It's all about two different times. It smells of a beautiful era many Egyptian young people hear about from parents and old relatives. It was an era when the values of family, honour and true friendship ruled. This is one side of Mohamed Ghozlan's new novel "Hawel Teftekerni" (Try to Remember Me). But the other side seems to be appalling for a man who lived his youth in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a time when dreams could come true by hard work. But now one would have to bribe to get their right! The title of the novel is a famous song by late Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez (Halim). The 57-year-old novelist uses lyrics from Halim's hit of the 1970s whenever he makes dramatic shifts throughout the novel. "Who wished to be a doctor became a doctor, and who wished to be a military or police officer became one. Everything was possible by hard work and patience. Patience has gone taking ambition with it, and hard work is no longer the key to success!" Salem, a retired police major general, tells himself on his way to visit a sick sister in the family's house in Old Cairo. The 139-page novel, published by Oktob Publishing House in Cairo, portrays how time has taken its toll on a middle-class family. Six brothers and sisters do their best to look after their youngest sister, who was deserted by her husband and two sons. While taking care of her, memories of the beautiful past linger in their minds. Salem remembers how his deceased father was a very kind man. He found a little boy named Zaki and treated him like a true son of his own. Ghozlan makes his characters speak for themselves, portraying various narratives of the same situation from different viewpoints. "Don't bother yourself with names. Zaki is your brother and that's all. After he failed at primary school, my father took him to be his right arm at his tannery," Salem says. "Zaki would take me to the holy shrine of Sidi Abul Saud, where we would look at women's legs as they wash for wudu (ablution). My father dedicated one-eighth of the tannery and the family house to Zaki." Years would prove that Zaki was a true brother by upbringing to all. He ran the tannery after the father left this world. Yields from the tannery would be very helpful to cope with spiralling costs of living. The main theme is a love story that came to an end. Salem's youngest sister, Safaa, fell ill due to a forced marriage. She loved a man and her mother forced her to marry another after the father died. "It's a time when love is a liability for the poor. It's a time when people left Egypt for Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. They haven't crossed to the other of the Nile to El-Roda or Manyal. It's a time when people have become familiar with travel and airports. It's a time when a man would take his bride without costing her family a penny. If Mohsen loved Safaa earlier, things would be different!" Salem says in a siloloquy. The man she loved travels to the Gulf to make money. She becomes a mother of two; a daughter and a son, who both leave Egypt for Germany and the US respectively. She feels betrayed and a breakdown was inevitable. The novelist, who is a foreign affairs reporter for the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Messa, draws on a very explicit style of writing fiction. His long experience as a reporter must have helped him develop a very direct way of expression without allegories or figures of speech. Journalism tints fiction with a touch of simplicity. A vanguard of Egyptian journalists made great storytellers and novelists from Ihsan Abdel Quddous, Fathi Ghanem, and Moussa Sabry to Gamal el-Ghetany, Youssef el-Qaeed, Mohamed Galal and many others. A journalist, even for a small daily newspaper, encounters a myriad of situations throughout a career span. Whether one wants to write fiction or non-fiction, one would be able to incorporate some of his or her experiences into a piece of literature. Colombian Nobel laureate Garcia Marques once explained how the two arts are related. "In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work." Ghozlan incorporates true incidents into the fabric of his work. This is a trend that may be easily traced in his previous published novels: “The Beginning of the Poem”, Exodus from “Baghdad” and “The Ignoble”. He had recourse to real events: student demonstrations in January 1972 demanding war against Israel to free Egypt's occupied lands, and Egyptians' uprising in January 1977 due to price hikes. But Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz widens the scope of fiction when he said: "Events at home, at work, in the street – these are the bases for a story." "There's a huge picture of Gamal Abdel Nasser hanging on the wall that is so cherished by my husband Salama. Every now and then, he dusts it off with a piece of cloth," Madiha, Salem's sister says. "Is there anyone who doesn't know this man? This is Nasser of the poor. His pictures will reappear when people get so desperate suffocated by unemployment and price hikes... Some people will hang his pictures although they never knew him nor lived in his era," Salama tells Safaa's husband, who seemingly hated Nasser's socialist era. Family reunion has helped Safaa recover from her emotional malaise. By the end of the novel, Safaa speaks again after a long time of silence, crying out: "I want a divorce". Although Ghozlan writes in formal Arabic, his style reminds the reader of British-born novelist Arthur Hailey (1920-2004). His plain language and narrative style resemble that of modern British novelists Alexander Masters, Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees.
