Poor

Idris Ali

Description

"This is your last day. Be strong. Don't hesitate. Cut and run. An exit with no return." Idris Alis confessional novel opens with these words, spoken on an unbearably hot August afternoon in downtown Cairo, where the Nubian narrator has just decided, once and for all, to end his life. Delirious and thirsty, he wanders around venting his resentments large and small, his sexual frustrations, and his sense of powerlessness in the face of unremitting injustice. He seeks to expunge his failed life in the Nile: the river that had been the life blood of his country for millennia, and that with Egypt's new dam now drowns Nubia, flinging her dispossessed sons north and south into exile. Many years ago, the narrator was one of those sons, fleeing flood and famine only to arrive in Cairo, penniless and shoeless, in time to see it go up in flames, the old regime overthrown by "the men in tanks." Poor is the story of a life of hardship, adversity, and emotional starvation. It is also the story of opportunities squandered and hopes traded away for nothing of a life lived, at times, all too poorly.

Sujets

• Arabic
• Foreign Language study
• Lettres et linguistique
• Language

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617971501
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published in 2007 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
Copyright © 2007 by Idris Ali
First published in Arabic in 2005 as Taht khatt al-faqr
Protected under the Berne Convention
Translation copyright © 2007 by Elliott Colla
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Dar el Kutub No. 3310/07
eISBN: 978 161 797 150 1
Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ali, Idris
Poor / Idris Ali; translated by Elliott Colla.—Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2007
p. cm.
1. Arabic fiction Colla, Elliott (trans.) II. Title 813
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12 11 10 09 08 07
Designed by Joanne Cunningham/AUC Press Design Center
Printed in Egypt
For Adults Only
Warning:
If you suffer from even mild
high blood pressure,
do not read this novel.
Sayings on Confrontation
Poor of the world . . . unite!
Don’t kiss the hand you can’t cut off.
Look back in anger.
Do not reconcile.
The forbidden.
He was no confectioner.
Say it and die.
The one who marries your mother is not your uncle.
Foxes stole into Egypt’s vineyards while the night watchmen slept. They gorged themselves, but could not finish the grapes.
Merely a Question
I need to be frank with you: I lost control of the narrator of this story. He slipped out of my hands and began to rant about forbidden things. Present conditions do not permit his sort of effusiveness. He was unrestrained, as if he was speaking in the wilderness. I tried to direct him, but in vain. He comes across as disrespectful, hurtful, and harsh. He tries to harm the protagonist of his story and to slander his reputation, as if he’d never heard of al-Azhar, the censor’s office, or the agents of the contemporary Islamic inquisition. It’s as if he’d also never heard of tolerating and accepting others.
In the end, I confronted him angrily: “Why do you hang out our dirty laundry for all to see?” He rudely replied, “Why are you second-guessing me when the laundry—your laundry, Egypt’s laundry—is so dirty?”
Like you, I think better of the protagonist of this story than what is spewed out here. As a noble being, who may or may not enjoy a solid reputation among people, I must ask him, and you along with him, “Is the protagonist of this story really as despicable as he appears, or is it that he was just narrated that way?”
Cairo
August 1994
Homeland. Torture. Departure.
T his is your last day. Be strong. Don’t hesitate. Cut and run. An exit with no return. The end of the game. You’ve tried many times before. Today your decision is final, coming after a desperate life journey. That steady misery. You’re serious this time. Determined. A heavy pall blocks every opening before you. There’s no escape but death. The only possible conclusion. A depression colonizing you ever since you were born. Your condition drops in bad weather. Murderous Africa, home of the sun and oppression and homicidal rulers: damned, desperate continent. You’ve never lived like other people. As the poet says, “Trouble: life’s nothing but.” A suffering woman answers, “There’s no greater mess than life.” Weariness. Sickness. Trouble. You’ve lived alone and you will go out alone, leaving this planet of the apes without regrets.
How stifling this heat is! The Gehenna of August. Cairo ablaze. Egypt’s rich have left you to face the sun all by yourself. They’ve fled toward the happy coastline, as they always do, in their Mercedes, SUVs, express trains, and planes. Even government officials are managing the country wearing nothing but their bathing suits. The naked governing the unclothed. Montazah Beach used to be occupied by just a single king, then the men in tanks seized it. It’s a catastrophe— they’ve converted all the beaches of the country into private Montazah picnic grounds! Their forces have amassed along the summer refuges of the poor— So where are we supposed to go?! —and overrun the Bedouin beaches. Now they hang signs over these places with names like ‘Maraqya’ and ‘Maribella’ and surround themselves with guards and gates.
Poor you, drowning in your sweat, with no access to even a breath of fresh air ever since they landed their private clubs across the banks of the Nile. This historic Nile that is yours. They’ve separated you from your Nile. So you’ve decided to die in its waters as a sort of lawful protest. A feast for the schools of tilapia.
Yes, the Nile. You won’t set yourself on fire. You won’t shoot yourself in the head. Nor will you jump from the Cairo Tower. You won’t retreat. You’re shameless, refusing all sleeping pills and tranquilizers. You curse the ancestors of Job, the king of patience, worms, and putrefaction. You laugh when they try to tell you that sturdy trees die standing. Empty slogans! Trees die standing, lying, or falling down. They die and goodbye! They’re done—worthless. They turn into either lumber or kindling. But they don’t then start to bear fruit. Ask Papa Hemingway who famously said, “You can crush a man, but you can’t defeat him.” Were those words ever true? So what’s left of someone after he has been crushed? Should he dance while he’s bleeding? Should he laugh underfoot? Is he supposed to flash the victory sign in the midst of defeat? Isn’t this what our leaders do in the underdeveloped world, shouting, “We’ve won! Victory is ours!” If you’re above all this, Papa Hemingway, then how should we explain your horrific end? In my opinion, suicide is the prerogative of the brave and noble.
Faced with a life of bother, it is dignified to leave by your own choosing. Assholes don’t kill themselves. They flee sinking ships. It’s the idiots who cling on and float and are later called heroes. Meanwhile, the assholes make off with the loot and then pick up their corruption and sabotage from other bases of operation. They’re the ones who say, “When the flood comes, stand on your son,” as the idiots rattle on their ancient slogans: Homeland! Resistance! Land! They tell us, “Stand up in defiance!” even though there’s nothing left that deserves the honor of resistance. Not since they sold the homeland along with everything else they could sell, including “The Cause,” “The Land!” and their depleted bases of operation. Our freewomen are forced to sustain themselves by nursing from their own breasts. Our freemen sit there trying and almost shitting, their dull hands reaching out toward mulberry leaves. You tell yourself: Better to go out stoned.
You hesitate when you reach the Qasr al-Nil bridge, the spot from which you’ve chosen to depart. You hesitate, but not because you fear death, for death’s an inescapable fact. The struggle wells up inside you, almost splits you in two. A brutal, ugly struggle. An awful fury inside shakes you and you rebel. You continue walking, confused. You ask yourself: Why did you lose your nerve? It collapsed! You want to go back on your decision. You reevaluate despite the fact that you’ve decided and committed yourself.
As you walk, you pass by the sleek League of Idiot Tribes Building. This is where they deliver speeches and applaud and say all the right words. You sleepwalk to the edge of Intifada Square, which once upon a time witnessed the Revolt of the Poor, that uprising which the tank rider called “The Revolt of the Thieves,” even though it was he who opened the country’s gates to the worst kinds of thieves and who told the most famous thief, “Beware of Alexandria, Mr. . . . !” Isn’t that funny? How did that hashash reason? That comedian exposed him when he referred to him, saying, “Someone taught us how to cheat and steal. . . .”
Why do you bother with all this crap? It’s their country and they’re free to do what they want with it. Or are these just pre-mortem hallucinations? You’re beset by many cravings all at once. Hunger. Lust. Thirst. The urge to scream. You’ve got one chance to fulfill one desire. Let out a scream that’ll rock the world. Then relax. Or burn yourself up with crying. But your tears have gone dry after mourning over so many events, over innumerable national disasters whose sole cause was that singular man in the tank. He took you up to heaven’s heights, then smashed your necks on the bank of the Suez Canal.
In your depressive state, your sexual appetite is so dead that even Viagra is useless. The diagnosis is that your impotence is systemic. One of them blamed it on white chicken. But the Tagammu‘ Party guy tells you, with the conviction of one who really knows, that the Mossad is behind this debacle: they have agents working at the water reservoirs and distribution centers. Some have rumored that the government is trying to limit the population explosion, while one intellectual attributes the cause to a general state of futility. Regardless of the cause, what’s certain is that it’s a thousand times easier to manage a society of limp men than to deal with men whose complete sexual capacities are intact. Perhaps the cause of your condition is that you’re womanless in a city that hums with beauties. And that’s because those women are meant for export and the enjoyment of tourists.
And then there’s hunger. That boorish guest who’s clung to you since childhood. You’re used to him by now. And you only ever knew love once in your life. Dina Tantawi, the girl from Bulaq who tortured you. Impossible love. Poor folk’s love.
You’ve got no choice but oblivion. To quench your thirst. Your budget is almost enough to get you drunk. It’s