Novelist Naguib Mahfouz was laid to rest, yesterday, during a state funeral. Mahfouz, was hospitalized last month after he fell in the street, and died after suffering from a bleeding ulcer. He came to this world only to write, writer Youssef Al-Quaid told Egyptian television. He had an incredible ability to create and create all his life. Mahfouz, a prolific writer best known for his Cairo Trilogy, became a literary force when he moved beyond traditional novels to realistic descriptions of Egypt s 20th century experience of colonialism and autocracy. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988 for works which formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind . Al-Azhar, the world s foremost Sunni authority, banned his 1959 novel Children of Gabalawi (or Children of the Alley) on the grounds that it violated Islamic rules by including characters which clearly represented God and the prophets.
Declared an infidel by Muslim militants because of his depiction of God and the prophets as ordinary people, Mahfouz survived a knife attack in 1994 that damaged a nerve and seriously impaired his ability to use his writing hand. They are trying to extinguish the light of reason and thought. Beware, Mahfouz said after the attack. Born on December 11, 1911 in Cairo, the son of a merchant, Mahfouz was the youngest son in a family of four sisters and two brothers. He obtained his philosophy degree from Cairo University at the age of 23, at a time when many Egyptians had only a primary education. He worked in the government s cultural section until retiring in 1971.
Mahfouz, who rose to prominence with his depictions of Egypt under British occupation and the autocratic rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser that followed, influenced writers across the Arab world. Dignitaries from around the world paid tribute to the author, including U.S. President George W. Bush. Mahfouz s family had declined a U.S. offer for hospital treatment, Egyptian television reported. On behalf of the American people, the President and Mrs. Bush extend their deepest sympathies to Mr. Mahfouz s family and friends and to the Egyptian people for the loss of an extraordinary artist who conveyed the richness of Egyptian history and society to the world, a White House statement said. Mahfouz s 1945 book New Cairo combined social criticism and psychological insight to portray living characters across Cairo. It adopted a realistic style that critics say started a new school of Arab writing. Another four realistic works followed. Mahfouz stopped writing between 1949 and 1956 while he observed the changes that saw the fall of the monarchy, the end of British rule and the rise of the military under Nasser. But he came back full force with a trilogy that covertly attacked the new army rulers. In the three works, Mahfouz narrated developments in Egypt through the eyes of a middle class family over three generations. In the 1960s, when no Egyptians dared voice dissent, he indirectly criticized Nasser s rule in Chit Chat on the Nile and Miramar . Mahfouz s support of Egypt s 1979 peace treaty with Israel brought him the wrath of many Arab countries, who banned his novels. But many of his works have been made into Arabic films and his books have been widely sold across the Arab world. Mahfouz publicly opposed Islamic militancy, but before the 1994 assassination bid he had declined police protection. Two men were hanged in 1995 for the attack. “A man who had once worked for hours at a time – writing in longhand – found it a struggle to form legible words running in more or less straight lines, said El-Sheikh, a Sufi scholar describing the aftermath of the accident.
Still, Mahfouz maintained a busy schedule well into his 90s. In his final years, he would go out six nights a week to meet friends at Cairo s literary watering holes, trading jokes, ideas for stories and news of the day.He continued to work, producing short stories, sometimes only a few paragraphs long, dictating each day to a friend who would also read him the newspapers. His final published major work came in 2005 – a collection of stories about the afterlife entitled The Seventh Heaven. I wrote The Seventh Heaven because I want to believe something good will happen to me after death, the wispy-bearded writer confided in El-Sheikh, with a grin, during a small gathering for his 94th birthday in December 2005. Spirituality for me is of high importance and continuously provides inspiration for me, said Mahfouz. He says he no longer fears death, although he used to fret that it would come before he had the chance to finish the novels he was writing, reads a 2002 interview with The New York Times. That is the way of life, [Mahfouz] said. You give up your pleasures one by one until there is nothing left, then you know it is time to go, quotes the Times article. with Agencies
