The Dreams

NOTES

1 Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1966), p. 68.

2 After a swift and controversial military proceeding, two men were hanged and eleven others sent to prison for the attempt on Naguib Mahfouz’s life and for plotting against the State. See Raymond Stock, “How Islamist Militants Put Egypt on Trial” (London: The Financial Times, Weekend FT, March 4/5, 1995), p. III.

3 The title is taken from the classic compilation of early Arabic poetry called Kitab al-aghani (The Book of Songs) by Abu Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 967) — no doubt the direct inspiration for Mahfouz’s own work. For al-Isfahani, see Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 32.

4 Dream 206 is found in Naguib Mahfouz, Dreams of Departure, translated from the Arabic and with an Afterword by Raymond Stock (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2007), p. 111. The first volume appeared as The Dreams, translated from the Arabic and with an Introduction by Raymond Stock (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2004). A comprehensive Arabic edition of Mahfouz dreams published to date (including 204–30, which appeared after the author’s death) in Nisf al-dunya magazine and al-Ahram was brought out by Dar El-Shurouk in Cairo as Ahlam fatrat al-naqaha in 2007.

5 See Naguib Mahfouz, Ra’aytu fima yara al-na’im (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1982), pp. 119–52.

6 Fedwa Malti-Douglas, “Mahfouz’s Dreams” in Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition, ed. by Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 126–143. For more on the maqamat of Badi’ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani and Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham by Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, see Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, p. 73. Allen’s translation with commentary of Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham has appeared as A Period of Time (Reading: Garnet, 1993).

7 George Makdisi, in History and Politics in 11th Century Baghdad (Aldershot, Hamps. and Broofield, VT: Variorum, 1990), pp. 35–36.

8 Ibid., pp. II/249–50.

9 Interview with Naguib Mahfouz, June 23, 2004.

10 As quoted by Ian Littlewood in The Rough Guide Chronicle: France (London: Rough Guides Ltd., 2002), p. 296. For an expansion on this theme, see Sarane Alexandrian, Le Surréalisme et le rêve (Paris: Gallimard, 1974).

11 Khufu’s Wisdom (translated by Raymond Stock), Rhadopis of Nubia (translated by Anthony Calderbank), and Kifah Tiba (translated by Humphrey Davies) were all published in hardback by the American University in Cairo Press in 2003, in paperback by Anchor Books in New York in 2005, and by Alfred A. Knopf in an omnibus Everyman’s Library hardcover edition, Three Novels of Ancient Egypt, introduced by Nadine Gordimer (New York, 2007).

12 For a summary and the statements cited, see “Egypt’s Nobel Winner Asks Islamists to Approve Book,” by David Hardaker in The Independent (London), January 28, 2006 (available online).

13 Mohamed Salmawy, “Wijhat Nazar: Hiwarat Najib Mahfuz,” al-Ahram, Cairo, January 23, 2003, p. 12. Mahfouz had expressed similar frustration in an earlier period, where he felt unable to remember his dreams to record them, to Salmawy in “Wijhat Nazar,” al-Ahram, September 12, 2002, p. 12.

14 Mahfouz later suffered at least two more falls, both also in his home — on January 22, 2006, which left a long gash in his forehead, and again on July 16, 2006, causing a cut requiring five stitches on the back of his head in the Police Authority Hospital next door, where he was then held for tests and observation. A few days later, he struck his head in his hospital room in unclear circumstances, after which his condition gradually deteriorated — though the role of this incident, if any, in his decease remains uncertain.

15 Youssef Rakha, “Dreaming On,” al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo, December 11–17, 2003, p. 16. Mahfouz told Rakha that he had written Dreams 1–97 with his own hand before turning to dictation.

16 Interview with al-Hagg Muhammad Sabri al-Sayyid, Cairo, September 1, 2006. Al-Hagg Sabri also confirmed something that Mahfouz had told me several times in his last months of life — that he had created more than three hundred dreams that were not yet published at the time of his death.

17 For a brief account of this prodigious figure’s life, see Arthur Goldschmidt, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt (The American University in Cairo Press, 2000), p. 57.

18 For more on the film, see Samir Farid, Naguib Mahfouz wa-al-sinima (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-’Amma li-Qusur al-Thaqafa, 1990), p. 18. For details of Rayya and Sakina’s crimes and their memorialization in a museum, see Rasha Sadeq, “The Other Citadel,” al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo, February 20, 2003.

19 See Goldschmidt, pp. 234–35.

20 Ibid., p. 47.

21 Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk, translated by William M. Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny (The American University in Cairo Press, 1989), p. 498.

22 For more on Reda Helal and his mysterious disappearance, and the latter’s depiction in Mahfouz’s Dream 151, see “The Forgotten Man,” report by Joel Campagna posted online by the New York — based Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/forgottenman), October 17, 2007.

23 Naguib Mahfouz (“Nagib Mahfus”) interviewed by Volkhard Windfuhr, (with Raymond Stock) “Wir müssen die Fenster öffnen” (“We Must Open the Windows”) in Der Spiegel (Hamburg: No. 8, 2006), pp. 106–07.

24 To Atiyatallah Ibrahim Rizq, twenty-five years his junior, who bore him two daughters — Umm Kulthoum and Fatema (who prefer to be known as Hoda and Faten respectively).

25 Naguib Mahfouz, “Umm Ahmad” in collection Sabah al-ward (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1987), p. 7. Passage translated by this writer.

26 That this evidently never-realized relationship was in effect a dream was the observation of Shirley Johnston, whose Egyptian Palaces and Villas: Pashas, Khedives and Kings (New York: Harry Abrams, 2006) deals with just the sort of houses owned by families such as the one to which Mahfouz’s unattainable Abbasiyan idol belonged.

27 N. Mahfouz, The Dreams, p. 122.

28 N. Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street, translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan, with an introduction by Sabry Hafez (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman’s Library, 2001); see death of Aïda Shaddad in Sugar Street, pp. 1288–94.

29 Interview with Naguib Mahfouz, Maadi, April 5, 2006. Aïda Shadid, Atiya’s oldest sister, died after a prolonged illness in Alexandria on September 11, 2001; she was apparently in her nineties.

30 Nisf al-Dunya magazine, Cairo, February 14, 1999. Translated by this writer.