Alaa Al Aswany’s Chicago sheds light on the lives of Egyptian intellectuals amidst dictatorship and corruption. Set in Chicago, the novel delves into the conflicts and realities of Egyptians who have fled their country, exploring the complexities of political repression and the human condition.
About Alaa Al Aswany
Egyptian novelist and dentist Alaa Al Aswany (b. 1957) was born into a middle-class family in the capital, Cairo. His highly educated family is known for producing literary figures. His father, Abbas Al-Aswany, was a lawyer and writer who revived the maqāmāt, a distinctive form of medieval Arabic prose, in the 1960s and named it the Aswany Maqāmāt. His father also won a national prize for his novel al-Aswār al-ʿĀliyah, but he never achieved the same level of fame as his son. Alaa Al Aswany’s grandfather was also an improvisational poet.
Alaa Al Aswany says his first literary teacher was his father. Not only did he teach him to write, but he also gave him a large study in their home. Thanks to this, Alaa Al Aswany grew up in a library filled with all kinds of humanist books from an early age. He was also taught by his father’s friends, who represented the Egyptian intellectual scene. His father, a lawyer, warned him against pursuing fiction as a career, fearing that his son might give up his livelihood if he focused on it. Alaa Al Aswany then enrolled in dental school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned his master’s degree. Along with his studies, Alaa Al Aswany also studied foreign languages, including French and Spanish, and became fluent in them.
He still continues to make a living as a dentist. He says he doesn’t see writing as a way to make ends meet, but rather as a hobby that allows him to dream and breathe. Alaa Al Aswany is also a practicing intellectual, and is a member of the Kifāyah movement, a national movement in Egypt that sought to oust former President Hosni Mubarak from power after 30 years of dictatorship. He writes a monthly column for the Egyptian newspaper Jarīdah al-ʿArabī.
His works of fiction published to date include Jamʿīyah Muntaẓirī al-Zaʿīm (1998), ʿImārah Yaʿqūbiyān (2002), Nīrān Ṣadīqah (2004), Chicago (2007), and Nādī al-Sayyārat (2013). Most of his novels tend to be thematically critical of the Egyptian dictatorship prior to the January 25 Revolution (2011), seeing the government as the root cause of all social problems. He has also written commentaries on current events before and after the Egyptian democratic revolution, including Why Don’t the Egyptians Revolt? (2010) and Did the Egyptian Revolution Fail? (2012).
Alaa Al Aswany stood in the ranks of the democratic revolution protesters in January 2011 at Maidan al-Tahrir (Freedom Square) in the center of Cairo. Alaa Al Aswany did not only attack the dictatorship through fiction, but also showed himself as an active intellectual who did not hesitate to stand with the Egyptian people to call for ‘anti-dictatorship’ and ‘ousting Mubarak’. Since then, he has continued to emphasize the realization of democratization in Egypt and the protection of people’s freedoms and rights through his constant writing, lectures, and media activities, actively participating in the movement to achieve the unfinished revolution.
Plot of Chicago
While ʿImārah Yaʿqūbiyān is set in the author’s native Egypt, Chicago is set in the United States, where the author studied abroad. According to the artist’s bio and reviews of his works, both titles are based on his own life experiences. ʿImārah Yaʿqūbiyān is the name of a building in downtown Cairo where the author opened a private practice as a dentist, and Chicago is the American city where the author studied abroad and earned a master’s degree in dentistry at the University of Illinois. This suggests that the author’s real life experiences were utilized in the novel. ʿImārah Yaʿqūbiyān is a work based on the author’s life in Cairo, where she lived, and was inspired by the colorful buildings she saw while walking around downtown Cairo to portray the changing times in Egypt, the lives of the people closely connected to the buildings, and the general problems of Egyptian society, especially under the dictatorship. On the other hand, “Chicago” may have been influenced by the author’s experience of studying abroad, as “Chicago” contains various life stories of Egyptian students and Egyptian professors studying at universities in the United States.
The novel centers on a group of Egyptians living or staying in Chicago. They include Egyptian-American professors (Rafat Sabit and Muhammad Salah) in the Department of Organizational Studies at the University of Illinois, Egyptian international students (Tariq Hassib, Shaima Muhammadi, Ahmad Danana, and Naji Abdul Samad), an Egyptian Coptic immigrant (Karam Doss), and a security officer at the Egyptian Consulate in Chicago (Safwat Shakir). While the novel presents common themes such as the cultural and mindset gap that Egyptians experience in the United States, loneliness as a foreigner and nostalgia for home, these are not the center of gravity of the novel. Rather, the author’s intention is to examine the situation in Egypt today through these characters, which means that it is worth paying attention to their relationship with Egypt’s politics, society, and culture, and more specifically, how the rampant corruption and dictatorship in Egypt shape and determine the direction of the lives of Egyptian intellectuals. Some of the highly educated intellectuals pursue personal advancement and glory by kowtowing to the dictatorial regime, while others become targets of repression for protesting and opposing the system, and others stop paying attention to the domestic situation and pursue their own success and desires. There are also intellectuals who are dissatisfied with the dictatorship and want to resist it, but hesitate to take action. In this way, the novel reveals the various aspects of intellectuals in Egypt during the long rule of an unstoppable power (probably President Hosni Mubarak).
Above all, the novel criticizes and resists the dictatorship in Egypt. In this respect, Chicago can be seen as a continuation of ʿImārah Yaʿqūbiyān. Naji, an international student, is classified as a so-called activist, and when he comes to the United States, he remains critical of his country’s regime, as well as the U.S. government for supporting such dictatorships. Karam Doss, an accomplished surgeon who has found success in the United States, shares Naji’s views on the situation in his country. Naji was not allowed to practice medicine in Egypt because of his activist background, and Karam was discriminated against as a Coptic and fled his country. With a fondness for their country, they plan to make a statement to overthrow the dictatorship during the Egyptian president’s visit to Chicago. On the other hand, there are Egyptians in Chicago who want to put the brakes on their anti-government movement. They are Safwat, a national security officer in the Egyptian consulate, and his nephew, Danana, an international student. Safwat, a minion of the dictatorial regime, has risen to prominence through his dastardly repression of opposition activists, and Danana, a foreign student, has become Safwat’s main tool to monitor and report on the daily activities of Egyptian students in Chicago. The novel is set in Chicago and centers on the conflict and tension between these two sides.
Centering on this political and social conflict structure, the novel shows various aspects of the lives of Egyptians in Chicago as observed around it. Among them is the failed romantic relationship between Naji, an international student, and Wendy, a Jewish woman, which hints at the irreconcilable reality between Arabs and Israelis. There is also Professor Salah, who left his lover Zainab in Egypt 30 years ago, emigrated and married an American woman. He still misses Zainab, who was a student activist against the dictatorship as a young man. Professor Rafat, who despises his native Egypt and admires America, is devastated when his daughter Sarah, who was born and raised in the United States, dies while living with her drug-addicted boyfriend. Tariq, an international student, meets and falls in love with Shaima, a fellow Egyptian girl. Tariq, who has been studying hard to succeed, neglects his studies to indulge in a romantic relationship, while Shaima, who comes from a conservative family, becomes deeply involved with Tariq and regrets her deviation from Islamic tradition.
Through these various Egyptian events, the novel observes American life in Chicago and reveals Arab perspectives on American issues. For example, Naji’s thesis advisor, Graham, is an elderly professor who, while pursuing romance in his youth, criticized American capitalism and participated in the Vietnam anti-war movement, and is now a vigorous critic of American conservatism and imperialist policies. Carol, a young black woman who lives with Graham, faces racial discrimination and is forced to model underwear to make ends meet. Professor Rafat’s daughter Sarah, like many young Americans, leaves home and moves in with her boyfriend Jeff, only to be seduced by him into a drug addiction that ultimately costs her her life. After Naji’s planned anti-dictatorship speech during the Egyptian president’s visit to the U.S. goes awry, he is harshly scrutinized by U.S. intelligence agents who have been contacted by Egyptian intelligence. As such, the novel reveals the grim social problems of drug addiction, prostitution, sexual commodification, and racism behind the glamorous image of the United States as a capitalist power in the modern high-tech civilization, as well as the problems of foreign policy, such as the U.S. society’s heightened sensitivity to terrorism after 9/11 and the support of the Egyptian dictatorship for national interests.
The novel does not provide clear-cut answers to the problems that emerge from the events of the Egyptians in Chicago. At the end of the novel, after an attempted anti-dictatorship statement planned by conscious individuals such as Naji and Karam fails due to Professor Salah’s indecision, Salah blames himself and commits suicide, while Naji is captured by U.S. intelligence agents. Rafat, a follower of American culture, loses his daughter, who has promised to live independently of her parents, and falls into a spiral of skepticism and despair. Shaima, an international student who has forgotten her Islamic traditions and falls in love with Tariq, is psychologically disturbed and goes to the hospital for an abortion. Tanana’s wife, fed up with her snobbish husband, who puts his studies on the back burner and works for the government, runs away from Chicago and returns to Egypt alone. Naji suspects Wendy, whom he loves deeply, of being a spy for the Ministry of Intelligence, and she breaks up with him. In this way, the Egyptians in the film are baffled by the inability to fulfill their dreams and plans in the United States. The overthrow of dictatorships and demands for democracy are thwarted, families are broken, and love is unfruitful. The translator will not offer any further interpretation or commentary on this ending of the novel. It is up to the reader to read and interpret the work. In his previous book, ʿImārah Yaʿqūbiyān, Alaa Al Aswany presents the lives of a group of human beings living in Cairo and presents their problems, but does not provide answers. I think Chicago is similar to this. I look forward to hearing readers’ opinions on what the author was trying to say in Chicago.
