Author of Egypt’s Culture Wars and AUC professor of Arabic literature Samia Mehrez celebrated the signing of her latest book, The Literary Atlas of Cairo, at Diwan bookstore in Zamalek last Wednesday. Despite the hot weather and limited space, several friends and admirers showed up for the event at 7 PM.
Mehrez began her address by thanking all the writers quoted in her book: “My role comes second to all the beautiful material I had the liberty to delve into for an entire year,” she said.
Mehrez thanked publisher Mohamed Hisham of Merit Publishing and all the translators who worked on the book. She added that the Arabic edition of the book was running late, but expressed hope that it would be available by September, published by Dar el-Sherouk publishing house.
“This book is my own map, but each reader can have a different view of the city,” explained the professor. She added that the book represented a “multi-leveled political, social, cultural and geographical map of Cairo.”
The book is divided into four sections. The first is a geographical mapping of the city through the eyes of Naguib Mahfouz, Ismail Wali el-Din, Mahmoud el-Wardani, Youssef Idris, and many other celebrated authors to have enriched the city and its inhabitants through their literary contributions.
The second part of the book is about public places and landmarks. This section recaptures the essence of Cairo’s monuments through cultural material. The first example is Gamal el-Gitani’s Pyramid Texts, which depict the different faces of the monuments, their awesome greatness and their impact on people. In this section there is also a thorough description of the Citadel by author Sonallah Ibrahim, in which he notes how the monument has changed in appearance through the decades after several renovations by ruler Ahmed ibn Tulun and Mohamed Ali.
The third section is entitled ‘private spaces,’ which is, according to the author, the more intimate part of the city and the hardest to infiltrate. In this section, we find extracts from In the House of Mohamed Ali by Hassan Hassan, Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz and Youssef el-Sibaie’s We Do Not Cultivate Thorns. All the translated pieces draw an image of the different lives within the city–the small talk and gossip; how people eat, sleep, pray, love and marry.
The fourth and last part of the book is the ‘Move in Cairo,’ which sheds light on the geographical change that the city had witnessed, its exploding population, and how its denizens commute, by way of horse carriages, the metro, taxis, etc.
Perhaps the most descriptive extract of this section is from Khaled el-Khamissi’s Taxi ,where the author chats with a funny, anti-government taxi driver who believes the seatbelt law to be a fiasco, created solely in order to make money for Egypt’s big businessmen.
The book is a beautiful painting of the real Cairo, drawn by the hearts and minds of its famous authors, collected by Mehrez in a tribute to a city that has lived for centuries and continues to produce and exist. Some of the translations are a bit difficult, so you might have to consult your dictionary. Other times, you might feel that the original Arabic would be more self explanatory. Overall, though, it’s a great collection of pieces.
The Literary Atlas of Cairo is available at Diwan bookstore. According to the author, a second volume — The Literary Life of Cairo — is due to come out in November.
