Author Sherif Lotfy: inspired by cinema and popular storytelling

Sherif Lotfy is a young man who studied engineering, majoring in the economics of heritage. Then he entered the world of literature, issing his first novel last year and following it with a second novel that carried the strange title of ‘Al-Armaghan’ the meaning of which he explained on the inside cover. It is a Persian word that means a traveler’s gift, which he did not explain how it is related to the novel.

 

The story, which is masked in the Mamluk period, tackles the problem of absolute power in pre-democracy years, a power that fears the dreams of freedom of ordinary people and turns them into nightmares.

 

Yet the current developments urged him not to suffice with disguises and symbolic references as other fiction writers like Naguib Mahfouz and Gamal al-Ghitani did. He broke that disguise by recalling facts from the 25 January revolution to tackle tyranny in all ages. In doing so, he missed the difference between the Mamluk era and our time. For civilizations have reached a level of maturity in the democratic era that renders the Mamluk disguise ambiguous.

 

We have long come out of the Middle Ages and we can discern foolish attempts to make us swirl in their primitive forms of violence under the pretest of religion or other. 

 

It seems the study of heritage economics bequeathed the author a fondness for popular storytelling, as he talks to the readers as if they were listening to a speech and says: “Good people, before we tell the story, pray that peace be upon the prophet and know that a river begins with a drop of water and a march begins with a step.” Then he starts: “Once upon a time there was a ruler…”

 

This method of narration reclines on a religious sense, away from superstition or surrender to fate. It selects from the heritage its positive elements that do not hinder evolution and aesthetically represents life according to the logic of history and the experience of generations. 

 

This type of traditional narration places the author at the heart of contemporary culture. But he does not even suffice with that, as he starts using contemporary psychology to interpret dreams, freeing the novel of its time barrier. 

 

The sultan wakes up upset by a nightmare. His deputy summons an interpreter of dreams, ironically a young boy and not an old man as is usually the case. The boy says: “Dreams are but childish visions containing pictures that only the young can see with their imagination. They are rooted in the depths of childhood memories.”

 

“Sire, I am a boy with the views of a child and the wisdom of an elderly,” he says. “I am closer to your dreams.”

 

Then the author refers to modern psychology when the boy says dreams are a recollection of events. Here he referred to ancient and modern scholars like Ibn Sirin and Freud as he mentioned at the end of the novel.

 

But he forgot that such information could not be said by a boy in the Mamluk era summoned by a sultan to interpret his dreams.

 

Compatibility between knowledge and discourse is what gives a character its credibility. Paradoxically insisting on using the language of the Mamluk era to describe the knowledge of modern time, the author had to explain many terms, such as Al-Qafgan and Al-Zamt, sometimes in as long as a half page.

 

 

The basic idea of the novel is that revolution and change are the dream of the people that power deliberately tries to turn into a nightmare. The sultan’s deputy is the architect of this mechanism. He tells the sultan: “You know that you have eyes deployed in all parts of the sultanate working at your command. They can find the sources of dreams for us to confiscate.”

 

He then takes the matter to another level and says: “Then we turn those dreams into nightmares so that people dread dreaming and despair of the idea of ​​change as a whole.”

 

The sultan tells of his nightmare: “I dreamt that I was blind. And while I was wandering aimlessly, a young man from my subjects appeared, slapped me on my face and pulled a sword that looked like no other sword. Looking up to the sword, I saw thick red clouds in the sky pouring heavy rain that cut the trees. 

 

“When the clouds went away, a black moon appeared. Then the sun and the stars appeared but there was no light coming out of them. 

 

“Then the moon was split into two halves, one on my right and one on my left. 

 

“Then the planets crumbled and faded away. 

 

“When I failed to understand that riddle, I woke up in panic.”

 

The interpreter tells the sultan that this dream meant the sultanate is in danger. For the red clouds represent strife and anguish, the black moon means a toppled sultan and the crumbling planets represent the falling symbols of the sultanate.

 

The dreams of the ordinary people start with Gaber, a street vendor who sells nuts on the market in Cairo. He likes to sit with his friends around the fountain of the public bathroom. When he tells his friend Mahdi of his dream, he reassures him that it means tyranny will soon fall.

 

But Gaber is arrested and taken to undergo brain surgery, whereby a needle pierces the back of his head to the area where the memory is saved, pulls the dream out of it and, with a chemical element whose formula only one person knows, replaces it by permanent nightmares that turn his life into hell.

 

I am not sure that scientific fantasy is appropriate for the Mamluk era. I believe it was taken from the American movie ‘Inception’. Using it in the Mamluk era makes no sense.

 

The author repeats Gaber’s experience with Ahmed al-Sakka, Zakia, who works at the women's bathroom, and Fatma, the maid who works at the house of the trade minister. Except touching on their different backgrounds, they all go through the same identical experience as Gaber, a repetition that renders the story redundant.

 

 

Then the author jumps on the walls of history in a fast forward move and blends contemporary facts and events with what is happening to his Mamluk characters. 

 

We find Gaber telling his friend that security forces arrested bloggers and young people of different political parties on their way to offer condolences to the family of the Nag Hammadi victims and that security forces dispersed a demonstration called for by the April 6 Youth Movement on the anniversary of the Day of Rage.

 

This technique aims to prove that phenomena continue throughout history and weakens hope to overcome them in eras of freedom, democracy and scientific thinking.

 

The novel exposes the ugly methods of suppressing and humiliating Egyptians under Mubarak when the narrator says: “We will infect the Delta population with Hepatitis C. We will make them die in fights over butane gas cylinders. And we will paralyze traffic because Gamal Mubarak is going to Fayoum.”

 

I think that claiming such excesses were done deliberately is a bit of an exaggeration.

 

The novel talks about acts of oppression and humiliation that led to the January revolution and parallels them with similar acts by Mamluk sultans. But the Mamluk victims all ended up insane, with torn clothes that smell bad and a scar in the back of the head.

 

But in the end they gather at the Rumaila Square (now the citadel). Whether lunatic, derwish, poet or merchant, they all look at each other with a sparkle in their eyes as if they stumbled on a crazy idea. Then they run towards one target: the sultan’s palace. 

 

Perhaps the author wants to tell us that the January revolution was the result of thrones that lasted for centuries and of dreams of hope for freedom, justice and human dignity. Perhaps this is the Armaghan or the traveller’s gift of time to contemporary readers.