thetravelingminstrel

September 11, 2023 – Sunsets in Alexandria

This is what sunsets look like in the city that Alexander built, and which Cleopatra lost.

Isn’t it crazy how I hopped on an early bus from Cairo this morning, paid the fare equivalent to two hundred Philippine pesos, and three hours later I’m here? Here! Alexandria! How magical that I can write those two words together — here, Alexandria.

But I won’t lie. When I got off the bus, the sun was already high and wielding its full power. It exposed everything unsightly about what has become of the city. With an aching heart I walked to C.P. Cavafy’s house while waiting for the opening hours of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina; mainly for comfort, and maybe for shade. It was closed for renovation. The ache slightly intensified.

I took a cab and decided to wait at the library’s entrance along with droves of tourists. The driver cruised through the Corniche on the way there and I saw the Citadel of Qaitbay looming in the distance. That 15th century fortress built where once stood one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Lighthouse of Alexandria. After a few minutes, we arrived at the impressive new library where once stood the Library of Alexandria. Everything was something where something great once stood.

When the sun finally relented I walked the entire stretch of the Corniche up to the Citadel of Qaitbay and back. With the Mediterranean breeze blowing on my face and the sun casting a golden glow on everything, Alexandria’s beauty started to reveal itself to me.

Lawrence Durrell was right. This city is “the capital of Memory”. And perhaps it really is about creating one’s own personal Alexandria.

I will spend the night, and maybe in the morning, Alexandria will have more lessons for me.

September 10, 2023 – Old Cairo

Old Cairo’s dust and cacophony remind me of Kathmandu. But instead of Hindu temples or Buddhist stupas, mosques and minarets. Instead of Newari tiki jhyas, Arabic mashrabiyas.

These windows with intricate latticework are some of my favorite features of traditional Islamic and Newari architecture. They seem to me embodiments of how a thing of beauty and tradition can become a refuge or a prison, and it is for you to decide. Moreover, these similarities in architectural identities make me wonder at the extent and influence of the Silk Route.

But what’s beautiful about these places of endless excitement is when you explore beyond the chaos and pass through their exterior, and find pockets of poetry and enchanting silence. I usually find what I’m looking for behind these latticed windows.

September 9, 2023 – The Citadel of Saladin

The Pyramids of Giza seen from the Citadel of Saladin.

Several friends wondered why I hadn’t gone crawling straight to the pyramids as soon as I arrived.

That’s because the Cairo presented to me by beloved authors goes beyond travel packages, tour groups, and cookie-cutter experiences; and so I was aware that there was another Cairo I wanted to savor apart from the pyramids and pharaonic Egypt.

But even though it would take me over two incredible weeks after landing in Egypt to get close to the Pyramids of Giza, my first glimpse of the pyramids took place on my second day as I was exploring the Citadel of Saladin. Saladin, or Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (1137 – 1193), founder of the Ayyubid dynasty — one of my favorite historical characters.

This strategic fortress with a commanding view of Cairo that he built on the Mokattam Hills was the seat of government in Egypt from the time of his rule up until the 19th century.

Within the fortress walls are magnificent architectural exemplars of Ayubbid, Mamluk, and Ottoman architecture that bear proof of the major Islamic eras that Egypt underwent.

To the untrained eye, Old Cairo’s mosques and minarets look similar, but I have learned that there are differences between Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman architecture that manifest the vastness of the umbrella term that is Islamic Architecture.

September 8, 2023 – The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz

The Cairo that was introduced to me as a reader was not the Cairo of travel posters. The same way that the Istanbul I know is the Istanbul seen through the soul of Orhan Pamuk, the Cairo I know is the Old Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz.

If you’ve read works of both Nobel laureates, you can attest that the constant main characters of their novels are the cities of their birth.

And just as I crossed to the European side of Istanbul to visit Pamuk’s museum, the first thing I did after only a few hours of sleep post-MNL-DIA-CAI flights was to visit the Naguib Mahfouz House Museum and the Naguib Mahfouz Coffee Shop (a coffee house Mahfouz used to frequent so that when he was awarded the Nobel, the owner renamed it in his honor).

A special display of the author’s books.

On Google Maps, the distance between the two establishments is near. But I turned out to be like an Israelite who fled Egypt and wandered for 40 years traversing a distance that can be done in 9 hours and 5 minutes by car, if you consult Google Maps.

The confused directions came from locals who mistook the coffee shop for the museum and vice versa, and this had me going in circles. It took me a while to finally realize what was going on. But it was as if Mahfouz planned the excursion himself. He did not want me to have it easy. I had to experience his Cairo before arriving there — the Cairo of chaos, of spices, of squawking chickens, of tantalizing fragrances and unpleasant smells, of shouting vendors, dirt, heat, of wonderfully claustrophobic alleys, of uncomfortable stares but also friendly and curious smiles. What I saw today was not the sugarcoated Cairo, and definitely not the whitewashed Cairo. It was the Cairo I came a long way to experience.

A collage of book-covers from Mahfouz’s novels.

Scholastique Mukasonga

COCKROACHES

It is and it isn’t Kafkaesque. It is because, not too long ago, the Tutsi people woke up as inyenzi — cockroaches. It isn’t because it is no longer allegory, no longer fiction.

“The soldiers… were always there to remind us what we were… cockroaches. Nothing human about us. One day we’d have to be got rid of.”

Mukasonga, who lost an entire family, an entire clan, and an entire people in the genocide, chronicles life as a Tutsi in Hutu-dominated Rwanda. As a child, she and her family were forced to relocate to a camp during the first pogroms against the Tutsi; and from then on, they knew what awaited them. “Humiliated, afraid, waiting day after day for what was to come, what we didn’t have a word for: genocide.”

In this disturbing and exceptional account, we become witnesses to how hatred and prejudice crescendoed from the 1950s into what erupted as the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

OUR LADY OF THE NILE

In two chapters of Cockroaches, there is an account of being unexpectedly accepted to the prestigious Lycée Notre Dame de Citeaux, a Catholic boarding school in Kigali. The experience becomes a fictionalized novel here.

The elite school for young women perched on the ridge of the Nile remarkably becomes a microcosm of Rwandan society. Corruption, the tension between Tutsis and Hutus, history, their myths, Rwanda’s relationship with the west, orientalists, disinformation and lies that fuel prejudice — “It’s not lies,” justifies one of the girls. “It’s politics.” — the complexities of government and society, and how Mukasonga proficiently mirrors these through the lives of the young women makes it a powerful work of fiction.

IGIFU

An anthology of 5 stories that remind us of why we should read about worlds and lives so different from our own. And if you’re wondering about the identity of Igifu, “who woke you long before the chattering birds announced the first light of dawn,” who “stayed at your side…to bedevil your sleep,” “the heartless magician who conjured up lying mirages…” you would be heartbroken, just as I was, to know that he is Hunger.

THE BAREFOOT WOMAN

A lament with pockets of lightheartedness dedicated to the mother she lost, written by someone who, in her own words, has the sorrow of surviving.

KIBOGO

A spirited portrait of a people grappling with the choice between the faith of their European colonizers and their pagan beliefs. A relatable quandary amongst peoples of colonized lands, but written in a manner only Mukasonga can achieve.

Truly, an African section of a library would be inadequate without Mukasonga. These are essentials in world literature. The word essential has been abused, but there are times when essential is appropriate.

Out El Kouloub: Zanouba

The soundtrack: Wails from professional mourners and murmurs among the attendees. The novel opens with a funerary scene in Cairo at the turn of the twentieth century.

“God refuses to grace his home,” they whisper of an honored guest in the crowd. “Sad is a house deprived of a son,” they lament. “Not one son!” they say of this man who has four wives but “only” daughters. We enter yet another world where men are favored over women — even by the women.

The titular character who becomes this man’s fifth wife is uneducated and easily swayed by superstition. Although the author treats her with compassion, Zanouba’s unhappy fate seems to me a gentle critique on the tolerance and perpetuation of this mindset among women.

It is unimaginable for me to dethrone Naguib Mahfouz as the king and Nawal el Saadawi as the queen of Egyptian literature, but Out El Kouloub deserves a significant spot in the tapestry of Egyptian literature. I’m delighted with the discovery of this relatively obscure author who sheds light on Cairene women as Nawal el Saadawi does but without the rage, and paints early 20th century Cairo as perceptively as Naguib Mahfouz but through a more feminine frame of reference.

Although Out El Kouloub grew up in Cairo, she fled to France during the Nasser regime. Once dubbed “the richest woman in Egypt” by many, Out El Kouloub’s life is as intriguing as her stories. The work is translated from the French by Nayra Atiya, as all of Out El Kouloub’s books were written in French.

On Women in Translation Month 2023, I write this for the rare reader who tries to look for traces of Out El Kouloub (1899–1968) in #bookstagram and finds only six frames bearing her hashtagged name. This will be the seventh. There should be more.

Naguib Mahfouz: The Cairo Trilogy

There are better editions with attractive new covers now. Mine still carry the designs of the first American edition of the English translation, but I love how the first volume depicts the antique mashrabiyas of Old Cairo. These projecting windows with intricate latticework are some of my favorite features of traditional Islamic architecture. They seem to me exemplars of how a thing of beauty and tradition can become a refuge or a prison.

And yet, not even these mashrabiyas could shield Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family from life, love, death, and a changing world.

It is often said that the Cairo Trilogy is a family saga spanning three generations, from the period of the Egyptian revolt against British colonizers in 1919 to the final days of the Second World War. But it is more than a family saga: It is an astute record of a society, a city, a nation, and a world in transition.

I admit that I found good reason to put the first volume down. I was constantly infuriated by how women were perceived and treated by the male characters, by how men justified their immorality and hypocrisy and got off scot-free while women were punished severely for the most innocent blunders, and by how women themselves accepted this as the natural order of things. Those passages were deeply frustrating.

But Mahfouz’s exquisite storytelling carried me through. He does not so much describe Cairo as transport me there — into the volatile political scene of an Egypt yearning for independence, through its wondrous or disreputable backstreets and alleys, and especially into the women’s cloistered lives so I could hear the questions brewing in their hearts, and eventually to the reflection of society’s gradual development through the change in attitude toward women and their education.

In this trilogy, imperial tyranny juxtaposes with tyranny in the family, but through it all, an incredible compassion and empathy emanates from Mahfouz who humanizes everyone, even the tyrants.

Before I knew it I was at the final page of the last volume, not quite ready to let go, and contemplating on the fact that I had just read one of the finest works of literature ever written.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Defense

“…and when Luzhin left the balcony and stepped back into his room, there on the floor lay an enormous square of moonlight, and in that light — his own shadow.”

The awareness of this being a story of a man possessed by chess (“…sleep could find no way into his brain; it searched for a loophole, but every entrance was guarded by a chess sentry…”) makes the allusion to the white square of a chessboard more impeccable.

Nabokov is a writer that allows a reader to experience cinematography in literature. The deliberate composition of each frame is so visually satisfying that I’m tempted to say it’s the reason I read him. But I would be lying. I’m also here for the traces of his synesthesia.

“Hearing” the chess moves — “combinations like melodies”, chess notations synthesize with musical scores, games begin “softly, softly, like muted violins” then without the least warning, a chord sings out tenderly, a trace of another melody manifests, some other deep, dark note chimes elsewhere…

Sometimes I, too, ask myself if I’m missing the point and reading Nabokov incorrectly by fixating on those passages and often forgetting that this is a tragic tale about how our sanctuaries can turn into obsessions and lead to madness, or the fact that this novel belongs up there with Stefan Zweig’s Chess Story; but then I find myself falling for those passages all over again. Part of me asserts that if this is me reading him wrong then I’m reluctant to be right!

Naguib Mahfouz: Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

Cleopatra’s era is closer to the invention of the iPhone than it is to the construction of the pyramids of Giza. A podcast episode that I listened to years ago pointed this out. The fact still blows my mind. When they are mere numbers written on a page, the breadth of history’s timeline cannot be fully grasped until such a comparison is made; but to make those epochs come alive is a task for the novelist.

Khufu’s Wisdom is set in Ancient Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty (circa 2625 – 2500 BCE). Khufu, also known as Cheops, whose sarcophagus rests in the Great Pyramid of Giza, is the pharaoh to whom Egypt’s biggest pyramid is commonly attributed when people are not busy attributing it to aliens. Rhadopis of Nubia in the Sixth Dynasty (circa 2350 – 2710 BCE), gravitates around a courtesan and King Merenra’s short-lived reign. Thebes at War, set between the Seventeenth to Eighteenth Dynasty (1630-1292 BCE), reimagines the interval when Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos or “foreign kings”.

I have read several works by Naguib Mahfouz before taking on this trilogy but have found this to be the easiest to read and the most entertaining thus far! Yes, the language is grand and often pompous — it has to match its pharaonic subjects! Yes, some details can be politically incorrect by today’s standards — the publication years of each volume are as follows: 1939, 1943, and 1944! But reading this made me feel like a very young girl again; one who cannot help but be swept away with abandon into wondrous tales of the past. How I was able to imagine the stories as grand cinematic adaptations in my head is proof of Mahfouz’s skill as a storyteller!

Although the stories are easy to read, they are not as simple as they seem on the surface:

Khufu’s Wisdom is a classic contemplation on fate and duty, and about the difficult submission to both. My favorite passage comes from a secondary character who asks the protagonist, a skilled warrior, “And now, tell me, are you reading anything useful? …the virtuous mind never dismisses wisdom even for a day, just as the healthy stomach does not renounce food for a day… The virtue of the science of war is that it trains the soldier to serve his homeland and his sovereign with might, though his soul does not benefit at all. And the soldier who is ignorant of wisdom is like the faithful beast — nothing more… if the soul isn’t nourished by wisdom then it sinks to the level of the lesser creatures.”

It was in Rhadopis of Nubia where I felt the political undertones deepen. While it also questions the role of beauty and art, there are questions posed to corruption in theocracies and the tricky relationship between king and clergy. In the hall of Rhadopis, politicians and all manner of men gathered to be entranced, even though it was believed to be a most dangerous thing to set eyes upon her. Her tragic tale left me wondering whether she inspired Salman Rushdie’s Enchantress of Florence and whether she is, as I continue to reckon Rushdie’s enchantress, an allegory for Power.

Thebes at War is the most dramatic out of all the three and a most fitting finale for the trilogy. It is where one will find this line, “Weeping is no use, gentlemen. The past will disappear into ancient times and obliteration so long as you are content to do nothing but mourn it.”

Mahfouz is a man who did more than mourn Egypt’s past. He has built literary edifices forged from existing architectural wonders and archaeological findings, constructed modern allegories out of ancient lives and times, and transformed them into timeless political missives — knowing that there will always be those who are doomed to forget and repeat the follies of history.

Mavis Gallant: Paris Stories

*“Leaving was the other half of arriving…”*

Underneath the rumblings of revolution and the sparkling notes spilling over like champagne, Chopin’s music reaches for something far away… far away in distance, or in memory. The bulk of the work written in Paris, and yet they speak of other landscapes, of nostalgia for an irretrievable time and place, of exile, of home or the lack of it.

So were and so do Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories. Had Gallant’s heart been brought home in a jar of cognac whilst the body remained in Paris, perhaps it would also have been found to be larger than the average human heart.

But how those hearts, Chopin’s and hers, continue to beat through the music, through the stories!

“Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death.” — Mavis Gallant