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A review by jpegben
The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
5.0
The way love can disregard fears, however, is an age-old wonder. No fear is able to spoil love’s development or keep it from dreaming of its appointed hour.
Just wow!
The Cairo Trilogy is a seminal reading experience. It's up there with the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature. It's rare to encounter a book that is a world unto itself. War and Peace is one example, Buddenbrooks another, Don Quixote a third. The Cairo Trilogy is one of those literary mosaics that readers actually become a part of, it's self-referential in the sense that the book has its own internal history, its own cycles, seemingly its own awareness of itself. It's a supreme achievement because we live and breath the sultry, dusty Cairene air, we run down the claustrophobic alleys, we gaze down from latticed balconies covered in vines, we luxuriate in the the buzz of the coffeehouses and we experience the frenetic, heaving energy of the crowds.
Of course, the travails and times of the al-Jawad family are set to the backdrop of some of the most tumultuous years in Egyptian history. I'm glad I read this book with a thorough understanding of late British colonialism in Egypt and the trying campaign for independence. The book is a historical and sociological tour de force inasmuch as it seems to express the essence of a time and a place. The very best fiction of a historical bent is generally truer than any history - and certainly more representative - and this is no exception. The struggles of the family do, in a very real way, function as a proxy for the struggles of the nation. However, to fixate solely on the broader political and historical resonances of the narrative is to lose its very human and very universal characteristics.
As a writer, Mahfouz is as good as any at fusing the mundane and the lofty, the historic and the everyday, the grand and the inconsequential. The Cairo Trilogy is a book about time, life cycles, and change. As readers, we experience love and loss, birth and death, moments of ecstasy and contentment, and ruptures which leave the characters forlorn and despondent. We see what a cruel mistress fate can be, reducing the seemingly innocent like Aisha and Fahmy, to either lifeless ciphers or taking them far too soon. And we see how it smiles more favourably on others in spite of their indiscretions. As Mahfouz writes at one point, "Time, which by the mere fact of its uninterrupted existence, betrays man in the worst possible way". Only the greatest writers are truly able to capture life's cyclicality, able to write about decay and regeneration in a way that isn't trite or glib.
When reflecting on this book, I am not, unlike a few other reviews I have read, drawn to talking about Sayyid's role and the gradual fragmentation of his absolute patriarchal authority. Nor was I primarily drawn to Amina's quiet suffering and untiring, relentless commitment to the wellbeing of her family, regardless of the barriers, both social and otherwise, placed in her way. These were fascinating and disturbing in equal measure and it was both amusing and, at times, distressing to watch the struggle between piety and righteousness typified most by Amina and secondarily by Khadija on the one hand and lust and decadence represented by al-Sayyid the patriarch and even more so his son Yasin play out within the family.
However, for me, this book will always be about the arc of two characters: Yasin and, most of all, Kamal. Relatability is not a criteria which is essential to me when I read, but I saw something of myself in both these characters. They grappled with questions I have grappled and continue to grapple with. For both characters, in spite of their different temperaments, the unrelenting struggle to find meaning, orientation, a true set of precepts to guide them, was something which was utterly fascinating and at times deeply uncomfortable to read. Kamal's "dictionary of pains", his internal obsessions both human and intellectual, colour everything he does. They paralyse him, leaving him unable to make decisions, unsure of what is important beyond knowledge and his vigorous intellect. The only thing Kamal is ultimately sure of is his skepticism, the only thing he has 100% faith in is his capacity to poke holes in the systems around him be they marriage, Islam, the nationalist movement, and so on. Kamal evokes Dostoevsky's famous refrain from Crime and Punishment "pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart". His capacity to think profoundly and feel deeply is greater than any character he encounters bar, perhaps, Riyad Qaldos, but he seems to be a man who has thought too much to be truly happy. Mahfouz writes, "belief is a matter of willing, not of knowing" and, in Kamal, I wonder if he is penning a warning about becoming too learned, too absorbed in abstraction, rather than allowing oneself to be buffeted by life's vital currents. When Kamal spurns his opportunity with Burdur, I was left with a sense of bleak fatalism. Encountering sliding doors moments like that in books is as powerful a reminder as any that life is there to be seized by the throat because there are few feelings more bitter than those of unrealised connection and unfulfilled promises.
Yasin is another story entirely. For large parts of the text, he inhabits a "bizarre world that reeks of liqour, drugs and despair". Yet, he is also a man who is deeply wounded and the scene visiting his dying mother is among the most visceral and powerful of the entire book. Yasin is debauched and licentious. He buries himself in women, music, and liquor. Yet, in spite of the aspersions others cast on him, he is more sensitive than he lets on and loves poetry and literature. What struck me most about Yasin as a character, however, was his resilience. His episodes of egregious behaviour did not change the fact that he remained steadfastly loyal to his family, particularly his siblings. He did not allow himself to be cowed in the face of his setbacks, all too often self-inflicted, and he continued to live sincerely rather than changing himself to comport with the expectations and whims of others.
Kamal and Yasin are ultimately two sides of the same coin. They both spend much of the narrative unfulfilled, despairingly lonely, and craving meaningful connections. Yasin, to some degree, is able to realise this the form of his family, but even then, I got the sense that, while he is infinitely proud, he remains essentially alone. For me, this book will always be about Yasin and Kamal and it will always be a work of existential struggle. Mahfouz writes primarily about a family unit, about the collective, but the experiences of Yasin and Kamal struck me, as a reader, as a timely reminder that we are essentially alone. We love alone, we come to make sense of reality alone, we face grief, loss and suffering alone. Much our lives are characterised by momentary, fleeting connections, by a sporadic sense of solidarity. Or at least some of us do. I'm happy to concede this is my reading of the book. And other characters, Khadija being an obvious example, seem to be a clear corrective to this, but reading this book one does get the sense that there can be few more isolating things than love and few places you can feel more alone in than a crowd or room packed with family.
I'll read this book several more times in my life because I suspect different elements of it will resonate as I myself progress through the very life cycles it elucidates.