(EXAMPLES OF NAGUIB MAHFOUZ’S NOVEL MIDAQ ALLEY AND SIMIN DANESHVAR’S NOVEL SAVASHUN)
Historians tend to use only official documents out of subjective point of view in order to create historical picture truthfully, especially for the analysis of recent events. Researchers turn to fiction only in the absence of more reliable sources. Nevertheless, both literature and history are two forms of self-reflection and self-expression of the society.
Unfortunately, only an exemplary role was assigned to literature in studying the history of modern and contemporary times. But I strongly believe that the new directions of historical thought have to change the attitudes to the source, as far as the artistic image, as a rule, is characterized by accuracy and persuasiveness and it facilitates the perception of the historical past.
For this essay I have chosen two different characters: two women who for one or another reason chose different life positions in response to the events. They are Hamida from Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley and Zari from Simin Daneshvar’s novel Savashun.
Although Egypt and Iran were not directly involved into the World War II, still it is wrong to say that this war has passed them by. During the World War II Iran was occupied by both British and Soviet armies. The country was used by Soviet Union as a corridor for supplying, which ruined the economy of Iran. That left many Iranian people in starvation. Moreover, alike any other war, that one was a fight of politics too and that affected all the Iranian citizens. The Simin Daneshvar shows in her novel Savashun the usual life with the confrontation of political views of everyone, even between spouses. Zari is an average woman who firstly remains silent about the politics because of her fear in contrast to her husband, a radical critic of the current political regime. Using the figure of Zari, the author tells a truthful story which changes as Zari moves from her internal commotion to courage, from impartiality to involvement. Zari’s attitude to the situation is complicated and often poetical. As Simin Dānishvar writes: “time stood still, as if it had gone to sleep under the heavy quilt of the sky”.
Simin Daneshvar through the whole novel tries to explain what happened to those who stood for and against the current regime during the World War II, following only Zari’s way of considering the situation. That’s why the main part of the book is composed by Zari’s everyday scenes because of her way of life. She spends a lot of time at home and worries so hard about her family. Such thoughts usually come to Zari during long sleepless night, worrying about her missed son.
Zari’s story gains a fairy tension because of the complicit world intervenes into her affluent life. Most of her time the main heroine is very quiet, but Zari is a steadfast woman and alive to the world. As we read in Simin Dānishvar’s novel: “She wished the sky would clear up and become a garden with millions of eyes; she wished the trees would open their chattering lips and begin to talk”.
Unlike Zari Hamida from Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley desires something new and different from the Egyptian traditions to become rich and careless. As shows Midaq Alley, the war had a great impact on Egyptian society, especially in the big cities. The war, as the author-eyewitness shows us, forced people of Cairo to neglect formerly strict barriers of class, age, and sex metaphorically as well as literally offering them at the same time unexampled and most welcome opportunities of social rise and creating strong desires.
Actually, desire is the author’s central theme which he shows skillfully in all its forms ranging from the simple wish for material gain and social rise to sexual desire. Unlike Zari, Hamida do not possess strong character to follow the moral rules. Her desire of wealth had led her to the path of prostitute to serve the solders from the US and Great Britain during the last months of the World War II, not valuing her own betrothal and her fiancé, who decided to serve in the army felt under Hamida’s influence. Hamida yearns for a better life. She is able and willing to forget her past for achievement of her main goal. She got a new name – “Titi” – a name which Englishmen and Americans could pronounce easily. Hamida resigned herself to her new reality without any resistance. As Najīb Maḥfūẓ tells: “she realized that he considered her name, like her old clothes, as something to be discarded and forgotten”.
So, you see how the literature can show the persons’ attitude to the events. Zari, who is strongly faithful to her fillings, position and traditional morality, tries to find a real hero to protect her regular life, her family and her country in a wartime; and Hamida, who desires a better life and agrees to everything in order to make another step forward her dream, notwithstanding ideals, morality and family. It doesn’t mean that there are no women like Zari in Egypt or there are no Hamidas in Iran. Both the authors show a real life and choices all the people make in tough times. I must say that Hamida’s behavior and reasoning were those that least convinced me because they felt unusually superficial to me. But each can choose its own path.
Thus, I view literature as neither more nor less than another kind of “soft” source requiring its own methodology but containing much more historical evidence. Literature helps us not only to learn more about varies historical events, but to feel the spirit of that time. Without such spirit our knowledge about the past is merely a collection of dead and dry facts. Authors-witnesses leave us not only description, but also their understanding and interpretation of the events. I’m sure that historians shouldn’t make the conclusions based on the sole novel of any author, but comparison of a couple of works of contemporary authors about the same period of time lets us to form a many-sided vision of history.
Bibliography
Dānishvar, Sīmīn. Savushun: A Novel about Modern Iran. Translated by M. R. Ghanoonparvar. Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1990.
Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Midaq Alley. Translated by Trevor Le Gassick. New York: Anchor Books, 1992.
