Half a Day: Naguib Mahfouz

Introduction

Every now and then one encounters a story that leaves an indelible impression long after it is read. I read this short short story written by Naguib Mahfouz shortly after his winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I was enamoured by its rich and ornate style, its narrative technique, universal theme and dramatic ending. Quite recently, I suggested a speaker to present it as a monodrama and it was well-received by the audience.

Egyptian writer Mahfouz is the only Nobel Laureate in Arabic Literature. I had the delight to visit the Naguib Mahfouz Cafe (Earlier known as Fishawy's Café in Khan Al Khalili market, one of the most ancient surviving markets in the World) during my visit to Egypt last year. Naguib used to write many parts of his Cairo Trilogy in a special place in this café. In his 33 novels, including his masterpiece, “The Cairo Trilogy”; his 16 short story collections; 30 screenplays; and several plays he invented a vast human comedy populated by the inhabitants of Cairo’s sprawling metropolis whose lives embodied the history of his country: wily shopkeepers and heartless bureaucrats, wheedling beggars, voluptuous women, whores and holy men, desperate parents and starving students. Mahfouz passed away in 2006.

The following story is my personal favorite.

Story

I proceeded alongside my father, clutching his right hand, running to keep up with the long strides he was taking. All my clothes were new: the black shoes, the green school uniform, and the red tarbush. My delight in my new clothes, however, was not altogether unmarred, for this was no feast day but the day on which I was to be cast into school for the first time.

My mother stood at the window watching our progress, and I would turn toward her from time to time, as tough appealing for help. We walked along a street lined with gardens; on both sides were extensive fields planted with crops, prickly pears, henna trees, and a few date palms.

"Why school?" I challenged my father openly. "I shall never do anything to annoy you."

"I'm not punishing you," he said, laughing. "School's not a punishment. It's the factory that makes useful men out of boys. Don't you want to be like your father and brothers?"

I was not convinced. I did not believe there was really any good to be had in tearing me away from the intimacy of my home and throwing me into this building that stood at the end of the road like some huge, high-walled fortress, exceedingly stern and grim.

When we arrived at the gate we could see the courtyard, vast and crammed full of boys and girls. "Go in by yourself," said my father, "and join them. Put a smile on your face and be a good example to others."

I hesitated and clung to his hand, but he gently pushed me from him. "Be a man," he said. "Today you truly begin life. You will find me waiting for you when it's time to leave."

I took a few steps, then stopped and looked but saw nothing. Then the faces of boys and girls came into view. I did not know a single one of them, and none of them knew me. I felt I was a stranger who had lost his way. But glances of curiosity were directed toward me, and one boy approached and asked, "Who brought you?"

"My father," I whispered.

"My father's dead," he said quite simply.

I did not know what to say. The gate was closed, letting out a pitiable screech. Some of the children burst into tears. The bell rang. A lady came along, followed by a group of men. The men began sorting us into ranks. We were formed into an intricate pattern in the great courtyard surrounded on three sides by high buildings of several floors; from each floor we were overlooked by a long balcony roofed in wood.

"This is your new home," said the woman. "Here too there are mothers and fathers. Here there is everything that is enjoyable and beneficial to knowledge and religion. Dry your tears and face life joyfully."

We submitted to the facts, and this submission brought a sort of contentment. Living beings were drawn to other living beings, and from the first moments my heart made friends with such boys as were to be my friends and fell in love with such girls as I was to be in love with, so that it seemed my misgivings had had no basis. I had never imagined school would have this rich variety. We played all sorts of different games: swings, the vaulting horse, ball games. In the music room we chanted our first songs. We also had our first introduction to language. We saw a globe of the Earth, which revolved and showed the various continents and countries. We started learning the numbers. The story of the Creator of the Universe was read to us, we were told of His present world and of His Hereafter, and we heard examples of what He said. We ate delicious food, took a little nap, and woke up to go on with friendship and love, play and learning.

As our path revealed itself to us, however, we did not find it as totally sweet and unclouded as we had presumed. Dust-laden winds and unexpected accidents came about suddenly, so we had to be watchful, at the ready and very patient. It was not all a matter of playing and fooling around. Rivalries could bring pain and hatred or give rise to fighting. And while the lady would sometimes smile, she would often scowl and scold. Even more frequently she would resort to physical punishment.

In addition, the time for changing one's mind was over and gone and there was no question of ever returning to the paradise of home. Nothing lay ahead of us but exertion, struggle, and perseverance. Those who were able took advantage of the opportunities for success and happiness that presented themselves amid the worries.

The bell rang announcing the passing of the day and the end of work. The throngs of children rushed toward the gate, which was opened again. I bade farewell to friends and sweethearts and passed through the gate. I peered around but found no trace of my father, who had promised to be there. I stepped aside to wait. When I had waited for a long time without avail, I decided to return home by my own. After I had taken a few steps, a middle-aged man passed by, and I realized at once that I knew him. He came toward me, smiling, and shook me by the hand, saying, "It's a long time since we last met - how are you?"

With a nod of my head, I agreed with him and in turn asked, "And you, how are you?"

"As you can see, not all that good, the Almighty be praised!"

Again he shook me by the hand and went off. I preceded a few steps, and then came to a startled halt. Good Lord! Where was the street lined with gardens? Where had it disappeared to? When did all these vehicles invade it? And when did all these hordes of humanity come to rest upon its surface? How did these hills of refuse come to cover its sides? And where were the fields that bordered it? High buildings had taken over, the street surged with children, and disturbing noises shook the air. At various points stood conjurers showing off their tricks and making snakes appear from baskets. Then there was a band announcing the opening of a circus, with clowns and weight lifters walking in front. A line of trucks carrying central security troops crawled majestically by. The siren of a fire engine shrieked, and it was not clear how the vehicle would cleave its way to reach the blazing fire. A battle raged between a taxi driver and his passenger, while the passenger's wife called out for help and no one answered. Good God! I was in a daze. My head spun. I almost went crazy. How could all this have happened in half a day, between early morning and sunset? I would find the answer at home with my father. But where was my home? I could see only tall buildings and hordes of people. I hastened on to the crossroads between the gardens and Abou Khoda. I had to cross Abou Khoda to reach my house, but the stream of cars would not let up. The fire engine's siren was shrieking at full pitch as it moved at a snail's pace, and I said to myself, "Let the fire take its pleasure in what it consumes."

Extremely irritated, I wondered when I would be able to cross. I stood there a long time, until the young lad employed at the ironing shop on the corner came up to me. He stretched out his arm and said gallantly, "Grandpa, let me take you across."

Tarbush: red hat similar to the fez worn especially by Muslim men

Post Script:

Time is telescoped into a morning's walk, the first day in the school, and the return journey home. To Mahfouz, our entire life can be condensed into just ‘Half a Day” in the school of life, from sunrise to sunset. Everything you learn in school repeats in life as well (Learning to work, love, play, obey rules, break rules). Being a follower of Bergson’s philosophy Mahfouz has made a stunning masterwork on ‘Time’, both lived and straight. The narrator emerges from the gates of the school oblivious that his entire life has passed, and that he is now no longer a young boy but an old man. Life is a tragedy.

It is a gentle story tinged with nostalgia for time irrecoverable.

(This blog is an elaboration based on more information gathered from web on a blog on the same subject posted by Amit Goel Saab (Refer: http://hexa6.rediffiland.com/scripts/xanadu_home_view.php). His blog is very succinct and more effective. Being a Speaker, elaboration comes natural to my tongue and my pen. His blog deeply impressed me . As we  have worked in the fertilizer field, the subject is quite exciting to both of us. The whole credit for this blog goes to him. Such small leaps by charity organizations are truly big leaps for mankind. Small is indeed  beautiful, in the Schumacher way.)

Lesotho is a small land locked nation nestled entirely by the surrounding South Africa. This is the home of the Basotho people. The country came into being when the Basotho were forced to flee from two advancing groups – the Zulus and the Boers. They took refuge in the Drakensberg and Maluti mountains, and under the “protection” of the British remained independent of South Africa.

Lesotho is incredibly beautiful and its vast highland plains are spectacular places for tourists. Broad and treeless, they offer stunning views of the mountains looming over shimmering gold grasslands. The proud, distinct, and traditional Basotho people are welcoming, friendly and generous.

Sadly, this is also one of the most impoverished countries in Africa because of a debilitating cycle of environmental and social problems. There is no rain between April and September and when the rains do come, the water just runs straight off the mountain side.

Lesotho sits on a plateau mostly above 1,800 metres altitude. For many years, the weather in Lesotho has been unpredictable. This little kingdom has bleak backdrop for agriculture. Its craggy landscape is obviously fragile: the soils are infertile and thin, a shallow covering over steep slopes; the temperature rebounds between intense heat and fierce cold - from 40 to -15 degrees Celsius; it has to cope with hail, snow and frost; water is available in only two volumes, almost none during the long droughts, or far too much during devastating downpours. Once the surface of the ground is broken, the soil is washed away. The country suffers some of the worst soil erosion in the world. Erosion has created countless miniature canyons that split the plains everywhere. The already thin mountain soils have lost virtually all their productive nutrients. In many respects, Lesotho is a microcosm of the problems facing so many parts of the developing world.

More than 45 percent of Lesotho's population are now unemployed, so when crops fail or food prices rise, families are hard pressed to buy enough food for their daily needs. The most important opportunity for Basotho men was to work in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. Many thousands of them did. Layoffs at the mines cut the cash inputs necessary for farming in Lesotho. And then came AIDS. Migrant labour returning from South Africa proved a perfect transmission route for HIV, and Lesotho now has possibly the highest infection rate in the world with almost one-third of the population living with the virus. Many of its able-bodied workers have either died or been crippled by disease. Life expectancy here has plummeted to 35 years, and for most, life is hard; subsistence farming on a background of drought is the challenge for the majority of people in Lesotho. At least 200,000 Lesothans annually are without enough food to eat.

As an answer to the soil and social problems, Send a Cow, a Christian charity organization came up with a sustainable farming technique, so that the destitute and diseased farmers could use their land to work their way out of poverty. This farming technique is called ‘Keyhole garden’

Keyhole Gardens are ‘stacked up’ vegetable beds with an inner column of compost.  “Keyhole gardens” are so called because, from the top, each one looks like a keyhole. It looks like a circular cairn of big stones or bricks and is shaped like a cake at top. It  is about four feet high (Waist level) and eight feet in diameter, with a slice of the cake cut out like a wedge to provide access for the sick and elderly to work. It is constructed of alternating layers of suitable soil, manure from pigs and livestock.  At the bottom, layers of tin cans or pieces of and scrap metal are laid to provide iron, ash is spread to give potassium and then straw mats are laid to retain moisture. These materials are supported by an outer layer of stone and have at the center, a column of alternating layers of manure and ash held within a porous straw basket which leaches out nutrient to make the gardens extraordinarily productive. This straw centre is important as it is through this domestic waste water is fed for irrigation. Seeds are planted once the bed is ready.  Because they are protected by Stones and waste rubble from brick building, the rich soils are safe from erosion. Farmers are also taught to harvest rainfall from roofs with ferro cement water tanks.

"The Keyhole garden is ideal for the elderly or sick AIDS victims who often depend on it as their primary source for survival . Because the height of the garden is at waist level, people who don't possess the strength to bend down and cultivate can adopt it easily", says Lyle Kew of CARE. What makes it particularly fascinating is that it is cheap – recycled products are used – and easy to maintain. Insecticide is also home-made, from garlic and cooking oil. During a drought, it can be covered with plastic bags and the compost holds enough moisture for the vegetables to survive. It will grow vegetables efficiently in a baking landscape of bare rock and a person unwell with HIV would still be able to tend to the garden.

Despite their small size, the gardens are highly productive: they can yield substantial amounts of nutritious vegetables, year round and regardless of rainfall patterns. Their ease of use and immune boosting nutritional value of vegetables grown make them apt for AIDS Victims.  Vegetables usually planted are spinach, pumpkins, rape, legumes, onion, beetroot, apricot and carrots. Keyhole gardens can retain moisture far more effectively than land farmed by traditional farming methods, and they are compact enough to turn the tiniest plot of land into productive agriculture. Once built, keyhole gardens need very little labour and are easy to irrigate. It is small, simple and simply reliable.

These gardens in the sky won't solve all the problems of the country, but it will help to break the cycle of hunger. The whole idea of creating a simple  garden in hilly, windy and dry climates is so uncomplicated, so effective,  so enterprising and empowering that it can even provide tangible solutions to some climate change problems as well. Necessity can indeed be the mother of invention. Such innovative ideas in farming are valuable weapons in the fight against food insecurity in Lesotho and elsewhere. Anyone anywhere can do it. It demonstrates eloquently how communities can work together to change lives of people for the better.

 Keyhole garden is indeed an ex-pression of human faith, the testimony of a humbling experience and an embodiment of the flaming hope of a feeble nation. It is an assertion that any spot of ground, however arid, bare or dreadful, can be tamed into fields of fertility

The Crate (Le Cageot)

In his prose poems, he offers a view of life transcribed into mute symbols around us-Pebbles, trees, flowers, sea, candles, oyster or even cigarettes. He expresses their mute character in moral terms. He recognizes their mortality, vulnerability and bestows on them a heroic vision by projecting more than what they are. His words sculpt them. As a result we see them like figures emerging from stones or as characters from a novel.  ‘They are heroes “, Ponge says in ‘Snail’, ‘beings whose existence itself is a work of art.’ This is exactly why I like him so much.

Ponge has rare sensibility and brilliance to dwell on objects without a desire to possess it or to immerse it with his personal disappointments or desires. His objectifying poetic process aims to grasping thing-in-itself. Do not mistake me here. Ponge is no partisan of art for art sake.

Man arbitrarily placed in the world, makes an arbitrary choice by allowing himself to survive in it before being  arbitrarily removed from it like the crate, used only once and then tossed on the trash heap. The poet having chosen literature to make his life meaningful, which can only partially convey his meaning like the work of any man,  can only partially express man the cosmos.

In his poem ‘Pebble’ he says that the pebble, the final offspring of a race of giants, is of the same stone as its enormous forbears. If life offers no truth, it nonetheless offers possibilities. For trees, there may be no way out of their ‘treehood’, ‘by the means of trees’-leaves wither and fall-but they do not give up. They go on leafing season after season. They are not ‘resigned’. This is the first lesson, ‘the heroic vision’, as I mentioned earlier, and their first weapon against mortality. Snails, Flowers and Pebbles – all express an indomitable will and a striving for perfection by whatever means are unique to them: the tree has leaves, the snail its silver wake, man his words. Man also possesses all the ‘virtues’ of the world he lives in: the fearful fearlessness of the shrimp, the stubbornness of the oyster, the determination of water, the cigarette’s ability to create its own environment and its own destruction. Rather than using things as images of human attributes, he covertly uses human attributes as images of things around us (This is quite interesting) .

Ponge underlines that the ultimate weapon is the work of art, the sublime regenerative possibility, which man carries within himself, like the oyster its pearl, the orange in its pip. His poems are not ‘morals’ in any didactic sense, but they are lessons, models of exemplary virtue to follow.

I am sure that next time when you observe a crate in a busy market or hold the knob of your door, you will pause to ponder and salute its being with a benign smile.

In the year 2002, I was once attending a meeting at my friend  Shahul Hameed's house. When the meeting was about to be over, he brought a tray of fruits as snacks. Amidst them, I saw something incongruous:- a plateful of sliced pieces of what looked like tomatoes. No one touched the apparent 'tomatoes' while we eagerly savored the other fruits. Noticing our inhibition, Shahul told us that they were not tomatoes but sweet persimmons (It is called Kaki fruit in India). He himself had brought it from market by mistake thinking it as tomatoes but was bowled over by its taste. I tasted a piece and I was taken aback by its smooth texture, its sticky sweetness, syrupy taste and indescribably delicious fruity flavor. I was literally tasting a new experience. There onwards, I have become an addict of this fruit, waiting for the season to savor the pleasurable persimmons. But the fruit has a spilt personality. The unripe ones , though sweet, carries a bit of astringent taste. The skin of ripe and glossy one is so taut that one tough touch can break and spill the jelly pulp.

I was reminded of my above experience as I read this beautiful and powerfully painful poem  by a Chinese Poet called Li-Young Lee. It also roused my own maudlin mango memories. There are  several elements that figure importantly in this poem. Persimmon stand for painful memories of cultural barriers imposed by language and custom, and for a present-day loving connection to an elderly, blind father. The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between "persimmon" and "precision" and makes a play on other words which sound similar and "that got (him) into trouble." He takes revenge later, when the teacher brings to class a persimmon that only the narrator knows is unripe, as he "watched the . . . faces" without participating. We now understands that the sixth grader's misperception due to pronunciation finds the right revenge when the boy can handle the difference in meaning between these two words quite nimbly: "How to choose / persimmons. This is precision."

Persimmons also remind him of an adult sensual relationship with Donna and of his attempts to teach her Chinese words which he himself can no longer remember. The speaker first suggests, perhaps shamefacedly, his detachment from his parents and their culture by embodying the source of his distraction in the figure of Donna, a white girl (or woman) with whom he lies naked in the grass. The speaker's vacillating attempts to teach Donna Chinese and his own forgetting of some words due to non-use hint at the fading power of his parents' culture and its values in USA.

Ripe persimmons continue to gain positive associations as the speaker next recalls his mother's observation that "every persimmon has a sun / inside, something golden, glowing, / warm as my face." The second part of the poem describes the role persimmons have played in his father's life and in their relationship. To comfort his father, gone blind, the narrator gives him two sweet, ripe persimmons, so full and redolent with flavor that it will surely stimulate the senses remaining. The fruit links him with his father when he says "forgotten" persimmons, "swelled, heavy as sadness, / and sweet as love."

Later, in the "muddy lighting" of his parents' cellar, with his father sitting on the stairs, the poet searches for something meaningful from his past: "I rummage, looking / for something I lost." He finds three rolled-up paintings by his now blind father. As the father reaches to touch a rendering of "Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth," he remembers "the strength, the tense / precision in the wrist" required to paint them. For both the poet  and reader the search has ended. The poet has recovered two qualities embodied in and demonstrated by his parents that he has found so lacking in American culture: the rich, full warmth of his parents' love, figured in persimmons, and their precise, caring ways, represented by their respective crafts. The poem ends with the father's remark that "some things never leave a person".

Indeed this is precisely crafted poem that reaches into the murky depths of memory to salvage cherishable characteristics of one's parents and one's culture. It is a sensitive and supreme example of how a fruitful emotional association such as with persimmon can transform and enrich our life

                              PERSIMMON

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner

for not knowing the difference

between persimmon and precision.

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

Chew on the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down,

I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.

Naked: I've forgotten.

Ni, wo: you me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

Wrens are small, plain birds,

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn't ripe or sweet, I didn't eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,

where each morning a cardinal

sang. The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding

he was going blind,

my father would stay up all one night

waiting for a song, a ghost.

I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He's so happy that I've come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolf tail on the silk,

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times

eyes closed. These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,