A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories by Sabry Hafez

A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories by Sabry Hafez

Author:Sabry Hafez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saqi


3. The Text

4. Textual Notes

1 : without saying so explicitly Idris lets us know that they are poor, illiterate or semi-literate women (probably from a poor quarter of Cairo) adhering to the social conventions of their class and background. There is a suggestion too that with this dress they are erecting a fence between themselves and the outside world, creating a situation of self-imposed isolation.

2 : Literally ‘almost’. This is elliptical and presumably means that almost the only thing they had taken from their mother was their height.

3 Note in this paragraph the powerful contrast between the austerity of the surroundings and the sensuality of the women, and also the indication, pointing forward in the story, that they are making something out of nothing.

4 (plural of ) : ‘suitors’. After the repetition of the word strikes a sudden joyful note, but this is quickly muffled.

5 : both are current proverbs and are further indications of the social and cultural background of the characters in the story. (a rephrasing of the proverb means literally that every single bean has someone to evaluate it by , the measure in which fūl beans are sold. The proverb means that everyone, however insignificant, has someone who can appreciate his or her worth. : cf. ‘other half’. ‘here refers to a marriage partner as in , the house where a woman goes to live with her husband. It is expressive of the outlook which conceives of marriage as ‘half of religion’ , as the Prophet called it according to a ḥadīth, providing a framework of balance and order without which a man’s or woman’s faith is incomplete.

6 : ‘monotonously’.

7 : ‘he’s had no experience with a woman’; a standard Arabic rephrasing of the Egyptian Arabic with the same meaning.

8 : i.e. ‘his moustache is just sprouting’; i.e. he's young and naive.

9 : ‘a nice girl [to marry]’.

10 : alternative form of the vocative with modification of the first-person singular pronominal suffix.

11 : ‘it would be shameful’, ‘shame on you’ from root .

12 : ‘giggles’.

13 : from this sentence we conclude that she had just had a bath which in the context implies that she had had sexual intercourse (a full bath being prescribed by Islamic law after intercourse). In the joy of her physical fulfilment she is careless about the conventions which make it taboo to uncover her hair.

14 : ‘paraffin lamp’.

15 : famous Egyptian singers popular throughout the Arab world before Nasser’s era and up to the present day. Umm Kulthūm died in 1975. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb died in 1991.

16 : gift offered by man when proposing marriage. It always takes the form of jewellery corresponding in value to the social status of the couple.

17 : i.e. her second husband, and secondary legitimate concern.

18 Idrīs explores the connotations of the concept of (opposite of recurrently in his writing. Here he appears to be hinting at a radical re-evaluation of moral categories with a hyperbolic example, although the mother’s behaviour could be regarded as merely pragmatic.

19 : ‘the prickly pear’, a kind of cactus.



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