Snag The Zafarani Files: An Egyptian Novel Illustrated By Gamal Al-Ghitani Listed As Softcover
الرواية لخبطتنى جدا و اخدت معايا وقت طويل
من جهة الموضوع و الطلاسم و عجز الرجال الجنسي لم ينل اعجابي بالمرة
و من ناحية اسرنى الأسلوب
اسلوب ساحر حقيقي في بناء الحارة المصرية والشخصيات فكرنى برواية زقاق المدق و حسيت أن جمال الغيطاني متأثر جدا بنجيب محفوظ فى هذه الرواية هذا أول عمل اقرأه للغيطانى
لم أشعر فيه انه يتحدث عن حارة مصريه, لم اجد فيه حميميه وحرارة المعتاده عندما تقرأ عن الحارة المصريه.
وجدته عمل محترف زياده عن اللزوم.
اللغه ممتازة وقويه. وان عابها انها ليست لغة الحارة
عمل تبدو فيه الرمزيه بشدة.
الاحداث تنتابها بعض المرح والمرونه.
الشخصيات شديدة المصريه حتى اون لم يصفها الكاتب بالشكل المصرى الكافى
فى المجمل وجدت طبيعة الغيطانى الوظيفيه غالبه عليه كمراسل حربى وكمحقق صحفى يقدم حقائق ووقائع تصل أحيانا لدرجة الجمود
فى العموم عمل جيد ومن المؤكد أنى سأقرأ له أعماله الأخرى. حائرة بين نجمتين او ثلاث لكن سأعطيها ثلاث.
العمل الأول الذي اقراؤه لجمال الغيطاني ابن بلدي وصديق ابي ولكن لم تحظي هذه الروايه بما تمنيت منها نهايه مبهمة لم تشبع فضولي علي اي حال سأقرأ له المزيد للتعرف علي اسلوبه بدقه. The Zafarani Files originally published as Waqa'i' Harat alZa'farani,, Trans. Farouk Abdel Wahab. Cairo New York: The American University in Cairo Press,
This early novel by one of Egypts most prolific short story and novel writers is a slapstick comedy set in Cairos teeming alHussein neighborhood, back in the days of Anwar Sadat Egyptian president,.
The crowded, rundown and entirely imaginary Zafarani alley is inhabited byor more named and mostly zany characters, each obsessed in his or her own way by sexual performance their own and all their neighbors' and their social standing.
Normally, they tolerate one another's routines including the effendi an honorific for the rare alleydweller with a steady job and some high school education who pimps his own wife, the virile and rustic baker who has found work as a male prostitute at the baths, the ancient sergeant major retired with his hallucinatory memories of serving the king and crown prince back before Nassers revolution, the alleys only college graduate who dreams of swaggering around with a pistol, and their wives and mistresses whose greatest entertainment besides sex, of which they are very demanding is starting or watching their own loud and violent quarrels.
The quarrels are mostly about who has the best sexual partner, but having the most impressive domestic appliances also boosts a womans status Sitt “Madame” Busayna, besides demanding daily intercourse from her beleaguered busdriver husband, spends his money on outrageous luxuries like a transistor radio the alleys first this is mids, remember and even a manybuttoned washing machine!
But one day the mysterious gnomic sheikh who lives in a tiny, dark apartment at one end of the alley, and whom hardly anyone has ever seen, magically deprives the alleys men of what they prize most: their sexual potency.
He hints that this is just the first step of his worldchanging program, by which he will end all quarrels and bring universal harmony, The pimp loses his customers, the male prostitute his job, the other men a taxi driver, a railroad coaler, a lowlevel bureaucrat, et al, their selfconfidence, and the women have to resort to ever more desperate methods to get sexual satisfaction, Meanwhile, the government apparatus for political repression tries, with hopeless incompetence, to investigate these strange events while simultaneously denying to the world that anything unusual is occurring.
For a nonArab reader it is hard to keep so many characters straight, especially since the names are often similar, For example, Nabil, Nabila and Umm Nabila are three different people, the first a young man that some of the local women fall in love with, the second ayear old female schoolteacher and unwilling spinster, and the third her mother "Umm" means "mother of," and may be followed by the name of either a daughter or a son.
And inevitably, and despite the best efforts of the translator, Englishreaders will miss a lot of what must be jokes in Cairene slang and subtle political digs that must have been very naughty in the time of Anwar Sadat.
This work is a lot sillier than the betterknown Naguib Mahfouzs
mythification of another Cairo alley Children of Gebelawi,or his portrait of generational conflicts at the end of the Sadat period The Day the Leader Was Killed,, but its silliness is also sharpedged satire.
AlGhitani appears to have set out to scandalize everybody, religious sheikhs, pretentious bureaucrats, ignorant shopkeepers and tradesmen, women though more gently, and the organs of the police state.
The only characters who come across as reasonably sane are the "politico," possibly a Communist or so the state bureaucracy imagines just released from long imprisonment, the young man who visits him to learn about the world, and the sweetnatured wife of the merchant “Radish Head” who escapes the alley and its ridiculous prejudices to parts unknown, though rumored to have run off to live with her English instructor.
And finally, nothing ever gets resolved, With so many characters, each with his own craziness, there is no central element holding them all together as a story except the sheikh's curse or blessing, or whatever it's supposed to be.
But we never find out what happens to the sheikh or even whether he really exists as they imagine him or with the curse of impotence, which may still be in effect in that fictitious alley.
Unfortunately, this is one of only three of alGhitanis many novels available in English, Hes a writer we should know, Though ultimately The Zafarini Files fails to come to a satisfactory conclusion, it succeeds in amusing us by antics of its ineffectual and nutty characters, and gives us a glimpse of social conflicts in Cairoyears ago.
But maybe not so much has changed in Cairo and its alHussein neighborhood, Check out this April,article: A City Where You Cant Hear Yourself Scream New York Times sitelink nytimes. comwor .