كتبت هذا الموضوع فى أكتوبر 2006 لمجلة الشركة التى أعمل بها - ITWorx Insite - بمناسبة رحيل نجيب محفوظ.
“This is the story of our Alley, or the stories of our alley to be truthful. I didn’t witness of its reality except the last era that I lived in, but I recorded them all as told by the narrators and they are so many. All the children of our alley tell these stories, everyone tells them as they hear them in a coffee shop or as they were handed over from generation to generation. And nothing supports what I wrote except these sources.”
With these few simple lines, started Naguib Mahfouz the introduction of his unusual story: ‘Awlad Haretna’, also known as ‘Children of Gabalawi’ in one of its English translations.
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) wasn’t only a Nobel Literature laureate along Shaw, Sartre and Hemingway, but also the first Nobel Prizewinner with Arabic as his native tongue.
In 1988, The Swedish academy recognized ‘Awlad Haretna’ as one of Mahfouz milestones, and considered him the one who brought the Arabic Novel to maturity.
‘Awlad Haretna’ was a great risk to Mahfouz life after it was first published in 1959 in Al-Ahram. It left him with a serious permanent nerve injury in his right hand after he survived an assassination attempt in 1994. After writing many stories about the contemporary life such as ‘Midaq Alley’ and the Trilogy, Mahfouz explores new mystical horizons in story-telling by writing about the spiritual history of mankind and man’s everlasting search for spiritual values. It is the symbolic nature of the story and the way it relates to historical and spiritual symbols that ignited the controversy.
‘Awlad Haretna’ tells the story of Mankind in 114 chapters, divided in 5 sections, named after the main characters of the story, Adham, Gabal, Refa’a, Kassem, Arafa.
The story begins with Gabalawi, the father who lives with his family in his mansion surrounded by high-walled gardens. After assigning his son Adham to run his estate (waqf), his other son Idris strongly objected and Gabalawi banned him from the mansion for all his life. Idris kept tricking Adham’s mind to peek at his father’s book where he keeps his commandments. Adham couldn’t resist the temptation, so he ended up, and his wife Omayma, out in the alley, where they lived all their life longing for Gabalawi’s mercy and forgiveness.
From generation to generation, different Gangsters (futuwat) protected and ruled different quarters of the Alley along the tyrants who controlled the estate. While the Hero in each Generation had a mission to fight evil and restore the rights of the alley’s poor inhabitants to the estate. Each Hero had his own and unique way in battling the tyrants and Gangsters, and also had his followers and descendants who held his name and lived in separate quarters of the Alley.
Mahfouz has a magic formula that includes great imagination, amazing description of old Cairo scenes, and a strong grip of the Arabic language. Add to this formula the symbolic dimension that makes you stop at every scene – sometimes every sentence – to wonder, what does he mean by that?
“Every injustice has an end, every night has a dawn, let’s see in our Alley the death of tyranny and the rise of light and marvels”
With these words, Mahfouz finishes his story.
Apart from the Story’s controversy, I extremely enjoyed ‘Awlad Haretna’ for it made me think of many aspects of life differently. I recommend it to anyone who is ready for a mind challenging timeless story.
