Ala Khat Greenwich (On Greenwich Meridian), by: Shady Lewis, (Cairo: Dar Al-Ein), 2019
Al-Ein Publishing House
Shady Lewis in his second novel, “Ala Khat Greenwich” (On Greenwich Meridian), has decided to bring to life people that we hear about in today’s media but can never imagine the lives of, or the kind of death they might end up facing.
The story is sad. A young Syrian immigrant dies in London, no family or friends around him, his body discovered a few days after his death because a neighbour smelled the corpse. An awful story that became normal in today’s world. His parents were notified in Cairo by the British embassy that their son had passed away.
The whole matter ends up in the lap of an Egyptian immigrant living and working in London. Someone who has never rendered a service to anyone in his homeland while living in the UK. It simply does not work that way in the West: you cannot bring someone to visit, or look for a job for someone from your old country in the new one. The writer, without saying bluntly, leaves it clear that helping your friends or family to come to the West, as an immigrant in the West, is nearly an impossible task.
Yet he was asked to take care of the funeral procedures to bury “Ghyath”. Out of curiosity to know the favour required by a good friend of his, he accepted to help, then tried to evade his commitment but could not, and the process became the main line of the novel. The writer with obvious cruelty describes the situation as a “boring way to die." The quote that sums up his philosophy on that matter is, “I prefer to do something with all my heart or not do it at all; that’s why I rarely do anything” — a brilliant way to live selfishly without committing to any idea or position with a clear conscience — a guilt free pass.
Among the colonial powers, Great Britain has the best record in accepting immigrants on its land. Violence is at a minimum towards the newcomers and their chances of leading a decent life are fair. That is what a researcher would find according to numbers and incidents over the past few decades. What cannot be measured is the institutional discrimination; to understand it we need an insider to tell us how it works.
That is exactly what Shady Lewis did in his novel. The main character works in the social service department in local government. No “pure” English people work there. They are all immigrants taking care of other immigrants, just in worse conditions. A Nigerian British co-worker explains that the employees are there until they can get their pension and return to their homeland with enough money to buy a house with a pool. Compassion, the will to do a good job, or have a successful career, are the last things in the minds of social services employees.
They have been tamed and accepted the role of doing the dirty work of the ruling class who would sacrifice them as scapegoats when the need arises, or a mistake occurs that would interest the media. An old refugee is denied decent housing and dies on the same day in the place she was in, due to fire. It was the cruelty of the system, the rigidity of the questionnaire, and the prejudice of the Nigerian co-worker that led to the indifferent decision.
The fact that the narrator had a desk where he works was an amazing fact for his uncle who left Egypt a couple of decades earlier and lived the hard life of an immigrant doing all low-level jobs. The uncle is semi-envious of his nephew’s position.
The writer skillfully sheds light on the way an immigrant with a job thinks and acts in a foreign land, and at the same time how he is looked upon by his countrymen in the homeland. Intentionally, the main character/narrator has no name, symbolising what all Egyptian middle aged single men living in the West, to a great extent, face: circumstances such as not having friends from the adopted land (in our character’s case, he hardly interacts with white English people, let alone have them as friends). Even without the language barrier, a lack of common history leads to superficial, cold and distant relations.
The writer is certainly ambitious. In merely 200 pages, Lewis took on the whole world. He poured his heart out, his philosophy, views on religion, feelings. From the oppression that Copts face in Egypt (a deep wound that society is having problems dealing with or solving), to describing his aunt (an amazing female character who is a strong supporter of the British Conservative Party and considers Margaret Thatcher one of the greatest leaders ever, irregular for a woman in Upper Egypt), Lewis exposes many problems of the contemporary world.
“People don’t die on Facebook … their pages remain intact … their pictures don’t change”: a quote that anyone in today’s world can relate to. The context was the death of a friend to the main character in Egypt. They knew each other but they were distant while in Egypt. Facebook brought them closer, resolved their old differences and their chats became an important part of both their lives. Then all of a sudden the friend dies. The shock was overwhelming to our character and after absorbing the fact that his friend is gone, he realises that on Facebook people don’t die and kept writing him on a regular basis, expecting that he will receive an answer one day. Any Facebook user can connect to such an act. Some might have done it and those who did not can fully understand how it can be a comforting thing to overcome the loss of a loved one. With that quote the writer gave eternity to one of the characters, an interesting thought that the reader might adopt in his virtual life on social media.
Lewis's writing style is condensed, precise, which made the novel an enjoyable but hard read. What gave the impression of a well-written story turned out to be a deep novel that challenges the reader into re-evaluating some basic ideas, such immigration, the kind of friends they have or want to be with, or the life they want to lead. Existential questions that people might forget to ask from time to time.