The Peculiar and The Untrodden in Ahmad Al Shahawy’sThe Magician’s Hijab.
The poet in Al-Shahawy sings his melancholy on the flute of narration.
Dr. Salwa Gouda writes
The Egyptian Lebanese house announced the publication of Ahmad Al-Shahawy’s novel,‘The Magician’s Hijab’. Ahmad Al-Shahawy is an Egyptian poet and author of more than 20 books and poetry collections. His poems have been translated into many languages including French, Italian, English, Turkish and Spanish. He participated in many international poetry festivals organized in many countries of the world. Al-Shahawy was also the recipient of UNESCO literature award in 1995, and Cavafy Poetry award in 1998. His poetry collection “I DO NOT See Me” was nominated in the long list of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the branch of literature.
The Magician’s Hijab is the first novel by Ahmad Al Shahawy which he dedicated to three people. The first is to his mother Nawal Issa:
“To Nawal Issa because of loss I go to bed afraid of tomorrow”.
The second dedication is to his son Ahmad:
“To my son Ahmad: Put a violet on my grave every time the sun rises, and the sun will come to you as usual”.
The last dedication is to his heroine Shams Hamdi:
” To Shams Hamdi: Know that the earth no longer rejoices for me, as if my heart is asleep in your hands. Your water is running, flowing between my sides, and it is the ammunition of my life. The world will stand long before your eyes that taught me to strive to change the alphabet.”
“The Magician’s Hijab” tells the biography of Shams Hamdi, the beautiful attractive woman who is haunted by ghosts every night. A fiftieth woman who studied political science and lived her university life interested in politics and in opposition to authority. She fell in love with the history of ancient Egypt; until she believed that she was an Egyptian goddess, Sekhmet (a goddess who came to save people from evils and sins). She continued to live among people, between her three daughters, and her family as an ancient goddess.
Shams Hamdi is not a tragic figure, but she is full of strange elements that overlap with each other. She is many women, not one woman repeating herself. She fascinates everyone, takes your sight for a moment and does not leave until you have become her captive. But black magic destroys her whole life and she goes through a long journey with her lover for magic cure. They go together through the dangerous, peculiar and the untrodden that fascinate the reader. As The Magician’s Hijab discusses the nature of family relations in modern society; it also deals with the world of magic, jinn and witches, as if the writer of the novel is one of the experienced magicians who knows human soul and beyond.
For those who are familiar with Ahmad Al Shahawy’s poetry and his interest in themes of love, Sufism, and travel literature will find the same voices apparent in this novel. If Al Shahawy has managed to build his own special kingdom of love poetry till some hail him high as being the prince of the kingdom of love, this novel also can be read as a story of love eishq, The poet in Al-Shahawy sings his melancholy on the flute of narration. In addition, he penetrates a new unknown in the realm of writing through a literary genre that he hasn’t experienced before. He goes to the extremes of adventure, and he makes his reader share him this experience, in search of an almost impossible salvation for the beloved’s body, in graves, inside the pyramids, in Socotra Island and around the Dragon tree.
The narrator in Ahmad Al-Shahawy opened his store room, reveals his secrets, the hidden deep in his unconscious, his early life in Kafr Al-Miasara, his memories, his sheikh, his travels across the world, his readings .his interest in jewelry and antiques and his pains and grieves. One can never believe that Shams Hamdi is a fictional character, a figment of the author’s imagination; Once you start reading the novel, you feel yourself trapped, taken, overwhelmed by the plot, characters, settings, dialogues, atmosphere, places and the fantastic. Each element that constitutes the narrative needs to be researched in, he tried by all means to personify Shams to his readers who is-as he describes her- one of the best women, and no woman has come since Eve prettier and more beautiful. His aim is to preserve her history from disappearance and oblivion, so that her remembrance does not fade. Shams reveals herself to the reader from the very beginning and the narrator is hiding behind, watching from a far and interfering when needed:
“I have interfered a little with weaving and braiding the incidents, not in the manner of everything expected to come; Because her world is more rich and flowing than imagination, and of course I must mention to you that she gave me some light to write, and she was frank with me to the extent that I did not find in other women I knew or encountered, as she enjoys a great deal of honesty and intelligence, and in many cases I find her poor and helpless, sometimes I see her skilled in managing her affairs, and getting out of predicaments easily and easily, and sometimes I see her not having the ability to do what is necessary, as if she had no strength left”.
Shams Hamdi captures the sympathy of the readers from the very beginning of the novel. She needs nothing from life but peace and rest and the whole narrative is her journey for salvation and happiness:
“I will not forget what is unforgettable in my life, for a person does not forget his pain and aches, the signs of malfunction in his soul, and the witnesses of death that crowded in his heart. I never Fight, and I do not want the lamp of my mind to remain on all the time, I want to rest, I am the one who has been doubled and multiplied, and I have ghosts about myself every night, and I will not achieve that with a memory composed of layers, in which accidents are repeated, and written in its plan: oblivion-resistant.”
Ahmad Al-Shahawy in his “The Magician’s Hijab” will not resort to explanation and interpretation, for he is one of the people who is interested more in acts of revelation interpretation, contemplation, inner meaning, imagination and delusion in illusion, and unobtrusive facts, and he let accidents present themselves without much intervention from his part. The writing of Shams Hamdi makes mentioning her a meaning that circulates, and people takes it as an example and a lesson, and it is not just a story told to have fun with. The question now is, did El-Shahawy succeed in immortalizing Shams Hamdi?
