That Smell and Notes From Prison by Sonallah Ibrahim

Author:Sonallah Ibrahim
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Fiction
ISBN: 9780811220620
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Published: 2013-02-19T19:50:13+00:00

Introduction to the 1986 edition of That Smell

The great Yahya Haqqi asked me, when I met him recently at some function or other, whether I remembered his criticism of my first novel, That Smell, just after its publication in 1966. When I said yes, he asked my opinion now, almost two decades later, of what he’d said and of my novel more generally. I’d forgotten almost everything to do with the book. Years had passed since the last time I’d read it. I’m not in the habit of going back to previous work — reading like that bores me when it doesn’t lead to depression. As for Yahya Haqqi’s criticism, I will never forget it.

I’d given the manuscript to a shabby little printer in El Zaher district, during one of those rare moments in the history of modern Egypt when martial law was lifted and a book didn’t require prior approval from the censor before being given to a printer. Officially, at least. In fact, the censor kept his office and his job as before. The only difference was that his door no longer had a sign on it, and the confiscation of books didn’t happen before the printing, but afterward.

Which is what happened to my novel. The printer had hardly finished before the book was seized. I don’t remember if I was summoned to the chief censor’s office or if I went there on my own to complain. In any case, I met the late Talat Khalid — one of the more zealous disciples of the Minister of Information, Abdel Qader Hatem — who had called in some departmental bigwigs to enjoy the spectacle. Khalid had a copy of the confiscated novel in front of him, with the margins of most pages marked in red. He asked me, contemptuously, “Why does the hero refuse to sleep with the prostitute his friend brings him? Is the hero impotent?”

I wasn’t especially interested in arguing the point. I’d managed to rescue a few of the confiscated copies and began distributing them to writer friends and journalists, asking those with some influence to get the novel released. The late Zaki Murad and I went to see Ahmad Hamrush, then editor-in-chief of Ruz al-Yusuf. Hamrush welcomed me very warmly and showed me proofs of the magazine’s new issue, which included a short essay by him on my novel titled “The Language of the Age.” When I told him about the confiscation he was visibly surprised. He picked up the phone and called his friend Hamdi Hafiz in the Information Bureau; he listened for a moment, and then without replacing the receiver he called the magazine’s printer and requested the article be removed.

The news didn’t reach most writers and journalists in time, however. A number of magazines and newspapers published reviews, all while the book reposed in the storehouses of the Ministry of Interior.

Yahya Haqqi was one of those to whom I gave a copy of the book. We’d become acquainted a few months earlier, following my release from prison in the middle of 1964.

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