Taghridat al-Baga'a (Swan Song), Mekkaoui Said, Cairo: Al-Dar, 2006. pp290 Mekkaoui Said's novel Swan Song, now reprinted for a third time, has been hailed in Egypt as one of the most moving testimonial works to have appeared in at least a decade by a younger and less-established novelist than those of the 1960s generation. According to the critic Gaber Asfour, the reason for this warm reception is that the novel has "touched a raw nerve among a readership of a certain age-group," this group being the generation of the 1970s, all of whom were born after the July 1952 revolution and were university students during the 70s. What marks this generation out in Asfour's view is the fact that while it came of age under Nasser and was much influenced by the Pan-Arabist and socialist slogans of the period, it was also a generation that was torn away from such dreams when Sadat came to power in Egypt and set himself the task of reversing much of what this generation had politically believed in, especially concerning the means of resolving the Arab-Israeli struggle. As Asfour has written, "comprising Nasserists and Marxists, this generation opposed Sadat's reneging on the Nasserist path and his inching closer to the US at a time when the economic crisis was tightening and class polarisation was becoming sharper with the rise of a new parasitic class that was bent on destroying all previously positive societal values.... All this took place while Sadat was busy consolidating the power of the Islamist groups, in order that he might call upon their help in combating the nationalists, socialists and communists who vehemently opposed his new orientation and called for social justice, political independence and the reversal of the military defeat of June 1967." However, while Asfour's description of the student generation of the 1970s is an apt one, his straight- jacketing of literary works within this generational grouping gives rise to some unease. This is because the 1970s student generation in Egypt, very much like that of 1968 in Europe -- the political movement among Egyptian students also began in 1968, though it reached its climax in 1971-72 during the first two years of Sadat's rule -- was a political phenomenon that inspired and informed many works by writers who did not necessarily belong to that generation. Older writers, from Naguib Mahfouz to Ibrahim Aslan, Bahaa Taher and Ghaleb Halassa, have in one way or another dealt with the dilemmas of the 1970s student generation in their works. Yet, it is nevertheless the case that much of what happens in Swan Song deals, as Asfour remarks, with "the fall of the 1970s generation from the heights of dreams to the lower depth of nightmares, and from revolution to individual and collective disasters," though it is tempting to believe that Said has been haunted by the experience of this generation precisely because he has stood at an angle towards it and watched former revolutionaries themselves reneging on what they had earlier advocated. Indeed, one of the narrative strategies that the hallucinating protagonist of Swan Song employs is to compare himself to members of this fallen generation, whom he holds in contempt. "What's the difference between [you] and all those people now peddling human rights, women's rights and anti- discrimination slogans," he asks. "All those former colleagues who have milked the few weeks they spent in jail, boasting loudly of their sacrifices on satellite TV channels?" Referring to the way in which a mutual friend has changed political direction and now embraces Islamism after having been an ardent Marxist, a friend asks the novel's protagonist "and what is wrong with that? .. Isn't what has happened to him better than the ways in which some formerly leftist colleagues have changed? At least he hasn't started stealing, or helping to cover up the corruption, or begun sucking the blood of the poor... He has always been in search of an ideal. Let him enjoy the dream of achieving that under whatever banner provides him with protection." Part of the strength of Swan Song comes from the fact that the protagonist stages himself as an observer of such events, and one who is sometimes stoned and hallucinating and is himself on a journey to hell without really noticing. In his case, this is a hell made up of other people, among them an American woman researcher who is described as "changing the subject of her research as often as she changes her underwear," and who persuades him to help her produce a documentary film about Egyptian street children. At the beginning he is enthusiastic about the project, especially as he is enjoying a passionate relationship with her, but gradually what he sees of her way of working makes him suspicious. "Why has she decided to become a director all of a sudden," he asks himself. "Was it a decision made because I expressed my concerns at the magnitude of the problem, or did she make it because of her sensitive radar, able to detect potentially explosive issues in Egyptian society? Perhaps somebody else directed her? I continue to be a prisoner of an insatiable desire that will lead me to my doom, but I do not even want to try to escape... I shall not try to defend either state or society. I am a nobody." Even so, this "nobody" is not oblivious to the processes by which he is being turned into one. "Over the last few days I have begun to sense their presence everywhere," he says. "I walk through the streets of downtown Cairo that I know so well, or in the Pyramids area where I was born, or in the Hussein district that I love, and I find no-one but foreigners. I hear many languages, but not a word of Arabic. I see blond people, people with pink faces and green eyes, large and small people, all of them marching in military formation ... They smile at me like sharks, and they allow me to pass by. I walk past them and I become a nobody." The more the protagonist makes himself into a hostage in his relationship with the American woman, the more he finds himself implicated in criminal acts that finally drive him insane, especially since he is already receiving psychiatric treatment. Finally, and as he finds himself forced into beating the Sudanese maid of his American friend whom she has accused of stealing money, he ends up becoming a murderer. The maid, in desperation, throws herself off the balcony of the 14th-floor flat, at which point the protagonist decides it is time to end his own life. Swan Song is the story of a disintegrating society, told by a man who is himself disintegrating, physically, morally and mentally. The parallels between the fate of this man, together with his hallucinations and nightmares, and a society that has itself lost direction and sense of purpose are perhaps what has made this novel so popular in contemporary Egypt. By Mona Anis
