national identity, that is, the transformation of the downtown into a modern stage and the experience of social contest as a counterplay occurring in this space. In short, I will read her novel as a textual reclaiming of the downtown for purposes of recovering the nationalist project as the natural inheritor of the project of modernity.
Qit‘a min Urubba : Playing on the Gaze
As a useful point of departure, recall Arjun Appadurai’s idea that the produc- tion of a neighborhood is also the act of creating a frame within which social action occurs. It is also, as he notes, an inherently colonizing act, as it requires the assertion of power over “potentially chaotic” or “rebellious” spaces.9 Using this geographic frame as the primary historical lens in the novel, Radwa ‘Ashur’s male narrator vacillates between a sense of nostalgia for the downtown during his child- hood in Cairo in the 1930s and 1940s and a sense that the space, conceived by Isma‘il Pasha as the emblem of a modern Egypt and owned by a class of foreign, urban elite, was always (at least until it was Egyptianized by Nasser in the 1950s), an “occupied” space that never reflected the interests of the varied classes in Egypt. The principal protagonist through which the history of this area is filtered intro- duces himself as the “looker” or the “gazer” (al-nazir),10 who we learn comes of age during the demonstrations in the years leading up to the revolution. Playing on the identity of the author and narrator as both actors and spectators in Wust al-Balad’s history, the narrator states, “In this novel I am the Gazer (al-nazir). This name is not what my parents chose for me and it is not my nickname by which people call me. I am the “gazer” because my concern is to “gaze.” I impart across my novel what I’ve viewed with my own eyes and my heart, that is what I’ve seen and what I’ve come to understand through insight.”11
The Gazer in her novel recalls Timothy Mitchell’s objective modern spectator—the subject for whom Western modernity-as-exhibit was designed. This spectator, for ‘Ashur, is the Egyptian middle-class subject, and it is through his personal memories that ‘Ashur is then able to integrate the lesser-told stories of wealth accumulation among Cairo’s foreign elite and their collaboration with the aristocratic classes that would largely come to decide Cairo’s course of devel- opment. The idea of the narrator as “gazer” also plays on the idea of the colonial gaze. Here ‘Ashur reverses the notion of the colonizer as the one authorized to “gaze” and uses her narrator as the native Egyptian gazing back, reclaiming and reinserting the Egyptian experience under colonial occupation.
Yet the narrator also questions the authority of the gaze by suggesting that the novel is not meant to be a historical chronicle presenting documented facts, but rather it is a subjective, personal account of one man’s relationship to this neighborhood. Later in the work, as the narrator reflects on what he has tried
النتائج (
العربية) 1:
[نسخ]نسخ!
الهوية الوطنية، فتحول وسط المدينة إلى مرحلة حديثة وتجربة المسابقة الاجتماعية counterplay التي تحدث في هذا الفضاء. وباختصار، اقرأ روايتها كاستصلاح نصية من وسط المدينة لأغراض استعادة المشروع القومي كوريث طبيعي للمشروع للحداثة.قيتع مين أوروبا: اللعب على غض البصرAs a useful point of departure, recall Arjun Appadurai’s idea that the produc- tion of a neighborhood is also the act of creating a frame within which social action occurs. It is also, as he notes, an inherently colonizing act, as it requires the assertion of power over “potentially chaotic” or “rebellious” spaces.9 Using this geographic frame as the primary historical lens in the novel, Radwa ‘Ashur’s male narrator vacillates between a sense of nostalgia for the downtown during his child- hood in Cairo in the 1930s and 1940s and a sense that the space, conceived by Isma‘il Pasha as the emblem of a modern Egypt and owned by a class of foreign, urban elite, was always (at least until it was Egyptianized by Nasser in the 1950s), an “occupied” space that never reflected the interests of the varied classes in Egypt. The principal protagonist through which the history of this area is filtered intro- duces himself as the “looker” or the “gazer” (al-nazir),10 who we learn comes of age during the demonstrations in the years leading up to the revolution. Playing on the identity of the author and narrator as both actors and spectators in Wust al-Balad’s history, the narrator states, “In this novel I am the Gazer (al-nazir). This name is not what my parents chose for me and it is not my nickname by which people call me. I am the “gazer” because my concern is to “gaze.” I impart across my novel what I’ve viewed with my own eyes and my heart, that is what I’ve seen and what I’ve come to understand through insight.”11The Gazer in her novel recalls Timothy Mitchell’s objective modern spectator—the subject for whom Western modernity-as-exhibit was designed. This spectator, for ‘Ashur, is the Egyptian middle-class subject, and it is through his personal memories that ‘Ashur is then able to integrate the lesser-told stories of wealth accumulation among Cairo’s foreign elite and their collaboration with the aristocratic classes that would largely come to decide Cairo’s course of devel- opment. The idea of the narrator as “gazer” also plays on the idea of the colonial gaze. Here ‘Ashur reverses the notion of the colonizer as the one authorized to “gaze” and uses her narrator as the native Egyptian gazing back, reclaiming and reinserting the Egyptian experience under colonial occupation.Yet the narrator also questions the authority of the gaze by suggesting that the novel is not meant to be a historical chronicle presenting documented facts, but rather it is a subjective, personal account of one man’s relationship to this neighborhood. Later in the work, as the narrator reflects on what he has tried
يجري ترجمتها، يرجى الانتظار ..