"I thought I was performing a humanitarian service."
"Listen, you demanded a whole five pounds from me for a service that costs almost nothing in a public hospi tal, which is where you ought to be. What"s humanitarian in that?"
"A clinic like this is expensive," he said. "Furthermore, there"s no hospital whose services you can trust."
I said hysterically, "You and your ilk have been the ruin of public hospitals to the advantage of private shops. You have conspired to fleece anyone with the bad luck to fall into your hands."
He stiffened and said disdainfully, "It"s my right to set the fee for the services I offer in any way I see fit."
"And I"m ent.i.tled to free treatment from you," I said.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise, "How so?"
Gesturing with my good arm to include the doctor as well as the furniture, the air conditioner, the sound system, and the medical equipment, I leaned over the desk, saying, "None of this has resulted from your unique genius. You and your ilk benefit from a system of inherited privileges that over time have been wrested from me and from others, our fathers and forefathers. Above and beyond this, you are from the generation that had a free education, a free ride on me and others like me."
He stood up, shaking with anger. "Enough. I don"t want to argue with you. I want you to leave my clinic now. Your kind has no right to my services."
As he pressed the buzzer firmly with both hands, I said, "I admit I made a mistake in coming to you. As soon as you return the pound I paid today, I"ll leave."
He said superciliously, "My time is valuable and you"ve wasted too much of it already. Therefore, I don"t owe you anything. If you don"t go now, I"ll have the medic toss you out in the street."
The medic who appeared in the door was a strapping young man and I was afraid the incident on the bus would be repeated. I got up slowly and said, "I"ll go. But I know what to do about my pound. We still have law and order around here."
Naturally, I didn"t believe that, but it was a way of saving face, helping me face the critical looks that met me outside and the insults with which the medic escorted me to the door.
I walked along seething, hardly noticing anything around me. I wasn"t aware of myself until a woman b.u.mped my forearm and it hurt. At that point I started walking toward my apartment, picking my way with difficulty around the ditches, the dirt, the garbage that n.o.body has an incentive to remove or even complain about, and the piles of imported goods and crates of Coca-Cola filling the sidewalk.
I began to look around at the people who were crowding the streets, shopping enthusiastically, cracking seeds, and listening to songs. I blamed myself that my fear of pain had exposed me to humiliation by the physician. In fact, when considering the fate awaiting me, it hadn"t been worth the effort.
I bought enough food for a few days. I told the doorman to tell anyone who asked for me that I was away. I climbed to my apartment.
There were a few things I had to take care of right away. I got busy at this, even though moving my arm was painful. I went through my old papers and put them in order. I spent some pleasant moments, although they were tinged with sorrow, in going over my accomplishments and the resulting comments and reverberations. Old government applications, tickets, letters, bills, and receipts helped me trace the course I had taken since I stood on my own feet.
I lingered over a picture of my father. I contemplated his legacy, laden with pain, negative att.i.tudes, and delusions, and also laden with the hopes he had pinned on me. Time hadn"t allowed him to witness the outcome. Thank G.o.d he wouldn"t see my fate.
I spent a whole day sorting through pictures of individuals who had crossed my path and women I had been linked with, all of whom I had pinned my hopes on at different stages. I dwelt on everything that had combined to shatter those hopes, looking one last time for where things had gone wrong.
Naturally, this preoccupation stirred up certain feelings. So I got out my p.o.r.no books and with the aid of my fantasies and memories sought to live for the last time those charged moments, during which life floods every cell of the body and a caress anywhere arouses waves of ecstasy that inevitably crest.
The following day I was entirely occupied with my old diaries and the notes I had made in moments suffused with suffering and hope. At one time their possibilities seemed limitless, but now they appeared faded, yet still tinged with sorrow. The great plans I had at one time mapped out enthusiastically and the ensuing frustrations leaped out at me from the yellowing pages.
Numerous quotations I had copied from my readings at various times stared out at me. Most of them spoke of the ideal way of life. I spent hours staring at these lines by Mayakovsky, which he most likely spoke shortly before his tragic end: His fate reminded me of my tragedy. I recalled the events that had happened to me since I had prepared myself for my first interview with the Committee. I reviewed the stages of the whole experience and how it had opened my eyes-completely-to the whole dreadful truth, even though this came too late.
When I visualized the details of the last interview, I regretted my complaisance and how, before the whole Committee, I had lost the glibness and courage which were part of me when dealing with individuals, like Stubby, the giant on the bus, and the physician.
I was engaged in finding an explanation for this phenomenon, when, after some examination, I realized it was rooted in the distant past, in the first test I had ever taken, at just a few years of age, and each time thereafter when I stood naked before the cold, indifferent eyes of ruthless people who belonged to a world other than mine. The life of each of them revolves in an independent sphere, not dependent in any way on the outcome of any confrontation between us, which is contrary to my own case.
I wished I was standing before the Committee members again, so that I could make them listen to me. I imagined myself facing them confidently. I went on to pick precise, exact expressions. I got carried away. Sud denly I stood up, put an empty tape in the recorder, and set it cn the table. I faced it as if it were the Committee.
My voice rang out strong and steady in the empty room. "I committed-from the beginning-unpardonable errors. I shouldn"t have stood before you, but against you. Every n.o.ble effort on this earth should be aimed at eliminating you.
"Let me quickly add that I am not so naive as to imagine that were this achieved, the matter would end there. By the very nature of things, a new Committee would take your place. No matter the beauty of its plans or the perfection of its goals, corruption would soon set in. Even if it started out as a symbol, it would become an obstacle, and sooner or later it in turn would have to be eliminated.
"From my investigations of history and cases similar to mine, I perceived that via this very process-an ongoing process of change and transformation-your group will gradually lose what authority it has, while the power of those like me to confront and resist it will grow.
"However, unfortunately, I won"t be here when that takes place, because of the fate allotted me, a fate deriving on the one hand from my ambitions, which exceedec my potential, and my quixotic search for knowledge and, on the other hand, from my entanglement in a reckless but inevitable attempt to challenge your Committee at an unsuitable time and place. But what alleviates my sorrow is my confidence in what will eventually happen, for this is the logic of history and the nature of life."
I didn"t exaggerate, and I didn"t get carried away talking to the tape recorder. Now, as I considered everything through my impartial eyes, I totaled the gains and losses and found myself not regretting the fate awaiting me. In comparison with other fates-at least in my generation-there was nothing to be ashamed of. What made me truly sorry was that I would miss the great day. But this in itself had no real significance since I was convinced it would come.
When I reached this conclusion, I felt a strange peace of mind which filled my heart with a tranquility I had rarely known. I spent a few intoxicated moments, the likes of which I had only experienced when listening to music. I wanted to prolong these moments right to the end, so I got out my tape recordings, which I took pride in. I leafed through them for a long time, pa.s.sing over those notable for their delicate, pleasant melodies, such as Mozart and Grieg, or those composers who expressed sorrow, such as Schubert and Tchaikovsky. My soul likewise rejected the enchanted world of Berlioz and Scriabin and the solemn metaphysics of Mahler and Sibelius.
My choice finally came to rest on Cesar Franc, in whom the splendor of doubt evolves into the bliss of certainty, Carl Orff, who erupts with vigor and conflict, Beethoven, who sings of victory and joy after pain, and Shostakovich, who blended all of this with mockery.
Darkness had fallen. I put the recordings of these great geniuses within reach of my hand. I took my favorite place behind the desk, at the final wall of the apartment.
I proceeded to listen to the music, whose notes rang throughout the room. I stayed in my place, tranquil, elated, until dawn.
Then I lifted my wounded arm to my mouth and began to consume myself.
Modern modes of critical a.n.a.lysis have taught us to look closely at the various ways in which works of fiction achieve closure. With the strictures of Henry James in mind regarding so-called happy endings-marriages, inheritances, discoveries of long-lost relatives, not to mention the alternatives proposed by John Fowles in his well-known novel The French Lieutenant"s Woman-we are now accustomed to encounters with a wide variety of strategies whereby a novel"s narrator chooses to terminate his activities. With "Then I lifted my wounded arm to my mouth and began to consume myself," the final sentence of Sonallah Ibrahim"s novel, The Committee, the reader comes face-to-face with a particularly shocking example of this variety, in that the narrator recounts the initial stage of a process whereby he will disappear by self-consumption.
The process he describes is, as we have already learned from the narrative, a direct consequence of the dreadful sentence that has been pa.s.sed on him by "the Committee" that gives its name to the novel"s t.i.tle. The exact purview of this "Committee" is never mentioned; it is just "the Committee." It has, the narrator informs us, great importance and extensive authority, and yet "officially it [doesn"t] exist." However, the narrator"s reactions to a summons to appear before it and the various ways i: which its procedures manage to impinge on and interfere with his lifestyle, professional conduct, and research agenda all convey to the reader a truly disturbing picture of an organization-in fact, a society-in which individuality and difference are considered subversive. In thi; regard, Sonallah Ibrahim can be regarded as a true peer of Franz Kafka in his ability to make use of a disarmingly undramatic level of discourse to convey a reality that is genuinely disturbing in its routine callousness. The mindless bureaucracy that appears to be all-powerful succeeds, almost effortlessly, in creating a general atmosphere of paranoia within which the individual is to be crushed.
Indeed, the Committee in Ibrahim"s novel reaches a unanimous decision, one that condemns the narrator to "the harshest punishment on the books," that process of self-consumption with which the narrative concludes. The way in which Sonallah Ibrahim"s masterful use of discourse style manages to convey this atmosphere is one of the great achievements of this work of his, as well as others.
The narrator of this unsettling story self-identifies as an Egyptian. However, the Committee itself does not use Arabic as its language. It is further described as being made up of civilians and military personnel. Among prominently mentioned members is a blond man who, among other disarming procedures, conducts an investigation of the narrator"s private parts in order to a.s.sess the veracity of charges of impotence that have been made. The all-important symbolic power of this unspecified bureaucratic machine thus brings some broader concerns to Sonallah Ibrahim"s novelistic reflection on Egypt. Thus, the first chapter may indeed concern itself entirely with the narrator"s initial confrontation with the Committee (and, on a biographical note, it is worth pointing out that this chapter was published as a separate piece in the journal Al-Fikr al-mu"asir [May 19791, some two years before the appearance of the complete work). However, in subsequent chapters, the narrator follows the Committee"s directives by undertaking a research project on a famous figure in society. In his decision to examine the career of the personality known simply as "the Doctor," the narrator inevitably finds himself introducing a more chronologically and politically focused mode to the underlying commentary of the text. The first resort, needless to say, is to the archives of the press. From this source it emerges that "the Doctor" is a veritable paragon of the era during the 1970s when President Sadat radically transformed the bases of the Egyptian economy by introducing his "open-door" economic policies (infitah in Arabic). Readers will, no doubt, immediately notice the way that the entire narrative of The Committee seems almost obsessed with the "Coca-Cola" culture. The economic phenomenon of globalism, viewed as such a modern and progressive development within the context of the market-driven societies of the Western world, emerges from within the third-world perspective provided by an ironic reading of this novel as an alien import, one whose benefits for the vast majority of people are far from obvious. In his blandly uncritical commentary, the narrator shows "the Doctor" to be socially and economically remote from that "vast majority." Having already become rich even in the period before the October War with Israel in 1973 (the so-called crossing of the Suez Ca.n.a.l [Al-`Ubur}), he has since become a maximal beneficiary of the new entrepreneurial trends in Egypt, having made opportunistic use of the moment to parlay construction interests and even arms dealing into a position of wealth and prestige. Such is his renown that, as the narrator discovers during a visit to the American Emba.s.sy library where he is able to peruse issues of Time and Newsweek, "the Doctor" is the subject of an elaborate profile that includes accounts of his poor background, his frequent use of "connections" (including the marriage of his own daughter), and his close linkages to important figures both inside and outside Egypt.
The ringing endors.e.m.e.nt of "the Doctor"s" personal qualities and achievements undertaken by the narrator in response to a challenge from the Committee (and particularly the member nicknamed "Stubby") becomes, in Sonallah Ibrahim"s skillful hands, a stinging indictment of the values of an entire cla.s.s in Egypt that has chosen to enrich itself at the expense of its fellow citizens. The author"s ire at the increasing polarization of society expressed in this powerful fashion can be placed alongside that of his fellow Egyptian novelist, Naguib Mahfouz, in the novels that he too penned during this period, among them Malhamat al-Harafish (1977; The Harafish, 1994), Al-Baqi min al-Zaman Sa"ah (Just One Hour Left, 1982), and, above all, Yawm Qutil al-Za`im (1985; The Day the Leader Was Killed, 1989).
The author of The Committee, Sonallah Ibrahim, was born in 1937 and educated both in Egypt and the Soviet Union. Like many other leftist writers whose careers span the course of the Egyptian revolution, he suffered the horrors of imprisonment and forced labor between 1959 and 1964. The work that first attracted the attention of critics both inside and outside Egypt was a direct consequence of this experience, the short novel Tilka al-Ra"ihah (1966 [incomplete], 1986 [complete]; The Smell of It, 1971). Like Al-Lajnah (The Committee), it is narrated in a terse, detached style that only serves to emphasize the incredible degree of tedium and tension felt by a recently released political prisoner forced to be at home for a police check every few hours. In an astute study of Ibrahim"s works, Sarnia Mehrez points out that a succession of works that he has penned can be viewed as a running commentary on the book in Egypt and therefore on the general state of civil liberties in the majority of countries within the Arab world region (Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction, 1994, pp. 39-5 7). In 1974 Ibrahim had published Najmat Aghustus (August Star), a sardonic account of the officially orchestrated glorification of the high dam project in Aswan, but with Al-Lajnah (The Committee) there is once again a return to the all-too-real world of interrogations and constraints that are, it would appear, the necessary implements of such a closely monitored society. Mehrez convincingly demonstrates the way in which The Committee can be viewed as Ibrahim"s commentary on the atmosphere of suspicion and inst.i.tutional hara.s.sment that are so clearly represented by the tortuous publication history of Tilka al-Ra"ihah (and the complete edition was eventually to be published in Morocco). Still later comes Bayrut, Bayrut (Beirut, Beirut, 1984), a novel that, against the background of the Lebanese civil war [1975-88], explores, and indeed debunks, the reputation of Lebanon as the liberal center of Arabic book publication. Two novels of the 1990s, Dhat (1992) and Sharaf (1997) reveal Sonallah Ibrahim as a widely recognized craftsman of contemporary fiction, a member of a distinguished generation of novelists who, working in the mighty shadow of Mahfouz, continue their experiments with texts and styles in order to reflect their views of his society and world in excitingly new ways.
In terse and undecorated prose of great subtlety, Sonallah Ibrahim"s The Committee introduces English readers to a world that has already become familiar to us through the works of Kafka and other portrayers of the bureaucratic and totalitarian mind. However, it has new and important things to tell us. For, in an era in which the term "globalism" has become a catchword used to imply, reflect, and promote what is widely viewed as the way of the future, it is a salutary corrective to read an accomplished narrative from another cultural tradition and world area, one indeed that is a target of global trends and that, like many others, views the alleged benefits involved in this entire process with a wary and often jaundiced eye. It is merely part of Sonallah Ibrahim"s artistry that he manages to couch such notions in a narrative of such cogent subtlety.
Sonallah Ibrahim is an Egyptian novelist and a major literary figure in the Arab world. He has published short stories, historical and scientific children"s books, translations of American and German fiction, and seven novels, including Tilka al-ra"iha (The Smell of It), Beirut-Beirut, and Warda.
Mary St. Germain is head of the Near East section at the University of Washington Libraries.
Charlene Constable studied Arabic at the University of Washington and has traveled in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. She has a long-standing interest in translation.
Other t.i.tles in Middle East Literature in Translation.
The Author and His Doubles: Essays on Cla.s.sic Arabic Culture.
Abdelfattah Kilito; Michael Cooperson, trans.
A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems.
Simin Behbahani; Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa, trans.
In Search of Walid Masoud: A Novel.
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra; Roger Allen and Adnan Haydar, trans.
Three Tales of Love and Death.
Out el Kouloub; Nayra Atiya, trans.
Women without Men: A Novella.
Shahrnush Parsipur; Kamran Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet, trans.
Yasar Kemal on His Life and Art.
Eugene Lyons Hebert and Barry Tharaud, trans.
Zanouba: A Novel.
Out el Kouloub; Nayra Atiya, trans.
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