Snapshots from a Life: Egyptian Novelist Radwa Ashour, 1946-2014

Photos and quotes from Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour (1946-2014):

On her husband, Palestinian poet and memoirist Mourid Barghouti, from Spectres, trans. Barbara Romaine: “Seven years after his deportation, Mourid would be able to return to our house in Cairo, not to live with us, but for short visits, determined each by a prior permit granted by the authorities in charge of security. Upon his arrival at Cairo Airport, an airport official would stamp his passport and make a note upon it saying, ‘One week, non-renewable,’ or, ‘Two weeks only.’ We would meet him at the airport. See him off at the airport. Wait until we could go to him during our summer holiday, or petition once again in the hope that he might be permitted to visit us again. This situation lasted another ten years.”

On teaching: “I joined the Ain Shams University faculty soon after I graduated in October 1967, and have never stopped teaching since, except for the nine months after I got married [1970], when I had to join my husband in Kuwait, but even then I worked as a school teacher. I like teaching, it’s the job I really enjoy, even though currently it puts pressure on me because I need the time for writing, but that’s the only kind of pressure it’s ever put on me. The only other job I might have enjoyed would’ve been a job that involves writing, like journalism, but I can’t imagine myself otherwise. I see myself in the eyes of the students. I feel their eyes are a mirror that comforts and reassures me. I feel there is a value there, the value of that contact, a contact with a life in process. It is actually a very complex experience, which I live moment by moment; no two lectures are alike.”

On writing and other writers: “Then I went to a young writers’ conference in Zaqaziq in 1969. Looking around me, I saw Bahaa Taher, Yehia El-Taher Abdallah, Ibrahim Aslan, Abdel-Hakim Qasim, Amal Dunqul and others. Admittedly, they were all about a decade older, but each had something to show for himself, some form of evidence that he was really talented. And what had I written, apart from one short story that proved nothing? This scared me even more and I stopped writing. It wasn’t until 1980 that I finally made another attempt. I had health problems and underwent a serious operation, and I felt I might be dying, and suddenly I had this sensation of abrupt awakening: I’m dying to write, and perhaps I will die before I do, so let me write something, say a word or two in time, and it doesn’t matter whether or not I’ll manage to write what nobody else has written. So, based on my relatively recent experience in America I wrote The Journey, and as I did so, for the first time I was learning; nothing teaches you to write better than writing.”

On her son, Tamim Barghouti, from Spectres: “I would call Tamim for lunch or dinner, or Mourid would call him: sometimes ‘Tamim!’ but at others ‘Tamtam’ or ‘Tamatim’ (‘tomato’), which later evolved into ‘Tamatish,’ and subsequently ‘Mukarrar,’ or ‘Ma’quoud,’ after a visit to Algeria during which Mourid discovered that tomato sauce is known in Algerian dialect as ‘mukarrar ma’qoud al-tamatish.’ In this way the three words were used interchangeably as new names for Tamim. Mourid would shout at the top of his lungs, ‘Ma’qoud! Mukarrar!’ and Tamim’s voice would be heard beneath the window, ‘Yes, Papa!’ In a moment of anger or frustration, I might exclaim, ‘Ya zift!’ Tamim would answer, ‘Yes, Mama,’ and dash up the stairs, fearful all the way of some rebuke. He would ring the bell, and when I opened the door he would find us laughing. Suddenly grasping the absurdity of responding as he had to ‘You rubbish!’ as if it were yet another of his new names, he would join in the laughter.”

From The Woman from Tantoura, trans. Kay Heikkinen: “I was with the boys on the train and yet I wasn’t, because ever since that day when they loaded us into the truck and I saw my father and brothers on the pile, I have remained there, unmoving, even if it didn’t seem like it.”

On protest, from Heavier than Radwa, excerpt trans. Barbara Romaine: “No sooner had the wall been built than kids came with their buckets of paint and paintbrushes, and covered it with colorful artwork, along with whatever graffiti they cared to put there, sayings and slogans. Thus the wall was transformed by the gloriously colored images superimposed upon it, and by arresting murals such as might have pleased David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, the great Mexican artists who painted murals and brought attention to the value of such expression, during the revolutionary period in their own country.

“The fact is that the kids made the best of a bad job when they took a wall–bleak, sand-colored, depressing, painful to contemplate–and turned it into an artistic monument, in brilliant colors that brought relief to the soul. This is not just because they proved that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction–meaning they could be reassured that the laws of nature continue unchanged, subject to the forces of no government, no Israel–but rather that, in offering artistic beauty that also served a purpose, they carried on in the spirit of those who had gone before them. Moreover, they balanced the timelessness of art with the paradoxical notion of timely advantage, and the possibility that the two may be interchangeable, according to circumstance and necessity.”

On good-byes, from Spectres: “Her husband stands on one side of the divider, she stands with her son on the other. They call the passengers for boarding. Her husband holds out his hand to say goodbye, she clutches at his hand, beginning to weep. Weeping breaks into sobbing. Her husband entreats her to cancel her trip and go back home with him. ‘We can postpone the journey,’ he says. She shakes her head, dries her tears, and proceeds with her son onto the plane.”