How to End Up in a Cult with "The Yacoubian Building"
Also how to feel bad for a terrorist but that'll pass...eventually
What is Happening and Why Should I Read This?
Glad you asked, self! The reason is in the background and history which is important.
The Yacoubian Building was erected by Hagop Yacoubian, an Armenian, in Wist El Balad (referred to as Downtown) which is a very old and illustrious neighborhood in Cairo. The name of the borough in Arabic literally means “middle of the city.” It was the first neighborhood to start producing and showing films in the 1920’s as well as where every foreign influence stayed and made their mark during its heyday (i.e. before 1952). The design and engineering of the building was Italian and the tenants were decidedly not Egyptian. Like the Suez Canal, the military and the Pan-Arabists nationalized it to make way for whoever Egyptians they deemed fit to be in it; specifically military personnel.
Today the Yacoubian Building is still there and exists as a landmark, a place of residence and a place of various businesses. Zoning is also decidedly not Egyptian. After Gamal Abdel Nasser died Anwar Sadat took over and had other, more far off problems to deal with (which we’ll get to) and then was publicly assassinated. Then Hosni Mubarak became the new dictator and engaged in a practice known as kleptocracy. It was the fashion for Middle Eastern dictators at the time, but he kept the US and their geopolitical interests happy and let the economy go down while his under cities went up. It is this pre revolution Egypt that we see over the course of this story.
The author, Alaa Al Aswany, himself grew up in the Yacoubian Building with his father maintaining a law office during his upbringing. He then maintained a dental office before writing became his full time career in 2002 with this being his debut novel. In all of Aswany’s works he deals with themes of sex, power, money, and political corruption. His narrative voice is as though someone is letting you, the reader, in on the local gossip and recent history. There are judgements, criticism and entendre to make everything more lively, baiting and scandalous. But there is also an undercurrent of lamentation over Egypt’s lost identity to time. There used to be a prestige of being European with certain advantages that were never really genuine. Now we grapple with the uncertainty that has come with this new Islamist movement coming from the Gulf that feels daunting, forced and contradictory to what people were used to before.
Who Are the Characters?
The characters are mostly residents of the building. Shocking, I know.
Zaki Bey El Dessouki - Zaki is an aging playboy son of old order aristocrats. He is either addressed as Bey or Pasha in this respect even though that caste no longer exists; a fact he is all too well aware of. To keep the darkness at bay, he indulges in living off his family’s fortune and in their apartment because he’s not a very hardworking engineer and loves the company of women. Something that his sister, Dawlat, is deeply ashamed of.
Abaskharon and Malak - These two characters are brothers who are Christian and very poor. They rely on their own devices to get ahead since they have no connection to recommend them. They develop a habit of pushing their boundaries.
Taha El Shazli - Taha is the son of the doorman who has aspirations of becoming a policeman and living an honest life. He is guided by his faith and his love for Busayna.
Busayna El Sayed - Busayna is the girl next door who is forced to give up all of her dreams and forego an education to start working to avoid poverty after the death of her father. The direction her life is headed makes her disillusioned and jaded which causes problems between her and Taha.
Hatim Rasheed - Hatim is the flamboyantly homosexual nepotism baby of an Egyptian aristocrat and his French wife. He’s the editor-in-chief of ‘Le Caire’ and is hopelessly in love with Abd Rubbuh.
Abd Rubbuh - Abduh is the young family man from the farmlands who questions his sexuality during his affair with Hatim Rasheed whom he meets while on his compulsory military service.
Hagg Muhammad Azzam - Hagg Azzam is the purported real estate developer who owns half the street, including the building. He is known to be pious, always high on hashish, and harbors grander political aspirations to which he enlists the help of Kamal El Fouli. He also struggles with his age and so marries Souad behind his first wife’s back.
Souad Gaber - Souad is a single mother from Alexandria who agrees to marry Hagg Azzam for his ability to provide for her even though she must be parted from her son.
SPOILERS!
For real, you should stop now if you want to read the book for yourself and be surprised. I’ll still be here when you finish.
General Analysis
We see how characterizations progress as the relationships move forward. In showing power, Aswany draws a parallel with the power dynamics between Hagg Azzam and Souad then immediately with Hatim and Abd Rubbuh. Money plays a role in meeting immediate needs but love bombing can feel like a certain prestige in the moment when it’s really the dominant partner putting his respective subject in a gilded cage. Souad invests in her son so long as she does not see him to stay with Hagg Azzam while Abd Rubbuh gets a livelihood in a kiosk to sustain his family so long as he never leaves Hatim. Furthermore, Aswany likens the appetites of the elites in the Sheraton kebab restaurant to their greed. Here we find Kamal El Fouli and Hagg Azzam. Then there is hypocrisy about “family values” among men who engage in every other manner of sin/amorality such as corruption, indecency, infidelity, dishonesty and greed. There is the double standard that immodesty in a woman is bad but racketeering is fine when a man commits it. It is telling that these men are willing and enthusiastic to engage or tolerate every indiscretion besides a woman’s own agency, sexual or otherwise.
With Abd Rubbuh and Hatim or Busayna and Zaki there is a theme of missed opportunity and/or idleness. Hatim cannot have a full life with Abd Rubbuh because he will never be apart of Abduh’s family even if he bankrolls said family life. Zaki and Busayna feel they cannot be together in Egypt (or anywhere in public) because of the large age difference. This is remedied, albeit temporarily, by historical/political discussions and daydreams of emigration. Even Hatim wants Abduh to be respectable for this to be possible. These are shown, with varying degrees of feasibility, to be pipe dreams. Homosexuality will likely never be accepted in Egyptian society as it is now and Abduh could never abandon his family. Zaki will always have to contend with Dawlat even if that means leaving Busayna in the crosshairs.
But none of these plot lines compare to how Taha’s story stayed with me the way it did. We get a glowing appraisal of each character’s abilities like Taha and Malak then makes it clear that they never stood a chance at reaching their goals honestly in the first place. Each one must make compromises. It colors my own reading of the book having grown up in America where the narrative is that hard work will always be rewarded, with fabulous wealth of course, regardless of where you started which is highlighted in a tonal shift in the narration past that initial mood of idealism in the beginning.
So Let’s Talk About Taha
We meet Taha, the doorkeeper’s son, and he represents all of the virtues of what a young man ought to be. He’s well behaved, hardworking, obedient, soft-spoken, God-fearing, intelligent and ambitious. It’s made clear that he has enough faculties about him to achieve whatever he decides to set his mind to do. What’s more is that he’s respectful of (to Egyptian standards) and loyal to Busayna. His likelihood of social mobility posed a threat to the tenant of the building who looked down on him.
“Some encouraged him to study, gave him generous gifts, and prophesied a glorious future for him. Others, however, (and there were many of these), were somehow disturbed by the idea of ‘the high flying doorkeeper’s son’…”
By accident of birth, Taha is denied the dream of becoming a policeman and so he must pivot to go to university to study economics and political science. The trouble is, Taha also has the fault of being too stubborn to take this in stride. After losing his dream, he begins to lean into his faith by spending his free time at the mosque and his thinking starts to shift. Still upset and feeling out of control, Taha starts to pester Busayna about how much she’s changed and so she breaks up with him having fell out of love. Taha, having only his faith and his education left, cleaves ever tighter to his religious teachers who misguide him to not fight for whatever life he still can achieve and use the Iraqi Invasion as an excuse to radicalize him. He loses interest in his studies and experienced many changes in his personality and becomes the perfect religious soldier. The outside world (read: American soldiers still reeling from 9/11) don’t help contradict his new worldview.
“Do you know what the American pig wrote on the rockets before he fired it? He wrote ‘Greetings to Allah!’ Muslims, they mock your God. What then will you do? They murder and violate your women. […] Do your self respect and manhood count for so little with you? Gihad! Gihad! Gihad!
- Taha’s friend Tahir preaching at a protest
As a result of this protest, Taha gets arrested where he is tortured and violated. He cannot alone deal with this trauma and so seeks the guidance of his religious leaders. He is moved away from the rest of the city, his friends and his family where he trains in combat, gets married to a new woman named Radwa (keep in mind he is a college student) and swears revenge on his assailant. When Taha finally gets his justice, he’s immediately shot and dies from a bullet fired from the gun of one of his fellow zealots in the confrontation.
What was haunting about this was the sense of peace Taha felt when he died. Aswany wrote it in a way that the character was satisfied and met every goal he could have ever had. But all I could think was “what a waste of talent and potential.” This poor child gave up everything for absolutely nothing and he didn’t deserve this almost predestination. Then it hit me. How easy it is to lose your way and put your trust into the wrong person even when it is in the most perfect place to ask for help. A place of divine worship. A mosque. This is the place where most people feel like they don’t need to exercise their critical thought and look where it got Taha. Imagine all of the other Taha’s in the world backed into corners.
Feel free to leave a comment of what your thought and what stuck out to you. I would love to hear from you. <3