Novel
Unforgettable Days
أيام لا تُنسى
- Year
- 2018
- Places
- A village in the Giza countryside · al-Hussein and al-Ghuriya · Cairo
- Period
- From the era of the tarboosh and the village omda to the 1952 revolution
Dedication
إلى زوجتي الراحلة..
زهرة الماضي وطيف الحاضر..
كنتِ الأم والأخت والحبيبة، وبرحيلكِ فقدتُ كل هؤلاء..
To my late wife,
flower of the past and shadow of the present.
You were the mother, the sister and the beloved, and with your passing I lost them all.
About the novel
A photograph from the old days and a small wooden box are all that Ali has left of his grandfather Haroun, “the omda”. From his old age in Cairo, Ali recovers his childhood in the grandfather’s house: the guest hall, the fields and the waterwheel, grandmother Hanem and her tales, the uncles and their quarrels, outings to al-Hussein and al-Ghuriya, until 1952 arrives, hereditary village headmen are abolished, and the grandfather dies. A novel about memory and loss, dedicated to the author’s late wife, “flower of the past and shadow of the present”.
From its pages
Unforgettable Days
Unforgettable Daysروحه في الأرض، يحبها مثلما يحبنا، وإذا تفشت الدودة في أعواد القطن سنة من السنين أو خابت زرعة من الزراعات، كان الحزن يخيم عليه ولا نستطيع ساعتها الاقتراب منه. خمسون سنة والأرض عينه وعافيته، حتى أصابه التعب.
His soul was in the land; he loved it as he loved us. If the worm spread through the cotton stalks one year, or a planting failed, grief settled over him and we could not go near him. Fifty years the land was his eye and his strength, until weariness overtook him.
Unforgettable Daysانفجرت معه، بكيت لما بكى.. فلم أشاهده من قبل مهزومًا على هذا النحو، ولا دار في خاطري على الإطلاق أنه يعرف الألم ويتوسل إليه بالبكاء كالصغار أمثالنا!
I broke down with him; I wept when he wept. I had never seen him defeated like that, and it had never crossed my mind that he knew pain, or pleaded with it by weeping like us little ones.
Unforgettable Daysوبرحيلي وبموت أمي وقبلها أبي، انقطعت رائحتنا من البيت.
With my leaving, and my mother's death, and my father's before her, our scent was cut off from the house.
Unforgettable Daysلا إشارة ولا اسم يدل على اللوكاندة، لكني أعرفها مثلما أعرف كف يدي وبِتُّ فيها ليال كثيرة، فعلى مدار ثلاثة أجيال لم نكن ننزل إلا بها.
No sign or name marks the hotel, but I know it as I know the palm of my hand; I spent many nights there, for across three generations we lodged nowhere else.
Unforgettable Daysنادى عليها كما لو أنها موجودة معنا في الغرفة، سكرات وهلاوس، ربما! لكن الأمر بالنسبة إليه لم يكن كذلك، بدا وكأنه يراها بالفعل، أو في أدنى حد يشعر بها عن طريق آخر غير طريق البصر والعيون.
He called out to her as though she were there with us in the room. The throes of death, hallucinations, perhaps. But not for him: he seemed to see her truly, or at the very least to sense her by some way other than sight and eyes.
Unforgettable Daysالذي جذبني بحق هو مسكن الجد، فرغم أنه مجرد بناية بالطوب اللَّبِن، بناية لا معنى لها تطل علينا من وراء الباب الخشب، إلا إنها أعطتني أول درس في التساؤل والفضول!
What truly drew me was the grandfather's quarters: though it was only a mud-brick building, a meaningless building peering at us from behind the wooden door, it gave me my first lesson in questioning and curiosity.
Words of a narrator or a character belong to the novel's world, not to the author's personal views.