A Son of the Rock

American University in Cairo Press, 2011, 101 p. First published as Qalb al-layl, 1975.

Jafaar Ibrahim Sayyid al-Rawi lives as a pauper in the ruins of his grandfather’s house. The novel consists in the telling of his life story to our (unnamed) narrator who occasionally interjects comments to or asks questions of him. Jafaar seeks advice on the possibility of breaking his grandfather’s will in which his fortune was left to a charitable cause known as a waqf, thereby disinheriting Jafaar. Our narrator tells him a waqf cannot be set aside.

There is a knotty history here. Jafar’s father too had been disinherited when he married someone his father deemed unsuitable. Jafaar was the offspring of that union. In adolescence Jafaar had been taken in by his grandfather, a religious man who desired Jafaar to follow a religious life. He had been content with this till of course his life too strayed off-course. Again it was an attraction to a woman which caused the rift. In the end, though, she had gone back to her Bedouin family leaving Jafaar to try to rebuild his life via the (somewhat unmanly to Jafaar’s mind) profession of singer – background only, his voice being not good enough for a leading role.

Jafaar also becomes involved in a project to found a political party based on a concocted ideology that was “the logical heir of Islam, the French Revolution, and the communist revolution,” again something unlikely to recommend him to a traditionalist grandfather.

His conversation with our narrator wanders over life, religion and philosophy. Jafaar at one point says, “There is no ‘truth and fiction,’ but different kinds of truths that vary depending on the phases of life and the quality of the system that helps us become aware of them.” A contention which literary fiction is well-suited to examine.

Pedant’s corner:- “an id ea” (idea,) dumpster (seems to me a not very Egyptian type of description of a refuse container,) “the truth of the matter is that that man was and continues to be in a period of transition where the instincts and the mind are both present” (the truth of the matter is that man was and continues to be,) “the abolishment of private property” (abolition.) In the Glossary; “the income generated by ….. are aimed at the needy” (income ….. is aimed at.)