Nabokov, Murakami, the Beats – and Robert Beshara
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Nabokov, Murakami, the Beats – and Robert Beshara
Rakha’s narrators are all unreliable, winking at the reader to confuse them. But it is through that confusion that the reader can gain access to a higher truth.
That really flattered me, especially coming from a talented and impartial writer who not only doesn’t know me but evidently also knew nothing about my work until he read the relevant Barakunan publication, Zein El-Amine. In a new review of EMISSARIES that appeared today on the great Markaz Review, he writes:
In his biography of Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd mentions that the Russian writer had a “penchant for literary deception.” He quotes Nabokov explaining that he “detected in nature a playful deceptiveness and found nothing more exhilarating than the surprise of seeing through the deception to a new level of truth.” Boyd adds that Nabokov was much the same in person; he quotes an acquaintance saying that the Russian writer “tells you the truth then he winks at you to confuse you.” This is a fitting description of the way that Egyptian writer Youssef Rakha relates his ten short stories in his newly released collection, Emissaries…
The beat poets and writers, especially William Burroughs but also Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, figure indirectly in several of the stories. These are all writers that had spent some time in North Africa, specifically Morocco. At times, Rakha’s writing itself takes a Burroughsian surrealist turn. The language is as dense and elusive as that of Burroughs, especially in its nods to his classic Naked Lunch.
While I am referencing writers that seem to have influenced Rakha (though that kind of imitation might be mockery), what prepared me most for the bizarre logic of the stories is having read Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. But make no mistake, Rakha is an original. His command of the English language is quite deft. His use of imagery is original, evocative, and concise. He can render a scene or a personality in an otherwise throwaway line. His vivid prose straps you into the story as it takes sharp narrative turns that shake it loose from its grounding in the mundane realities of Egyptian society.
I saw the review within hours of receiving my friend Robert Beshara’s brilliant track based on a recording of my CROCODILES poem “The Revolution for Real” – the first of many collaborations I hope. This called to mind the Egyptian proverb about a Quran reciter commissioned to perform in two different places on the same night. I’m a lucky piper. Here is Robert’s work (using my reading in Arabic) and below is the poem in Robin Moger’s translation (from THE CROCODILES):
The Revolution for Real
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
Allen Ginsberg, The Lion for Real
Back from Alexandria via Tanta to find the revolution beneath my bed And bent double by the light of the bedside lamp, cheek level with the bed-boards I make out millions stampeding and defending themselves with stones, each one a butt end still aglow, Lifting signs like stamps and carving slogans bigger than their bodies in the parquet; I eavesdrop on their cries. A last glass of vodka not yet vaporized out my skull from a lay in Alexandria left undone, Pissed bones popping as I fight back tears, shredding my clothes at the window: The revolution’s happened you sons of whores! The revolution’s here for real! I’d left my girlfriend in Ibn Al Farid Street over the pickle place receiving the old guard, come to pay their respects, And me missing neither lay nor sea nor her mother’s face widowed just hours before, Nor my dad, dead a decade back, Nor a saint round the back of the Shrine café who numbers among his blessings a member bigger than a military policeman’s truncheon, But rather my ear, soaked in Azareeta because her tears were dripping from my phone. I splash my clothes with red ink and rush to work to lie down at the boss’s door The revolution was not with workmates, nor on the Metro nor even in the throats of martyrs resurrected as Central Security hoods. Drifting through the realms of Egypt Rail how come I couldn’t catch it before it fled to my room? Weak after a night in the office bathroom I whisper to the tea boy: Without revolution life’s unbearable; Do you know that Ibn Al Farid said a lover’s death is life and better to kill than part forever? Sadly, just as there’s no change without slaughter there’s no time without waiting; Know the angels? Angels? he asks scornfully, fingering a bald patch like a boulder and, gazing at me with pity, slips me five pounds A lion with Moleskin I make for a lioness to let her know the revolution’s not in Tahrir Square And sipping a frappe on the back of a smoothie chasing three double espressos at a branch of Cilantro I screech over my laptop screen at a teen Catholic: There’s no such thing as penis envy! From Doqqi to Tahrir many times over in the company of a young poet, from Tanta, too, Knowing our efforts have been wasted when my girl, bereaved, don’t answer, And with Zizo keeping a Jordanian girl company the night I got her call, was her sudden misfortune the seal set on our compact? When she answers at last I persuade my poet friend that there’s a sit-in in my room, for real: We set out unarmed, And he shifts along behind me on his knees, past the bedside table in Bermudas, a spy, a snooping plant Crowds of protestors clustering around a stone cake: an old sole Just like we were Tanks, matchboxes and F-16s like pins, shameless demagogues, By night, between the bed-boards and the mattress: snipers We hump the pillows after I tell my friend God’s immanent in train-tracks and the revolution will not be Wi-Fied I picture my girlfriend knelt before me in her black blouse, our heavenly grief as I come in her throat And when mother wakes us in the morning I don’t resist, I see the maid, her hoover with its Eagle emblem, I see the national flag aflutter in alien hands and know that we shall not defeat Israel. My friend’s furious, sleepdust in his eye as the Hoover’s hose reaches beneath the bed; When the soap and mops come out I warn him off the maid, with difficulty: No point raping her now! Nothing but the hoover’s drone while he weeps, Nor blood nor iron, The bedroom’s parquet once more clean and clear, And where books of poetry stood on the shelves, bottles of Dettol and bleach, sponges and embroidered cloths; Suddenly my bed sighs to the siren’s wail, the sheets catch fire, the mattress detonates, Bedside table morphs to dread lion roaring my friend vanishes the writing on the walls: A panther ejaculates every twenty minutes when it mates and its tongue is rougher than sandpaper. My Bereaved Darling, Conferrer of the final orgasm: death knits our lives together; I have seen the comers and goers, kissed bearded ones and run from hatchet men on Metro steps, Have borne my saint down to the grave’s gloom for your father’s ease of mind and drowsed cross-legged between two carriages to Cairo, Have found you beneath my bed and my mother’s army in my room, Have offered up my neck to the lion’s mouth.
Salamat!