Charaf ou L'honneur. (Arabic).

Accad, Evelyne

Sonallah Ibrahim. Charaf ou L'honneur Richard Jacquemond, tr. Arles, France Actes Sud / Sindbad. 1999 (released 2000). 349 pages. 149 F ISBN 2-7427-2388-9

SONALLAH IBRAHIM, a rising Egyptian novelist who had already impressed us with his forceful 2992 novel Cette odeurla, has once more, with the poignant novel Charaf ou L'honneur, hit upon the important questions and problems plaguing Arab societies, Egypt in particular, in an incredible tour de force. It is no wonder that he obtained the literary award for best novel of the year in 1998 during the thirtieth Cairo Book Fair.

Ibrahim, who was imprisoned with other leftist Egyptian militants from 1959 to 2964, tells the story of a young Egyptian man named Achraf Abdel-Aziz Soliman, nicknamed Charaf (literally "honor" or "pride") by his mother. Charaf was imprisoned for having accidentally killed an Australian man who had lured him into his hotel room and tried to rape him. The action takes place in a squalid, corrupt, dehumanizing Egyptian prison whose inmates nevertheless demonstrate an astonishing unity and cohesiveness.

Forced under torture to say that the crime was not accidental and not a reaction to his violated "honor," Charaf is sentenced to a lengthy term with no real legal recourse, for the system is too inept to provide him with a lawyer who could plead his case. While in prison, he meets several interesting characters, one of whom is Dr. Ramzi, a Coptic pharmacist whose story unrolls parallel to Charaf's own.

Dr. Ramzi, who had first tried to enter Egyptian politics, subsequently went into a brilliant career with a multinational pharmaceutical company. He finally fell victim to a plot which used his patriotism and probity against him to cause his downfall. His speeches in prison are very interesting warnings of the dangers facing modern civilization, such as chemicals dispersed into the atmosphere, or the unjust proportion of costs borne by the Egyptian poor: "Ailleurs, les dechets bouchaient le lit du canal jusqu'audessus de sa surface, chargee de matieres petrolieres, azote, graisses melees a la terre.... On vend le produit de ces champs sur les marches de gros de Mostorod et Rod el-Farag. Les paysans ne savent pas qu'ils exportent le poison."

All this is narrated with humor and a real talent for storytelling. Ibrahim knows how to bring out the vital issues, the ones that need to be addressed and dealt with if our world is to survive. In this novel, he does so with renewed imagination, with creative ideas, and with descriptions and images that are highly effective and show great maturity in style and thought. Evelyne Accad University of Illinois, Urbana