice: . ‘God forgive you! How could you think so little of your mother?’ He took her hand in his and sat her down on the bed, then sat beside her saying: ‘I’m sorry.’

©Naguib Mahfouz 1959 and 1981 In translation Philip Stewart 1981 First published 1981 by Heinemann Educational Books, Ltd. (London) and Three Continents Press, Inc. (Washington, D.C.) Published in the U.S. in 1981 by Three Continents Press 1636 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009 First U.S. edition 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations in reviews or articles. ISBN: 0-89410-654-6 (paperback) Cover Art by Max K. Winkler ©Three Continents Press 1988 CONTENTS Translator’s Introduction Prologue Adham Gebel Rifaa Kassem Arafa ‘/ ae tins ct: a ee ef j a a eee ee ee wpe Fiet pees Lites ORE = Heunon ons re : E dynes 2 Fea thtiray tah, vom ms Ty ct Rreiiaae “a = a “ae acai sal aires “ Translator’s Introduction It is not often that preachers lead their flocks into the streets to shout for the banning of a novel hailed by many as a masterpiece, nor that the editor of a great newspaper has to rely on his friendship with the Head of State to ensure that a serial is published uncut to the end.

But this is what happened in Nasser’s Egypt in 1959 when the semi-official Al-Ahram printed ‘Children of Gebelawi’ by Naguib Mahfouz. So great was the uproar that no Egyptian publisher dared bring it out in book form, and for years it passed from hand to hand in the newspaper version. It was only in 1967, and in Lebanon, that it was at last made available, slightly expurgated, by Dar-al-Adab. The reason for these strong reactions was that Naguib Mahfouz had boldly taken up the issues that most deeply divide Egypt and, perhaps, the world.

The successive heroes of his imaginary Cairo alley relive unawares the lives of Adam, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed; and their aged ancestor, Gebelawi, represents God, or rather ‘not God, but a cer- tain idea of God that men have made’, as Mahfouz put it in the course of discussion with me, so that his fate takes on a dreadful significance. Most readers became so passionately involved that they could see in the novel only their own ideology, or that of their most hated opponents, though a closer study would have shown them that the book has many dimensions and that its interpretation is no simple task.

Mahfouz confounded friends and foes alike by his choice of subject.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 717.12 minutes
• Total Words: 143,425
• Total Characters: 796,044
• Average Words per Page: 384.52
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