Review: Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz (1967)

Miramar centers on a group of people who, for various reasons, come to stay at the Miramar hotel in Alexandria, Egypt. Each chapter recounts the same complete story from the perspective of a different narrator. There is Amer Wagdi, a retired journalist who has come to find a peaceful place to wait for death to catch up to him. Hosny Allam is a young, reckless womanizer adrift in a mindset of random causality. Mansour Bahy, once an idealistic revolutionary, has come to the Miramar to escape his conscience at not being radical enough. And Sarhan al-Beheiry, the smoothest of the lot, enters in pursuit of Zohra, a stunningly beautiful young woman who has fled to the hotel from a sticky past. Under the watch of Mariana, the sly old proprietress, these four men revolve around the central struggles of Zohra, no one coming quite near enough to discover her spirit.

I'll be honest: this is the first novel of my Arabic literature course that has impressed me strongly. This comes with the admission that political literature, which includes books that examine social balances, is not my strongest suit. And of course, that's what you'll find in a survey course aimed at conveying culture. With all that said, Miramar is impressive because it juggles this and an examination of human nature at the same time. One outcome of the book is that human nature is what causes social currents. It's so nice when writers agree with me!

Perhaps the biggest strength of the novel is that Mahfouz finds a way to immerse himself totally within each of his narrators. Not one of them has remotely the same voice as any other, yet with the binding beauty of Zohra's development, the speakers are missing something without each other. The novel is a whole only with four sides. Arguably, it also lacks a supporting center, but I'll come to that in a moment. I was particularly touched by Amer Wagdi, the first and last narrator; Mahfouz was not old by this time, nor was he especially religious, but Amer's voice perfectly matches what a meek, benignant old man should embody. I think I also like Amer the best because he never tries sexually to intrude on Zohra, but that's another story.

Zohra, on the periphery of each narration, is the center of the story. My first essay for this class is about reading between the lines of Miramar. I argue that the very act of excluding Zohra from the narration, when she ties all the pieces together, is both a descriptive portrayal, which is superior to a proscriptive one, and is a feminist writing. Feminism, when done right, is not a promotion of one sex or a denigration of the other, but a diagnosis of a way in which humanity can't stand up straight without both male and female perspectives. And the book is purposely incomplete: we never know where Zohra goes after the Miramar, or whether she completes her education in spite of the fact that she is objectified wherever she goes.

To say all this would be incomplete without a bit about Zohra. She's deliberately shady, but there are points at which her real personality shines through the narratives. She's uneducated, but she's sharp. She's usually quiet and flighty, but she gets into more fights than any other character. She's the kind of character a girl should want to relate to, but she never gives the reader the chance.

Both Mahfouz books I've read have kept my attention and kept my brain running on its hamster-wheel, but Miramar is the one that makes me want to read more. I'll grant that this could have to do with the fact that he keeps his true ideology under lock and key, whatever it is. But sometimes we need a good story to tell us what we think, rather than to tell us what to think.

Short Review: Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz (1962)

The year is 1952, and there is revolution in Egypt. The youth of the nation, more reckless and optimistic than their parents, have formed a militia to drive out both the English colonizers and the corrupt Egyptian king. Miraculously, both goals are achieved. But Isa, an ambitious government worker, is thrown beneath the hooves of history when a new inquisition discovers his corrupt bargains and fires him ignominiously. All at once he is deprived of his job, his fiancé, and his home. The novel traces his existential wanderings through Alexandria and the questions that accompany a lasting revolution.

While this book lacked the physical vividness of The Open Door, the moral structure of it is compelling enough to create its own aesthetic value. This is true even if you're not a card-carrying existentialist. (It's all right; neither am I.) Mahfouz focuses on Isa's story and mental processes rather than using him as a conduit to state any plain conclusion. Yes, the pathetic fallacy makes several appearances (that's when the setting reflects the character's disposition, and it's frowned upon by those who disbelieve that our perceptions of nature influence nature as we perceive it), but it's tastefully in the background. Primarily we become intimate with a powerful listlessness that makes Isa believable.

I don't recommend this book on the basis of an entertaining plot or likable, Rowlingesque characters. Isa is a bastard who doesn't know what to do with himself, even to the very end. Nearly all of the other characters are forgettable. But I do recommend it because it's short and will make you take a moment to breathe a different kind of air.