The Coffee House by Naguib Mahfouz

The Coffee House by Naguib Mahfouz

Egyptian Fiction

Original title – قشتمر (رواية)

Translator – Raymond Stock

Source – Personal copy

I have read a few other books by Mahfouz over the years. He is a writer whose books are widely available in English and are also widely translated. He is best known for the Cairo trilogy, which I intend to read early in 2027 if anyone is interested in joining me in reading the epic novel that earned him the Nobel Prize. With Mookse and Gripes doing an episode on him in 2027, I have time try and read as many as I can. This is a book from later in his career. It was his last novel, but not the last book he wrote. So far, from the other books I have read by him, he always captures the vibe of his country so well, and he has great insight into relationships. Also, here, I felt this is a microcosm of the country for the five young boys who grow to be men in this book.

Sadiq Safwan lived in a house blessed with love, harmony, and a stable marital life. As an only child, he was favored with every sort of care but his adolescent awakening was considered a secret that must be avoided. At puberty, with neither a teacher nor a helper, he abandoned his piety.

“Marriage is the only cure for this,” he once told us. “But

when will that come?”

Sadiq loved his parents he was not afraid of them: Tahir Ubayd was like him in this. Safwan Effendi al-Nadi began to escort his son to Friday prayers at the Sidi al-Kurdi mosque.

“Didn’t your father’s mustache poke those praying on either side of him in the eye?” Tahir teased Sadiq after we’d waited for his return.

Sadig’s father never stopped pushing him to work hard and settle into the right position, for only that would save him from a future of poverty.

Sadig gets out of his poor background

The title refers to a local coffee house near where the five main characters in the book all went to school. They all came to the school from different places in Cairo. So when they grow up, they are, in ways, on opposite sides at times, but still have regular meetups at the coffee house. Ismel is very clever and, maybe in a way, a disappointment in his life, but devout and works in publishing. Opposite to this is Tahir, a man from a low-class background, but not religious, who loves poetry.  Hamada is a lawyer when he grows up. Sadig is a middle-of-the-road person who runs a factory and is married. Then there is our narrator, and we have very few clues about him. For me, he was maybe Mahfouz himself; he spent time in coffee houses. What happens is the events of the middle years of the twentieth century, from World War II to the rise of the muslim brotherhood. I loved how it showed how these five boys who met as seven-year-olds and managed to stick together through adulthood, each having their own paths and views.

Ismail Qadri was more or less our leader. That was his right due to his academic excellence, an undeniable distinction. He had a special status among the teachers, not to mention an air of excitement due to his sexual caprices. Since his reaching puberty, his mother had kept a special watch on him, so he lost the opportunities that the roof terrace had offered. Thus he transferred his instinct to the forest of fig trees, into which he lured the daughters of street vendors. Nonetheless, he persisted in his piety like Sadig Safwan, stuffing his storehouse of information with many things he learned from his mother on the afterlife and the torture of the grave. He sustained his fervor by picturing the image of God.

Ismail is the most well written character i felt he must been some Mahfouz knew well

I was so happy when I found this last year, as I had read a Mahfouz last year and had only a couple on my TBR pile, so this is his final novel for me, and it’s a personal book. I see the narrator as Mahfouz and the other characters as people he has known. I am not quite sure if each character is one person or various friends from the many traditional coffee houses he used to go to.One in particular is the model for the cafe in the book, and it is still kept as it was in Mahfouz’s time for people to visit. He has also shown how turbulent the years have been for Egypt and how the locals have coped with it. Have you read any books by Mahfouz? If so, do you have a favourite? If you are after a Proust-like book about Cairo in the mid century, this is the book for you