Alaa al-Aswany : The Yacoubian Building

Ever since finishing The Cairo Trilogy by Mahfouz, I've desperately wanted to read another chapter of it. And now my wish has been granted by an author born 46 years later (1957) -- who obviously admired Mahfouz as much as I do, as he dumps us into an updated version of the same narrative world of central Cairo.


Aswany assumes that same celestial point-of-view, as he pulls the roof off a Cairo building and lets us examine the denizens within, with that combination of distance and compassion that characterizes the best entomologist.


And it's an equally scary view for folks like me -- as well as the author himself -- because Egypt is becoming an Islamic fundamentalist society whose true believers shout NO! to socialism, democracy, and the freedoms that allow for open discourse in literature and the arts. The tolerant sheiks are the corrupt ones who will twist Islamic law until it satisfies their wealthy clients. The honest, sincere sheiks are the ones who teach their flocks to love death instead of life, giving them an incredibly destructive power, like Muhammad Attah, one of the Egyptians who flew planes into the World Trade Center.


Aswany presents us with no vigorous counter-balance to that ferocious idealism -- other than the utterly brutal, vicious, and corrupt state security -- or the sweet, rich, aristocratic old lecher whose happy wedding to a whore celebrates the end of this novel.


A similar event occurred 50 years earlier in "The Cairo Trilogy" -- where the central character was also an old skirt-chaser (it's one his sons who marries a sing-song girl). But what's absent in this updated version is any sense of a strong, modern idealism that might oppose the approaching tyranny of fundamentalism. The only character with the intellectual ability to go in that direction is a homosexual half-French journalist who, unlike the gay character in Cairo Trilogy, was damaged by a childhood rape that has directed him toward an apparently inescapable tragic destiny at the hands of his poor, uneducated, pious Nubian lover.


No... wait.... there is one, and only one, strong character with modern sensibilities: the man who peeking down into all these lives: the author himself who is capable of a clear, compassionate view of both his mortal enemies and his allies. Though he might be trying too hard to please a young Arab male readership.


For one thing, he is a bit hard on the Copts. His Muslim characters may be dangerous and/or corrupt -- but the two sneaky Christian brothers are truly repulsive - as they wheedle their way into taking over more of the building. They pretend friendship or loyalty - but they are back stabbers. And I'm sure that's not a helpful stereotype as the Coptic community enters into a period of Muslim intolerance.


And for another, we might note the dominant role of male sexuality, and the male gaze, in all the episodes of Aswany's book-- even in the story of the poor doorkeeper's son who is looking to move up in the world and ends up in the bed of a jihadist widow who teaches him about good old-fashioned Islamic sex. The entire book is framed by the story of a failed engineer who has devoted five decades to the pursuit and delectation of women.


One might also note that the only adult female who plays a role in this novel is the vituperative, ruthless, thrice-divorced old harpie who is the sister and nemesis of the above mentioned playboy. All the other women are young, hot, and sexy -- in contrast to "The Cairo Trilogy" whose focus in on an entire family, with women of all ages, and framed by the life and death of the family matriarch.