Poor

by إدريس علي, Elliott Colla (Translator), Idris Ali

“This is your last day. Be strong. Don’t hesitate. Cut and run. An exit with no return.” Idris Ali’s confessional novel opens with these words, spoken on an unbearably hot August afternoon in downtown Cairo, where the Nubian narrator has just decided, once and for all, to end his life. Delirious and thirsty, he wanders around venting his resentments large and small, his sexual frustrations, and his sense of powerlessness in the face of unremitting injustice. He seeks to expunge his failed life in the Nile: the river that had been the life blood of his country for millennia, and that―with Egypt’s new dam―now drowns Nubia, flinging her dispossessed sons north and south into exile. Many years ago, the narrator was one of those sons, fleeing flood and famine only to arrive in Cairo, penniless and shoeless, in time to see it go up in flames, the old regime overthrown by “the men in tanks.” Poor is the story of a life of hardship, adversity, and emotional starvation. It is also the story of opportunities squandered and hopes traded away for nothing―of a life lived, at times, all too poorly.

Genres: Literature

220 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

من مواليد 1940، في قرية قرشة في مدينة أسوان، وفي عام 1969 نشر أول قصة في مجلة "صباح الخير"، كما صدرت له عدة أعمال من بينها: "انفجار جمجمة" و"اللعب فوق جبال النوبة".

Reviews

[Steve]

Omar El-Nagdi (1994-5)

Murderous Africa, home of the sun and oppression and homicidal rulers: damned, desperate continent.


Raw pain and despair edging over into blasphemy and flagrant insults to the powers that be. If he were alive in today's Egypt, I fear Idris Ali (1940-2010) soon would not be. The narrator of Poor (2005) has abandoned all hope and is just looking to end it all in the Nile; the self-censoring exercised by the prudent in countries where the disagreeable are jailed, tortured and murdered(*) is tossed to the winds. Just consider for a moment this brief excerpt, one among many, many, many:

Death is the easiest solution. Easier than facing the tanks, the viciousness of the riot police, and the arrogance of State Security officers. They have always been the stronger. This is the difference between them and you. Is it really possible that they conquered an ancient nation with four thousand barefoot savages, then converted its language and religion? Al-Muqawqis - the Coptic patriarch who welcomed Islam into Egypt - was a traitor. But the Iberians were men and threw the Muslims back into the sea as the Prince sat on the shore, lamenting the loss of his dominion, his palaces, and his slave girls.

Suicidal.




George Bahgory (2011)

With a thick layer of irony no one could overlook, Ali distances himself from his narrator in a sort of foreword, but his own life enters into the text again and again, for also the narrator is a poor, dissident writer of Nubian descent whose father escaped to Cairo and left wife, mother and son behind without support. Even more than in his novel Dongola Ali indites Egypt for its treatment of the Nubians, submerging the heartlands of Nubia under Lake Nasser, taking "a nation of farmers and turn[ing] them into servants and doormen for your palaces and villas."

But there is nothing, in the end, geographically narrow about this text; in short, choppy sentences shot out under high pressure Ali's narrator bitterly recounts the fate of the underclass everywhere: to be stomped under the heels of the powerful and wealthy (and their eager representatives) and left to scramble for their scraps, grateful for whatever falls to the floor. The few who do not conform with this role are simply crushed.(**) Here this universally valid schema is fleshed out with the special story of a proud and impulsive boy of ten trying to escape the hunger in Nubia by stowing away on boats and trains to get to Cairo in the hope that his life may be better with his father in the worst slum of the city. Most of the book is filled with an engaging coming of age story of the rebellious, dreaming boy who became the disillusioned, bitter narrator, but along the way the reader meets with the cultural and social realities of modern Egypt, from the disillusioned hopes of the 1952 revolution, when the old, untouchable power was just replaced by a new, untouchable power without making a jot of difference in the lives of the overwhelming majority of the people, to the fervent nationalism of the 1956 Suez Crisis.

It wouldn't hurt to know a bit about recent Egyptian history to fully appreciate this book, but it's not essential, since Poor can be read as a Kafkaesque allegory in which one does not need to know that "the Prince" refers to Anwar Sadat, that the "League of Idiot Tribes" is the League of Arab States, that the "International Ruination Fund" is the IMF, etc. The bitter bite (and truth) of the text is not lost without these identifications, and the densely realized coming of age story surely appeals to all.


(*) Frankly, I'm not sanguine about the survival of freedom of expression under an orangely glowing President who admires rulers like Putin and Erdogan and repeats, again and again, "I alone," whose minions clamor for his political opponent to be jailed and whose campaign aide proclaims that she should be shot as a traitor. The danger is no longer merely theoretical and my interest in this text by Ali goes well beyond mere curiosity.

(**) One wonders how long it will take for the white working class in America to realize that Trump and Thiel give a damn about it only insofar as they need its votes and money. "Billionaire populist" is a quintessential oxymoron.

[Walid Elalfy · Rating 3 out of 5]

نفس صرخه الفقر لمحمد شكرى فى الخبز الحافى . صراع من اجل قليل من الطعام لسد قسوه الجوع
نفس قسوه الاب نفس التشرد ونفس الخط البيانى ونفس الفشل فى التعليم ولكنه امتلاك مفردات لغويه غايه فى القوه والقسوه فى نفس الوقت . حياه الصعاليك ثم رغبه شديده فى الانتحار .
حتى نفس الالفاظ السوقيه
لا ادرى ان كانت قواعد ما يكتب ولا ما لا يكتب قد انتهت ام لا ؟
محمد هاشم صاحب دار ميريت نشر الكتاب كما هو بالفاظه القبيحه والان عرفت لماذا منع فتره طويله
من الاقتباسات


تضحك حين يشيعون بان الاشجار تموت واقفه . كلام شعارات . تموت واقفه او راكعه او منبطحه . ماتت والسلام , انتهت , لا قيمه لها . ستتحول الى خشب او وقود ولن تثمر . وتسأل العم همنجواى صاحب العباره الشهيره : من الممكن سحق الانسان .. لكن هزيمته غير ممكنه " بالذمه ده كلام ؟" فما الذى يبقى من الانسان بعد السحق ؟ ايرقص وهو ينزف ؟ ايضحك وهو تحت الاقدام ؟ ايرفع اصبعيه بعلامه النصر وهو مهزوم كما يفعل حكام العالم المتخلف هاتفين : انتصرنا انتصرنا . واذا تجاوزت هذا كله , فيم نفسر نهايتك يا عم همنجواى ؟ فى تصورى .. الانتحار موقف شجاع نبيل , امام حياه مزعجه فمن النبل ان ترحل عندما تريد . لان الاوغاد لا ينتحرون , انما يفرون من السفن الغارقه ويتشبث الاغبياء بالسفينه ويغوصون معها ويوصفون بعد ذلك باالابطال . بينما يفر الاوغاد بالغنيمه ليواصلوا فسادهم وافسادهم من مواقع اخرى . هم الذين قالوا " اذا جالك الطوفان حط ابنك تحت رجليك " ويلوك البسطاء شعاراتهم القديم
, الوطن . المقاومه . التراب . التصدى مع انه لم يعد هناك ما يستحق شرف المقاومه بعد ان باعوا الوطن وكل ما يمكن بيعه , القضيه , الارض , حتى مواقعكم الفقيره !!

[Kenneth Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very dark novel that plumbs the profound sense of dispossession that many Nubians feel since their homeland was flooded by the Aswan High Dam.

[Karim Fareed · Rating 2 out of 5]

بداية من الفصل الثانى تبدأ متعة الحكى والحكايات واللغة السهلة الممتنعة على الكثيرين البسيطة السلسة بيد الكاتب الذى عجنها على مهل ليخرج لنا رغيف خبز طازج وسط جوع الحكاية أو سأقول الحكايات المعلقة بين ماضى القرية النوبية الغارقة ووحشية القاهرة وشوارعها وطيبتها وقسوتها فى عيون الطفل النوبى الهارب من بلاد يحبها ركضا وراء أحلام بعيدة تكسرت فوق صخرة الواقعيه والطبقية والجوع.

[ضحى · Rating 1 out of 5]

لو كان فيه تقييم بالسالب كنت عملته
ندمانة ع الوقت اللي ضيعته في قراءتها