A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore. By Mohamed Mansi Qandil. Translated by Barbara Romaine. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2018. Pp. 380, with glossary of historical figures. $34.95 (paperback) ISBN: 9780815654629; $34.95 (e-book) ISBN: 9780815611097.
A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore sheds light on the late nineteenth century in Egypt. That period was marked by a powerful collision between competing archeological excavations and discoveries undertaken mainly by Western scholars and art dealers, and by national struggles of Egyptians against British influence and occupation under the Khedival regime.
The novel tells the story of two parallel lives. The first character, Aisha, is a young girl from Upper Egypt. Smuggled by her mother out of her home village, she grows up and is educated in a Christian convent in Asyut, away from her abusive step-father. The second, Howard Carter, is a young British man who leaves his hometown and finds himself in Egypt documenting archeological findings.
Aisha, the main protagonist, lives under a new identity, becomes educated, and starts working as a translator. Her path crosses with those of famous historical figures of the time. Employed as the personal translator to Lord Cromer, then British consul-general in Egypt (1883–1907), Aisha gets exposed to the worlds of politics, expatriates, nationalism, and political demonstrations. While working for Cromer, she meets Howard Carter, and eventually joins Carter on his adventure to locate Tutankhamen’s tomb. Throughout the pages of this novel, the reader discovers personal chapters in Aisha’s life, dating back to her schooling; her work in a local newspaper with political activists like Abdulrahman al-Rifaʿi; participating in events that led her to fall in love with the Egyptian sculptor Mahmoud Mukhtar; and her ongoing longing to go back to her village and see her mother again, an action she finally takes that results in devastating and heartbreaking experiences.
Through Aisha’s life events and experiences, the reader is introduced into powerfully intersecting dynamics—British colonialism and its relations with the Khedival court, gender inequities and abuse within Egyptian rural society, national struggles by Egyptian political movements, Pharaonic dynasties, and longstanding cultural myths. The novel is well situated within a crucial juncture of Egypt’s contemporary history. The narrative provides an insider’s view into the life of a European expatriate elite, engaged in the despoilment of Egyptian antiquities and cultural heritage. It also sheds light on the political conditions under which Egyptians were living, and their political aspirations. The novel is organized in chapters that alternate in their focus between Aisha’s life events and Howard Carter’s journey into his career. In the beginning, the protagonists’ life stories seem to be disconnected, leaving the reader longing to read more to find out how these two stories are ultimately merged.
Published initially in Arabic, under the title Yawm Ghaʾim fi al-Barr al-Gharbi (Dar El-Shorouk, Cairo, 2009), in this work novelist Mohamed Mansi Qandil provides us with a complex picture of the social and political forces—local, national, and regional—that have shaped Egypt’s contemporary history. Against this backdrop, the author develops the relationship between Aisha and Carter. The original Arabic work was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (often referred to as the Arabic Booker Prize) in 2010. This English translation, undertaken by Barbara Romaine, offers a pleasant read. In her translation, Romaine captures vividly the detailed descriptions of places and events. She allows the reader to engage emotionally with the story, as it evolves through its chapters. Some Arabic phrases appear in their transliterated form (in the Egyptian dialect) throughout the text, thus adding value by keeping the translation closer to the experiences associated with the original text. Barbara Romaine is an academic, Arabic instructor, and an experienced translator. She has translated from Arabic to English a number of literary works and received honors and awards acknowledging her expertise in the Arabic language.
A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore is highly recommended. Readers interested in the ways in which historically-situated novels build their narratives by weaving the highly personal and intimate with the highly political and social will find in this novel a wide space for imagination. The English edition of the novel includes a glossary of historical names and events which provides the reader with contextual information that adds value to the text and allow readers to orient themselves in a terrain that may be new to them.
Suher Zaher-Mazawi