Walk Like an Egyptian

In Mahfouz's Cairo

I’m doing it again, making a visit somewhere into a kind of literary pilgrimage — in this case, predictably, and oh-so-on-the-nose, to Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo. How original.

         I have been reading and rereading some familiar and new-to-me Mahfouz while in Egypt and of course, walking around downtown Cairo, the streets now just blaze and shimmer with all of his stories, all of his characters. The kids in the alley, the family between the palaces. The Heart of the Night, in particular, really ravaged me on this trip — not least because it is the story of a guy throwing away his life, ha. And now here I am, walking around at the end of my trip, with my life in a bit of tatters, hearing him talking about the holy madness that led him on his path of (seeming) self-destruction.

         I am staying in a new hotel and apartment project downtown, in a once grand Art Deco high-rise (pictured above), the like which Poirot might’ve lived in if he had lived in Cairo. Where the rich and beautiful of the Cairene demimonde apparently had flats, offices, mistresses, and staff quarters. And which will soon be grand again, thanks to this new project which opens in September. I’ve run into a friend here who has an apartment in the building, a glorious apartment that is sort of how I might picture D’s flat in Justine, or how a film set might recreate such a thing. Elegantly stuffed with Asafo flags and ewe cloths, Coptic carved wooden doors, Syrian pearl inlaid cabinets and mirrors, brass trays and deco champagne coupes. It is heaven.

So too has it been heavenly to think about all the stories gone by and the stories yet to come in this building, about all of the characters here — and how like a Mahfouz novel in real life. Characters whose lives Mahfouz would relate in his arid dry, sheer-sharp diction, and sort of languid sentences. God I love his sentences. And I have been thinking a lot about the sort of affect-less-ness of his characters, their resolve in the face of quietly horrific circumstances, their patience, their.... I don’t know, “sangfroid” seems wrong. Their fatalism.

         One of the reasons I’ve been so drawn to Mahfouz is for that resignation in his characters. Not a world weariness so much as a kind of surrender to forces larger, more unpredictable and ferocious than we can ever know. It is a kind of surrender I have been (ironically) desperate to find in my own life. And I have, on this trip, even been trying to find a mantra of my own that would help me to better recognize and let go of the expectations and ambitions and the rest that keep me in conflict with a graceful sort of Tao flow through the inevitable disappointments and frustrations of the day, of life, of everything.

         How funny then that my friend who I’ve run into here, in talking about his time spent in Cairo, has described a kind of surrendering to chaotic and uncontrollable forces here, the way you walk into traffic and just resignedly dance your way through. And about the patience he has cultivated, the surrender, in a way, to others, in deference to their unknowable lives, to their agonies and frustrations. The way he described the wisdom gained from his years here knocked me down. Inspired me, but flattened me, the way those great, meaningful revelations do, reminding you of the magnitude of life and how far we have yet to go.  

         And it stirred up a bit of sentimentality too, the way these things do, chiming somewhere deep inside of me with a feeling I remember having while reading the books I loved in my youth, the novels about expats living in some dusty distant capital and just weathering the world as it washed over them. About their resignation, their world-weariness which seemed science fictionally remote for me. Expecting little, but still engaging. Living in a way that I could never reconcile with my own sort of Labrador energy and American ambition. Living with a kind of peace and patience and tolerance that cranky, demanding American-me struggles to even understand let alone achieve.

         Case in point: I’m doing it again — not the romancing and pilgrimage, but perhaps the complementary thing: freaking out in disappointment. About all of the photos I’ve missed here. Because it isn’t just the Mahfouz that glitters and shimmers on the streets here. It is all the beaux arts and deco buildings downtown, all of the spectacular medieval minarets and massive markets and wild Nile views and... and... And I think if I were more fearless and maybe a little less perturbed by the demoralizing heat, I would’ve had one of the best few days of my life taking pictures. As it was, I just wasted a bunch of film I can’t afford, shooting out of car windows or in banal public places. Maybe I still haven’t shaken off the scares I had taking pictures in Baalbek and Baghdad last year. Maybe I have spent too much time reading horror stories about shooting on the street in Cairo, but it is hella intimidating to see a squadron of blacked out swat cars and jackbooted dudes with m16s sorta near-ish to the frame you like. Maybe there will be another time. Or maybe I need to learn, like a Mahfouzian character, to just let go.