( From Ron Scheer on Buddies in the Saddle in 2015)
Naguib Mahfouz, Karnak Café (1974)
Bit of a change today at BITS, from West to Middle East. This short
novel by Nobel-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz is a sadly melancholy
story of the crushing of youthful hope. Set in the 1960s around the time of the 1967 war
with Israel, it describes how a generation of young Egyptians, the children of
the revolution of 1954, were betrayed and lied to by their government, while
being subjected to interrogation and imprisonment by secret police.
Their story is told by an older man (and stand-in for the author), who
befriends a gathering of them who are regulars at a Cairo café, Al-Karnak. There they talk of
politics and express their idealistic aspirations, both for themselves and
their country. Abruptly disappearing for periods of time, they return shaken
and demoralized. While in police custody, kept in windowless cells, they have
endured harsh treatment and false accusations.
Eventually it’s revealed that they have been coerced into becoming
informants, which corrodes their trust in each other and eventually leads to
the death of one of them. Two, a loving couple at the story’s start,
are driven apart by their guilt and shame.
Karnak Café is a
troubling vision of life in a modern police state, and it sheds light for
Westerners on the recent struggles in Egypt for freedom and justice. Novella-length,
it takes a stand somewhat distant from political events, while clearly throwing
its sympathies to the young people who speak on its pages.
