The Literary Life of Cairo: One Hundred Years in the Heart of the City by Samia Mehrez

Author:Samia Mehrez
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, pdf
Published: 2010-12-20T16:24:27+00:00

Women in the City

This section brings together literary representations of women in the city from different class and social backgrounds whose multiple roles are defined and shaped by the space they occupy or strive to inhabit in the city. The numerous roles that women play, as mothers, lovers, artists, house cleaners, prostitutes, students, and professionals are not uniform or identical in their constraints or limitations but rather, are conditioned to a great extent by the social space and context, that is, class affiliation, family background, and urban experience in general, of the women themselves. As one reads these representations, one cannot help but see the extent to which they unsettle preconceived ideas and stereotypes that have come to be attached to women specifically from Arab countries. Given that the representations of women in the city also span more than one hundred years, we are able to trace changes in the space accorded to women across the social spectrum. Similarly, at a synchronic level, we can discern the wide range of positions and possibilities that are available to women in the city at one and the same time. Through the experiences of these different women, readers will encounter different faces of Cairo that have everything to do with these women’s locations within the city.

One of the fascinating and quite exceptional representations of a practically extinct role that was played by women for centuries is to be found in Tawfiq al-Hakim’s 1933 The Return of the Spirit. The story of the cultivated singer, Maestra Labiba Shakhla, an almeh, who frequented the narrator’s family, is reconstructed from the memory of a six-year-old child, Mohsin, who represents, to a great extent, the author himself as a child. Little Mohsin’s mother had seen Maestra Labiba Shakhla at the wedding reception of one of her relatives and was “immediately taken by that famous artiste’s manners and decorum, modesty and taste.” Even though Labiba’s fame name, ‘Shakhla,’ evokes playfulness and erotica, the Maestra is invited to the family home and becomes a regular 247

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member of the household entertainment and animated evenings of music, song, storytelling, and cuisine. Maestra Labiba’s story is of great significance for several reasons. First, the very fact that she is a family guest represents an important statement about the status of such cultivated women artistes, not to mention the status of art in general, so much so that six-year-old Mohsin is allowed to partake of the Maestra’s presence and her accomplishment and is influenced by her talent and humor in storytelling. Indeed, it is common knowledge that Tawfiq al-Hakim’s distinguished career as a man of letters was inspired by encounters with artistes like Labiba Shakhla who shaped his imagination as they did little Mohsin’s in The Return of the Spirit, leaving a definitive imprint on both the character in the novel and the author himself, whose career veered from that of a public prosecutor to that of a brilliant playwright, novelist, essayist, and leading public intellectual figure.

The

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