Sample Solution

xpressed varying degrees of dissatisfaction and disgust with the state of Arab society; one thinks of Qabbani’s “Khubz wa-hashish wa qamar” (Bread, Hashish and moonlight, 1965), Aduni’s “Marthiyyat al-ayyam alhadirah” (Elegy for the present days, 1958), and Khalil Hawi’s “al-A’zar ‘am 1962” (Lazarus 1962, 1965). In the same novel from which we have already cited an extract, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra once again provides us with a clear expression of views on this subject. Parenthetically, I might point out that Jabra’s prediction for setting the multinarrator technique serve to make his novels a gold mine of views on a whole variety of subjects connected with life in the modern Arab world. In the current instance, we are dealing with the main character of this novel, Wali Mas’ud, the Palestinian who emerges from a period in an Israeli prison during which he has been tortured. In an unforgettable passage he describes the darker side of Arab society at this time:
“I saw my homeland for which I had been prepared to go through the very tortures of Hell itself applying those very same tortures to anyone who fell into the hands of the people in authority. From the Arab Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean I heard a cry, I heard weeping and the sound of sticks and plastic houses. Capitals and casbas, the valleys below; men in neat civilian suits walking to and fro like a thousand shuttles on a thousand looms, hauling off to the centres of darkness by the tens and hundreds.” 69
The almost sneering use of ‘Abd al-Naseer’s ringing phrase of Arab unity, “from the Arab Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean,” draws attention to the grim side of the life of intellectuals in many countries of the Arab world at this time. Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, al-Karnak (1974), made into a high exploitative film during the heyday of President Sadat’s regime, is just one of many fictional works that portray just how grim such a life could be; 70 others include Munif’s Sharq al-Mutawassit (East of the Mediterranean, 1977; A l’est de la Mediterranee, 1985), Sanaullah
Ibrahim’s Tilka al-Raihah (1966; The Smell of it), and the quartet of novels by the Kuwaiti writer Ismail Fahd Ismail, set in Iraq.