Rhythm- Translated Reviews wrote by Egyptian criticism about my Novel Iqa’a

Heba Sherif, critic

Talking of leaks, rumors, statements and denials all the time, in such days I don’t prefer history books, I prefer reading novels. For me, history books are not as real or as honest as novels, because a novel, by nature and structure, allows the plurality of voices and multiple points of view.

This brings out the unofficial narratives and the things that people are afraid to say or say only to themselves. History doesn’t mention emotions and fears, for example it wouldn’t mention what were the feelings of protesters in the Nahda sit-in nor their real motives. History wouldn’t have brought out the dreams of the Copts and their depressions that prompted them to demand the Egyptian church to allow divorce, nor it would have brought out the fears of Copts who feel they are the origins of this country though they can’t have their rights in it.

History books will definitely take the side of the class in power and it is hard that they will bring out the voices of the marginalized, and it is really hard that they will mention in details the dreams of the common people and their music. Maybe they mention those things by the way but eventually history books will take the side of the official history and will present one truth despite the truth has many faces.

Wagdy El-Komy’s Rhythm managed to monitor all of that: the emotions, the fears, the dreams and the important contradictions that history books doesn’t mention.

The novel didn’t take a certain stance’s side, a certain class or a certain group. It tried to present what happened through the eyes of people and their emotions.

For that, the novel for me is a more important reference than history books, especially in a country like Egypt and in times like those we live. It is hard to write about the Egyptian revolution in a different way than this; that nobody has the full truth and that people saw and lived every incident in different ways. Thanks you very much Wagdy El-Komy. 

Zeinab Afifi, journalist

In Rhythm, El-Komy weaved the incidents of his novel in the period prior to the January Revolution in 2011 and until the fall of Mohamed Morsi’s government and the dispersal of Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins through an entertaining narration of events that mixes old history and contemporary events in the area of Bin Al-Sarayat “the endowment manor” with the novel’s protagonist Shafak Ibrahim’s dream of restoring the ownership of the manor which she inherited from her grandfather Boktor Al-Khawly.

For this dream she encounters many hardships starting with her husband Aziz, the architect and grandson Botrous Finny, who accused her of madness, to her relationship with the German antiquities professor Schandor, coercion to convert to Islam and marrying Sheikh Hamza Abul Nour hoping she can restore her heritage of the endowment manor which doesn’t really exist.

The hope for restoring the heritage that doesn’t exist triggered the entanglement of relations between Christians and Muslims through narrated stories that mixes reality, imagination, news documents and historical places that played the starring role in the narration such as the endowment manor and Boulaq district and the history of these neighborhoods, especially the later that sparked against the French.

The novel was the narrated confessions of Ahmed Khreisha the Bin Al-Sarayat native and Aziz Botrous Finny, Shafak’s husband, who his opinion of Egypt before the 2011 revolution was that it is “poor country where we can build a company or a factory without paying the installments of the land, an open market for everything that rapidly grows as selling values increase with every step with encouragement from people’s passion of consuming and buying.”

These were Aziz’s dreams that got shattered on the reality rock while his wife Shafak was seeking restoring her ancestors’ ownership of a land that doesn’t exist anymore.

The couple separated, she went after her unfortunate dream that sparked the events and he blundered between marrying another woman with the church objecting to that and searching for his wife as he lost his own reality after he was one of the best architects.

 The story of the bishop and his own anguishes, Schandor the visiting History professor to the faculty of Antiquities and his involvement with Shafak, Zahran the extremist, Hamza Abul Nour the modern Sheikh and Shafak Ibrahim; all of them grabbed an end of the story’s web that El-Komy weaved with historical knowledge and fluent narrative language that has much of the documentary writing’s taste to complete and confirm the events and an example for that was citing the news published in Al-Ahram newspaper or other texts.

We can’t describe the novel as historical but it can be a novel that narrates fresh evens with recalling history both in time and place.

And if the rhythm is the harmony of sounds and its synchronization with singing and music, the novel brought an unforeseen rhythm of engagement and harmony between the characters of the novel and its incidents and historical places that resurfaced to restore geography that time demolished the same way Naguib Mahfouz’s alleys were demolished in his novels that will always represent the geography of creativity or the creativeness of geography if I would say.

The novel is generally harmonized and balanced in rhythm except for the prolonging in the character of the bishop and some of the situations the German professor Schandor encounters.

Mahmoud Abdel Shakour, journalist and critic

I liked Wagdy El-Komy’s Rhythm and I find it to a great extent a well-crafted novel that represents a step forward and more growing up and skill form El-Komy’s previous novel “Trenches of the Virgins.”

In the two novels there is the occupation with the idea of selling and buying of everything, which increased in the era of Mubarak, and there is also greater occupation with the idea of the human value which has become nothing.

In Rhythm, this theme takes a larger space as it stretches from Mubarak’s last years to the aftermaths of January and June revolutions. The voices in the novel multiply to allow the narration of a Coptic lady’s story of trying to restore the land that was giving by Khedive Ismail to her grandfather, the land became later the Bin Al-Sarayat neighborhood.

This incident opens the door for uncovering the sick society from head to toe. The rhythms of Mahraganat singers intersects with the screams of the tormented and the journey of the novel reveals a full-scale falling down that is still ongoing and didn’t disappear despite Mubarak’s fall, that is because poverty and ignorance produced religious zealotry and economic marginalization while the gready capitalism helped selling everything including both lands and souls.

The novel is very daring in its anatomy to the reasons why many Copts feel injustice and alienation in their home country, and like the pieces of Meccano, the dimensions of the tragedy will only complete with the last sentences.

Wagdy El-Komy expressed every voice brilliantly. I wish he thinks of writing scenarios for cinema because he narrates through image and because he has a clear ability to build situations and relations between characters while playing with surprises and maintaining the suspense until the end.

HE mastered his craft to an apparent extent and saluted the Mahraganat artists who protest, using their singing, poverty and chaos. They scream their own way and don’t claim anything except for that they express themselves and people.

At the end, the rhythm of the songs intersects with the art of deceit and human trafficking and also with religions in one painting that incites grieve and cogitation. Inportant novel that deserves reading and discussion.