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Naguib Mahfouz

Egyptian writer (1911–2006)

Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic: نجيب محفوظ‎ Nagīb Maḥfūẓ, IPA: [næˈɡiːb mɑħˈfuːzˤ]; December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian writer, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Naguib Mahfouz, 1990s

Quotes

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  • Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.
  • You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
    • Cited in: Michael J. Gelb (1996) Thinking for a change: discovering the power to create, communicate and lead. p. 96
  • God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.
    • Attributed to Naguib Mahfouz in: Thorntize (2009) The Handbook of Wisdom and Delight. p. 121
  • According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.
    • Naguib Mahfouz in: Gary Dexter (2010) Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective Form Amis to Zola. p. 226
  • It was amazing that in this country where people allowed emotion to guide their politics they approached love with the precision of accountants.
    • Mahfouz (1957) Sugar Street
  • It is something worth picking from the thrash-can the alluring experience of the working days.
    • Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.

Khufu's Wisdom (1939)

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  • Monra recited this prayer with an unsteady voice. His eyes flowed with hot tears that trickled down his thin and drawn cheeks. They wet his hoary beard, as he raised his aged head, looking with emotion upon the pallid face of his wife, confined to her childbed.
  • My lord, our immortal philosopher Kagemni, vizier to King Huni, says that patience is man's refuge in times of despair, and his armor against misfortunes.
  • Patience allows ministers and obedient subjects to bear great tribulations-but the greatness of kings is in overcoming calamities, not enduring them. For this reason, the gods have compensated them for their want of patience with an abundance of power.
  • My lord, Your Divine Majesty! Why differentiate your lofty self from the people of Egypt, as one would the head from the heart or the soul from the body? You are, my lord, the token of their honor, the mark of their eminence, the citadel of their strength, and the inspiration for their power. You have endowed them with life, glory, might, and happiness. In their affection there is neither humiliation nor enslavement; but rather, a beautiful loyalty and venerable love for you, and for the homeland.
  • And of what value is the life of an individual? It equals not a single dry tear to one who looks to the far future and the grand plan. For this I would be cruel without any qualms. I would strike with an iron hand, and drive hundreds of thousands through hardships-not from stupidity of character or despotic egotism.

Rhadopis of Nubia (1943)

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  • She is beauty herself, Your Majesty. She is an irresistible temptation, a desire that cannot be controlled. The philosopher Hof, who is one of her closest friends, has remarked quite correctly that the most dangerous things a man can do in his life is to set eyes upon the face of Rhadopis.
  • A look of vehemence appeared on the king's face. "Is it right that Pharao should yield to the will of the people?

Midaq Alley (1947)

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  • Abbas now marveled at the strength of love, its power and its strange magic. He thought it right that God had created mankind capable of love and then left the task of developing life to the fertility of love.
    • Page 37
  • He [Kirsha] was a narcotics peddler and accustomed to doing his business under a veil of darkness. Normal life had eluded him and he had become a prey to perversions.
    • Page 45
  • He was, in fact, a veritable crouching tiger, willing to cringe and fawn until he mastered his adversary, and woe to anyone he did master! Experience had taught him that this gentleman and others like him were enemies with whom must be friendly. They were, as he put it, useful devils.
    • Page 66
  • Satan finds the doors of youth an easy entrance and he slips in both secretly and openly to spread his havoc. We should do all we can do to prevent the doors of youth opening to him and keep them tightly closed. Just think of elderly men to whom age has given the keys of respectability. What would be the situation if we were to see them deliberately opening these doors and calling out in invitation to the devil?
    • Page 94
  • It's fantastic the way these young men act. Why, they scarcely have a penny to their names, yet they see no reason why they shouldn't get married and populate the whole alley with children who get their food from garbage carts.
    • Page 139
  • The barber is young and Mr. Alwan is old; the barber is of the same class as Hamida and Mr. Alwan is not. The marriage of a man like Alwan to a girl like your daughter is bound to bring problems which will make her unhappy.
    • Page 149
  • If money is the aim and object of those who squabble for power, then there is clearly no harm in money being the objective of the poor voters.
    • Page 151
  • Kirsha thought of Hitler as the world's greatest bully; indeed his admiration for him stemmed from what he heard of his cruelty and barbarity. He wished him success, viewing him like those mythical bravados of literature Antar and Abu Zaid.
    • Page 152
  • What hopeless wretches we are. Our country is pitiful and so are the people. Why is it that the only time we find a little happiness is when the world is involved in a bloody war? Surely it's only the devil who has pity on us in this world.
    • Page 247
  • Some consider that such tragedies afflicting apparently blameless people are signs of revengeful justice, the wisdom of which is beyond the understanding of most people. So you will hear them say that if the bereaved father, for example, thought deeply, he would realize his loss was just a punishment for some sin either he or his forebears committed. Yet surely God is more just and merciful than to treat the innocent as the guilty...
    • Page 272

The Harafish (1977)

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  • He and Raifa each lived in hell, in a world of tedium.
    • p. 29
  • Why do people laugh, dance in triumph, feel recklessly secure in positions of power? Why do they not remember the true place in the scheme of things and their inevitable end?
    • p. 272
  • [....] was struck by the idea of a woman's weakness is her emotions, and that her relationships with men should be rational and calculated. Life is precious, with vast possibilities, limitless horizons. Love is nothing more than a blind beggar, creeping around the alleyways.
    • p. 236
  • In the Harafish, dreams are carried on the shoulders of ordinary people.
  • The Harafish is a reflection of the eternal struggle between good and evil.
  • The Harafish is a labyrinth where the paths of the lowly and the noble intertwine.

Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985)

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  • You will never accuse me of meekness hereafter, Father, for I am swept by a sacred desire, strong as the northern winds, a desire to know the truth and record it, as you did in the prime of your youth.
  • [...Life] is a sky laden with clouds of contradictions.
    • pg. 27
  • the priests are swindlers” and the “temples are brothels, and there is nothing they hold sacred but their carnal desires.
    • pg. 107
  • They think my God and I are defeated. But he never betrays not does he accept defeat.
    • pg.142

About Naguib Mahfouz

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  • He has this style that goes very quickly through generations, giving little cameo portraits of people and sort of bringing it all together in a very exciting way.
    • Rosario Ferré interview in Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out by Donna Marie Perry (1993)
  • [Mahfouz's fiction allowed readers the] rare privilege of entering a national psychology, in a way that thousands of journalistic articles or television documentaries could not achieve.
  • Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian novelist who was the first Arabic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and who was often considered the greatest writer in the Arab world... lived his entire life in Cairo, which provided the inspiration and backdrop for almost all of his writing... He set most of his works in the ancient Islamic quarter of Cairo, with its mosques and serpentine alleys teeming with shopkeepers, metalsmiths, government workers, peasants, prostitutes and thieves. His vibrant novels portraying life at every level of society were often likened to those of such other writers of urban social realism as Charles Dickens, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola.
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