Obituary: Yehia Haqqi

IN HIS introduction to the 28 volumes of his complete works, Yehia Haqqi states that he might accept that all his narrative fiction and other writings be neglected, but he would be extremely sad if his call for linguistic innovation and a new literary style is overlooked, writes Sabry Hafez (further to the obituary by Adel Darwish, 10 December). He sought to create a new literary style which is scientific in character, based on accuracy, precision and clarity. It is rather ironic then that his obituary contained so many inaccuracies.

Haqqi was not a novelist. He did not translate from German, Italian or Persian, but mainly from English (curiously omitted in an English newspaper) and French. He has not been in the shadows in the last few years: he was awarded the prestigious King Faisal International Prize for Literature in 1990, and three different monthly magazines devoted special issues to his work over the last two years. Haqqi's service for the state was not for three decades, but almost five. His language has been called many things but not al-haqqawiyah (Haqqism). His best-known work, The Saint's Lamp, as it is known in its English translation, is not his longest novel, indeed not a novel at all, but a collection of short stories. The title-story itself is a long short story, no more than 8,000 words long, and the saint of the title, al-Sayyidah Zaynab, is not the daughter of the prophet Muhammad, but his granddaughter. Her mosque and its lantern are not 1,000 years old; they have been in existence for less than 500 years. The hero of the story, Isma'il, was not educated in Germany, but in England, and the Muslim mother was no other than his own mother. She was treating no child, but the hero's grown-up fiancee. When the story was turned into a film for Cairo television in 1964 Islamic fundamentalists were not outraged, because they barely existed at the time.

In addition Haqqi has no novel entitled al-Ustazh, and his attitude to Nasser's regime was reserved rather than supportive. As a result critics never accused Haqqi of seeking favour with Nasser. Haqqi never sold his furniture or books, but donated his vast library to the University of al-Minya in Upper Egypt. His second collection of short stories, Blood and Mud, never won any prizes. Haqqi wrote no more than four introductions to books of the younger generation, and those are a tiny fraction of the writers in Egypt between the ages of 30 and 50, and one of these introductions is a Saudi writer. Furthermore Tawfik al-Hakim, the playwright and writer, is no Egyptian philosopher, and the contrast between Haqqi and Naguib Mahfouz's stand vis-a-vis Islam is unfounded.

Haqqi's father was the first of his family to be born in Egypt, and Yehia Haqqi himself was born in the poor quarter of al-Qal'a in Cairo and spent his childhood in this quarter. After obtaining a degree in law (Cairo University, 1925), he worked as a solicitor in the Delta for two years, and as an assistant prosecutor in Upper Egypt for another two years before joining the Foreign Office in 1929. His work took him to Arabia, Turkey, Italy and France. He continued to work there until he met his second wife, Jean, a French artist, in the early 1950s, and asked to be moved to another department to be able to marry her. At the time, the regulations prevented diplomats from marrying foreigners. In 1954 he was moved to the newly established Department of Arts and his work there developed the base for the formation of the first Ministry of Culture in modern Egypt. From 1961 to 1970 he was editor of the literary review Al-Majallah. During his editorship, it became the leading literary review in the Arab world, encouraging young writers and modernistic writing.

Haqqi is one of the great writers of modern Arabic literature. Many critics consider him a greater writer than Mahfouz, the only Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature. He is a short- story writer of the calibre of Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield and Hemingway; a perceptive literary critic and the finest essayist in modern Arabic literature. His career spans the most significant period of its development, from the early 1920s to the present. He was the youngest of the pioneers of al-Madrasah al-Hadithah ('the New School'), but one of the most talented, perceptive and sophisticated. He commenced his literary career in al-Fajr, the organ of the New School, started writing and publishing short stories as early as 1926 and continued to do so until 1968. He published his first collection of short stories, The Saint's Lamp, in 1944 after almost 20 years of significant work in the field. In 1955 he published both his second collection, Blood and Mud, and his third, The Mother of the Misfortunates. His fourth, Antar and Juliet, appeared in 1961, his fifth, The Vacant Bed, in 1982 and his last, Oblivion, in 1985.

These six collections are the harvest of more than 40 years of continuous work in the field. The publication dates of the first three are a little misleading, especially the publication of two collections in one year. These collections contain stories which appeared as early as 1926 and throughout the 1930s and the 1940s. The delay on their publication in book form is due to the fact that the artistic sensibility of the Thirties and the Forties was, perhaps, unable to accommodate such avant-garde writings in the centre of the cultural scene at the time.

In these works he left his mark on the language, themes and structure of Arabic narrative and created a richly fascinating world. His work raises questions of culture and morality and has the ability to transcend the realistic and the contextual for the humanistic and universal. Many of his themes are rooted in the dramatic encounter between European civilisation and traditional Arab culture and are intricately linked to the nationalist awakening, the struggle for independence culminating in the 1919 revolution and the quest for national identity. The other leading theme in Haqqi's work is that of the human will and its vital role in life, a view which is bound up with his concept of man. Haqqi considered this to be one of the most important. His work emphasises that willing and wishing are not synonymous. Every character has a strong wish to attain a good life, but when he/she lacks the will the results are usually grave.

The title-story of The Saint's Lamp offers an insight into the interaction between the Arabs and Europe. Here Haqqi asks how Egypt should cope with this new cultural phenomenon without losing its specific identity. In spite of its brevity, it is one of the most demanding and inspiring texts in modern Arabic narrative. The story centres upon a pivotal character floundering in the midst of an adverse moral climate and wrestling with problems of both psychological and ethical dimensions. Yet its call for change has continued to entice an endless line of Arab intellectuals to reformulate the questions that Haqqi posed more than half a century ago, and which continue to reverberate in the minds and souls of his fellow writers.