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Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture and Empire

2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/complitstudies.50.2.0375

1528-4212

Marlé Hammond,

This monograph about the way Egypt's unique brand of pre– and post– WWII cosmopolitanism has been represented in Arabic and Hebrew fictional narratives is divided into three parts. The first, “Colonial Anxieties and Cosmopolitan Desires,” focuses on readings of Alexandrian novelists Edwar al-Kharrat and Ibrahim Abdel Meguid; the second, “Counterpoint New York,” analyses the autobiographical fictional films of the late Alexandrian filmmaker Youssef Chahine; and the third, “A Mobile Levant,” discusses two Israeli novels, Yitzhaq Gormezano Goren's Alexandrian Summer and Ronit Matalon's The One Facing Us. Note that this last title, which is set primarily in Cairo, is the only headlined work that is not set, directly or indirectly, against the backdrop of Alexandria. Alexandria dominates here, and one wonders if Deborah Starr chose to feature Egypt rather than Alexandria in the title of her book in order to accommodate her chapter on Matalon. The subtitle, too, is perhaps too broad, for the book is almost entirely about literary texts and literary interpretations of filmic texts, and although the author situates this body of literature within its colonial contexts, and although these contexts are foregrounded in the works she analyses, the scope of her study is not as broad and multidisciplinary as its subtitle would suggest.The strength of Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt is its original observations about its core primary texts. Starr argues, for example, that whereas in City of Saffron (1985), al-Kharrat represents his native Alexandrian community primarily as a “binary” of mostly working-class Muslims and Copts that coalesces in order to fight off British occupation, in that novel's sequel, Girls of Alexandria (1990), al-Kharrat constructs a more porous and multifaceted identity for Alexandrians that includes and in some sense embraces cosmopolitan elements of the population which are compromised by their association with the occupier. Starr sets up, in other words, an interesting point of comparison between the two novels, which would initiate a dialogue with an informed reader. Similarly, in the chapter on Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, she suggests that his portraiture of the cosmopolitan city in No One Sleeps in Alexandria (1996) is inherently antinostalgic: the novel represents “not an idealized model of coexistence, but rather a cosmopolitan, pluralist nationalism forged through interethnic conflict” that is “uncoupled from anti-colonial sentiment” (60). Given that the novel is constructed around a sympathetic relationship between two railway workers—one Muslim and one Copt—this cynical undercurrent is not necessarily readily transparent.The most intriguing if problematic section of the book, and the one that serves as the focus of this review, is that which deals with Youssef Chahine's autobiographical quartet Alexandria … Why? (1978), An Egyptian Story (1982), Alexandria Again and Forever (1989), and Alexandria … New York (2004). This chapter lends coherence to the monograph in the sense that it serves as a transition to the section of the book treating Hebrew-language fictional reminiscences of Jewish life in cosmopolitan Egypt. This is because whereas Jewish characters in Abdel Meguid and al-Kharrat are mentioned only in passing, Starr argues that in Chahine's films “Jews are not merely part of cosmopolitan society—they represent its primary, essential component.” (86, emphasis in original). Because the term “cosmopolitan” has historically been employed as a code word for “Jew” in some forms of antisemitic discourse, she finds an “uneasy ambivalence” in this identification of Jews with cosmopolitanism even if Chahine's portrayals of Jews are meant to “dislodge” misconceptions (87). Starr does make some interesting observations about particular aspects of the films and offer some good insights, but her argument in this chapter is forced and ultimately unsubstantiated. Jews hardly figure in the story planes of the second and third of the autobiographical films, and in the fourth (which I have not yet seen in its entirety), it seems to be American support for the state of Israel, rather than Jewish cosmopolitanism, that figures as a central theme. Chahine's reference to Jewish artists George Gershwin and Woody Allen in An Egyptian Story (90) is rather thin evidence to prop up her overarching theory: there are many reasons to pay homage to these artists in the evocation of the city of New York, and one should not reduce them to their Jewish background, even if snippets of the dialogue would encourage such a reduction. Moreover, although she devotes a section of her introduction to the term “cosmopolitanism” (10–15), it is not always clear which of the terms' connotations she is using as her working definition. She explains that some scholars use it “to describe cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity amongst resident populations in urban environments,” while others, namely anthropologists, “tend to focus on the cosmopolitan subject—a person or group with multiple, flexible affiliations” (10). There are important distinctions here: while it may be true that Jews in Alexandria … Why? are somehow representative of diversity in Alexandrian society, it is not the case that individual Jewish characters are uniformly portrayed as cosmopolitan subjects. Whereas the character of Sarah Sorel, as a Jewish member of a nonsectarian secular leftist underground who gets romantically entangled and has a baby with one of its Muslim members, most certainly represents such a cosmopolitan subject, her brother David begins the film as a proper cosmopolitan, that is, as a member of a close-knit gang of multiethnic and multisectarian Alexandrian school friends, and later forsakes his cosmopolitanism for Zionism, here portrayed as a form of parochial nationalism. Moreover, while it may be true that the extras playing ultra-orthodox Jews who accompany Yehia on his boat journey into the New York harbor, unconvincingly and hilariously costumed “in traditional Eastern European garb” (87), represent cosmopolitanism in its general sense of “urban diversity,” their appearance on screen as a group entity and their seemingly uncompromised devotion to their sect contrasts sharply with the character of Yehia and his own unique combination of multifarious affiliations. What Starr fails to acknowledge is that in these autobiographical fictions, it is Yehia—the Hollywood-musical-loving, Arabic Hamlet- reciting Levantine Christian first-generation Egyptian (i.e., the character identified with Chahine himself)—who emerges as the ultimate cosmopolitan subject.Unfortunately the monograph has not been properly proofread, which sometimes makes for a halting read. On page 26 of the introduction, for example, the Arabic word for Alexandria in the Arabic versions of the titles of two of Chahine's films (Alexandria … Why? and Alexandria … New York) is mistransliterated as “Iskadariyya.” This same mistake is repeated when the films are listed again on page 75 and in the filmography on page 190. There are many other spelling mistakes (e.g. “Stocisim” for “Stoicism,” and “Malcomson” for “Malcolmson,” p. 11; “Alacalay” for “Alcalay,” p. 25; “Lawerence” for “Lawrence,” p. 76; “Reifenstahl” for “Riefenstahl,” pp. 80, 196; “Bourgiba” for “Bourguiba,” p. 137; “Nai'la' for Na'ila,” p.147) and typos (e.g. “to quite the din,” p.59; “to endorsed Islamic leaders,” p. 61). Surely every manuscript contains lingering errors, but one would expect fewer in a book in the prestigious Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures series.On the positive side it must be acknowledged that the author consistently animates her primary sources by posing interesting questions and engaging with the various controversies and debates they have inspired. In fact, her treatments of works that are peripheral to her main subjects (such as Alaa Al Aswany's novel The Yacoubian Building, 43–46, Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff's essay entitled “Generation of Levantines,” 134–39, and Nadia Kamel's documentary House Salad, 147–50) may be worth consulting in their own right. I would recommend this book, therefore, to those seeking interpretative readings of the literary works and filmic texts it discusses; furthermore, as it is rather well researched, it should provide useful references for social and cultural historians.