The death of a writer means only one thing to his readers: a spring run dry. The death of a writer means an end to a font of imagination, emotions and knowledge. But the death of Naguib Mahfouz is something else. To his readers and professional disciples, Mahfouz was more than just a writer: He was, and is, the Arab novel itself. Before him, there was nothing called the Arab novel; today, thanks to him, there exists a genre to speak of.

Writing the novel was a conscious decision for the young Mahfouz.

“I worked in an almost arid land. I had to discover by myself, and I also had to pave [this land],” the novelist and editor Gamal El-Ghitani quotes Mahfouz as saying in his book Al-Magalis Al-Mahfouziyya (Mahfouz’s Gatherings). At the age of 25, the future Nobel laureate decided that literature, and not philosophy (then his field of study), was going to be his passion.

“Because I started late, I did not study any single writer completely. I read War and Peace by Tolstoy, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, I read short stories by Chekhov, de Maupassant and, at the same time, I read works by Kafka, Proust and Joyce. I loved Shakespeare. I loved his cynicism, his greatness, and a close friendship developed between us. I also loved Eugene O’Neill, Ibsen, and Strindberg. I fell in love with Melville’s Moby Dick,” he told El-Ghitani.

At the time, the Arab novel as an art form was almost unheard of.

“I used to read the modern Egyptian writers, but I knew that the story or novel was secondary for them,” Mahfouz told his friend. “I liked Awdet El-Rouh (the Return of the Soul, by Tawfik El-Hakim) as a literary work, but I found it to be closer to the theater than to the novel. No The novel had no literary heritage, nothing I could depend upon. The writers of the novels themselves did not acknowledge their works. Dr. Taha Hussein wrote a novel in the summer, but who is Taha Hussein? He is the thinker. El-Aqqad wrote Sarah, but who is El-Aqqad? He is the thinker. El-Aqqad even resented the story and the novel as forms. If these people looked down upon the novel, how were you to pay attention to them through their novels?”

Al-Ahram Photo Mohammed Hassanein Heikal and Omm Kolthoum celebrate Naguib Mahfouz’s fiftieth birthday in December 1962

Mohamed Salmawy, the writer, playwright, editor-in-chief of the French-language Al-Ahram Hebdo and chairman of the Writers’ Union, was a close and trusted friend of the late novelist. He makes the same argument.

“Definitely, there were people before him who wrote the novel, but the novel hadn’t taken the special place it has now in Arabic literature,” Salmawy says. “Before him poetry was considered the main thing in Arabic literature — for thousands of years, even before Islam — pre-Islamic poetry was very famous and Arabs came from a great literary background. It was generally accepted that poetry is Diwan Al-Arab (the Arabs’ Domain), but in the twentieth century, the novel became Diwan Al-Arab. It became the main venue of Arabic literature. The reason is Naguib Mahfouz himself,” Salmawy says.

Salmawy, whom Mahfouz chose to read his Nobel lecture in 1988, has known Mahfouz since the early 1970s, when the two used to meet at the literary gatherings the writer and playwright Tawfik El-Hakim would host at his Al-Ahram office. After Mahfouz was the victim of a near-fatal stabbing in 1994, Salmawy took over the Nobel laureate’s Al-Ahram column, which he turned into a weekly interview with the literary legend.

Like Mahfouz, literary critic Farouk Abdel Qader has dedicated his life to studying the Arab novel.

“There were some beginnings at the turn of the century. Zeinab [written by Dr. Mohamed Hussein Heikal in 1914] was the true beginning, because it was artistically better-built than the novels preceding it. In its construction, it is closer to the European novel form,” Abdel Qader says. “But the thing is, if you see the first edition of Zeinab in 1914, it is not attributed to Heikal. Instead, it’s credited as having been written by ‘An Egyptian Peasant.’ Because of that, this novel did not influence the novel as a new form of expression. What did was the second edition, which had Heikal’s name printed on it, because he was a public figure: president of Al-Ahrar Al-Dusturiyyeen (Free Constitutionalists) Party and a politician,” he says.

Courtesy Mohamed Salmawy Mahfouz in a recent photo with his friend Mohamed Salmawy, head of the Writers’ Union

After Zeinab, many writers tried their hand at the new literary form, but their steps were uniformly hesitant and half-hearted. The only one who might have come to something — had he continued, Abdel Qader points out — was Ibrahim Abdel Qader El-Mazny.

“He wrote Ibrahim El-Kateb, then stopped,” Abdel Qader says. Mahfouz, on the other hand, was a different story: “In 1938, he decided to stop writing short stories and articles and dedicate himself to writing novels. In 1939, Abath Al-Aqdar (The Mockery of the Fates) came out. And from then on, he decided to write one novel every year. What proves it is what happened between Mahfouz and Mostafa and Ali Amin. They had founded Akhbar El-Yom in 1944 and asked him to write them a short story every week for a tremendous amount of money. They offered him LE 50, which was enough to buy a house back then, but he turned it down. He had decided to found the Arab novel,” Abdel Qader says.

Unlike the novelists that preceded him, Mahfouz was part of Egyptian discourse: He reacted to outside events and actively tried to influence Egypt’s present.

“[His time] saw the 1919 revolution, and he was deeply affected by it, expressing it better than anybody in his work. It saw a very important period between the two great wars, where Egypt was aspiring to independence but also taken in by the conflict between tradition and modernity. He dealt with that question very much in his work,” Salmawy says.

Courtesy Shawki Mostafa At Naguib Mahfouz’s fiftieth birthday (L-R): Poet Salah Jahine, Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, Wafd Party Head Fouad Serag El-Din, Minister of Culture Fathi Radwan, Omm Kolthoum, Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfik El-Hakim

Abdel Qader traces four distinct phases in Mahfouz’s work, although he is reluctant to use the word “phase” because it means “that you close one drawer and open another. There are no sudden changes in the world of Naguib Mahfouz. It is more like a flowing river in which a wave may rise higher than the rest of the flow.” According to the critic, the first phase starts with Abath Al-Aqdaar (The Mockery of Fates). “His project, at the beginning, was to write Egyptian history through the novel, and started with three novels,” he says.

Although the novels of the first decade of Mahfouz’s career were largely set in Ancient Egypt, Salmawy and Abdel Qader say the author used history only as an excuse to discuss the British occupation.

In the late 1940s, Mahfouz began exploring new ground, delving directly into the problems of modern Egypt. “The culmination of this phase, which ended with the 1952 Revolution, was the Trilogy,” Abdel Qader says. One of the most beautiful characteristics of 1940s and 1950s Mahfouz novels is the honest and detailed description of the alleys of Old Cairo, the Gamaliyya district where Mahfouz spent his childhood. Here is where the alley of Mahfouz’s work is born. The alleys were real in this phase. It would be later that they would start to take on more symbolic meanings.

The trilogy — which includes Palace Walk (1956), Palace of Desire (1957) and Sugar Street (1957) — remained one of Mahfouz’s best loved works — even to him.

“I wrote the trilogy when I was at my peak,” Mahfouz told El-Ghitani. “I was patient, thorough. A work like this needs patience, you need to be healthy. If you see the Trilogy archives, you would understand what I mean. Each character had his or her own file, so I would not forget features and description Then there was the planning for the novel as a whole, so it would be a concrete building. I have a lot of papers and notebooks which I wrote in a period of four years, thoroughly, quietly, moved by the need to finish something good. My struggle with the language had not yet started, so I wrote it peacefully,” he says.

Indeed, the author admits to having invested his own personality in one of the trilogy’s characters: Kamal Abdel Gawwad, the youngest son in El-Sayyed Abdel Gawwad family. “Some people believe that the Trilogy is based on my personal life and that Kamal Abdel Gawwad was a reflection of myself,” Mahfouz once told his friend Salmawy. “This is not true. The Trilogy is a panorama of an entire society. Still, Kamal’s character mirrors mine in certain ways, especially in the intellectual sense: in the dilemmas he faced over such matters as Western and Oriental cultures, faith, and European philosophy.

“A part of me is in the trilogy, in the character of Kamal Abdel Gawwad,” the author later told El-Ghitani. “But Kamal did not just pop into the trilogy, and did not get there because he is part of me. He appeared because he was an indispensable part of the essence of the novel. The novel comes from the Classical age, delves into the Romantic age, and heads towards the Analytic age. You find East and West in it, but not through the journey of Tawfik El-Hakim, or Yehia Haqqi, or El-Tayyeb Saleh. It represents he who found the West while living in the East. The manifestations of civilization had come to him, and these psychological, spiritual and mental changes had to be explained. I had struggled through this,” Mahfouz says.

By the time Mahfouz had finished the Trilogy, the Revolution of 1952 had already taken place. It was, Salmawy says, an event that had a massive impact on Mahfouz.

“First of all, he spent five years of the post-Revolution period not writing at all,” Salmawy says. “There were many reasons for this: He was exhausted; he felt his source was drained with the Trilogy. He couldn’t go back to writing. But politically and socially, he was a man writing about the need for independence, criticizing the status quo, and the corruption that existed before the Revolution and under the British occupation. All of a sudden, the occupation is gone, Egypt becomes independent, and many of the hopes and aspirations of Egyptians are realized. He didn’t know what to write about.

“This is where he left realism and started another period of his life that had to do more with the actual state of things after the Revolution. It was more philosophical, psychological and — in terms of his art — more experimental than the classical novel he used to write in his realist period.”

Abdel Qader marks the beginning of this new Mahfouz period with Al-Liss wal Kelab (The Thief and the Dogs, 1961), and ending with Tharthara Fawq El-Nil (Adrift on the Nile, 1966) and Miramar (1967).

In an interview with the literary critic Ragaa El-Naqqash, Mahfouz describes his works following the Trilogy: “I said farewell to the novel following the trilogy. Now, I write something the English call the novella, which is best translated as qessa [story],” he said.

While Mahfouz was deeply affected by the events that took place around him, no great work is ever born of simply chronicling of events — that’s the job of history, not literature.

“For us writers who belong to the world described as ‘the developing,’ we believed that realizing our literary self only came through negating ourselves. We believed the European novel form to be sacred, and leaving it behind to be blasphemy. At one point in time, I imagined that our generation’s role was to write the novel in the correct way, because I imagined the existence of a wrong way and a right way. Now, the theory has changed. The true novel comes from inside. I do not imitate the Maqama or Joyce. Actually, what makes me angry is imitation. What I wish of the coming generations, who may take us to the international level [the interview was many years before the Nobel], is to be faithful to this point; true to the self. It is not only the subject that must be local, but also the form. The day we achieve this, we will have presented the real Arab literature to the world.”

After Egypt’s disastrous defeat at Israeli hands in 1967, Mahfouz stopped writing novels for the second time in his life. “The short story helped him here, and he started to produce a number of short story collections, including Taht El-Mizalla (Under the Bus Shelter), Hikaya bila Bidaya wala Nihaya (A Story Without A Beginning nor an End), and others. His third phase starts in 1973, with El-Hobb Taht El-Matar (Love in the Rain), and ends in 1989 with Qushtumor, his final novel,” Abdel Qader says.

According to the critic, the writer could not produce novels after 1967 because of the enormity of the change that had overtaken the country: “How can I write a novel when I don’t know what is going to happen? Writing this form demands freezing reality so the writer can look at it. To be able to photograph someone, you ask them to stand still. The short story was more suitable for that time,” Mahfouz once said.

But like the phoenix rising out of its ashes, Mahfouz always reinvented himself — and somehow came up with more. Take his final writings, marking his fourth and final phase, beginning with Asdaa El-Sira El-Zatiyya (Echoes from a Biography).

“The outside world had become too narrow for him [in his final years],” Abdel Qader says. “He could not see nor hear properly, and could not go to the theater or watch television. The world became too small for him, so he resorted to the world inside him. His Sira and his Dreams are two very important works, but to enjoy them, you must be a very good reader of Naguib Mahfouz.”

Salmawy agrees. “He went into his own reality. [These works] take us to a more spiritual and philosophical plane. The realistic aspect of life was no longer there, but the philosophical outlook to life which comes only to people in their last years. Dreams have always reminded me of Beethoven’s last quartets, where he left the boisterous symphonies and wrote very simple quartets — simple in that you find a kind of self-resignation, the philosophical outlook to life that only comes to people in their last years. You find it also in Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest.”

Today, more than 200 of Mahfouz’s Dreams sit written, yet unpublished. “For the writer, a story is like the sexual instinct,” Mahfouz told El-Ghitani. “As long as there is vitality, it must come out. This is basically it. If this ability is gone, it is over, even if the world is full of stories.”

Despite his decades-long relationship with Mahfouz, Salmawy is still awed by the writer’s having topped the nation’s (and the region’s) literary pyramid for over 70 years. “He has worked with the novel and experimented with it so much — much more than the younger generations that came after him. He has not only expressed reality, he expressed the daily problems of the younger generations better than they did in short stories like El-Hob Fawq Hadabet El-Haram (Love on Top of the Pyramids Plateau) and Ahl El-Qemma (Those at the Top). Apart from that, he also experimented with the novel as a form. He was very much aware of all the experimentation that went on in the world, and he experimented in his own way, but he never forgot his roots and never wrote European novels,” Salmawy explains.

No work better illustrates this than El-Harafish. The epic work, which first appeared in 1977 and which is one of Mahfouz’s best-loved works, reveals a form of magical realism that is purely Egyptian, at a time when magical realism was still taking its first steps in South America.

“[Magical realism] actually draws from eastern and Arab roots, which go back to A Thousand and One Nights, which is the first example of magical realism in the world,” argues El-Naqqash.

So where does Mahfouz’s death leave the modern Arab novel? Salmawy believes the great writer left a complex legacy that should ultimately open new doors for the next generation.

“[Mahfouz’s legacy] provided all of them [the next generation] with unlimited opportunities, because he opened new vistas for the novel. All this was there in the waiting for younger writers to use. So it enriched the possibilities that were there in front of them. But on the other hand, he may have made it difficult for us to view other novelists who grew up during his time. Yet when I think now, I can’t remember anybody who was really neglected because Mahfouz was taking all the attention.

“Don’t let us forget that whenever Mahfouz did something new, he was attacked, not applauded. Even during his realistic period which was not in any way experimental, he was attacked by leftist critics who branded him as someone interested only in the small bourgeoisie and did not deal with the plight of the workers and the farmers. Classical critics attacked him for using a language close to ammiyya. But he carried on undaunted. He was like the sun, like a huge star, and all the other planets who gathered around him shone even more because of his light,” Salmawy believes.

Asked which writers he thinks were influenced the most by Mahfouz, Salmawy finds the question virtually unanswerable. “Can you say which British writers were influenced by Shakespeare? Every one of them. There are some writers who reach a certain state, a certain level, where they become like the air we breathe. I would say that every Arab writer writing after Mahfouz was definitely affected by him one way or the other, and there are no disciples who have followed his school of writing because he has none, or because he has many,” he says.

Abdel Qader agrees. “Everyone writing novels in the Arab world was affected by Mahfouz. Many were influenced by him, but do not ask me who.”

But in an article entitled “Did Naguib Mahfouz Become an Obstacle in the Way of the Arab Novel?” El-Naqqash recounts a curious little incident that suggests Mahfouz may have become a psychological hurdle to some: El-Naqqash had written a review of the then new novel Season of Migration to the North by the Sudanese El-Tayyeb Saleh, describing it as a great global work presented by the modern Arab novel to the world. When Saleh read the review, he sent El-Naqqash a letter in which he wrote, “What genius are you talking about? There is no genius but Mahfouz.” El-Naqqash goes on to say that this is probably the secret behind Saleh’s current hesitation to produce new works.

But that was years ago. Today, the Arab novel is in very good shape.

“The Arab novel is flourishing, which shows that what Mahfouz has sown is growing. Many female novelists are joining the field, which is encouraging. The Arab novel has spanned all Arab lands, leaving no corner without writing about it, be it in the West or East of the Arab world. The novel is the art form the most able to express the very complex reality we live in. Poetry and the short story cannot do this, and neither can theater because it is a group art. The Arab novel is accomplishing a lot, presenting us with the new every day,” El-Naqqash says.

When I ask Abdel Qader to give some examples of the names he believes will continue Mahfouz’s mission, the critic is annoyed at what he probably regards as a naïve question.

“Nobody completes anybody’s journey. Naguib Mahfouz is dead, and those coming after him must embark on their own journey,” he says. He does think there are names strong enough to stand the test of time, but points out that in the past two years, most of the work he saw was average, with a few shining examples. In his 2003 book About the Modern Arab Novel, Abdel Qader reviews 15 works he believes are important enough to be mentioned. Although his criticism is seldom glowing or gushing, he tries to be as pragmatic as possible in dissecting and analyzing the works at hand. Among the novels he mentions are Alaa El-Aswany’s Omaret Yacoubian (Yacoubian Building), Khaled Ismail’s Kohl Hagar (Stone Kohl), Asmaa Hashem’s El-Mo’asher Anda Noqtat Al-Sifr (At Point Zero), Miral El-Tahawi’s Naqarat El-Zibaa (Taps of the Does), Nagwa Shaaban’s Nawwit El-Karam (A Sea Storm of Generosity), Montasser El-Qaffash’s An Tara al An (To See Now), and Somaia Ramadan’s Awraq El-Nargiss (Narcissus Leaves), among others.

Addressing contemporary Arab novelists, El-Naqqash declares: “Nobody would love you to be better than himself than would your father. Naguib is the father of the modern Arab novel. Young novelists must begin by rebelling against this father so they will have their own voice, and their own vision of life and art.”

AWRITER USUALLY PRODUCES one or two great works, but one could say that all the novels of Naguib Mahfouz are masterpieces. It is difficult to describe a masterpiece, but one can instantly recognize one upon reading it.

I cannot claim to have been close to Naguib Mahfouz, but I can say that I was close enough to have the right to write about him. I was not part of his Harafish group, whose members were all friends of mine. Nor did I frequent his café meetings, but I was one of his regular readers from the moment his Trilogy was serialized in Al-Rissala Al-Jadida, a magazine edited by Youssef El-Sebai.

Moreover, I have read him in both Arabic and English, thanks to the publication of his works in English by the AUC Press. It was because of these translations that Mahfouz was able to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. This brings back a memory related to the prize. As secretary-general of the Egyptian Center of PEN, every year, I used to receive a letter from the Nobel Prize Committee asking me to propose a writer for the prize, as was the procedure with all national PEN centers. The Egyptian center started by proposing Dr. Taha Hussein, who was its president, then Tawfik El-Hakim, who assumed the post after Dr. Hussein’s death. But neither of them were lucky enough to win the award.

Finally, in 1987, the Egyptian center put forward the name of Naguib Mahfouz, along with a short biography. And he won, becoming the first writer in the Arab world to gain this honor.

I am not a literary critic, and I cannot claim the ability to comment on Mahfouz’s works. But what I can say is that Mahfouz proved that the more local a writer is, the more he has the chance of becoming international. Chekhov and Dostoevsky are examples of the same.

The last time I saw Mahfouz was in the art gallery at Al-Ahram. I had invited Britta Le Va, an American photographer, to Egypt, where she met Mahfouz and began her trek into his world. She produced a series of photos titled The World of Naguib Mahfouz, which were displayed at an exhibit inaugurated by Ibrahim Nafei, chairman and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram at the time. Later, the AUC Press published the photos in the book The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz with text by our leading writer, Gamal El-Ghitani. et