He Wished to See the Sea; The Morning After, by Nagui El-Shenawi, (Cairo: Al Dar publishing House), 2018.

Nagui El-Shenawi, an engineer, has been close to political and intellectual circles his whole life.

A couple of decades ago, he decided to put some of his memories into the form of short stories. The stories leave the reader wondering who he is talking about and whether the stories are fiction or actual events that he lived through, witnessed, or heard about. 

El-Shenawi published two collections of short stories and this new edition is a combination of both, a welcome revival of some of the memories of the 1980s and 1990s for those who lived through these years, and a glimpse for the younger generations who did not.

The two collections, which contain in 42 stories in total, are written in a snapshot stye, like a talented photographer catching a fleeting but beautiful image. They form a unified whole, reflecting the author’s ongoing storytelling saga. 

The first story, titled The Icy Eyes, is about a leftist activist working underground with a small group to achieve the goals of his political organisation by printing pamphlets. He decides to distribute the pamphlets in various places in the capital.

During his mission, he meets the girl of his dreams; they believe in the same principles, they work for the same goals, and in due course she wins his heart. At the time set for their meeting to move to distribute the pamphlets, she arrives, he gives her the papers and the secret police surround them, handcuff him and put him into a police car.

She, on the other hand, stands by, her loving eyes turning icy; she was simply an informant who infiltrated the secret group and turned him over to the police. A similar story has happened dozens of times to the political dissents who worked against the state.

The writer shows his bias towards those who believe in siding with the poor and shows that they were always targeted by the security apparatus. Choosing this story to begin his collection with makes the reader’s mouth water. It is daring, explaining the method of arrest, infiltrating the opposition, using girls to catch the members and imprisoning them. 

The snapshots continue: a murderer in prison who is an accomplished horse-rider is described. He rides horses better than any of the officers who guard the prison. No horse was difficult for him to tame, but he had no visitors in prison and eventually dies in his cell.

In prison he remembered his past, his glory, his reputation as a horseman and the admiration he acquired from everyone who saw him riding. In this story the writer remains neutral; should we sympathise with a killer without knowing the circumstances? Should we admire the knight that he was? It is another glimpse that pushes the reader to go deeper into feelings that he never experienced before; after all, how many people know the stories of killers who were caught? 

The River and the Memory is dedicated to Taymour El-Malawani. The story is simple; a man sits by the river, in high humidity, sweating so his clothes become sticky. His address book falls from his pocket, lying open on the name of his friend. He sees the name and the thought that comes to his mind that his friend is dead. The weird thing about this story is that the day after the author wrote it his friend did actually die, hence the dedication. Maybe he did not mean that specific friend, but the intuition that can happen to all of us was sadly correct in this instance. 

In The Beloved Country, the reader can feel the nostalgia for places that is the theme. People travel all the time, change countries, places and sometimes even identities. In this story, El-Shenawi gathers all the feelings provoked by the diaspora onto two pages. Even though people mostly travel freely, the long expatriation brings pain to most immigrants. The familiar coffee shop with its smells, drinks, background music, the friends whose faces become pale memories, are all sources of pain in particular when the new country is snowy, cold and the travellers cannot build roots, no matter how hard they try.

The new country simply does not care about the pains of the new members in their community, a feeling that all those who live away from their homeland have experienced. Success and wealth, if achieved, cannot take away the pain. Sometimes a hot drink or watching a group of smokers is all it takes to bring all the painful feelings back. 

El-Shenawi’s work brings back talent to short stories. His stories have both depth and a comfortable elegance that shows a great grasp of the language. A comparison with the writers who do not have that depth or mastery of the language but who have filled the literary scene is inevitable, and a reader might wonder how some of these writers find publishers in the first place. Not having written enough is this writer’s big error.