The
Poetics of Amnesia in
Khaled Osman's debut novel
Le Caire à corps perdu
Son Eldorado à
lui, c’était
le monde ancien dont il avait été extrait trop
tôt pour pouvoir en
vivre la plénitude.
[His Eldorado was that old world from which he
had been uprooted too
soon for him to be able to fully appreciate it.
Khaled
Osman (Le Caire à corps perdu 139)
Le Caire à corps perdu1 [Cairo
in
a lost Body] is the debut novel by the
Egyptian-French author Khaled
Osman, a Paris based novelist and celebrated
translator of such eminent
literary figures as Nobel Laureate Naguib
Mahfouz and Gamal Ghitany.
The novel portrays an Egyptian who, after years
spent in France,
decides to return to Egypt. Upon his arrival in
Cairo, he suffers a
concussion that leaves him disabled and
helpless, unable to remember
his name or any components of his identity. As
he attempts to
reconstruct his identity, the reader witnesses
the chaotic meanders of
a city that never sleeps. Evidently, all the
features that led to the
2011 Egyptian Revolution are enmeshed in the
narrative: bureaucratic
corruption, tyranny of the faces of power, and
lack of civil liberties.
Osman takes the reader in a maelstrom of
impressions, emotions, and
intricate social rapports in a narrative marked
by intertextuality, one
of the keys to the regain of identity, what I
call "the poetics of
amnesia" in the title of the essay.2
The aim of this essay is to delineate the
paradoxical particularities
of the protagonist’s amnesia, with the
consequent loss of identity, and
the subsequent chase to recover this identity.
At the outset of this
quest, the possibility of reverse migration—He
was born in Cairo and
moved to France with his parents as a young
child—is highly suggested,
though not definitely established. Keeping in
mind that readers may not
have access to the untranslated French novel,
the plot analysis that
follows, informed by the aforementioned aim, is
deemed necessary.
Soon after he faints with fatigue, hitting his
head against a tool box
in the taxi that drives him from the airport,
the unconscious
protagonist is carried and deposited by the
frightened taxi driver on a
bench in front of a modest looking boarding
house. In his haste to get
rid of such liability and for fear of reprisals,
the cab driver
forgets, in the back seat, the jacket which
contains the passenger’s
identity papers. However, moments later, the
protagonist is taken in
and befriended by the kindly head of the
boarding house, Sett Baheya,
and by her caring lodgers: Faouzi, a student of
medicine, Azza, a
student of political science, Ibrahim, the
concierge, and Khadra, the
maid. They all agree to name him, for the time
being, Nassi, which
means in Arabic "the one who has forgotten," and
they devise strategies
to help him recover his lost identity.
In point of fact, Nassi’s seems to be a case of
post traumatic
retrograde amnesia, where the victim may not be
able to remember her
name, her place of residence or any events that
occurred prior to the
injury, but can still recall scattered incidents
going back all the way
to childhood. That is precisely Nassi’s
predicament: He remembers
visiting his grandparents in Cairo every summer
as a child (where from,
he does not know, though he suspects it is from
"somewhere in Europe"),
and he evokes sensorial impressions from those
yearly visits such as
city walks that always ended with a refreshing
ice cream or iced
lemonade drunk in the scorching summer heat of
the metropole. Moreover,
unable to name his country of residence, his or
any of the names of his
relatives or friends, Nassi can spontaneously
recall the name of a
protagonist in a novel and he can recite Arabic
poems that illustrate
the emotions he is experiencing or the
situations he finds himself in
at a given moment during his search. He also
recalls sequences from
movies he saw in the past, sequences that
corroborate his present
experience.
Those incongruous memories act as objective
correlatives, whose
function is to show and suggest, rather than
describe, feelings and
emotions. One such instance is worth mentioning.
One day, Nassi thinks of going to the French
Consulate in Cairo to
apply for a job as translator, but mainly to
request that they check
their records abroad to see if he is possibly a
citizen of France, as
he suspects he could be. He hesitates taking
this step, however, and he
is plagued by doubt: What if he is rejected on
both sides, Egypt and
France? France because he would be deemed an
impostor, and Egypt
because of his state of amnesia which would
prevent him from securing a
place in this society; then he could find
himself, as the Egyptian
expression goes, "like the woman who danced
between two floors. Neither
those above nor those below saw her" (121-122).
Rejected by both
countries, Nassi feared to end up in a "no man’s
land" identity-wise,
"condemned to wander indefinitely" (121) like
the heroes of a Tunisian
movie he once saw.
The movie recalled3 is about two
foreigners, a Polish and an
Arab, who embark on a ferry in Ostende (Belgium)
en route to Dover
(England). After humiliating interrogations by
British Police and a
long wait, they are both refused entry to Great
Britain and sent back
to Belgium. There, again in Ostende, they are
also refused entry
because their visas have expired, so the two
characters find themselves
neither here nor there, in limbo, waiting
indefinitely in the port of
Ostende. Whereupon, the Arab character, Yousef
Quraichi, outraged and
offended in his Arab pride and refusing to plead
and beg, decides to
write a dignified letter in the form of a poetic
missive, addressed to
the Arab ambassador in Belgium:
A notre
ambassadeur arabe
à l’étranger,
Nous avons
quitté la
terre,
Nous nous
sommes embarqués
Et derrière
nous, le pont
s’est brisé.
Mais un jour
viendra
Où tu
t’apercevras
Qu’il n’est
rien de plus
terrible que l’infini,
Lorsque toute
terre est
irrémédiablement bannie (122).
[To our Arab
ambassador
abroad,
We left the
land,
We have
embarked,
And behind us
the bridge
collapsed.
But the day
will come
When you will
own
That nothing
is more
terrible than the infinite,
When all land
is
irrevocably banished].
"Nothing is
more terrible than the
infinite/When all land is irrevocably banished",
a
poignant and telling predicament of the refugee
in between lands,
forever branded an unwelcomed alien, forever
hounded by fear! It is
also the Kafkaesque nightmare Nassi faces.
Once he makes it to the French Consulate with
his dual request, it is
an utter fiasco. Nassi is evidently unable to
even begin to fill in the
application with all the required basic personal
information, and
indeed, he is deemed an impostor seeking illegal
entry into France.
Needless to say, he is not given a job as
translator.
Meanwhile, his co-lodgers are doing their utmost
to help him navigate
through his selective amnesia.
When taken through the streets of Cairo by his
friends, in a desperate
attempt to recover his identity by rekindling
memories of his past
whereabouts, he ends up recognizing the building
where his grandparents
lived. Alas, it is condemned and boarded up, and
no one inhabits it any
longer. Nassi laments that Cairo too suffers
amnesia, having eradicated
some of the places he cherished so: "Le pays
tout entier est en train
d’oublier son passé" [the entire country is
forgetting its past"], an
apt allusion to the deterioration of the living
conditions over the
last four decades. Standing in front of that
condemned building,
nevertheless, isolated memories come back
vividly to Nassi, of the day
when a neighbor learned of the sudden death of
her son and her screams
of grief. Or another day when he himself fell
off the balcony and
survived the fall witnessed by his terrified
mother and aunts. He also
remembers places where he used to eat with his
family, and even the
foul (fava beans) stand with the humorous sign
put up by the owner: "If
we run out of beans, I am responsible by no
means (90)." The chase for
his identity in the company of his friends
through the insanity of the
traffic and the immensely crowded streets, makes
of Cairo a stark
antagonist, and that, despite the endearing
memories the city evokes in
the protagonist.
As the narrative unfolds, one gets the
impression that Nassi’s amnesia,
on a symbolic level, is an escape from his life
as an Expatriate, one
he was keen to put behind him. His amnesia is
the objective correlative
of a deep dissatisfaction with expatriation and
the embodiment of his
nostalgia for his native land, to which the
epigraph to this paper
testifies. In fact, we learn, at the very
opening of the narrative,
that his initial decision to come back to Egypt
was motivated by his
disillusionment with Europe: The regulated,
productive lives, the petty
complaints of well-fed individuals who plead
poverty at the least
breach made to their comfort. He was getting
increasingly annoyed by
the "cult of performance and efficiency" (23),
and the resulting
"fierce individualism" that isolated people from
each other (203). The
chaos and vibrancy embedded in Cairo, on the
other hand, called and
appealed to him in his exile: "Il avait éprouvé
un besoin impérieux de
revenir à la simplicité, aux verres de thé
sirotés entre amis, aux
promenades sur la corniche du Nil, à
l’imprévoyance et au fatalisme."
(37). [He had felt an imperious need to come
back to simplicity, to the
cups of tea enjoyed with friends, to walks by
the Nile, to lack of
planning, to fatalism]. As he gets to know his
co-lodgers, he is moved
by their constant solicitude, their human
warmth, and their
unconditional support. So perhaps this loss of
identity was a blessing
in disguise after all. In Nassi’s own words:
"Malgré toute son horreur,
cette amnésie provisoire avait tout de même du
bon: elle lui permettait
de renouer directement avec son enfance en
passant outre les idées
noires, les angoisses et les appréhensions qui
encombraient
ordinairement son esprit" (37) [Despite all its
horror, this temporary
amnesia had a good side to it: It would allow
him to reconnect directly
with his youth by sidelining the dark thoughts,
anguish, and
apprehensions that normally cluttered his mind].
In this quotation, a
sort of nostalgia towards the native land
transpires. "To reconnect
directly with his youth" is the dream of
everyone past the prime of
life, and in this particular case, the dream of
Nassi in quest of his
stolen identity in the city of his birth.
Nassi’s double exile, his "metaphorical exile"4
in Cairo succeeding his physical exile in
Europe, is exacerbated by
Raouf Effendi, a civil servant who kindly helps
him in his quest by
sifting through national registers and archives
in search of someone
who could prove to be him. Thus, Raouf has
shortlisted three possible
contenders to Nassi’s identity, who are all
around his medically
estimated age. In his efforts to help, Raouf
presents our protagonist
with the identity files of the three prospects,
with the last one
corresponding in many ways to Nassi’s attributes
and trajectory.
However, and despite Faouzi’s insistence, Nassi
vehemently refuses to
embrace the identity of that man who allegedly
spied on his fellow
Egyptian Expatriates in France and reported back
to National Security
in Egypt, an oppressive, ruthless, corrupt, and
unethical entity. When
Faouzi insists that his find is a most
likely candidate, Nassi
heatedly argues that a human being cannot
possibly be reduced to his
trajectory. Rather, it is one’s convictions and
values ["these don’t
lie"] that constitute the true makers of our
being (237), hence the
impossibility for him, Nassi, who values freedom
and integrity above
all, to be that slimy individual who colluded
with an oppressive
government and spied on his countrymen residing
abroad.
In regards to Nassi’s delineation of what
constitutes the core of our
identity, one has the impression that Nassi is
Khaled Osman’s
spokesman. In fact, in an interview I conducted
with the author in
2013, he engaged the topic of the philosophical
dimension of the novel:
which are the elements crucial to one’s
identity, those elements one
can possibly hold on to when one’s bearings are
all lost or confounded?
an issue certainly relevant in the context of
migration and
transnational bicultural individuals. In the
narrower context of the
novel’s plot, it is relevant insofar as the
protagonist, despite
disabling amnesia, retains a strong sense of
self. It is almost as if
his disability has some liberating power to it.
Indeed, at the end of the novel, (...) he is
motivated by his fear of
going back to Europe, the fear, as he puts it,
"to fall back in the
trap of this uprooted existence he precisely
tried to escape, to the
point of losing his memory" (251). (...)Is this
a desperate move on the
part of an out-of-place transnational, forever
in between countries,
stranger everywhere, homesick wherever he goes,
and belonging to no
collectivity whatsoever? "Au fond, il n’a jamais
su trouver sa place,
et ce qui lui arrive en ce moment ne fait
qu’entériner tragiquement un
état de fait préexistant"(125) [In reality, he
never found his place,
and his present state of amnesia reinforces a
preexisting point of
fact]. Nassi’s decision (... may appear as a
willingness) to finally
re-appropriate his past by reintegrating his
lost and found identity
(253).
In conclusion, what I have termed "poetics of
amnesia" in the title of
this essay can be considered as a conglomerate
of features tied to
Nassi’s lack of memory. The loss of key facts of
his identity (name,
date of birth, country of residence, occupation,
parents’ names, etc.)
are juxtaposed with an uncanny remembrance of
chunks of poems, and of
songs and moviesthat mark the narrative with
intertextuality. These
snatches of memories act as objective
correlatives of the ills of his
expatriation in France and his nostalgia for
Egypt. Nassi’s remembrance
of incidents and impressions experienced as a
child during the yearly
summer visits to his grandparents in Cairo are
perhaps predictors of
the possibility of his reverse migration, as
suggested at the outset of
the novel. This is further suggested by his
(ultimate) decision ...as
perhaps) Nassi will reconcile his parents’
decision to expatriate when
he was only a young child with a redefinition of
his transnational
identity, for, in the words of Eric Liu, "in
every assimilation there
is a mutiny against history-but there is also a
destiny, which is to
redefine history."5
Notes
1. Khaled Osman, Le Caire à corps perdu.
Paris: Vents d’ailleurs: 2011.
This novel was a finalist for a prestigious
Francophone award, Prix
Gitanjali. Khaled Osman has just published his
second novel, La Colombe
et le moineau (The Dove and the Sparrow) in
2016 at Vents d’ailleurs.
Osman is recipient of many prestigious awards
by the French Academy and
other institutions for his fine translations
of Naguib Mahfouz and
Gamal Ghitany.
2. All translations are mine. This novel is
yet to be tanslated.
3. It is a 1982 Tunisian movie entitled
Traversées by Mahmoud Ben
Mahmoud. Throughout the novel, the title of
the poems/poets quoted and
the names of movies mentioned are never given
in the body of the novel,
but only in the end-notes.
4. An expression coined by the late
postcolonial critic, Edward Said,
in a liminal collection of essays,
Representations of the Intellectual:
The 1993 Reith Lectures. London: Vintage,
1994.
5. Eric Liu, "Notes of a Native Speaker;"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/middleground/liu.htm.
F. Elizabeth Dahab is Professor of Comparative
Literature in the
Department of Comparative World Literature and
Classics at California
State University, Long Beach. She has given
numerous talks and
published a number of research articles in her
fields of
specialization, as well as a book on exilic
Canadian/Québécois
literature of Arabic provenance, titled Voices
of Exile in Contemporary
Canadian Francophone Literature. She is also a
poet (French/English),
though her poetry is largely unpublished.
Elizabeth
Dahab, étude publiée dans le n° de décembre
2016 de la revue en ligne
"Wordgathering", dédiée au thème du
handicap en littérature
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