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    Wedding Song
    Wedding Song
    Wedding Song
    Ebook151 pages2 hours

    Wedding Song

    By Naguib Mahfouz

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Set against the backdrop of the the theater, this novel is a taut psychological drama on and off the stage.  First published in 1981, this brilliant novel focuses on how time transforms people and their emotions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9780525431701
    Wedding Song
    Author

    Naguib Mahfouz

    Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen. His nearly forty novels and hundreds of short stories range from re-imaginings of ancient myths to subtle commentaries on contemporary Egyptian politics and culture. In 1988, he was the first writer in Arabic to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in August 2006.

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    Reviews for Wedding Song

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      The construction of this novel is what makes it unique and fun to read. It’s almost like a looking through a window on each side of a square house. What you see differs depending in which direction you’re standing and whether you’re looking into or out of each window.

      Here’s how this analogy applies to Mahfouz’s novel. Each chapter is written in the voice of a different person. The first is an actor, the second is the theater’s prompter, the third is that prompter’s wife, and last is that couple’s son. The story is told mostly in conversations from the point of view of each narrator, but what complicates the matter is that Abbas, the son, is a playright who also wrote the story of the story. This play had been performed at the theater to rousing audience approval. Confused? Don’t be because it’s all very clear in the story.

      Because this novel is so cleverly done, you don’t know which characters to like and which to dislike. You see individuals in a different light as each subsequent narrator takes over. In addition, you will have no idea where the story is headed. I think Mahfouz is playing a bit with his readers here, but that’s okay. This is a quick read and one sure to entertain. Grab it now!
    • 3/5
      A portuguese translation of the arabic original Afrah al-Qubba, this short novel has a very curious construction: the same story is told four times by four different narrators-protagonists. Each time the story is told from a different point of view, by a more idealist and symphatetic character. Each time extra details are added. So, our understanding of the story is slowly built and modified along the book. A very beautiful and intriguing book by the famous egiptian writer.
    • 4/5
      Four perspectives of seemingly one reality. A powerful tale that drives forward relentlessly - and then back over the same ground as each character's perspective reveals itself. It is a prime example of George Engel's point of view - "Where you think you stand determines what you think you see." Beautifully constructed and executed.

    Book preview

    Wedding Song - Naguib Mahfouz

    INTRODUCTION

    Naguib Mahfouz is regarded as the leading Arabic novelist and one of the few of world stature. He is therefore one of the most translated Egyptian writers, matched in this respect only by Tawfik el-Hakim. The translation of his works remains a brave venture, however, not just because Arabic in general abounds with nuances but also because Mahfouz in particular has a style that poses a special challenge to translators, however accomplished they might be.

    Afrah al-Qubbah is among the latest of his books. First published in 1981, it reflects the most recent phase in the development of this remarkable writer, who has produced more than twenty-five novels and several collections of short stories. Born in 1911 in the picturesque Gamaliyya quarter of Cairo, Mahfouz pursued philosophical studies from early youth onward, obtaining his B.A. at Cairo University (then Fouad University) in 1934. An avid reader in both English and French, he translated James Baikie’s Ancient Egypt from English while still an undergraduate. This book became the inspiration of two early historical romances, Radobis and Kifah Tibu (The Struggle of Thebes), published in 1943 and 1944.

    Between 1945 and 1957 Mahfouz published what one can describe as realist novels, including Khan el-Khalili, Midaq Alley, The Mirage, The Beginning and the End, and the Cairo Trilogy, for which he was awarded the State Prize for Literature in 1957. Since 1959 Mahfouz’s novels have taken a different turn, making use of symbolism and allegory to achieve fresh philosophical and psychological dimensions. Critics regard much of his more recent work as experimental.

    Any novelist learns from his predecessors. The novel is young in Arabic and Mahfouz has perforce absorbed the work of many non-Arab writers. Chief among them, according to his own testimony, are Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Camus, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, all of whom he has read in French. Perhaps the most important Western influence, however, has been that of Proust. As a university student Mahfouz made a special study of the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Proust’s cousin, who had codified elements that would later become central to Proust’s work; and his subsequent intensive reading of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu has had a lasting impact, especially on his idea of time.

    Time is a constant theme in all his novels and a constant preoccupation of his characters. Mahfouz’s works are typically laced with sentences—such as Time is a terrible companion, What has time done to my friend? It has imposed a hideous mask on his face—that suggest almost a horror temporis.

    In this novel we are prompted to see how time works changes, transforming love into hate, beauty into ugliness, loyalty into treachery, idealism into debauchery, leaving its marks on Tariq Ramadan, Karam Younis, Halima al-Kabsh, Abbas Karam Younis, and even on the old house where Abbas grew up. Like all the novels of Mahfouz, Wedding Song may thus be regarded in part as a history of time and its impact on character. Avoiding such commonplace information as the age of the protagonists, Mahfouz gives us instead an evocation of what has happened to their features, their bodies, the looks in their eyes, the despair in their hearts. The techniques he favors for such evocation—stream of consciousness and interior monologue—lead to narratives in the first person. Each of his main characters thus tells his or her own story, supplies us with only a personal interpretation, creates in effect his or her own theatrical drama out of the raw materials of life. The future of each may be unknown, lost in the intricacies of present and past, which are woven by each character into a single dark strand that he or she follows alone, but even Abbas, despite his success, momentarily believes that death is, sooner or later, the only future for him, as well as for all mankind.

    Ultimately, however, what interests us in Wedding Song is not this forbidding motif or the plight of mankind, but how four very different kinds of minds and temperaments apprehend and deal with the realities that surround them. There is reason to believe that Abbas’s sense of triumph at the end of the book is by no means illusory. Unlike the other characters, he has been able to transform his own life; and he has also transformed theirs, through a creative power exercised almost unawares. It is his dawning consciousness of this power, which Mahfouz describes in the last pages of the book’s final section, that provides us with a masterful portrait of the mind of an artist.

    It is this portrait, which undoubtedly includes elements of Mahfouz’s own vision of himself, that the translator has sought above all to liberate from the limitations imposed by barriers of culture and language.

    MURSI SAAD EL DIN

    TARIQ RAMADAN THE ACTOR

    September. The beginning of autumn. The month of preparations and rehearsals. In the stillness of the manager’s office, where the closed windows and drawn curtains allow no other noise to intrude but the soft hum of the air conditioner, the voice of Salim al-Agrudy, our director, erupts, scattering words and ideas, sweeping through the scaffolding of our silent attentiveness. Before each speech his glance alerts the actor or actress who will be playing the part and then the voice goes on, sometimes soft, sometimes gruff, taking its cue from whether the part is a man’s or a woman’s. Images of stark reality rush forth, overwhelming us with their brutal directness, their daunting challenge.

    At the head of an oblong table with a green baize top, Sirhan al-Hilaly, our producer, sits in command, following the reading with his hawklike features fixed in a poker face, staring at us while we crane in al-Agrudy’s direction, his full lips clamped around a Deenwa cigar. The intensity of his concentration makes any interruption or comment impossible; the silence with which he ignores our excitement is so arctic that it compels us to repress it.

    Doesn’t the man understand the significance of what he’s reading to us?

    The scenes that unroll before my imagination are tinged with bloodshed and brutality. I’d like to start talking with someone to break the tension, but the thick cloud of smoke in the room deepens my sense of alienation; and I am sodden with some kind of fear. To hold back panic, I pin my eyes to the impressive desk in the rear of the room or a picture on the wall—Doria as Cleopatra committing suicide with the viper, Ismail as Antony orating over the body of Caesar—but my mind shows me the gallows. I feel devils inside me carousing.

    Salim al-Agrudy utters the words Final curtain, and all heads turn toward Sirhan al-Hilaly in bewilderment, as he says, I’d like to know what you think of it.

    Doria, our star, smiles and says, Now I know why the author didn’t come to the reading.

    Author? I venture, convinced that somehow the world has come to an end. He’s nothing but a criminal. We ought to hand him over to the public prosecutor.

    Watch yourself, Tariq! al-Hilaly barks at me. Put everything out of your mind except the fact that you’re an actor. I start to object, but he cuts me off irritably—Not a word!—and turns back to Salim, who murmurs, It’s an alarming play.

    What do you mean?

    I’m wondering what kind of impact it’ll have on the public.

    I have approved it and I feel confident.

    But the shock is almost too much.

    Ismail, the male star of the troupe, mutters, My role is disgusting.

    No one is crueler than an idealist, says al-Hilaly. Who’s responsible for all the carnage in this world? Idealist. Your role is tragic in the highest dimension.

    The murder of the baby, Salim al-Agrudy interjects. It will destroy any sympathy the audience might have had for him.

    Let’s not bother with details now. The baby can be left out. Not only has Abbas Younis persuaded me at last to accept a play of his, but I also have a feeling that it will be one of the biggest hits in the history of our theater.

    Fuad Shalaby, the critic, says, I share your opinion, and adds, But we must cut out the baby.

    This is no play! I exclaim. It’s a confession. It’s the truth. We ourselves are actually the characters in it.

    So what? al-Hilaly retorts, dismissing my objection. Do you suppose that escaped me? I recognized you, of course, just as I recognized myself. But how is the audience going to know anything?

    One way or another, the news will leak out.

    Let it! The one who’ll suffer most is the author. For us, it can only mean success. Isn’t that right, Fuad?

    I’m sure that’s true.

    It must be presented, al-Hilaly says, smiling for the first time, with the utmost subtlety and propriety.

    Of course. That goes without saying.

    The public, Salim al-Agrudy mutters. How will it go down with them?

    That’s my responsibility, replies al-Hilaly.

    Fine. We’ll begin at once.

    The meeting is over, but I stay behind to be alone with al-Hilaly. On the strength of the fact that we’re old friends and comrades as well as former neighbors, I take the liberty of urging him to put the matter before the public prosecutor.

    Here’s an opportunity for you, he says, ignoring my agitation, to portray on the stage what you have actually experienced in real life.

    Abbas Younis is a criminal, not an author!

    And it’s an opportunity that could make you an important actor. You’ve played supporting roles for so long.

    "These are confessions, Sirhan. How can we let the criminal get away with it?"

    It’s an exciting play. It’s bound to attract audiences and that’s all that matters to me, Tariq.

    Anger and bitterness well up inside me; past sorrows, with all their attendant regrets and failures, spread over my consciousness like a cloud. Then a thought comes to me: now I’ll have a chance to get back at my old enemy. How do you know all this? Pardon me, but we’re going to be married.

    What are you going to do? says Sirhan al-Hilaly.

    My primary concern is to see that the criminal gets what he deserves.

    Better make it your primary concern to learn your part.

    I give in. I won’t let this chance slip by me.

    At the sight of the coffin, a sense of defeat overwhelms me, and to everyone’s astonishment, as if it were the first coffin I’ve ever seen, I burst into tears. It is neither grief nor contrition I suffer, but temporary insanity. The contemptuous expressions of the other mourners waver like water snakes in my tear-filled eyes, and I avoid looking at them, afraid my sobbing will turn to hysterical laughter.

    What melancholy engulfs me as I plunge into the crowd—the men, women, and children, the dust

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