Spectres

'In Specters, Radwa Ashour, whoteaches at Ain Shams University in Cairo, blends memories with dreams, historywith fiction, and the personal with the political. As she seamlessly crossesgenre boundaries to produce a narrative that is part novel and part autobiography, seasoned with dashes of myth and poetry, she brings to light thedeeper implications and trends behind events, and the existential connectionsbetween them. One feels that she is taking stock of her life - and the state ofArab society, sifting through what has happened, imagining what could havehappened, and pondering what it all means. With her evocative prose, she takesthe reader onboard to navigate the ambiguities and stark realities that make upthe complexity of human experience.

A myriad of themes and historicalevents are woven together in this intellectually honest book: the challenge ofbeing a teacher in a corrupt system, the development of consciousness,Palestine, exile, the Egyptian people’s struggle for freedom from the time of British colonialism up to today, and Ashour’s life with her husband,Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, and their son, which was made very difficultby Barghouti’s refugee status and being banned from Egypt.

What holds all these threads togetheris the writing process itself. Ashour sets herself two tasks: to write hermemoir and to write a novel about a woman named Shagar. Playing on the motif of“the double”, the narrative weaves back and forth between the two, keeping one wondering whether Shagar is somehow Ashour, or who she might have been. What the two women do have in common is being teachers and researchers who are moving toward “recognition that a departure from the dominant pattern ispossible,” in order to see history in a new light and uncover its lessons. (p.48)

Shagar aspires to write a researchpaper on the Deir Yassin massacre; when the topic is rejected by her professor,she also begins studying the use of forced labour in digging the Suez Canal.She uncovers fascinating testimony from Deir Yassin survivors, which highlightsthe villagers’ resistance, as well as accounts of massacres enacted by the British army in Egyptian villages. In the end, Shagar has loads of documents;she is burning with knowledge of the injustices suffered by people overdecades, but paralysed by the corruption and alienation around her, and unableto finalise her research for publication. Still, she pursues the specters fromthe past, who remind both of their tragedies and of the possibility for change.At Suez, near where Egypt and Palestine meet, she sees a vision: “The spectersopen their eyes, light their lanterns, traverse the underground waterway bynight. Who is this they are telling their story to, filling him with determination, filling their noses with the breath of life? Who is this thatlaments morning and evening, will not be parted from his beloved and yet cannotreach her?” (p. 276)

The story is brought full circle byAshour’s memory of hearing about the Sabra-Shatilla massacre, and her manyreferences to the imprisonment of Egyptian leftists and the repression of theEgyptian student movement. Injustice is ongoing, but it will not be forgiven orforgotten.

Specters is a pleasure to read, not only because of Ashour’s beautiful prose, but also due to her intimate descriptions of Cairo, her many literary references and the anecdotes she relates of family, friends and relatives. Many of the friends mentioned are icons of theprogressive Arab intellectual movement, from Naji Al Ali to Ibrahim Nasrallah.

But Specters can also be disturbing, perhaps intentionally so, in order to prod the reader away from “the dominant pattern”. Many sections of the book are hazy, replicating the non-linearworkings of memory. One is not always sure of who is speaking, or where or whenthe event in question is happening. Yet, in the end, the threads come togetherin a coherent pattern replete with implications for the contemporary Arab world. In telling the story of two women, Ashour protests all forms ofrepression, victimisation and disempowerment. More importantly, she highlights people’s agency, to show that there is an alternative. A parallel theme is theoneness of the Palestinian cause and the struggle for freedom in Egypt, byimplication revealing the falsity of compartmentalising the Arab world. While laying bare the corruption and class divisions in Arab society, Ashour stresses the unity of the causes that really matter to people.'- SallyBland, the Jordan Times