His characters go to their fate like a swan a few days before her death, when she dances and sings her last song. This is the case with Mekkawi Saeed's heroes in his story Taghreedet el-Baga'a, translated into English by the American University in Cairo Press under the title ‘Cairo Swan Song'. The story is narrated by Moustafa, a journalist, a symbol of someone who is lost and wastes every opportunity for success in his life. "I've never done the right thing in my entire life, wasting every chance I've had to change my fate. I always cling, stubbornly and idiotically, to schemes that are guaranteed failures and wastes of time, and frivolous, and thoughtless and crazy.” But, in fact, he doesn't seem to cling to anything: from early attempts at writing poetry to a successful but brief career in advertising to living in the US for a while to working in the Gulf countries and as a teacher, he never seems to stick with anything. And some of the things, like his underreported-on stay in the US, seem to exist only so Saeed can have him comment on contemporary America. The novel is based on a complex web of dramas involving many characters from different races, classes and professions, even street children. This narrator, who teaches the Arabic language to foreigners, has a relationship with one of them, Marcia from the US. It's a relationship involving love and work together. The narrator is sceptical about both. "She was like quicksand; the harder you push down trying to climb out, the closer you come to certain death." Much of the novel centres on Moustafa's relationship with her, and a film she wants to make, about glue-sniffing Cairo street children. He's ambivalent about his relationship, and especially about the project. "Who had got her thinking about directing again? Was it my fretting about street kids? Or was it her uncanny ability to root out the ticking time bombs in Egyptian society? Or was she receiving direction from over there?” The narrator befriends Karim, one of hundreds of street children in Egypt. The narrator says of him: “Karim wasn't like all the other street kids. The world had swept him away so he swept up everything he had and everything he could get his hands on. As his world grew darker, he drowned himself in oceans of glue and checked out of reality." However, he rings the warning bells about their dangers. "The danger ahead won't come from the kids killed in clashes with the police and gangs. The danger ahead will come from the kids who survive; the ones who cheat death. The terrible violence they suffer will lead them to chase after us in the streets, to rob us and rape our daughters. They won't hesitate to break into our houses." There are many women in Moustafa's life. There is Zeinab, a young journalist who hails from Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt. The narrator, who depicts their nights together in bed, says of her: "[T]his woman's just a vagina with legs.” And then there's Yasmeen, who's the complete opposite of Zeinab, a young poetess, whose poetry he tries to promote. Their relationship is chaste without any physical contact. But no-one can replace his beloved Hind. Hind is a perfectly normal, simple girl. She loved Moustafa in college. They do everything together, including participating in leftwing demonstrations and meetings. She succeeds in the student union elections and presides over one of its committees. At one of these meetings, a bomb left over from the 1967 War with Israel goes off without warning and kills Hind. From that moment, the narrator loses the essence of his life. He constantly visits her grave and reads her poetry as he did when she was alive, and tells her everything he's done that day. He can't forget her and searches for another woman like her. He eventually finds Yasmeen, who looks like her, but whose character is quite different. Male friends of the narrator go their different ways in search of love and fulfilment, including abroad. Essam, the romantic artist, falls for a Singaporean businesswoman called Samantha. They get married in her country, but she soon tells him she wants a divorce, admitting that she's already involved with another man from her country. Essam becomes very depressed and turns to Sufism. Bizarrely, he then discovers that Samantha is not in love with anybody else, but she's dying of cancer. When she does die, she leaves all her money to Essam, who refuses it. He locks himself in his apartment, which he turns into a museum to Samantha. He draws every situation in her life and even her body parts on all the walls of the flat. "I could see that Essam had made his apartment into a tomb for Samantha and himself; that he had raised his anchor and sailed off with his memories." Ahmed el-Helu, an engineer, ends up being a hardline Islamist. A talented worker, Ahmed was promoted and spent four years in Saudi Arabia, where he worked for an international oil company. Returning from Saudi Arabia, he starts giving religion lessons after the afternoon prayers every day. One day, he hears of a fatwa [a religious edict] issued by one Muslim clerick that condemns governmental money as unlawful, allegedly because it doesn't come from certified, licit sources. “He decided to resign from his job with the infidel Government and to seek his livelihood in accordance with the Sharia [Islamic Law]. He started selling sweets, bassboussa, by the slice from trays that his wife, Shahinaz [formerly Comrade Shahinaz], prepared at home.” When the narrator goes to the psychiatrist, what he says sheds more light on the changes that have occurred recently in Egypt: "Schizophrenia stuck my society before it stuck me, Doctor. I'm just a symptom. Suddenly we went from the age of miniskirts and hot pants to headscarves and black tents, which have to lift up the front of their veils every time they bring a spoon of koshari or an ice cream bar to their lips." He feels like an expatriate in his own country. "As I walk through the downtown streets I know by heart and the Haram neighbourhood where I was born and my el-Hussein district, I see only foreigners. My ears pick up different languages, but Arabic isn't one of them." The author observes the Arab fellowship with the US, which he embodies through the relationship between Marcia and Moustafa. There is a monologue that says: "Let them enjoy our land, our climate, our oil, our beliefs. Let them cut us off our history and geography. Let them cut off our supply lines and leave us to face nature. Let them eradicate every one of our genes and keep them out of their so-called civilisation. It's no problem if they want to keep a few of us around to play important parts in natural history museums and freak shows and zoos. “Like this rare picture, published in the magazine Amazing Photographs in 1943, of the grand opening of the Berlin Zoo in 1840. The photo, if anyone cares, is of an iron cage at the zoo, surrounded by spectators throwing bananas to an African family, who are completely naked but for a few leaves covering their genitals. The family is made up of an old man in his seventies, a father in his late twenties, his wife and a nursing baby and the sign on the cage reads: ‘A Family of Savages Captured in the Jungles of Black Africa'.” The narrator is not unaware of the tragedies that affect Egypt. He reminds readers of the tragic fire at a theatre a few years ago in Beni Suef in Upper Egypt, where more than 50 people died. "The coffins were stuck in the positions they had been in when the fire reached them. Most of them were squatting and you could almost see their disgusting burns under the filthy veils that covered them." He penned with tears the tragedy when Israel spent 90 days bombarding Lebanon in 2006. The narrator has lost the desire to live. Moustafa decides to commit suicide. He drinks a cocktail made of various medicines and lapses into a coma, from which it seems that he will die. The novel's structure, moving back and forth between stories and individuals, causes some confusion: often the more interesting observations and incidents are buried among long-winded descriptions of rather boring excesses. Still, the novel touches the reader's heart with its romance, fear and emotions. The reader keeps on reading, anxiously to know what will happen next to these different characters. Cairo Swan Song By Mekkawi Saeed The American University in Cairo Press 283 pages LE80
