LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      

      Yasser Abdel Hafez is a journalist and novelist, and is an editor at the literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab. His first novel On the Occasion of Life was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He lives in Cairo, Egypt.

      Robin Moger is the translator of Otared by Mohammad Rabie and Women of Karantina by Nael Eltoukhy, among other books. His translation for Writing Revolution won the 2013 English PEN Award for outstanding writing in translation. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

      The Book of Safety

      Yasser Abdel Hafez

      Translated by

      Robin Moger

      This electronic edition published in 2017 by

      Hoopoe

      113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

      420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

      www.hoopoefiction.com

      Hoopoe is an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press

      www.aucpress.com

      Copyright © 2014 by Yasser Abdel Hafez

      First published in 2014 as Kitab al-aman by Dar al-Tanweer Protected under the Berne Convention

      English translation copyright © 2017 by Robin Moger

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      ISBN 978 977 416 821 5

      eISBN 978 1 61797 789 3

      Version 1

      To every battle its weapons, and should you shrink from using any of them on ethical grounds then that shall be to your credit, but expect no tributes when you are defeated simply because you were honorable.

      Mustafa Ismail

      The Book of Safety (original version)

      The Book of Safety

      By Khaled Mamoun

      Would you like to know your end, then arrange your life accordingly?

      “Select what you consider to be the correct answer, making sure to dictate your response to the clerk. Please do not write anything yourself. There’s no need. The pen and paper in front of you are for jotting down anything not immediately relevant to the subject at hand but which you consider crucial and would like to return to later.

      “Here, you may enjoy your confession. You might care to take a stroll around the room to let your thoughts flow calmly out—that’s right, like those clichéd scenes that doubtless find an echo in your memory: one man muses, another writes. Between friends, let me assure you that this one is a quite excellent machine, his handwriting neat and more than capable of keeping up with you, no matter how pushed for pace. He doesn’t stall. Try him out, you won’t regret it. Don’t be shy. It’s no fault of yours that this is his job. My dear fellow, doing what we were made for comes easy to us all. I mean, do you despise the miner for coming out of the ground all caked in black?”

      No answer.

      “Ah well, fair enough. You’ve never seen a miner. Nor have I. My apologies, the image is a little too ‘of-the-West.’ Are there no mines in the East? Just imagine, it had never occurred to me before now! But surely you get the point. Come, let’s not waste time with any more metaphors; what I’m saying is that my assistant here is at your service and will remain so until mankind invents a reliable automated transcriber. They’re almost there, I believe, but—and let me be frank with you, even at the risk of you thinking me a traditionalist—what a hateful innovation that would be! Wouldn’t you agree with me that the further science progresses the further we move from a human communion? Do you not sense, even in your current situation (and I sincerely hope you feel in no way constrained), the human warmth that binds we three together in this room? Now, imagine if that third fellow were nothing more than a machine—a machine that never erred, that carried out its instructions with matchless fidelity. We would feel reassured, certainly, because neither my questions nor your answers would be meddled with. No worries there. But how did fellow feeling become civilization other than through a muddle of error and coincidence?”

      1

      Usually, nobody noticed me. I banked on it, and it was what I wanted: for the victim’s gaze to stay fixed on the man sat handsomely at the massive desk. Which was how all the accused brought in to us behaved, however alert they were—only seeing me when my superior, Nabil al-Adl, would point me out, at which juncture I would be forced to emerge from the shadows.

      “Stay as you are, handmaiden to the truth.”

      My preferred designation. He thought and I wrote. They wished me to be his hand and his pen. I was not to sit level with him, and when he walked I would be a step behind: a countrywoman trailing a husband as yet untouched by urban mores. And those who came here understood in advance, which was why they gave me not a single glance, their eyes fixed on the man who decided their fate and not the one who transcribed it. Transcription is merely the documentation of the final verdict, a cosmetic enactment. Yet Mustafa Ismail, former law professor and the man dubbed the most skilled thief of the 1990s, was aware of my presence from the very first. He gave a fleeting turn behind him to where I sat. Later, after I’d become captivated by his ideas, I would remain haunted by that turn, searching for its explanation.

      Truthfully, though, neither I nor my profession were quite so inconsequential. What can I call it? False modesty? A deep-seated desire to draw back from the limelight? Some blend of the two blinded me to the potential of a unique position which I never made use of as I should. Another sufficiently rebellious character might have published secrets the likes of which you’ve never dreamed. Mustafa, looking to immortalize his tale, realized this, and in me he found his messenger.

      Maybe it was for this reason that I had responded to the strange advertisement stuck up on the wall of the café and had set out to claim the role that seemed written with me in mind. During my time in the job, a limitless sensation of power mounted inside me. I would overhear regular citizens discussing the big issues of the moment, each taking a stand and staunchly defending it as they advanced their conclusions and proofs; yet the truth is always different from the way things seem, and I was one of the few allowed to know it—though I couldn’t let them in on what I knew, bound to silence without being ordered, in keeping with the customs of all those who came to the Palace of Confessions. Yet it suited me; secrecy did not vex me. The power was quite enough: the growing self-confidence that compelled those around me to approach with caution, as though I were a modest godling come down to walk among them.

      My initial assumptions about Mustafa’s intentions were blown away by his confessions. He didn’t want me to immortalize his story, as I’d imagined. He didn’t care. This much seemed clear from what he said:

      They lie who say that a man’s life story is all he leaves behind. They set us in motion with profound utterances that fix themselves in our thoughts, and we move accordingly, like machines with no minds of their own. You are the totality of the actions you undertake now, in the moment, and when you pass on that space you filled is taken by the breeze. Actions are fated to be forgotten, and the history books never pay attention to what you had intended they should. They see what they want to see: a beautiful woman who gazes your way, but her heart and mind don’t see you. Don’t act the fool by troubling yourself with immortality.

      *

      He was doing as he pleased, as though he were still free as a bird, one more soldier enlisted, just as he’d picked out his chosen men before: a nod of the head to make them instruments of his will, awaiting orders

Скачать книгу