We shall go back by the boltless doors,
to the life unaltered our childhood knew-
to the naked feet on the cool, dark floors,
and high-ceiled rooms that the Trade blows through-
the wayside magic, the threshold spells,
shall soon undo what the NOrth has done-
because of the sights and the sounds and the smells
that ran with our youth in the eye of the sun.
[rudyard kipling... ’’song of the wise children’’]
welcome to egypt... a land of the pharoes, pyramids, giza and rameses...
welcome to egypt: a land of mystery and secrets; a culture as old as the nile itself...
welcome to egypt: cairo.. the citadel of muslim amalgamation with the west.. a whole races’s worth of labour enshrined in the monumental glory of the old and the new...
welcome to egypt: a land torn and ravaged by politics and socio-economic depression.. a land barely able to live up to its past magnificence.
... and who better to hold this country’s true tale upto the world than ahdaf soueif?
FOR ALL OF YOU WHO DO NOT KNOW...
ahdaf souief was born in egypt and went on to earn her Ph.D in linguistics. she later taught english and american literature at cairo university and at the university of riyadh. her work has appeared in the cosmopolitan, the london review of books, the observer, the sunday telegraph and the times literary supplements to name a few. she is also the author of ’’Aisha’’, a collection of short stories. she lives in london with her husband, the writer Ian hamilton, and their two sons.
THE BOOK....
set amidst the turmoil of middle-eastern politics the book is an in depth look into the oft hidden lives of arab women today.it tells the story of asya...
asya born in 1950 is the eldest daughter of lateefa and mukhtar al-ulama.her parents were professors at the cairo university.. doins there rather and so from a very young age it was imbibed in her that the university was all that was there in this world to work up to and work in.living through her sheltered and rose tinted world.. drowned under a deluge of literature and submerged under repressed longings and desires she was just the candidate to get into trouble if she were to be on her own.. but then may be fate wasn’t that cruel...
’’i’ve met him today, i’m sure. his name is saif madi.. a name with rhyme and resonance. he is 26...eight years older than me. he speaks terrific english and I absolutely know he’s read just about everything.’’
she thought she had found her true love; her soul-mate and if everything had gone the way it sould have.. a great love affair ending in a beautiful marriage may be they would have lived happily ever after but instead everything else got in the way and when she finally had him it was more of a ’’given’’ thing than something that she had hoped to get all her life. for asya was a romantic.. she needed to loved as it was in the novels.. she needed her wedding night to be just the way she had wanted.. she had pre-conceived notions about everything but somewhere down the line when everything did finally happen it was not exactly in the way she had wanted.
asya finds love in her westernised husband.. but she fears that in all these years he has taken her for granted.. ’’like an old coat’’ she believed. so she went into a dark foray of an extra marital affair to seek both emotional intimacy and sexual gratification with an english man.. who later turns out to be a very demanding and obstinate much to her dismay.... cause after, all all she had wanted was his body.. cause she had never been out of love with saif.
she had always loved saif...she thought that the affair wouldn’t even affect saif for he had grown so indifferent.. but it was only later that she realises her mistake... cause saif had definitely taken her for granted.. but not like the old coat.. rather as the very air one breathes to stay alive!
’’My love is of a birth as rare
as ’tis for object strange and high:
it was begotten by Despair
upon impossibility.’’
WHY READ THIS BOOK...?
well one may say why read another book about a woman committing adultery.. they do all the time.. and haven’t we read enough about them already.. so why this book, what sets it apart..
i think what really makes the difference is the architecture of the book.. being a mammoth volume as it is the book would have been a mere waste of pages if it only dealt with asya.. what it does is emerge as a poignant tale of egypt and the people there through the life of asya. its like opening a chapter into the private lives of the people there.. with their problems , strifes and joys to see an underpriviledged society through the eyes of the more fortunate like the protagonist.
the book may be treated as a short treatise on the socio-political condition of the land but with its strong fluid characterisations and analysis it is also a study of human nature grappling with situations as abstract as the importance of metaphors in relation to literature and life per se or as raw and straight forward as becoming a refugee in your own land and be jailed overnight.
above all the book is a call back to the basics.. probing you to analyse yourself and somewhere along the line when you find a part of you in the book you will truly feel what you are and may be you too shall be contended with whatever has happened so far just like asya did.
PS: SORRY FOR THE LONG REVIEW.. HAPPY READING THE BOOK. .. OPINIONS ARE MOST WELCOME.