That Smell and Notes From Prison (11 page)
“I hope you’ll forget the bad stuff, especially about
Mama Aisha. She’s changed a lot, to the point where now you can’t believe the
bad things she did. She’s the one who insisted on visiting you in Qanatir
prison, both times, and she always asks about you. So I hope you’ll forget the
rest. As for everything else. . . .” From my sister’s letter.
The flash-forward, to which Raauf has assigned
great importance: It is one element in our new vision of reality. An example
from Port Saeed: A. R. is fighting courageously and at the same time we cut
to see him ten years later in different conditions. Another example, from
the correction of man in prison: the torture reaches a certain level, then
stops; five years later, in an ordinary setting, he talks forcibly, calmly,
confidently, and from a place of power; but if the torture had been one tick
more severe, his fate would have been completely different. In a tragedy of
Djamila Bouhired, she is re-imprisoned after liberation. Knowledge of this
at the beginning lends strength.
*******
From
Nouvelle
Critique
, December 1962, Claude Prévost. “The Battle for
Moscow, sixteen years after,” on Aleksandr Bek’s two novels
Volokolamsk Highway
, published in 1944, and
Several Days
, published in
1960.
— If the critic’s theory of “an absence of
conflict” did harm to the theater, it also harmed the novel, pushing it to
refuse a treatment of detail, which critics supposed would lead to
naturalism. . . . (Realism is the organization of detail, which must not be
neglected or bypassed, but rather clarified in general. To neglect details,
with the excuse that they are sordid, is anti-realist. In war, this neglect
becomes a betrayal of realism, for the basis of war is
sordidness.)
April
April 3, shots. The wounding of Louis
Ishaq,
********
then
his death. Peace of mind?
April 9, silent funereal. Afternoon at the gate: a
wonderful wind, with the garden in front of us. The disc of the sun behind the
mountains, a big, perfect, yellow-orange circle, surrounded by gray (those who
criticize abstraction are asses).
I am reading Freud. What he says about sexual
symbols is important. The airplane.
On dreams:
condensation
: the coherence of
parts and elements that have no connection to each other in reality, as in
the paintings of Böcklin — the bells — the visual image (via retrospective
translation).
*
The beginning of the paragraph was written in a different pen and
carefully erased, apparently out of caution, at the time the papers
were taken out of prison. This is the first time criticism of the
regime (despite our political support) is frankly expressed. I also
erased the words indicated by the ellipses in the middle of the
passage.
**
Mustafa Sweif was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Arabic.
The book referred to here is
The
Psychological Bases of Artistic Creativity
, his
Master’s thesis, published by Dar al-Ma‘arif in 1951.
***
I still remember this novel even now when I think about current
events. It had a great influence on me despite the poor translation
published, I believe, in the “One Thousand Books” series. I also
remember my shock at learning that Camus had supported the
tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956.
****
Was I aware, when I copied these lines, of the extent to which
they described our own situation at al-Wahat?
*****
I had the habit of
going after lunch to the remotest spot in the prison’s courtyard,
right up against the outer fence, to escape the noise of the cells
and to have a short siesta. I took a blanket with me and spread it
over the sands, and a towel to cover my face and protect it from
flies. When I woke up, I would go to the cells for some tea and take
it back with me to the fence. I drank it out of a yellow plastic
cup, which I kept clean by washing it regularly with sand. My sister
sent me provisions of Republic-brand tea and since leaving prison I
have never found anything like it in any of the many places I have
traveled. There, by the fence, sometimes refreshed by a humid breeze
that would lift the summer heat, I was able to concentrate and write
several short stories.
******
Adel H. was Adel Hussein — later Vice President of the Work Party
— who was one of the prisoners at al-Wahat and once shared a cell
with me.
*******
It seems that Raauf Mas‘ad, one of our group, wrote a play in
which he used the technique of what he called “a leap into the
future” (the opposite of a flashback). This naïve idea sprang from a
desire to prove ourselves and create “a new vision” — thereby
ignoring, or pretending to ignore the fact that the English writer
J. B. Priestley had already represented his characters as meeting
multiple fates.
“A. R.” is probably Ahmad
Rufa‘i, a leader of the Communist Party and the popular clandestine
resistance to the British in Port Saeed. Along with Abdel Mun‘am
Shatila and Sa‘ad Rahmi, and with the cooperation of several Free
Officers in the entourage of Abdel Nasser, he was able to smuggle
arms into the city by way of Lake Manzala. Resistance operations
inside Port Saeed, culminating in a massive demonstration,
threatened the British position. None of this prevented Rufa‘i’s
arrest and conviction in January 1959. He remained in prison until
he was released in the general amnesty of mid-1964.
********
The release of prisoners finally began in small groups. At the
same time, there were persistent efforts to stop or delay this
operation. April third was set as a day for the release of a few
prisoners and their friends and acquaintances gathered at the prison
gate to say goodbye. Suddenly an officer named Subhi, who had just
arrived in the prison, began acting wildly and started a fight. He
had already alerted the wall sentries and given them the order to
fire at any sign of trouble. They did indeed shoot, at random, and
they hit Louis Ishaq, one of the most prominent Communist
leaders.
Copyright © 1966, 1986, 2003, 2004 by
Sonollah Ibrahim
Translation and introduction copyright ©
2013 by Robyn Creswell
Compilation copyright © 2013 by New
Directions Publishing
All rights reserved. Except for brief
passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review,
no part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
Publisher.
The translator would like to acknowledge
the generous support
of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for
Scholars and Writers
at the New York Public Library.
First published as a New Directions
Paperback (NDP1248) in 2013
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Penguin Books Canada Limited
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ibrahim, Sun‘Allah.
[Tilka al-ra‘ihah. English]
That Smell and Notes From Prison /
Sonollah Ibrahim;
edited and translated by Robyn Creswell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8112-2036-1 (paperbook : alk.
paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8112-2062-0 (e-book)
1. Political prisoners — Egypt — Fiction.
2. Political fiction. I. Creswell, Robyn. II. Ibrahim, Sun’ Allah. Yawmiyat
al-wahat. English. Selections. III. Title.
IV. Title: Notes from prison.
V. Title: That Smell and Notes From Prison.
PJ7838.B7173T513 2013
892.7'36 — dc23
2012032484
New Directions Books are published for
James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing
Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
