That Smell and Notes From Prison
Page 10
April
April 3, shots. The wounding of Louis Ishaq,******** then his death. Peace of mind?
April 9, silent funereal. Afternoon at the gate: a wonderful wind, with the garden in front of us. The disc of the sun behind the mountains, a big, perfect, yellow-orange circle, surrounded by gray (those who criticize abstraction are asses).
I am reading Freud. What he says about sexual symbols is important. The airplane.
On dreams: condensation: the coherence of parts and elements that have no connection to each other in reality, as in the paintings of Böcklin — the bells — the visual image (via retrospective translation).
* The beginning of the paragraph was written in a different pen and carefully erased, apparently out of caution, at the time the papers were taken out of prison. This is the first time criticism of the regime (despite our political support) is frankly expressed. I also erased the words indicated by the ellipses in the middle of the passage.
** Mustafa Sweif was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Arabic. The book referred to here is The Psychological Bases of Artistic Creativity, his Master’s thesis, published by Dar al-Ma‘arif in 1951.
*** I still remember this novel even now when I think about current events. It had a great influence on me despite the poor translation published, I believe, in the “One Thousand Books” series. I also remember my shock at learning that Camus had supported the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956.
**** Was I aware, when I copied these lines, of the extent to which they described our own situation at al-Wahat?
***** I had the habit of going after lunch to the remotest spot in the prison’s courtyard, right up against the outer fence, to escape the noise of the cells and to have a short siesta. I took a blanket with me and spread it over the sands, and a towel to cover my face and protect it from flies. When I woke up, I would go to the cells for some tea and take it back with me to the fence. I drank it out of a yellow plastic cup, which I kept clean by washing it regularly with sand. My sister sent me provisions of Republic-brand tea and since leaving prison I have never found anything like it in any of the many places I have traveled. There, by the fence, sometimes refreshed by a humid breeze that would lift the summer heat, I was able to concentrate and write several short stories.
****** Adel H. was Adel Hussein — later Vice President of the Work Party — who was one of the prisoners at al-Wahat and once shared a cell with me.
******* It seems that Raauf Mas‘ad, one of our group, wrote a play in which he used the technique of what he called “a leap into the future” (the opposite of a flashback). This naïve idea sprang from a desire to prove ourselves and create “a new vision” — thereby ignoring, or pretending to ignore the fact that the English writer J. B. Priestley had already represented his characters as meeting multiple fates.
“A. R.” is probably Ahmad Rufa‘i, a leader of the Communist Party and the popular clandestine resistance to the British in Port Saeed. Along with Abdel Mun‘am Shatila and Sa‘ad Rahmi, and with the cooperation of several Free Officers in the entourage of Abdel Nasser, he was able to smuggle arms into the city by way of Lake Manzala. Resistance operations inside Port Saeed, culminating in a massive demonstration, threatened the British position. None of this prevented Rufa‘i’s arrest and conviction in January 1959. He remained in prison until he was released in the general amnesty of mid-1964.
******** The release of prisoners finally began in small groups. At the same time, there were persistent efforts to stop or delay this operation. April third was set as a day for the release of a few prisoners and their friends and acquaintances gathered at the prison gate to say goodbye. Suddenly an officer named Subhi, who had just arrived in the prison, began acting wildly and started a fight. He had already alerted the wall sentries and given them the order to fire at any sign of trouble. They did indeed shoot, at random, and they hit Louis Ishaq, one of the most prominent Communist leaders.
Copyright © 1966, 1986, 2003, 2004 by Sonollah Ibrahim
Translation and introduction copyright © 2013 by Robyn Creswell
Compilation copyright © 2013 by New Directions Publishing
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced
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The translator would like to acknowledge the generous support
of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
at the New York Public Library.
First published as a New Directions Paperback (NDP1248) in 2013
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ibrahim, Sun‘Allah.
[Tilka al-ra‘ihah. English]
That Smell and Notes From Prison / Sonollah Ibrahim;
edited and translated by Robyn Creswell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8112-2036-1 (paperbook : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8112-2062-0 (e-book)
1. Political prisoners — Egypt — Fiction. 2. Political fiction. I. Creswell, Robyn. II. Ibrahim, Sun’ Allah. Yawmiyat al-wahat. English. Selections. III. Title.
IV. Title: Notes from prison. V. Title: That Smell and Notes From Prison.
PJ7838.B7173T513 2013
892.7'36 — dc23
2012032484
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011