television, theater, and film presentation. As a consequence his reputation is unrivaled throughout the Arabic- speaking world. His work has been a careful and deliberate reflection of the moods and frequently the malaise of his country. And so deep was the national depression after the Arabs' disastrous defeat in the 1967 war with Israel and the subsequent invasion of Sinai, loss of the Suez Canal, and the destruction and evacuation of the major towns along its banks, that Mahfouz, like the other major fiction writers of Arabic, has been in no mood for sustained literary production. In recent years his output has been largely restricted to allegorical and philosophical short stories and playlets. His latest novel, _al-Hubb tahta al-Matar (Love in the Rain),__ published in 1973, reflects the new sense of freedom then briefly being enjoyed by Egyptian writers and since heavily curtailed. Its subject matter was particularly sensitive at the time; it shows and by implication criticizes the carefree and dissolute life continuing in Cairo while troops suffer and wait on the front lines for a renewal of conflict with Israel.
_Midaq Alley,__ then, belongs to the earlier period of Mahfouz's work. Although written and set in the early forties, it provides glimpses of unusual intimacy into Egypt in a period of fast transition that is still today in progress. The past thirty years have seen enormous changes in every area of Egyptian life yet much there has remained the same. Many of the tourists in Cairo's great hotels who buy the recently republished pocket edition of E.W. Lane's famous _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians__ must fail to notice, as they view the colorful scene around them, that the book was first published in 1836!
Both the locale and the events of this novel should certainly not be viewed within a narrow framework of time. In _Midaq Alley__ we see how characters are enticed away from the roles natural to their birth and upbringing by the hope of material gains chiefly through work with the British Army; nowadays it is the factories of semi- industrial Africa and the Arab world that draw people away from their traditional roles in village and town. The universal problems of behavior and morality the novel examines remain, of course, the same; Kirsha's drug addiction and homosexuality and Hamida's ambitions, Alwan's middle-aged fantasies and Hussain's dissatisfaction, are restricted neither to time nor place. And the views expressed in eternal optimism by Radwan Hussainy, and the attitudes of his neighbors toward him, remind one of the place of men of religion in all societies today.
In this, as in many of Mahfouz's works, we perceive time, here personified in the ageless Alley, to be the novel's central focus. The aspirations and tragedies of its inhabitants are witnessed with total indifference by the Alley within which the circle of life and death is forever run again. In this it is a view in close focus of the human drama at large, selected by a literary craftsman of impressive skills. And in _Midaq Alley,__ as in life itself, there is much gaiety, color, and excitement to enliven the passing scene.
Translation Note
Arabic is, of course, a language far different in syntax and sounds from English and gives expression to a highly distinctive people and a complex culture. The translator has, then, an almost limitless range of choices and dilemmas over vocabulary and arrangement when attempting to convey the spirit of a work of fiction. The present translation offers an approximation of how Mahfouz might have expressed himself had English been his native tongue.
Very little deliberate editing was, however, in fact found necessary; some phrases and short passages that tended to be repetitious have been dropped or condensed and the names of characters and places have been simplified, while left in recognizable form. The changes made have been kept as insignificant as possible consistent with a text that should move easily and naturally for an English-speaking readership. A few words relating to aspects of Egyptian national and Muslim cultural life for which we have no parallel have been given brief descriptive definitions within the text where essential. The only alternative, a glossary and notations, would seem unfortunate in a work of creative fiction, a cumbersome and largely unnecessary barrier between the work and its readers.
This English translation of Midaq Alley (translated by Trevor Le Gassick) was first published in 1966 by The American University in Cairo Press.
Its original Arabic publication was in 1947 as Zuqaq al-Midaq.
Mahfuz, Najlb, 1911-2006
