Customer Reviews

The Day the Leader Was Killed

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Day the Leader Was Killed is a succinct but significant work in contemporary Egypt. Naguib Mahfouz, through his sober and lyrical prose, has skillfully woven one of the darkest political backdrops in Egyptian history into his novel. Sealing off the seventies and reaching the threshold of a new decade, President Anwar al-Sadat implemented the Infitah, an open-door economic policy that would expedite the country forward to modernization. Like many of Mahfouz's works, this story is told in alternating first-person narratives by three characters--Muhtashimi Zayed, a pious, retired family patriarch; his grandson Elwan Fawwaz Muhtashimi; and Elwan's strong-willed, beautiful fiancée Randa Sulayman Mubarak. The story builds upon around this middle-class family and through the family's perspective zooms a picture of the social, economic, religious, gender and interpersonal aspects of the larger society in Egypt. For the patriarch, who devoted his whole life to prayers and religious rituals, his life was nothing but loneliness. He was especially despondent that the younger generation drifted from the Koran to whose life made a substantial influence. The old man could not forget "the woes of the world" (25) when he thought of his beloved grandson. Randa, like all her female contemporaries, faced gender challenges and the clash between traditional values and modern ideals.

The novelette evokes the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981. Sadat was saluting troops at the annual military parade when a team of assassins began firing weapons and throwing grenades into the reviewing stand. Sadat, along with 20 others was instantly killed in the deadly attack. The underlying cause of the fatal massacre traced back to the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978, which led to a negotiated peace between the two countries in the following year. The historic agreement brought peace to Egypt but no prosperity. The economy still slumped with no trace of a turn-around. Poverty-stricken Muslims and Copts in Egypt rubbed in friction and exploded into some gruesome round of violence in the Cairo slum. This is the very socioeconomic backdrop on which Mahfouz adroitly set his novel. Like the Cairo Trilogy and many of his works, Mahfouz captures and chronicles the most crucial of his own times. 4.0 stars.

"The Day the Leader Was Killed," by Naguib Mahfouz, has been translated into English by Malak Mashem. The short author bio on the book's opening page notes that Mahfouz was born in Cairo, has received the Nobel Prize in literature, and "is the most prominent author of Arabic fiction published in English today."

This novel takes place during the "Infitah," an "open-door" economic policy in place under Egyptian President Sadat. The story is told in alternating first-person chapters by three characters: Muhtashimi Zayed, a retired old man; his grandson Elwan; and Elwan's fiancee, Randa. Both Elwan's and Randa's families face economic troubles, and the young couple faces uncertainty regarding their own future.

This novel is a fascinating look at modern Egyptian family life. I found it interesting that while the book deals with three generations of Egyptians, it is only characters from the youngest and oldest generations that actually "speak" directly to the reader. Mahfouz looks at the issues of gender, economics, religious faith, and family ties in the lives of these two families and the larger community. I was particularly moved by Mahfouz's portrayal of the old man's spiritual life; Muhtashimi Zayed is a Muslim in whose life the Quran is an important element. I was also intrigued by Mahfouz's exploration of the challenges faced by the modern young Arab woman, caught between contemporary ideals and traditionalism. Overall, a compelling multigenerational portrait.

Always focusing on aspects of Egyptian social and political history, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz here depicts three generations of one family as they try to survive the socially tumultuous period between the Six Day War with Israel in 1967 and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. The loss of the Six Day War in 1967 was a national humiliation for Egypt, which lost the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, as a result. In 1973, President Anwar Sadat tried to regain the lost territories with a surprise attack that initiated the Yom Kippur War, but again Egypt failed to win a strong military victory. Sadat's willingness to negotiate with the Israelis, however, resulted in the Egyptians' regaining of the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for Egypt's recognition of Israel and the establishment of normal diplomatic relations under the Camp David Accords. It made him very unpopular at home.

This tumultuous period was also a time of enormous economic hardships. Sadat had turned away from the Soviets, with whom Nasser had had a close association, and had established the Infitah, his attempt to establish a free-market economy in the desperately poor country. As Elwan Fawwaz Muhtashimi, one of the main characters in this novel says, however, "For this we cursed him, our hearts full of rancor. Ultimately, he [Sadat] was to keep for himself the fruits of victory, leaving us his Infitah, which only spelled out poverty and corruption. This is the crux of the matter."

Alternating points of view among Muhtashimi Zayed, his grandson Elwan Fawwaz Muhtashimi, and Elwan's fiancée Randa Sulayman Mubarak, Mahfouz creates a novel which shows the domestic difficulties faced by educated Egyptian city-dwellers as they try to live their lives under this unpopular, less structured new economic system. Elwan and Randa have been engaged for eleven years, unable to marry because Elwan's salary is too low for him to save enough for an apartment, furniture, and the expenses of a family. Elwan and Randa both work for the same employer, and their relationship with each other and with their boss shows the stresses of their long engagement. The interrelationships between their two families also become tense, and as each narrator describes his/her own feelings, Mahfouz speeds ahead with his story, which at times feels as if it is moving in double-time toward its ironic conclusion.

Keeping the narrative firmly fixed on the everyday lives of his characters, Mahfouz shows the failures of the political system and the desperate acts to which some residents are driven by circumstance. Though the novella is short, Mahfouz provides a rare and often ironic vision of life in Cairo during the period which concludes with Anwar Sadat's assassination. As Elwan walks in the city that night, he sees" a trace of death on every passerby," but as he thinks about the assassination, he believes that "Tomorrow cannot be worse than today. Even chaos is better than despair." n Mary Whipple

Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth A Novel
The Mirage: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Novels)
Karnak Café
Morning and Evening Talk

Najib Mahfouz in his compact dry story details the hardships faced by the people of Egypt from the economic liberation. Intifah, Anwar Sadat's open-door economic policy has increased disparities between the rich and poor, creating havoc in lives of its citizens. In this economic meltdown is Fawad and his fiance Randa whose commitment for each other is tested by realities of times.

In a subtle undertone, this novel has reflections to the struggle faced by masses presently in the middle east. Interesting aspect of this novel are the personal battles faced between self righteousness vs corruption, advancements vs traditions.

A short novella, written from the viewpoints of three people on the eve of Anwar Sadat's assassination. Two lovers are separated by a poor economy that they both blame on Sadat's open market policy, while the suitor's grandfather provides a continuity with Egypt of the past. Well-written, the book packs a punch out of proportion to the slim book size.

Once again, Mahfouz in THE DAY THE LEADER WAS KILLED gives us a great story reflecting contemporary life in Egypt. He captures the reader's mind and leads the reader to empathize with the sentiment and emotion of the characters who encounter life during the time of INFITAH.

The Day the Leader Was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz
(translated by Malak Mashem), (orig. pub. in 1985).

This is a slender novel by Mahfouz, only 103 pages. Mahfouz is one of the greatest writers of the Middle East in recent times. He was recognized for his accomplishment with the Nobel Prize in Literature. Almost anyone in the Middle East you talk to knows of him. He died only this year. It was, in fact, primarily through him that the novel as a form of writing was introduced into the Middle East. And O, how richly! The warmth and humane eye of his novels ponders the streets of Cairo, Egypt, the lives and loves and struggles and sorrows of humanity in the alleys and streets and behind the closed doors. The universal commonality of people is clearly brought to the fore in his deft works.

I don't care to make this a lengthy and needless praise. My purpose here is to hopefully bring to mind some of the noble and lovely, etc. things for for at the least my fuller contemplation.

The story is exquisitely told. It is about the love of a working age couple under the stresses of poverty and political unrest in Egypt. Each chapter alternates between three characters, Elwan and Randa and Elwan's grandfather, Mutashimi Zayed.

The grandfather in the story is a pious Sufi Muslim that has had a wild past. The kind of sweetness and stress on universal love in Sufi Islam comparative to the moreaustere and stern and miltant strains seems to be reflected in Mahfouz's books in general, but that is just a guess.

This book is a fine piece of art. It takes a writer like Mahfouz to be able to find the exact sentences with which to somehow evoke depth of emotion in his characters and the corresponding resonance in his readers in so few words. It takes a truly praiseworthy elegance of mind to trace the inner thoughts and lives of these three characters in a way that really captures depth and dimension, passion and sweetness, anger and despair, not just in them but also in the peripheral characters through their eyes.

There is something about Mahfouz's writings that is like a kind of sunlit illumination. I don't mean this sentimentally. First there is his broad eye which is reminiscent of Tolstoy for how much he takes in and the deft verisimilitude with which he paints a picture of the lives in his story. And there is the soulful focus on people. People are central to his writings. By the sunlit I mean this kind of attention to each person, even to the villains, that somehow is soft like the light of sunset. There is a kind of benevolence and knowing in his novels. He sees a great deal and does not hesitate to portray the dark motives and the evil behaviors but he treats all with a dignity so that there is a kind of perspective that is not inimical to the command to love ones enemies.

This book was also for me a chance to reflect on the exterior pressures such as finances and family on love. The portrayal of poverty and the sense of its oppressiveness and strain was also made more palpable. Elwan was not able to make enough money to pay for a flat and so he had to postpone marrying Randa until her parents began to intervene and her lecherous and ambitious boss sought to make the most of the opportunity and to enlist her in his project like a useful item rather than an end in herself. The dignity and the pride and humbleness in the midst of poverty is portrayed in a moving way in these characters, each with their perspectives and cares and perceptions and emotions. The grandfather's love for his grandson as he is nearing the end of his life with the distance of age is also movingly depicted.

Reading a book on the Triune God and going in increasingly rarified air, it was a true respite to turn to this novel on a sleepless night.

Such a novel I think depicts simply and elegantly and truthfully something that is often denied now, put out of mind as strange and foreign, or even militantly and openly attacked, the perception that men and women have natures, that love can grow up naturally and more or less purely between them, and that these routes can be abandoned by warping ways that effect our character, such as ambition, which stifles and paves over the possibility of true love in a man or woman's breast, by solidified ways of thinking and basing their life which negate the other, the Thou, preventing the fullness of the I and Thou relationship. It is in this sense a good and gentle reminder of the natural and a beacon to seek it. One of the sins condemned in Romans 1 is the lack of natural affection (such as a mother who abandons her baby). C.S. Lewis discusses this concept as it was conveyed in an archaic meaning of the word kinde in a poem by George Herbert:

"In Herbert's `I the unkinde, ungratefull' (from Love) the modern meaning would be disastrous; the idea of general beneficence fromman to God borders on the absurd. Herbert is classing himself with `unkind mothers' and `unnatural children' as one who, with gross insensibility, makes no response to the arch-natural appeal of the tenderest and closest personal relation that can be imagined; one who is loved in vain." -C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words, p. 32-33.

This is what I think of when I think of the effects of idolatry, on me and on others. The plastering over of natural affections, the replacement of them with void and drugs and distractions, with buzz and squirminess and shallow vapidity in the presence of the profound and lovely and whole.

In every country it seems there are always those growing up who view their country with a canny eye, who love the people and life they know enough to caressingly portray truth about it, granted with the imperfection and limitation of man. But they are always signs, it seems, to point us all, any who will heed, to truths which are plain to all except when pushed out by idolatry.