bi-yiḥraʾ id-dam:
It is infuriating, it makes one’s blood boil
Martin Hinds & El-Said Badawi: A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic. Arabic- English (Beirut, Librairie du Liban, 1986), 199
∵
Stories about the lack of food, that is need and hunger, can be found here and there in contemporary Arabic literature, from Muḥammad Zafzāf and Muḥammad Šukrī in Morocco to Ḥasan Bilāsim in Iraq, not to forget Muḥammad al-Bisāṭī’s short novel Ǧūʿ (Hunger, 2007). One could even go back as far as Naguib Mahfouz’s early novel al-Qāhira al-ǧadīda (Cairo Modern, 1945) where one of the three student friends depicted, Maḥǧūb, due to poverty, is almost starving and therefore selling his honor.1 In these texts hunger and destitution are described in often gruesome detail. In another well-known literary text, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s play Food for Every Mouth (al-Ṭaʿām li-kull fam, 1963), the problem of starvation or of the need for food on a global level are only the subjects of bourgeois considerations based upon the assumptions that “hunger is a weapon for control and slavery” and that “the dream precedes science”.2 In all these cases no action is taken to combat the lack of food, rather, it is either suffered and endured or it becomes the subject of abstract considerations.
In Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s story “Ḥarq al-dam” (literally: “The Burning of the Blood”),3 to be presented on the following pages, the perspective is different. The story deals with a process of food (meat/veal) supply for a group of workers, not in order to reduce or eliminate hunger or fight starvation but rather in order to provide the men with decent food at a reasonable price, and to do so through a cooperative-like arrangement.
1 Food in Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s Stories
Food, especially meat, and here particularly its consumption, plays a conspicuous role in several stories and other texts by Muḥammad Mustaǧāb.4 For example, there are a number of stories about the Āl Mustaǧāb, the House (i.e., Dynasty) of Mustaǧāb, in which several representatives of this “dynasty” are introduced.5 Among them, Mustaǧāb III. is said to have liked oven-warm bread6 and to have eaten an extraordinary meat dish before entering into sexual activities:7
اغتذى بقطعتين من صدور الايائل وشريحة من بيت كلاوي فهد امريكي.
He devoured two pieces of deer breast and a slice from the kidney area of an American cheetah.
In the story on Mustaǧāb V., the protagonist is said to have inherited from one of his ancestors his passion for meat; and:8
وفيما يروى فانه كان لا يقرب لحم خروف دون ان يكون في متناول يده خروف آخر خشية النضوب دون الامتلاء.
it is told, that he never approached the meat of a lamb without having another one within reach, fearing shortage before saturation.
In the rather brief story al-Ṯaʿālib (The Foxes) a group of male adolescents go to buy cigarettes and food, neglecting the task assigned to them, to protect the grapes in a vineyard against rapacious foxes, who consequently consume the grapes.9
Meat may, thus, not be an obsession, but it certainly seems to have been a particular object of interest of Muḥammad Mustaǧāb. Among the numerous short newspaper columns, originally published in the Kuwaiti journal al-ʿArabī, there is one in which the author reflects upon the value, including the symbolic value and the role of meat in his society. For example, he states that:10
لا يوجد في أنحاء أقطارنا رمز للكرم والجود يعلو على اللحوم.
In no corner of our region is there any symbol of generosity and magnanimity that surpasses meat.
Also, among his many newspaper columns, there are some in which Muḥammad Mustaǧāb reveals himself as a connoisseur of meat, and he ventures – always tongue in cheek, as is his style – to evaluate the quality and taste of the meat of different animals. There is one text about lamb11 in which he reminds the reader first that Šamhūruš, a genie king, always demanded that his adherents slaughter a Raḥmānī lamb (originating from a place in the Delta called al-Raḥmānīya), and then continues:
ويعد لحم الخروف أشهى وأدسم لحم حلال على الاطلاق، ومن المفرح أن التهامه في عيد الأضحى جاء مناسبا لرغباتنا القديمة منذ أن افتدى به سيدنا ابراهيم ابنه النبي اسماعيل، وقد حاولت أوطان أخرى أن يكون لها حيوانها الأثير كالخنزير أو البقر، لكن الخروف ظل الأشهى والأنسب والأحلى دائما.
Lamb is absolutely the most delicious and succulent ḥalāl meat, and it is very cheering that gobbling it down on Eid al-Adha turns out to be in line with our old desires since Abraham redeemed his son, the Prophet Ismaʿīl, with it. Other countries have tried to have their own favorite animal, such as pig or cow, but the lamb remains the most delicious, the most suitable and the most succulent.
2 A Roguish Writer’s Roguish Style
كان من المفروض ان أصبح لصا … ولكن ظروفي ساءت فأصبحت كاتبا.
I should have become a rogue, but then, the circumstances were adverse and I became an author:12
Muḥmmad Mustaǧāb’s self-description may serve as a key to his style, which is fairly elaborate in almost all his stories.
The first story he published was al-Waṣīya al-ḥādiyata ʿašrata (The Eleventh Commandment),13 a surrealistic tableau with a “gentleman” tied motionless on a chair and people dancing around him. It is not difficult to recognize behind this image a mischievous criticism of the overall situation in Egypt. This text of only three pages contains the essential characteristic of Mustaǧāb’s mode of narration, his narrative technique: the grotesque, defined in a German standard dictionary of literary terms as:
A type of writing, weirdly comical and foolishly funny, which partly humoristically, partly ironically juxtaposes and connects seemingly contradictory and irreconcilable things, especially the comical and the gruesome, in a paradoxical play of phantasies in a high-spirited, astonishing manner, and partly even links them with the wisdom of life; a countercurrent to any belief in reason on the one hand and a sign of alienation from the world on the other.14
Significantly, this story appeared just after the June War of 1967, that is, at the end of the 1960s, the decade during which many certainties in Egypt were shattered. In the realm of literature, a new era was ushered in. It was the time when Idwār al-Ḫarrāṭ’s concept of the new literary sensitivity (al-ḥassāsīya al-ǧadīda) was widely noted and echoed.15
Of the four tendencies that Idwār al-Ḫarrāṭ distinguishes as characterizing the new “post-realistic” period beginning in the 1960s – “the internal-oriented, organic, inner vision current” / “the external-oriented, things-in-themselves mode of writing” / “the ‘neo-realistic’ current” / “the contemporary mythical current” – the last two in particular apply to the writing of Muḥammad Mustaǧāb:
The author combines these two tendencies with his profound delight in the absurd and the abstruse in order to express a thorough, even radical criticism of Egyptian society and human behavior. The short story “Ḥarq al-dam”, which revolves around the topic of food procurement, provides remarkable illustrative material for this.16
3 “Boiling Blood” – the Plot
The plot of the story is quite easily told:
In a quarry far away from the nearest human settlement, several hundred workers earn their living breaking stones out of the ground. They live there under dire conditions, while the supervisors come by only now and then to mark their presence and inspect, the main office of the enterprise being situated in Cairo.
At some point, the workers feel the need to improve their daily diet and thus end their dependence on the fraudulent butchers in the next village. Suddenly, the idea is born of creating a kind of cooperative, which would allow them to buy a sheep or a calf. They would slaughter this themselves and distribute the meat among the participants in the cooperative at cost-covering prices. They start the project and it looks promising. Yet in order to really put it into action and keep it going they need the consent, or at least the tolerance, of their superiors and affiliated personalities. Such consent however, requires “small presents” to secure and maintain the necessary goodwill – and giving presents to one person awakens desires among others. So, as time goes by, the quantity of meat given away to the non-needy increases, reducing the quantity available for the actual participants in the project – the needy and the rightfully deserving. To crown it all, disagreement arises among them and the project slowly dies away.
4 “Boiling Blood” – the Text More Closely Read
“Boiling Blood” presents an explicit socio-political criticism behind a thin veil of a realistic story about workers in a quarry in Upper Egypt. The presentation of the story fits partly into what Mona Zaki says about the author’s style, exuding “wit, satire, irreverence and scathing sarcasm”.17 Yet sarcasm or mockery, so well-known from many of Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s texts, yield somewhat to bitterness and disillusionment in this particular story, even though some of the author’s linguistic acrobatics may be read as ridicule.
It is not the ritual of slaughtering, disassembling and preparing an animal for consumption – the transformation of “a living animal into the raw material of a meal”18 – which is the center of interest. The story is, rather, about the prerequisite for this, namely the procurement of meat, the “raw material”. The story follows a strict chronology and remains – apart from the peculiarities of the author’s formulations – easily comprehensible. It consists of about 5500 words and is divided into an introduction and eight chapters of very different lengths, the first five of which are much longer than the last three. This shortening of the chapters toward the end is a successful stylistic way to show the development of the project: it is petering out.
But back to the beginning. The setting of the story is clear: a desert region not far from the Upper Egyptian town of Darāw. The time of the action is less clear, the duration more so: a few months. The author’s hesitation to specify the timeframe gives the story a mythicizing character. It becomes more universal. A case of social self-empowerment is shown, which was not only to improve the quality of meat but also to strengthen the self-image and self-respect of a certain social group. But the effort was undermined.
Among the characters, some of the workers (especially those who become actively engaged in the project) are given proper names, and thus acquire a certain individuality; others do not. Persons from the different executive floors, that is, exerting some kind of control or power, remain nameless and are defined only through their functions, i.e., the quarry director, the district attorney, the imam, the chief of personnel.
This is not the place to trace the wide-ranging debate about the literary genre of the short story (Kurzgeschichte, nouvelle) and the way it is perceived in different language areas. To pay attention to the differences between the English and German use of the term “short story” may be helpful for the analysis also of Arabic qiṣaṣ qaṣīra, especially if one is aware of the importance that in German-language literary studies is attached to the genre of the “novella” (Novelle) “with its pictorial, clearly visible plot”.19 A few characteristics are recurringly considered essential to this narrative genre: the novelty of the plot, the oral character of the narrative situation, and the independence of the story from social and historical factors. There is a well-known summary of these essential elements – which also accurately captures the style and structure of M. Mustaǧāb’s narrative – written in 1961:20
A conflict that organizes the whole is at the center of the novella, which aims at what is essential and intrinsically necessary in the event in a single-strand plot. The epic special genre of novella is thus constituted in a profiled, trenchant, tense and a concentrated narrative of extraordinary unique incidents, of unheard-of events.
This definition, in turn, is based on the locus classicus by Friedrich Schlegel, published more than one and a half centuries earlier, which makes its language sound somewhat shop-soiled:21
A novella is an anecdote, a hitherto unknown story, told as one would tell it in company, a story which must be capable of arousing interest in and of itself alone, without regard to any connection with the nations, the times, the progress of humanity, or even the relation to culture itself.
The concentration on the one narrative strand, which does not allow for prolixity and psychological analysis, seems essential to many definitions of the novella. Likewise, the idea of the intrusion of a fateful event is to separate the novella from a simple narration. A turn or twist has to be anticipated, “a sudden, unexpected coincidence that thwarts the intention”.22
“Boiling Blood” begins with three introductory pages that serve as a kind of exposition, comparable to the first act of a classical drama,23 presenting the situation, the location and the narration, including the “exciting momentum” (erregendes Moment), i.e., the instant when the topic of the story is revealed.24
لا بد من تنفيذ المشروع، وكنت أحس بنشوة
The project had to be carried out, no matter what; I was intoxicated.
The story is told by a narrator who also works at the quarry. He reveals himself throughout the story at several places and in different functions, e.g. as someone who shares the life of the workers, but occupies a kind of “better”, elevated position among them; or as president of the “veal committee” (laǧnat al-ʿiǧl);25 or as a link between “above” and “below”, between the workers and their superiors. He tells the whole story (“told as one would tell it in company”), sometimes addressing a “you”, while himself being significantly involved in the project of meat procurement (“a single-strand plot”). Once (introducing section three), in typical traditional narrative fashion he even inserts a remark that could well be read as a reflection on the fact that the material of the story could be elaborated into different directions, but would then cease to be the single-stranded narrative “required” by the novella:26
كنت اود أن أتوسع في بعض الامور لكني أخاف أن نبتعد عن حكايتنا.
I would have liked to expand on some details but I am afraid that would take us away from our story.
His first word, however, is “we” as if he wanted to include immediately the whole group of approximately 300 workers about whose cooperative experiment, a grassroots effort, he is going to report. He begins as if continuing a conversation, as if contradicting someone – a little trick that points to the idea of a novella as representing a moment taken out of the overall flow of life:27
نحن – على اية حال – لا نضمر سوءا لأحد ولو الذين يلقون الينا بالتعليمات
We, in any case, do not want to harbor ill intentions towards anybody, not even those who throw regulations at us.
This conciliatory tone is continued in the following sentence using the first-person singular “I”, clearly referring to the narrator, who praises anyone who does good, becoming very Mustaǧābian as he explains what “good” means for him: It is this juxtaposition of seemingly or really unrelated things or concepts, mentioned in the above definition of the grotesque, that makes up an important element of Mustaǧāb’s style. In other words, in Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s literary world, different worlds merge: the human, the animal, the world of spirits and “forces” – realistic and imaginary or mythical.
The reddish desert and goodness are called identical, both being:
الخير – بمعناه الشمولي – مثل هذه الصحراء المترامية الاطراف الصهباء المنمقة بالصخور والأحجار والعاقول، تلك التي انفرشت تلالها وترهبنت حيواناتها الشرسة اللطيفة الضئيلة، الجرذ والنمس والثعلب، واحيانا يلمح بعضنا ذئبا.
like this sprawling desert ornamented with rocks, stones and stubble, this desert whose hills have been stretched out and whose ferocious, gentle, tiny animals have hermitized themselves – rats, mongooses, foxes, and sometimes one may even glimpse a wolf.
Several clues to the main story can be found in the introductory pages, some of them only understandable after the whole text has been read. The word baṭn (stomach, belly, abdomen), for instance, central to the topic of food procurement and consumption, occurs four times, yet not describing a human or animal stomach but metaphorically as “belly of the desert” (baṭn al-ṣaḥrāʾ) and “belly of the earth” (baṭn al-arḍ), from which stones are extracted and whose depths will stimulate the imagination, or else as “belly of a bulldozer” (baṭn al-buldūzir), from which the “intestines” are removed.
Elsewhere, among his journalistic texts that contain many curiosities and striking phenomena, Muḥammad Mustaǧāb published a brief column on the abdomen, which opens as follows:28
البطن أحد أجزاء الجسم الكبيرة، وفي تجويفه المتسع عدة أجهزة حيوية من معدة الى امعاء الى كبد، ويتمتع البطن بالقدرة على الغباء الفائق، لدرجة أن العقل (الانساني مثلا) يقضي معظم عمره – أو كل عمره بمعنى أصح – في فك اشتباك البطن من الآخرين، الا ان الكل يشهد بأن البطن هو المدخل الصحيح للحقيقة المجسمة. فكل ما هو خارج البطن وهم: الأكل والمشروب والمثل العليا والرغبات والطموح، لكن هذا الوهم يبدأ بالتحقق فور وصوله الى المعدة – أولى محطات خطوط قارة البطن، حيث تبدأ الحياة حقيقتها الغامضة الكبرى.
The abdomen is one of the large parts of the body, and in its expanding cavity are several vital organs from the stomach to the intestine to the liver, and the abdomen enjoys a capacity for supreme foolishness, to the point that the mind (the human one, for example) spends most of its life – or, rather, all of it – in disengaging the abdomen from others. But everyone testifies that the abdomen is the veritable entrance to anthropomorphic truth. Everything that is outside the abdomen is illusion: food, drink, ideals, desires and ambition, but this illusion begins to come true as soon as it reaches the stomach – the first station of the lines of the continent of the abdomen, where life begins its great enigmatic truth.
Also on these three introductory pages, one worker is introduced by name, Abū ʿAwwāǧa. He will play an active role in the meat distribution procedure narrated later on. At this point he is mentioned because of a recent episode that turned out badly for him. He thought about making a little money on the side by buying and slaughtering a goat and selling its meat to his colleagues. The reason for his failure in doing so was twofold: He used the working hours for his little business, and after three weeks, the director of the quarry discovered and forbade it and even made him pay a fine equal to 15 days’ pay, arguing that it undermined discipline in the workplace. Abū ʿAwwāǧa also, and for the story this is much more important, acted privately, as an individual, without the support of the group, and could therefore not succeed; later he integrates himself fully into the collaborative project.
It was exactly at that point – when the individual project of Abū ʿAwwāǧa failed, being stopped and sanctioned by the director – that the idea of joint action in the procurement of meat popped up at the same moment jointly among all the workers. At least that is what many of them later claimed! And everybody was wildly enthusiastic. It seems that the idea had been waiting for its implementation.
Section one begins with some recollections of all the not always very appetizing and sometimes outright repulsive meats they had already eaten, and the improvement they are expecting. And here, the word “abdomen” (al-baṭn) is used in a non-metaphorical way! Then action is taken by the workers, very democratically and excitedly. All who want to participate agree to act jointly. The moment comes to set up a fund as a financial basis of the project. Everyone has to contribute according to their respective wages. Even the strict director makes a (relatively high!) contribution as do the local border guards. The director’s participation is at this point considered fortunate and even a good omen for the success of the project. Only later does it turn out to be one of the major objective reasons for its breakdown.
The next step is the selection of some people to perform the necessary functions. The animal has to be bought. Among the workers, certain men with knowledge of handling animals for slaughter would be suitable to fulfill the task, yet unfortunately they are not reliable. In the end, four are selected and assigned to go to the cattle market in the next town. The following day they return with a gigantic calf, which all the men boisterously welcome. After that a scale is needed and some people to carry out the slaughter.
As the story enters its second section, there is a “calf committee” consisting of the narrator as president, a weighmaster, a butcher and a skinner plus helper. Details about the slaughtering are passed over in silence; they would not add anything substantial to the real topic of the story, the creation, development and dissolution of the joint action of a social group for the supply of meat. Only the prices of the meat and methods of payment are given. After the sale of the meat, including the intestines, hide, shanks and head, the first round of the new experiment successfully comes to an end. The path is laid out, the road paved. The continuation of the projects seems to be secured, with failure out of the question.
The next round, the narrator assures, goes even more smoothly. And here, for the first time, the title of the story appears in its literal meaning: Unusable parts of the animal should be burned, advises one of the engineers on the spot, so they will not attract wild animals from the surrounding area. The director keeps a strict eye on the activities around the slaughtering to ensure that no working time is lost. At the same time, he graciously accepts the meat he has asked for.
The success is there: the organizers make a profit of three pounds and the director holds his protective hand over the project. The success of this dimension is enough for a new age, a new era to be spoken of. A new calendar is introduced, determined by the different calves and their slaughter, e.g.29
ولم نلبث أن صنعنا تقويما خاصا بالمحجر، فلان أخذ اجازته قبل الذبح، وفلان سب فلانا بعد ذبح العجل الأسود بيومين.
It didn’t take long until we established a special calendar for the quarry: so-and-so took his leave before the beginning of the slaughtering, so-and-so insulted so-and-so two days after the slaughter of the black calf.
But then, section three, begun in this way, definitely heralds the beginning of the end. It was the success that led to destruction, one could argue. Or the hubris that had to be punished. This would be the argument of many definitions of the novella: the intervention of higher powers or metaphysical forces which steer the narrative in a new direction. Not so for Muḥammad Mustaǧāb. For him, no such influences are at work, as the second half of the story shows. The disruptive factors ringing in the end of the project are much more earthly:
First, not everyone seems willing to cooperate fairly and:30
وضبط أحد الخفراء وفي حوزته لحوم لم يستطع الافصاح عن مصدره.
one of the watchmen was caught red-handed, carrying meat whose origin he was unable to explain.
There are also cases of embezzlement, and measures are taken against one of the fraudsters:31
ثم أتبعه بقرار آخر بحظر منحه أكثر من كيلو ونصف.
This decree was followed by another one, according to which he [an engineer on the spot] was not to be given more than one and a half kilos.
What crime the villain in question had committed – the resale of inexpensive veal – is explained in a footnote, one of Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s stylistic peculiarities of which he makes extensive use especially in his short novel Min al-taʾrīḫ al-sirrī li-Nuʿmān ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ (The Secret History of N. ʿA.),32 whose approximately 80 pages contain 45 “academic” footnotes, that is, often rather presumptuously blown-up comments containing Quranic references or book titles or explaining names of plants or personalities.
Second and much more ruinous for the project: the number of persons, or rather, the number of more or less high-ranking personalities who are accepted among the beneficiaries of the distribution of the meat, grows continuously – first thanks to the personal intervention of the quarry director, then also by means of the functioning of the network of the political-administrative-religious ruling class.33
ففي الذبحة الرابعة اوصانا مدير المحجر بأن نعمل حساب مدير التشغيل.
At the fourth round of slaughtering, the quarry manager suggested that we take the operating manager into consideration.
and then:34
وما كدنا نذبح البهيمة السابعة حتى كان عدد المتعاملين معنا – من الأصدقاء المديرين – قد وصل الى خمسة أفراد.
No sooner had we slaughtered the seventh beast than the number of those who were in business with us – friendly directors – had reached five people.
The third problem, harmful to the project and similar to the second one, was the fact that for the smooth purchase and transport of the animal intended for slaughter, certain “gifts” became indispensable – for instance for the truck-driver and for the policemen along the road:35
وأدى ذلك الى تساهل ضروري في تقديم بعض الوزنات المجانية للمتعاونين معنا.
This inevitably led to a relaxation in the allocation of free portions to people who were cooperative.
The extent to which such “gifts” were imperative can be seen in the reaction of someone who feels passed over:36 A member of the city council publicly acknowledges the project as exemplary and groundbreaking, but when no material proof of gratitude arrives, suddenly the slaughter site is visited by the regional slaughterhouse inspector, who – for legal reasons, of course – confiscates all the material and arrests the slaughtering men for illegal activities. Only through the intervention of another interested individual is the incident declared a misunderstanding and the project can be continued. The lesson: in the web of everyday “corruption” or “venality”, everyone must be taken into account.37 Whether granting someone “his” share or withholding it – for either decision the price is high.
The project still flourishes through the fourth section, while at the same time difficulties accrue. Slowly, this project with its true aim of procuring (good quality) meat for a group of workers is taken out of the workers’ hands, although they continue to work on it, and becomes an instrument of the network of the “better” people, the social, administrative, political and religious VIPs, to cater for themselves, to obtain good quality meat – with or without paying for it. Due to the many “obligations” needed to keep the project running, the amount of meat available to the workers, the project’s original target group, becomes less and less. The portions are reduced accordingly or they are “stretched” with bones. Protests on the part of the workers are not long in coming, but all complaints and grievances, or even arguments about justice, are brushed aside by the organizers, among them the narrator, the president of the “veal committee”, with the argument that new conditions make it necessary, though he only specifies the rise in prices:38
قلت له ان ظروفا جدت جعلتنا نعيد النظر في الأنصبة كلها.
I told him that new circumstances had made us reconsider all the shares.
This leaves no doubt that part of the available meat has to be given away in order to keep the project going. During this section of the story the number of “dignitaries” receiving “gifts” is still constantly growing and the “gifts”, too, are becoming more and more extensive so that in the end there is very little left for the workers.
A “gift” in legal terminology is defined as “a voluntary transfer of property made without consideration, that is, for which no value is received in return, which is accepted by the recipient”.39 “Bribery”, on the other hand, is “the voluntary giving of something of value to influence the performance of an official duty”.40 Neither of these two terms captures the state of dependence between above and below as depicted in this story, between the top brass, who expect attention and respect, and the common people, from whom this attention and respect is expected and who are fully aware of their “duty”. Yet this dependence works here on two levels. Firstly, it prevents the workers from supplying themselves with decent food because it, secondly, thwarts their efforts to create an efficient coordination or cooperation to take care of themselves. This kind of social constellation nips (and this is the central theme of Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s story) any attempt at self- or group-determined action in the bud.
The fifth section is the actual swan song to the entire project:41
يبدو أن حكايتنا تقترب من نهايتها، فقد بدأت بعض المسائل في التلون بألوان غير مقبولة.
Our story seems to be coming to an end: some issues began to take on unacceptable colors.
The problems that had long ago arisen are aggravating. Some workers protest, because promises given in the beginning are no longer honored, and the workers are not willing to accept the “changed circumstances”. At this point, the quarry director intervenes to help; he finds a seemingly plausible solution. Slaughter is to continue on a weekly basis, but everyone will receive a share only every two weeks. Whether this “ingenious” proposal is ever put into practice, one does not learn on the remaining few pages. In any case, the varied opposition intensifies, and the quarry director once again has to arbitrate, or intervene with punishment.
This quarry director plays an interesting, rather ambiguous part during the whole procedure of the project as a link between the workers and the socially “important people”. He is introduced as having forbidden one of the workers, Abū ʿAwwāǧa, to slaughter goats and sell the meat. Since that particular worker did this during his working hours he was even punished – and the director stood there as incorruptible and correct, fulfilling his duty and maintaining order among the workers. Then he allows the realization of a collaborative project of weekly purchase and slaughter of a calf by some workers – on condition that this activity does not interfere with the work in the quarry. Thus, he fulfills his duty to his own superiors. At the same time, it almost goes without saying that he will also participate in it and even chip in, no doubt convinced that the idea, that the workers provide better food for themselves and also maintain their health and thus work better, is a reasonable one, and enticed by the possibility of having high-quality fresh meat supplied at a decent price. Whether knowingly or not (fortunately it is not clarified in the story), he plays a central role (as an essential link) in the system of this kind of toadyism, characterized by complaisance on the one side and exploitation on the other, that permeates society as a whole. He subsequently introduces countless representatives of Egyptian high society to the project and suggests the organizers let them partake in it. They are people who are certainly not dependent on cheap meat in the same way as the workers, but who are happy about the attention they receive and gladly accept the savings on their meat bill. Even the preacher of the town mosque shows up at a certain moment and is duly put on the list of beneficiaries.42
When the project is already in jeopardy, the director decides to take another step to support it – that is, to objectively preserve the benefits for himself and his peers while reducing the benefits for the workers. He allows the use of the company truck to transport the animal purchased to be slaughtered. In addition, he also makes himself popular with the workers, because he severely punishes those who want to interfere with the progress of the project by all sorts of disruptive actions. And the workers, including the narrator, seem to believe in the director’s altruism:43
وقد كان مدير المحجر شهما وهو يحاول حماية المشروع.
The director of the quarry was magnanimous as he tried to protect the project.
After that, in the sixth section (only three and a half lines) the project is continued, albeit with interruptions: a one week pause, then another one. … The original enthusiastic motivation has slackened. And in the seventh section (two lines) the director arranges with the border guards at the camp to establish security precautions to protect the slaughtering of animals, meaning to maintain and continue the project even after the workers have lost interest in it because it was no longer theirs and their benefit from it had decreased sharply.
Finally, in the eighth section, which is somewhat longer than the two preceding ones, the general mood among the workers is subdued. Apparently, the project does not yield anything for them anymore, only for the “high-ranking friends”, whose portions are being prepared for delivery:44
بدأنا نعد الوزنات الخاصة بالاصدقاء ذوي الحيثية
We began to prepare the portions intended for the friends of rank and name.
The workers in the camp are left with only the offal, including the blood, both of which must be burned. Everyone seems exhausted. Someone tells a joke – a typical way to get rid of frustration and defy and challenge the powerful, eschewing direct confrontation – but we do not learn what it is about.
There is a final surge of resentment – or is it a harbinger of things to come after the end of the story? After “the fire died down” one worker loses his temper. He grabs a hatchet and shreds the neatly piled up meat. Then everybody and everything fall silent.
5 Conclusion
The double meaning of “Boiling Blood” was undoubtedly a find for a writer like Muḥammad Mustaǧāb, who through all his writings seems to have enjoyed any pun and any play on words that he came across, using them to uncover and expose scandals or deviations in all walks of life.
“Raconteur in the rural tradition” is what Mona Zaki called the author in the short note accompanying her translation of two stories by Muḥammad Mustaǧāb.45 This description contains two characteristics that he shares with some other authors: first, village origins and especially the interest in the village; second, the use in his writings of traditions and customs, of ways of thinking and convictions, of beliefs and superstitions, of rituals and habits originating from the village environment. These characteristics he shares for example with Muḥammad al-Bisāṭī (1937–2012), only one year older, who came from the Delta, but even more so with Yaḥyā al-Ṭāhir ʿAbdallāh (1881–1938), who originated from the same region as him. All three of them concentrated on writing short prose texts – short stories or short novels or novellas – and all three are interested in people who are shaped by their village origins – even if they no longer dwell in the countryside or in the village. But while al-Bisāṭī strikes a very soft tone and Yaḥyā al-Ṭāhir ʿAbdallāh uses an often mythical language, Muḥammad Mustaǧāb is a thoroughly “political” author and he is a master of ambiguity, duplicity and malice. His domain, his goal, is the critique of political and social conditions, the merciless exposure of structural injustices or absurdities, even ridiculousness. So for him meat (or veal, in this case) will never be just that, an essential element of human nutrition, but will always be a means of “explaining” or, rather, unmasking scandalous phenomena. Therefore, this particular story of his can be read on different levels. In the simplest and most innocent way, one would read it as an entertaining text about a group of workers trying their hand at supplying their own sustenance. But then, looking for meaning behind the events depicted, two interpretations impose themselves, one region-specific, i.e., referring to Egypt, the other one global, i.e., referring to hierarchized human societies anywhere. The story could be understood on the one hand as a parody of Arab socialism under Nasser or as a sharp critique of social perversion in Egypt; on the other hand, it could be understood as a parable for exploitation or even starvation of the underprivileged classes by the privileged ones – an eternal pattern, as long as the underlying structures are left untouched.
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to two friends and colleagues: Hilary Kilpatrick for her eagle- eyed reading (and correcting) of this text and Edward Badeen for his role as co-translator of Muḥammad Mustaǧāb’s stories into German.
References
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Gifis, Steven G., (ed.). Dictionary of Legal Terms. A Simplified Guide to the Language of Law. Hauppauge, N.Y.: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 1998.
Good, Graham. “Notes in the Novella”. In The New Short Story Theories, edited by Charles E. May, 147–164. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994.
Guth, Stephan. “Literary Currents in Egypt since the Beginning/Mid-1960s”. In From New Values to New Aesthetics: Turning Points in Modern Arabic Literature. (1. From Modernism to the 1980s) [Proceedings of the 8th EURAMAL Conference, 11–14 June, 2008, Uppsala / Sweden], edited by Gail Ramsay and Stephan Guth, 85–112. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011.
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ʿIzz al-Dīn, Manṣūra. “Ḥayāt wa-mawt Muḥammad Mustaǧāb”. Aḫbār al-adab (July 3, 2005), 3.
Katanani, Kamel Mahmoud. “A translation and commentary on The Food for Every Mouth (al-Ṭa‛ām Li-Kull Fam), a play by Tawfiq al-Hakim” (1975). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 16087. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/16087.
Kilchenmann, Ruth. Die Kurzgeschichte. Formen und Entwicklung. Stuttgart et al.: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1967. 1978⁵.
Kunz, Josef. “Die Novelle”. In Formen der Literatur in Einzeldarstellungen, edited by Otto Knörrich, 260–271. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1981.
Mauritz, Hans. Muhammad Mustagab – der böse Spötter aus Oberägypten. https://www.leben-in-luxor.de/luxor_essays_mauritz_mustagab.html.
Mustağāb, Muḥammad, al-Aʿmāl al-kāmila: al-Muǧallad al-awwal: al-Aʿmāl al-qiṣaṣīya. Cairo: al-Hay’a al-miṣrīya al-ʿāmma lil-kitāb,2019, 537 pp. (Mustaǧāb 2019).
Mustağāb, Muḥammad, al-Aʿmāl al-kāmila: al-Muǧallad al-ṯānī: al-Aʿmāl al-riwāʾīya. Cairo: al-Hay’a al-miṣrīya al-ʿāmma lil-kitāb, 2020, 247 pp. (Mustaǧāb 2020).
Mustağāb, Muḥammad, Nabš al-ġurāb fī wāḥat al-ʿarabī: I. al-insān (Mustaǧāb 2021a); II. al-kāʾināt (Mustaǧāb 2021b); III. al-ašyāʾ (Mustaǧāb 2021c). Cairo: Dār al-karma, 2021.
Müller, Joachim. “Novelle und Erzählung”. In Novelle, edited by Josef Kunz, 469–482. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973.
Srirejeki, Kiky. “Corruption and Culture: Revisiting the Claim of its Relationship”. In SHS Web of Conferences 86, 01037 (2020), 7 pp. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/20208601037.
Wilpert, Gero von. Sachwörterbuch der Literatur. Stuttgart, Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1955. 1969⁵: “Absurdes Drama”, “Exposition”, “Groteske”, “Kurzgeschichte”, “Novelle”.
Zaki, Mona. “A rural raconteur”. Banipal 12 (Spring 2001), 46.
A certain number of Arabic literary works dealing with food as symbol and reality (with special reference to Naǧīb Maḥfūẓ, Yūsuf Idrīs and ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim) are mentioned and dealt with in an article by Sabry Hafez. Cf. Hafez, Sabry, “Food as a Semiotic Code”, 1994.
Katanani, Kamel Mahmoud, “A translation and commentary”, 1975, 80. 75.
Mustaǧāb, Muḥammad, 2019, 380–396. The story, which first appeared in the journal al-Ṯaqāfa 2, November 1973, 90–97, was republished several times as part of the collection Qiyām wa-nhiyār Āl Mustaǧāb: e.g. Cairo, al-Haiʾa al-ʿāmma li-quṣūr al-ṯaqāfa (Aṣwāt adabīya 132), November 13, 1995, 27–52, and Cairo, al-Haiʾa al-miṣrīya al-ʿāmma lil-kitāb (Mihraǧān al-qirāʾa lil-ǧamīʿ 98. Maktabat al-usra), 1998, 31–56. It has nothing in common with the little book carrying the same title and which was published in the series Maṭbūʿāt Aḫbār al-Yawm. Qiṭāʿ al-ṯaqāfa – unfortunately without indication of the year of publication.
Muḥammad Mustaǧāb (1938–2005) was a largely self-taught prose writer from Upper Egypt. He grew up in Daryūṭ al-šarīf, a village in the province of Assiut. Leaving the village in the late 1950s he pursued for some time various professional activities in Cairo and then, in the early 1960s, left the Egyptian capital for Asswan, where he, a convinced Nasserist, participated in the construction of what was considered THE symbol of Egypt’s future at the time, the High Dam. After his return to Cairo, Muḥammad Mustaǧāb worked at several state offices as a freelancer for several journals. His literary work consists of about one hundred short stories and half a dozen long ones (short novels). More details about his life and work may be found in Fähndrich, “Muhammad Mustagâb”, 2005, and “Nachwort”; 2009, ʿIzz al-Dīn, “Ḥayāt wa mawt”; 2005, Mauritz, Hans, Muhammad Mustagab.
These works have recently been republished and thus made easily available. The General Egyptian Book Organization put together the literary prose works in two volumes: al-Aʿmāl al-kāmila: Muḥammad Mustaǧāb. al-Muǧallad al-awwal: al-Aʿmāl al-qiṣaṣīya (Cairo, 2019), 537 p. (Mustaǧāb 2019), and al-Aʿmāl al-kāmila: Muḥammad Mustaǧāb. al-Muǧallad al-ṯānī: al-Aʿmāl al-riwāʾīya (Cairo, 2020), 247 p. (Mustaǧāb 2020).
In addition to that, the al-Karma publishing house collected the brief newspaper columns from the Kuwaiti journal al-ʿArabī in three volumes: Muḥammad Mustaǧāb: Nabš al-ġurāb fī wāḥat al-ʿarabī: I. al-insān (Mustaǧāb 2021a); II. al-kāʾināt (Mustaǧāb 2021b); III. al-ašyāʾ (Mustaǧāb 2021c) (Cairo, 2021). Unfortunately, both publishing houses chose the easy or fast way of publication: There is no information about the author except for the few words on the back cover, and, worse, there is no indication about when and where these texts appeared for the first time (and maybe reappeared subsequently).
Three of these “biographical stories” (Mustaǧāb al-ḫāmis, Mustaǧāb al-sābiʿ, and Mustaǧāb al-ṯāliṯ) were published, together with a few other ones, in the above-mentioned collection Qiyām wa-nhiyār Āl Mustaǧāb and are therefore found in the new edition. Mustaǧāb al-rābiʿ appeared in a separate book, obviously being considered a novel (or maybe a novella) and therefore republished with other novelistic works. The same is true for Mustaǧāb al-fāḍil and, finally, Kalb Āl Mustaǧāb, long stories that earlier came out in a separate little volume together with one more story.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 411.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 416. This motif of the “aphrodisiac significance” of food can be found in numerous works of modern Arabic literature. (Cf. Hafez, “Food as a Semiotic Code”, 273). The English translation of all the Arabic quotes is mine.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 373.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 407 f.
Mustaǧāb 2021c, 184.
Mustaǧāb 2021b, 11 f.
This dictum is found on the cover of the collection of articles Ḥarq al-dam mentioned above.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 105–108. Originally published in al-Hilāl 76/viii (1969), 45–47.
Wilpert, Gero von, Sachwörterbuch, 1969, 307f: “Dichtart des Derbkomischen, Närrisch- Seltsamen, die teils humoristisch, teils ironisch scheinbar Gegensätzlichstes und Unvereinbares, bes. das Komische und das Grausige, in paradoxem Phantasiespiel in übermütiger, verblüffender Weise nebeneinanderstellt und in Zusammenhang bringt, teils selbst mit Lebensweisheit verknüpft; Gegenströmung gegen jeden Vernunftglauben einerseits und Zeichen einer Verfremdung gegen die Welt andererseits.” (my translation).
Guth, Stephan, “Literary Currents”, 2011, 96–101. Interestingly enough, Guth does not mention M. Mustaǧāb among the almost 30 Egyptian authors he calls “the most prominent names” of this period and literary trends (106).
In his presentation of Mustaǧāb’s collection Qiyām wa-nhiyār Āl Mustaǧāb Shākir ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd attests to the author’s keen sense of the intricate relationship between above and below, deeply rooted in Egyptian society. (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Šakir, “al-Wāqiʿīya al-iḥtifālīya”, 1996, 47).
Zaki, Mona, “A rural Raconteur”, 2001, 46.
Bain, Frederika. “Meat Constructs”, 2018, 306 (quoting others).
Kilchenmann, Ruth, Die Kurzgeschichte, 1978, 186.
Müller, Joachim. “Novelle und Erzählung”, 1973, 473: “Ein das Ganze organisierender Konflikt bildet den Mittelpunkt der Novelle, die in einsträngiger Handlung auf das Wesentliche und Innerlich-Notwendige der Begebenheit zielt. Die epische Sondergattung Novelle konstituiert sich also in einem profilierten, pointierten, gespannten und konzentrierten Erzählen von ausserordentlichen einmaligen Begebenheiten, von unerhörten Ereignissen.” (my translation).
Good, Graham. “Notes in the Novella”, 1994, 154.
Kunz, Josef, “Die Novelle”, 1981, 4, quoting Wolfgang Kayser: “plötzliche, unerwartete Fügung, die die Absicht durchkreuzt”.
Wilpert, Sachwörterbuch, 245 f.
Wilpert, Sachwörterbuch, 232.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 386.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 388.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 380.
Mustaǧāb 2021a, 60.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 388.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 388.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 389.
Mustaǧāb 2020, 9–87.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 389.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 389.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 389.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 390.
Whether this kind of social or political constellations should be called “corruption” is convincingly discussed in Srirejeki, Corruption.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 391.
Gifis, Steven G., Dictionary, 1998, 204.
Gifis, Dictionary, 55.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 393.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 392.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 395.
Mustaǧāb 2019, 396.
Zaki, “A rural raconteur”, 46.