Al-Balda al-Ukhra: a meta-text unveiled.

• Author: Mikhail, Mona N.
• Position: Novel, meaning the other village

Ibrahim Abd al-Maguid, a rising star on the Arab literary scene, was awarded the American University in Cairo 1996 prize for his novel Al-Balda al-Ukhra (The Other Village), a work that is as moving as it is cerebral, as poignant as it is daring. A tale of epic proportions, heavily allegorical, it is narrated in the first person. A tour de force, this work will prove to be a landmark in contemporary Arabic fiction. In January of 1997, Abd al-Maguid was recognized for La Ahad Yanam fi al-Iskandariyya (No One Sleeps in Alexandria), by receiving Jai'zat al-Dawla al-Tashji'yya. Writing about the Gulf, the life experiences as well as the seismic changes that are challenging this pivotal part of the world have been successful in Abd al-Rahman Munif's Mudun al-Milh, (Cities of Salt) a classic of the genre. Others have written memorable works; for example Gamal al-Ghitani, Yusuf al-Qaid, and Iqbal Barraka.

Abd al-Maguid, however, gives us a tale of mythic proportions couched in the human drama of the daily life of hundreds of "foreign nationals," or those euphemistically labeled as "guest workers" throughout the Gulf countries. Although there have been numerous sociological studies conducted in the past decades attempting to asses the status of foreign workers, their impact on the host societies, as well as on their own, they have not told enough about the inner workings, and true suffering of these people. Aside from the vital remittances they transfer to their respective countries, which in some cases constitute the backbone of these third world economies, not enough research has been undertaken to measure how the individual is impacted by such an experience.

Ibrahim Abd al-Maguid's Al-Balda al-Ukhra is an extraordinary document that sociologists, anthropologists as well as political scientists, will, I am sure, find most useful. This richly textured narrative is delivered in the most denuded of prose. The factual yet elegant language is delivered in a naturalistic mode that often surprises us with its gripping poeticness. Abd al-Maguid, in recreating this imaginary yet so real world, carves for himself a lasting place amongst leading Arab writers. In three hundred and eighty seven pages divided into thirty chapters printed on butcher's paper (thick) with an unassuming white and blue cover with a sketch of two hands extended to each other but not touching, one holding what could be an apple, this is a work that was first published in London in 1991 and was dedicated to 'Fatima.' We encounter some truly unforgettable characters, witness incredible happenings and are moved by the turmoil and sufferings of this multiracial motley crowd temporarily thrown together for the sole purpose of making enough money to send back remittances to their families and eventually to return to their countries throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe and America.

Edward Said in Beginnings.' Intention and Method states: "A text distributes various textual intentions regularly and on several axes, what unifies these intentions or impulses is something very difficult to generalize about." (p. 220)

This work indeed operates on several axes. However, I believe the pivotal axis for Abd al-Maguid is a burning desire to write. The meta-text is the author's agonizing search for the true self, the confrontation with what every artist/creator undergoes in the quest after the 'holy grail' - the creative impulse. It is in a sense, a Pilgrim's Progress.

Will I become once more a shining surface (mirror)? It is incumbent upon me to know everything about what I witness. To look at details like a well seasoned consumer . . . and begin to write a diary, memoirs, that will render what happens to me, not really happen to me. For memoirs entail a state of consciousness which in turn defeats intuition . . . then I will not be beset with sorrow. If I could only remember who that cunning author is who wrote these words? . . . Ah, all writers are cunning and mostly all readers are not smart enough when they start believing them and proceed to live out lives not their own. A (cold) calculated theft of their precious time and lives, and yet no one complains. It was said that when Goethe wrote The Sufferings of Wherter, hundreds of young romantic Germans committed suicide at a time when Romanticism ruled supreme in Germany, and where Napoleon had previously plundered its youth in war with his armies, yet it was Goethe by means of a small book who decimated the youth of Germany. . . . Lorca's poetry hadn't also saved the soldiers of the Republic, although they had carried them in their pockets next to their hearts. During my last visit to Cairo, Salah Mansour (read Abd al-Sabbur?) he who had piercing eyes was said to have collapsed in his bed after enunciating Hamlet's famous soliloquy.

As soon as he had uttered "to be or not to be" he fell into an eternal sleep. I wonder how many Shakespeare has killed through his handsome Prince in the last five centuries . . . and why should I go that far? I, Ismail Khidr Moussa, who is always searching for the truth and is always behind at grasping reality, I too have been misled by Ahmad Akef and Naguib...