A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore

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by Mohamed Mansi Qandil


  mastaba. A specific type of ancient Egyptian tomb, consisting of a rectangular superstructure and one or more subterranean chambers.

  mizmar. A single-reed musical instrument producing a sound somewhat similar to that of an oboe.

  nargileh. A device for smoking tobacco (or sometimes hashish) consisting of a flexible or bamboo pipe attached to a bottle-like receptacle filled with water, through which smoke is drawn to filter and cool it; also known as hubble-bubble, hookah, gouza, or shisha.

  Pasha. An upper rank in the Ottoman political and military system; also an honorary title similar to that accorded a peer or knight in the British system.

  piaster. A small coin, equivalent to one one-hundredth of an Egyptian pound.

  rebaba (also rebab). A traditional instrument with a small sound box, a long neck, and two or three strings, played with a bow.

  riyal. A small coin (no longer used in Egypt) worth twenty piasters. (q.v.).

  Saïd. Upper Egypt, generally considered to be the regions of Egypt extending south from Fayoum; the term Saïdi refers to an Upper Egyptian.

  Sea of Shadows. An ancient name for the Atlantic Ocean.

  al-Siyaasa. Fictional name of a turn-of-the-century (early 1900s) Egyptian newspaper more sympathetic to British occupation than al-Liwa (q.v.); the word siyaasa also means politics. The actual name of the newspaper founded by Lutfi al-Sayyid (see Historical Figures Featured in the Novel) was al-Jarida, and it was not, in reality, sympathetic to colonial interests; on the contrary, it was nationalist in character.

  Born in 1946, Mohamed Mansi Qandil is an Egyptian writer of novels and short stories. He studied medicine and, following his graduation in 1975, practiced medicine for a few years before devoting himself to writing full time. He is the author of several novels and short-story collections.

  Barbara Romaine has been teaching and translating Arabic since the early 1990s. In 2011 she placed second for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and she has held two fellowships in translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the second of which supported her translation of A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore.

 

 

 


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