LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

writing the nation… A person scrutinizing [the reply] would sense an inner joy at this communalstyle of life. It might even have been possible to read on their pale faces the glow of asecret happiness at being sick together. They were submitting to one regime, takingthe same medicine and eating the same food. They suffered the same fortune anddestiny… He turned to the invalids stretched out there and said, ‘You must be from thecountry.’… His imagination had sketched a picture of subsistence farmers … He startedsaying to himself, ‘Only a dirt farmer could live like this, no one else. No matter howspacious his house, he will sleep with his wife, children, calf, and donkey colt in asingle room.’ 31These invalids are indeed from the country but, with the exception ofMabruk, they no longer hail from the class of subsistence farmers. In fact, asrecent arrivals to Cairo, they are largely representative of a new urban middleclass; and, taken together, they embody an even wider cross-section of a changingEgyptian society and signify several aspects of the emergent nation-stateapparatus. Hanafi offers a comic revision of the traditional patriarch as petitbourgeoisschoolteacher; Abduh, the engineering student, is representative of anew technocratic class; Salim, the policeman, stands in as the figure of statelaw; and Mabruk’s character suggests the uprooted peasantry’s transition into anurban working class. And while Muhsin foregoes the luxuries of family wealth,inherited by a mother of Turkish descent, to live here with the others, hisliterary studies mark him off as a future member of the intellectual elite. Zanuba,as the displaced peasant woman, is noticeably absent from this communal scene,figuratively if not literally. It is thus difficult to overlook the symbolism of thisrepresentative group introduced as a family of invalids – the nation, evidently, isin need of a cure. And though the household quickly recovers, each of itsmembers, with the possible exception of Muhsin, is plagued by a general level ofincompetence that reinforces this opening impression. In this light, the doctor’sinability to comprehend his patients’ curious behaviour as anything but theproduct of peasant life suggests, paradoxically, that the nation’s ills are rooted inan otherwise non-existent sense of solidarity. And it furthermore foreshadowswhat Muhsin will derive from his later encounter with and musings about thepeasantry: a traditional image of unity as the basis for a new national community.But it is Saniya who first emerges as Muhsin’s muse; and as her effect on himreveals, without that clearly defined basis, the unity that now exists among themembers of the household is necessarily a frail one.The ‘folks’, as the male members of the house affectionately refer to themselves,are all infatuated with Saniya, but Muhsin is the first to meet her. Oneday while in the company of his Aunt Zanuba, who is on friendly terms withSaniya, Muhsin is introduced to her as a singer; and because Saniya plays thepiano, she immediately invites him in. Although the propriety of this invitation— 147 —www.taq.ir