About the time the recent Egyptian drama was settling in on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, I came across an article on Egyptian writers and their travails in this deeply censored nation. Among the number of Egyptian writers listed was Ibrahim, who has been at the forefront of challenges to Egypt’s literary censorship, so I opted for this book, the centerpiece of his work.
Zaat is a story of a modern Egyptian wife, a middle class woman of no great thought or talent, it appears, married to Abdel Maguid, a man of no great achievement, and a stereotypically modern, Middle Eastern male chauvinist. He ends up in jail, and Zaat must deal with Egyptian life’s many incongruities – among them trying to gaint recompense for spoiled food she’s been sold.
Interspersed with Zaat’s story are listings Ibrahim has taken from the various news media that, viewed in sequence without time’s diluting effect, depict a corruption of Egyptian society based in overlaps of religion, politics, culture and the influence of European and American businesses.
Ibrahim’s prose – or at least as it’s presented to readers in English by translator Anthony Calderbank – seems wooden, as formally rigid as a bureaucrat’s memos. But underlying this there’s an anger tempered somewhat by a sly, sometimes sarcastic wit. Zaat’s story isn’t an inspiring one, nor is it meant to be – it’s an unvarnished view of modern Egyptian life and what makes it so humdrum.
Clearly, the society Ibrahim reveals – its prejudices, suspicions, external influences and aspirations for the future - are all part of the mix that recently brought down Hosni Mubarak.
It’s import to American, even European readers? This conflation of religion and business that has ruled over and depressed Egyptian government and the lives of most of Egypt’s population could ruin ours as well. To take the U.S.'s current political, social and economic pulse today to the extreme would seem to result in an Americanized version of Ibrahim's Egypt. The way out of this precipitous spiral for the U.S. need not be revolution, but that way out isn't yet clear.