I am still distressed by this short novel whose reputation has recently become notorious in literary circles. It might have been counted among our best productions had its author not shown such imprudence and lack of good taste. Not content to show us his hero masturbating (if the matter had ended there it would have been of little importance), he also describes the hero’s return a day later to where the traces of his sperm lie on the ground. This physiological description absolutely nauseated me, and it prevented me from enjoying the story despite its skillful telling. I am not condemning its morality, but its lack of sensibility, its lowness, its vulgarity. Here is the fault that should have been removed. The reader should have been spared such filth.
So the great writer was asking my opinion of what he called, in his article, my “physiological” style. But while we talked, I began to think about the incident in broader terms. I told him I felt that I was only now learning how to write. Each new book revealed something new to me about the art, exposing the limits of my abilities, my weak points. And it increased my esteem for those writers who boldly confront the blank page, bristling with the weapons of their craft. This is not at all how I felt when I began writing.
When I wrote That Smell, I had just gotten out of prison and was under house arrest, which required me to be at home from dusk to dawn. I spent the rest of the day getting to know the world I’d been away from for more than five years. As soon as I was back in my room, I rushed to record, in quick sketches, all those events and sights that had made an impression on me, that seemed to me completely out of the ordinary. Then I would put the diaries aside and get back to the novel I’d begun in prison, a novel of childhood. I planned for it to consist of a number of independent short stories, connected by the central characters and general theme. I’d finished a few chapters and managed to smuggle them out with the help of my friend Hussein Abd Rabbo, who took them with him upon his own release.
I would turn to the novel but find myself unable to get on with it. I had lost the fire that lit my pen while in prison. The new reality consumed me. And again the familiar question arose: What should I write, how should I write it?
I say “again” because this question was always with me during my time in prison, from the moment I chose to dedicate my life to writing. There were moments I couldn’t have cared less about the first half of the question. In the naïveté and enthusiasm of youth, I rebelled against the idea of a necessary relation between form and content in the work of art (a necessity expounded by Mahmoud al-Alim and Abd al-Azeem Anis in their famous articles,* which we were all very excited by in the fifties). Rebellion was the spirit of the age, after all.
The early sixties were a fertile time in politics, in art, in life. It was the moment when a new middle class emerged in Egypt and other countries of the Third World. These countries, benefiting from a favorable balance of global forces, dealt a decisive blow to the old and collapsing colonial order, and fashioned a dream of social justice they weren’t able to realize. The socialist movement awoke to the evils of idolatrous individualism and seemed prepared to draw the necessary conclusions. Man had walked on the moon. Sexual behavior went under the microscope, revealing important truths — for example, that a female might naturally enjoy up to fifty orgasms in one night compared to two or three for the average poor male.
From behind the walls of al-Wahat Prison, I and my friends, Kamal al-Qilish, Rauf Mas‘ad, and Abdel Hakim Qasim, enthusiastically followed Soviet poets — the young poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, as well as the older Tvardovsky — as they exploded conventional forms. We also followed the experiments in spontaneous writing and Op Art in America, and the nouveau roman craze in France. Cairene magazines were full of news about literary experiments all over the world. The regime’s covert, conservative opposition, which actually controlled publishing and media outlets in the country, cleverly promoted the works of Beckett, Ionesco, and Dürrenmatt.
Rebellion was the fuel and experimentalism was the slogan of the day. Naguib Mahfouz put Balzac aside and helped the Arabic novel leapfrog an entire century. New names rose to prominence: Edward Kharrat, Ghalib Halasa, Bahaa Taher, Sulaiman Fayyad, Ibrahim Aslan, Yahya al-Taher Abdallah, and others. I thought I’d found my own path when I discovered Hemingway, by way of two books that managed to breach the walls of al-Wahat. The first was by Carlos Baker and the second was a collection of essays — there was an especially good one by an older Soviet critic whose name I’ve forgotten — analyzing the great American writer’s techniques. I put my faith in these techniques right away (I still do, in certain respects), the most important of which were economy and restraint. Set against the conventionally flabby eloquence of Arabic literature, this “iceberg” style acquired a special sheen. It was under the influence of Hemingway that I began working on my still unfinished novel of childhood.
In the furnished room I rented after my release in the neighborhood of Heliopolis, I would leaf distractedly through the drafts of that novel, asking myself what the point was of writing something that didn’t engage the struggle against imperialism, the effort to build socialism, and all the difficulties these efforts brought in their train: terror, torture, prison, death, personal misery.
Then one night I won’t forget I glanced over the diary, composed in a telegraphic style, which I wrote in every night after the policeman’s departure. There were only a few entries, about sixteen days as I remember. I read the whole thing, then shivered with excitement. There was a buried current running through that telegraphic style, a style that never stopped for self-examination, didn’t bother to search for le mot juste, nor to make sure that the language was neat and tidy, nor that all ugliness such as might shock delicate sensibilities had been scrubbed away. There was beauty in such feeble sentences as: “The writer said that Maupassant said that the artist must create a world that is more beautiful and more simple than our own.” And there was a beauty in ugly actions, like passing gas in a bourgeois living room.
Wasn’t a bit of ugliness necessary to expose an equivalent ugliness in “physiological” acts like beating an unarmed man to death, or shoving a tire pump up his anus, or electric cords into his penis? All because he held a contrary opinion, or defended his freedom and sense of nationalism? Why is it stipulated that we write only about flowers and perfume when shit fills the streets, when sewage water covers the earth and everyone smells it? Or that we only write about creatures seemingly without genitals, so that we don’t violate the supposed decency of readers who actually know more about sex than we do?
Reading my brief diaries, I felt that here was the raw material for a work of art. It only needed some arranging and polishing. I felt that I’d finally found my own voice.
I found work at a bookshop selling foreign books (Rauf Mas‘ad and Abdel Hakim Qasim later graduated from the same institution). My job required that I man the store all day, so days off were the only time I had for serious writing. I still remember the morning in Ezbekieh Gardens when I wrote the first page of That Smell. But I quickly saw that I couldn’t go on in this way. I quit work and a friend of mine, Dr. Jamal Saber Gabra, provided me with an unused, book-filled apartment of his in Heliopolis. Surrounded by the writings of archaeologist Sami Gabra (and the tomes of the sainted martyrs), and drawing moral support from my old friends Rauf Mas‘ad and Kamal al-Qilish, I worked diligently on my first novel for three months.
I decided to keep the short-winded style that characterized my diaries, though I carefully rearranged their c
ontents, and I used endnotes to clarify a few things. I called the manuscript “The Rotten Smell in My Nose.”
Yusuf Idriss, whom I had known since the mid-fifties, opposed the idea of endnotes. He thought they were a bit too innovative and convinced me to move them into the main text. He also argued against the title I’d chosen. In the psychiatric clinic he’d just opened in Midan Giza we came up with “That Smell.” He was also kind enough to write an introduction.
Finally, I handed the novel over to a printer, paying him twenty guineas to publish it. The illustrator Mustafa Hussein gave me the design for the cover and Yusuf Idriss’s introduction opened the book. There was also a short text on the cover, a kind of manifesto, signed by Kamal al-Qilish, Rauf Mas‘ad, and Abdel Hakim Qasim:
If you do not like the novel now between your hands, the fault isn’t ours. It is instead the fault of our cultural moment, dominated as it has been for many years by works of shallowness, naïveté, and conventionalism. To shatter this climate of artistic stagnation, we must turn to the kind of sincere and sometimes agonized writing you find here.
It is in such straits that we introduce this novel by the young writer Sonallah Ibrahim. It will be followed by Nabil Badran’s play, “The Blacks,” short stories by Kamal al-Qilish, Ahmad Hashem al-Sharif, and Abdel Hakim Qasim, plays by Rauf Mas‘ad, and poems by Muhammad Hammam.
These unfamiliar names will introduce an equally unfamiliar art. An art that expresses the spirit of the age and the experience of a generation. An age in which distances and boundaries have vanished, brilliant horizons have opened while dangers threaten, illusions have crumbled and man has penetrated into the truth of existence. A generation born in the shadow of monarchy and feudalism, that went out marching to demand the fall of the King and the British, and that embraced the July Revolution with words and deeds. A generation that has witnessed the collapse of monarchy and capitalism and the construction of socialism — all this in a few short years. A rich and profound experience, full of contradictions and crises, a growing sense of self and knowledge of self. All this requires serious, courageous expression to articulate these experiences creatively and innovatively.
Such is the road we have chosen.
No doubt the reader of today will smile along with me at the tone of absolute self-confidence (reflecting, perhaps, an absolute lack of self-confidence), at those grand phrases, “the truth of existence,” and overhasty pronouncements, “the construction of socialism.” Such is the naïveté of beginnings, which may also be a form of special pleading.
The days following my novel’s publication were hard. At that time, Egyptian newspapers and magazines published nothing but the tired certainties of socialist realism, never neglecting to mention the global play of forces, the technological achievements, etc. (Today these dogmas are parroted by the most backward, reactionary writers, an illustration of their worth and usefulness as ideas.) The Arab nation, with Egypt in the vanguard, was indeed in a dogfight with American imperialism and its Zionist stepdaughter, not to mention Arab conservatives. So it was natural for me to wonder whether I wasn’t harming the country by publishing my work under such conditions. Meanwhile, the threat of imprisonment hung over my head.
Many readers took the novel as a butt for jokes and sarcasm. Others exploited it for their own purposes. Abdel Qader Hatem took it to president Gamal Abdel Nasser as proof of the Communists’ vulgarity and degeneracy. The Islamic Conference came to the same conclusion. It pained me that my “caper” was used to cast doubt on a movement whose struggles and sacrifices I have honored for many decades. I experienced the same feelings when compelled to publish the novel in 1968 in Shi‘r, a Beiruti magazine run by Yusuf al-Khal and edited by al-Nahar newspaper — neither of which were themselves above suspicion.
But I never regretted writing the novel or publishing it under such circumstances. Nor did I regret the style I wrote it in or ever consider renouncing it. True, I’m often troubled by the sense that I aborted a much greater work. But I’m convinced that such were the limits of my abilities at that time.
Self-criticism, an attention to the interior voice, recognition of the real, an impatience with bourgeois sensitivities and fads — all these continue to be at the basis of my work.
Confiscation didn’t put an end to the book for it was already out in the world (a lesson the state apparatuses of Arab countries might learn from). In 1969, while I was abroad, a publishing house called New Culture, once called July Editorial, came out with a second edition of the novel, having removed without my permission everything they imagined might offend the censor. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the publisher had in fact used a peculiar sort of censor, characteristic of that time, which was the “private editor” — a freelancer who offered his services to authors and publishing houses alike. After an agreement between New Culture and Contemporary Writings, the same edition of the novel was republished in Cairo in 1971.
The current edition is the first complete edition to be published since the initial, confiscated version: the version published by Shi‘r was not spared the usual scissors, cutting out everything offensive to readers of delicate sensibilities. I have of course corrected the original’s errors of syntax and grammar, as well as those of negligence (calling a child “he” in one place and “she” in another, for example). I’ve also corrected the epigraph by James Joyce. In the original edition I claimed it was taken from Ulysses (I’d come across the phrase in the TLS, which appears to have misattributed it). When my novel was translated into English by Heinemann in 1971, the translator Denys Johnson-Davies searched that novel long and hard without success. Joyce experts eventually located its source in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
SONALLAH IBRAHIM
CAIRO, 1986
* See Fi-l-Thaqafa al-Misriyya [On Egyptian Culture] (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-Jadid, 1955).
NOTES FROM PRISON
All footnotes in this translation are the author’s,
from Yawmiyyat al-Wahat (2004).
1962
April
Cairo commits suicide. The fire of ’52. The city that rose up and fell destructively on itself. Story of freedom in the streets, among the people. The great, enormous city from every angle, its birthing pains.
The hero and the masses — Plekhanov — the cult of personality.
Torture: and since that time he feels that wherever he walks, whether he’s coming in or going out, something will hit him, something will shock him. If someone surprises him, his muscles tense. He expects to be slapped or kicked.
June
The thing I seem furthest from, though I think about it all the time and hope to achieve it, is to deal with man from within. So many sentiments, so many strange and knotted interior operations.
Colors and their meanings. Red is love. Yellow jealousy. Blue sadness. Green loyalty. White purity. Purple yearning.
The writer’s path is full of sacrifices; everything must submit to his art. Pushkin wasted five years of his life chasing after his girlfriend while she toyed with him. The writer must not allow anything to get in the way of his work or his art. He is a saint and a martyr.
Here is the artist’s role in Egypt today. Not to write something enjoyable merely for its aesthetic value. Not simply to lose oneself in philosophical and intellectual issues. Not to live captive to one’s individual experience, which could lead to loneliness or to feelings of alienation and absurdity. Not to be content with recording — impressionistically, neutrally, sup
erficially — what happens in society. Instead, the Egyptian artist must work actively and with others. He must dive into the depths of the people and the depths of the individual. He must reveal the way forward, he must choose the direction and change the direction. He must lead and play a role in everyday life, armed with his technique, personal experience, self-awareness, persistence, and the readiness to sacrifice.
The writer is responsible for every word he writes.
“When people talk, listen. Most people don’t listen.” Advice given by Ernest Hemingway in a letter to a young writer.
“The Beacons,” at the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:
— Alexander Tvardovsky: “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all my heart, whom I have tried to depict in all his beauty, who was, is, and will be beautiful, is the truth.” Tolstoy.
— “Those writers who hurry to respond to the demands of the day, who apprise us of contemporary events, deserve the sobriquet ‘skimmers.’ For them, the building of the Volga Canal doesn’t merit more than two or three on-the-spot articles, dashed-off and superficial. A mirroring of events and nothing else. But the same subject cost Vladimir Fomenko ten years of hard work. I cannot hide my fear each time I see writers hurrying to spread the news before the events and facts have matured in their minds, before they have experienced a deep need to communicate with the reader.”
— Sholokhov: “A writer who speaks of collective farms should know no less than a local agronomist.”
— I am a Communist first, a writer after that.
November
That Smell and Notes From Prison Page 7