If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

by Noor Naga

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire—for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other—takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.

A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Audiobook, Historical Fiction, Egypt

204 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2022

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

idk how y’all 1-2 star review girlies are reading part 3 and then coming on this app to sound EXACTLY like the reading circle characters like it must be so embarrassing for y’all to just walk around like that truly

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

...a big fat nope from me.

DISCLAIMER: like with any other negative review that I write I feel the need to remind ppl that my opinions/thoughts/impressions of a book are entirely subjective (scioccante) and that if you are interested/curious about said book you should definitely check out more positive reviews.

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English implements many trendy literary devices. The two central characters remain unnamed and are referred to as the ‘boy/man from Shobrakheit’ and the ‘American girl’, there is a lack of quotations marks (although, although most dialogues appear in italics), and the narrative is structured in a supposedly experimental way so that when the pov switches between ‘him’ and ‘her’ we get a question that is somewhat related to the content of their chapter. As you can tell from my tone I was not a fan of these devices. They can work but here the sheer combination of all of them struck me as deeply affected and not even that innovative. The story, in broad strokes, could be summarized as: an alienated millennial Egyptian American woman goes to Cairo in an attempt at reinvention. Her shaved head and ‘western ways’ however make her feel like an outsider. She questions the way she is perceived in America, and how being in Cairo challenges her long-held identity and beliefs. We are never given too many specifics about her stay but the author does give us an impression of the ‘mood’ permeating her days in Cairo. Her navel-gazing does provide the occasional pearl of wisdom, but more often than not we are given the usual platitudes about belonging and its opposites. While the author does succeed in articulating her struggles with her dual heritage and her efforts and frustration to 'master' Arabic, I found her speculations to be, more often than not, all-flash and not substance. There are attempts at being edgy which come across as somewhat cringey and fairly prosaic.
‘His’ chapters are far worse. The man is a talking, breathing, living red flag. His traumatic experiences and drug addiction do not make him a nuanced character. While I appreciated that ‘she’ understands that his upbringing informs his misogynistic beliefs, which leads him to objectify women and much worse, I could not understand why she remains with him. She tells us that the man in question is a multifaceted individual, but we never see these ‘facets’ on the page. His sections, if anything, only show us his ‘vices’. His exaggeratedly perverted point of view also struck me as not entirely believable. He often refers to ‘her’ lips as genital-like or sees her lips and wonders what color her labia will be. The man is incredibly possessive, sexist, offensive, you name it…this results in a rather one-note cartoonish character. Their chemistry wasn’t there and their arguments left me feeling quite unmoved. The ending of their ‘troubled’ relationship feels rather anticlimactic. Maybe if the author had spent less time pursuing metaphysical questions and dedicated more time to fleshing out the voices of her two central characters I would have ‘felt’ more but since we get a recap of a relationship more than the actual relationship itself, I just could not bring myself to care. The occasional vulgar language was not thought-provoking or subversive and the author’s experimental structure and style were fairly banal. It’s a pity as I found the subject matter interesting (languages, identity, dual-heritage, cultural dissonance, etc..). I did not care for the way the author discusses queerness. She allows (as far as i remember of course) a page to the matter. The girl says she’s queer, but the context in which she says this is weird as she seems to equate her shaved head and desire to move in queer spaces as being queer. I would have liked for the author to spend more page time on this subject. That then we have the ‘lesbian’ character in love with ‘her’ frustrated me somewhat as she only seems to be mentioned to emphasize ‘her’ desirability and to fuel ‘his’ jealousy. That ‘she’ only shows interest/pursues a relationship with toxic men was a bit tiring. Maybe if the author had spent more time articulating the motivations/feelings that lead ‘her’ to self-sabotage, like Zaina Arafat does in You Exist Too Much, maybe then I would have those relationships more realistic.
There is also a mini-rant against cancel culture and its brevity does it a disservice as the author delivers a rather surface-level and rushed commentary on the dangers of this 'practice'.

SPOILERS

Here comes the cherry on the poorly baked cake. When the climax happens, we are taken out of the novel and into a writing workshop of some sort. The people there are discussing the novel, while the author remains silent. We learn that the novel is based on her experiences and the people who have also just finished it give their various opinions. Many of them are celebrating her achievement and giving her some truly fantastic feedback. The few dissident voices point out all of the book's flaws (the experimental style, the ending, the use of dual perspectives to tell what should have been just ‘her’ story) but it just so happens that said ppl are shitty so their critique is made moot. This supposedly self-aware wannabe meta chapter pissed me off. It seemed a preemptive attempt at rebutting any criticism, and in this way, it reminded me of a certain passage from Mona Awad’s Bunny, where we have awful people give some valid criticism to the narrator’s book which happens to be stylistically and thematically similar to Bunny. I am all for autofiction, and some of my favourite books are inspired by the author’s own experiences (the idiot, you exist too much, caucasia) but here I question the author’s choice to add the pov of the man she was in an abusive relationship with. The people in the workshop argue that this is an empowering move and that she has the right to tell her own story etc etc, and while I don’t necessarily disagree with that, I found the way she chooses to portray him and his inner monologue during ‘his’ chapters to be at best lazy, at worst, of poor taste. The florid metaphors that dominate his pov ultimately amount to a caricature of a man (“her water breasts slipping to the sides of her rib cage like raw eggs”). I couldn’t help but to unfavourably compare this to the jaw-dropping finale episode of I May Destroy You or the section in Wayétu Moore’s memoir where she convincingly captures her mother’s perspective.
I dunno, I felt this last section was smugly self-congratulatory and for no reason tbh. Nothing really stood about this ‘novel’: the structure was uninspired, the prose was mannered, and the characters were flimsy at best. The issues and themes had potential, and as I said, the author does on occasion proffer some keenly observed passages on American and Egyptian social mores, on cultural and linguistic barriers, on occupying a female body in contemporary Cairo, on being 'othered', on the ‘desirability’ of whiteness (for example she notes how in america her mother has recently ‘reinvented’ herself as white), on the privileges that come with being America (by emphasizing the opportunities that are available to ‘her’ and not ‘him’), and on the dangers of self-victimization (with ‘him’ trying to gaslight ‘her’ for his emotionally abusive behaviour by painting himself as a victim).

I’m sure other readers will be able to appreciate this more than I was. Sadly, I was not a fan of the overall tone of the novel nor did I like how the author portrays her story’s only lesbian character. Lastly, that meta chapter pissed me off. I didn’t think it was half as clever as it wanted to be, and it had the same energy as those successful authors who bemoan their book’s few negative reviews on Twitter.


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[ashmawi · Rating 1 out of 5]

i've been looking for novels on post-revolutionary egypt for quite a while, i read a few in English and Arabic; whatever I can get my hands on. But this? It was a pain from start to finish. If Naga had chosen to focus (with nuance, with sarcasm, with awareness of history and social context) on the character of the American-Egyptian heroine, I would've accepted it. But focusing on the dual povs of an American-Egyptian and an egyptian from the delta governorates gave us not only unreliable narrators, and not it a good way, but hateful characters, without any nuance or critique of their circumstances. Naga portrays an Egypt that is made up of motley contexts that she must've gathered from her parents, a few history books, and some google searches. Naga describes an Egypt with Sudanese servants and slaves that walk dogs in Dokki, boujie christians who despise Muslim women wearing veils (who are sweaty and smelly, jfc, Naga), and streets that she described from Ali Mubarak's Khitat. For Naga, post-revolutionary Egypt is a dark dystopian place of crushed dreams and an arid graveyard of hopes. If you read Ezzeldine Fishere's Kul Haza al-Hira' (كل هذا الهراء) you'll find it is mostly the same, except Fishere gives you a well-rounded portrait of the ups and downs of a post-revolutionary atmosphere. This is not where all the similarities stop; Fishere's novel also tackles a ruinous love story between an American-Egyptian immigrant who returns to Egypt and a lower class Egyptian who come together in Sisi's Egypt. Unlike Fishere, Naga knows nothing of Egypt, of its politics, its social topography, or the entire concept of social classes. Her nameless heroine wants you to know how anti-class she is that she is willing to sleep with a homeless-druggie, yet she exoticises him as a third world fellah, and in turn, Naga portrays him as a despicable, misogynistic, backward Egyptian that has no redeeming quality, that the only way to remove him from the space of the novel is to kill him off. Naga's novel should be called instead "If an Egyptian Cannot Write About Egypt", because, well, that is the case.

[fatma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There's a danger between us, but I'm not always sure who it belongs to. Which of us needs protection and which of us should be afraid?"

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a novel about an abusive relationship, and a novel about power. Its story is unrelenting in its depiction of the push and pull of power, the ways in which its characters are alternately powerful and powerless, at times wielding power and at others being subjected to it. At its heart it's a deeply ambivalent novel, not in the sense that it tries to make gray what is black and white, but rather that it is interested in interrogating the dynamics of those gray areas: how things can seem black one way and then white the next, how you can have power in one moment then be robbed of it in the next.

And this grayness of power is explored in so many ways, all intertwined and complex and hard to disentangle from each other. There is the power of nationality, of class, of gender, of culture. The protagonist comes from an Egyptian background, but she is American: as a foreigner in Egypt, she wields power and status, but because she is a foreigner, lacking the know-how to navigate Egypt, she is very much vulnerable--doubly so because she is a woman.

“I tried to tell a taxi driver I wanted to get off on the west side of Zamalek, and it was like he’d never heard of west. No one uses the cardinal points for directions. The Dokki side? he asked and I wasn’t sure, couldn’t say. The maps are all wrong. Where the roads are numbered (rarely), they are not ordered consecutively, and when they are named, no one uses those names. The landmarks are arbitrary—a discontinued post office, a banana-seller. The bridges are referred to by dates. I’ll take the 26th of July to Zamalek and then you point where you want to get off, the driver says politely. It’s as though the city were deliberately designed to resist comprehension and to discipline those who left for daring to return. You have either lived here and you know, or you never have and never will.”

Enter the man the protagonist becomes involved with: an Egyptian, born in a village called Shobrakheit, and now living in Cairo. Unlike the protagonist, he is poor--homeless at one point in the novel--and struggling with a drug addiction. But he also has a kind of power that the protagonist lacks: he is a man, and he knows Cairo well, knows its geography and history and culture in a way that she cannot--and, in many ways, can never--access.

When these two characters come together, these power dynamics come to the fore, and it is just so damn interesting. Just as the American protagonist others the Egyptian man, he also others her in turn. Their relationship is always precarious, balanced on a knife's edge. And the novel is not so much interested in shrugging off responsibility by depicting both parties as equally guilty, but rather in interrogating the very specific ways in which harm is inflicted, and the particular ways in which it manifests.

That being said, I don't want to give the impression that these characters are depicted flatly or stereotypically: the protagonist is more than just The Ignorant Westerner, and the man she is involved with is not just The Poor Egyptian. Those ideas are very much interrogated in the novel, and each character grapples with how they may or may not be seen in that way by the other.

“I swear this isn’t who I am. I’m not a violent person, but there is a violence that moves through you like a live current when you hate what someone has made you become. I feel estranged from myself the longer I am with her, made criminal solely because she is afraid, made pathetic because she pities me—a poor boy though I never was.”

And whether about the relationship or not, there are so many insightful and incisive moments in this novel. I highlighted a lot, and found a lot that was both familiar and new to me. Here’s an especially memorable passage,

“I resent [my father] because I recognize him. This desperation to refashion ourselves into the most pleasing form makes fools of us both. We’re pliable and capricious, shed our skin at the slightest threat, and ultimately stick out everywhere we go. We were both more convincing Egyptians in New York than we’d ever be on this side of the Atlantic. There I had enough Arabic to flirt with the Halal Guys and the Yemenis at my deli. At school, identity was simple: my name etched in hieroglyphics on a silver cartouche at my throat. I could say, Back home, we do it like this, pat our bread flat and round, never having patted bread flat or otherwise. But here I keep saying I’m Egyptian and no one believes me. I’m the other kind of other, someone come from abroad who could just as easily return there.”

I don't want to give too much away, but this is the kind of novel that works only if you read it from start to finish. What it sets out to do in its beginning it clinches by its end, and honestly, I was really impressed. I was ready to give this novel a 3 stars and move on, under the impression that I understood what kind of novel it was and knew exactly what I didn't like about it--and then it did something I wasn't expecting: it surprised me. And it surprised me in a way that made me reevaluate everything I'd just read.

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English was a novel that I didn't think I loved, but then it surprised me, challenged me, demanded that I actively be a part of its narrative. And in doing all of that, impressed me. It's one of those rare novels that's interesting in the true sense of the word: filled with the kinds of details and complexities that always draw your interest, even (and especially) if they are not immediately or entirely transparent to you.

Thank you so much to Graywolf Press for sending me a review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

[Haley Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

i refuse to read reviews about this book. i'm convinced any negative critique didn't FINISH the book, because that latter 1/3 made my head spin in the BEST way. 6 stars.

[Aron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is honestly, one of the hardest reviews I had to write.

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a story about an Egyptian American woman (who remains unnamed for most of the book). As an American, who has never really felt American, she struggles with her identity and decides to move to Egypt to connect with her roots, in an attempt to find herself.

Her parents, who do not really approve or understand her decision to move to Egypt, use their connections to find her a decent job as an English teacher, and a nice apartment in Downtown Cairo. However, the Cairo that she was hoping to live in is quite different from the reality. As soon as she opens her mouth, Egyptians ask her where she's really from. She struggles to fit in in fast-paced Cairo, fresh out of two revolutions.

In comes a man from Shobrakheit, a polar opposite to her. The most extreme move he did was from Shobrakheit to Cairo. He's a revolutionary and a photographer, but also a drug addict, who comes from an extremely poor family in the suburbs of Baheira governorate.

The man and the woman meet in a Café in Egypt. He obsessively starts calling her after their meeting. Eventually, she replies and they develop a "romantic" relationship. He was attracted to her being an American, and she was attracted to his authenticity as an Egyptian. Eventually, they resent each other for the exact same thing that drew them to one another.

From the start, their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable. As a reader, this made me reflect: why is it uncomfortable for me? Is it because they come from different worlds? Do people have to be alike to form a long-lasting relationship? Am I uncomfortable because of his personality?

Noor Naga's depiction of Cairo is what mostly took me by surprise. Coming from Cairo, I could immediately tell the author at least lived there when she was writing the book. There wasn't any depiction of the nicer parts of Cairo. If you have never been to Cairo, this book will sadly make sure you never will.

Everything about this book was surprising. The author poses a deep question at the beginning of each chapter. It is told in alternating perspectives, and you have to guess who your protagonist is at the start of each chapter.

This is the kind of book that I couldn't stop thinking (and unfortunately for my friends, talking about) up until I finished it. It is captivating, disturbing, and sometimes horrifyingly true.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okaaaaay, this blew my mind. Speechless right now. Holy f*ck. I’ll get back to you.

[Amy Biggart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn.

This is SUCH a good book. I promise a full review tomorrow.

A tumultuous romance that is soaked in identity politics and structured in three parts, each deeply experimental. It's short, but I don't know if any book has ever given me more to chew on.

Two unnamed narrators meet in a café in Cairo — she is an Egyptian American woman who's moved to Egypt for the first time to teach English after graduating from college. He is an out-of-work photojournalist and is recently clean from his addiction to Tramadol. He grew up in a small, poor town and moved to Cairo in the years before the Arab Spring. This is the framework for the romance that unfolds, which thankfully is told from both POVs. You get to see how their backgrounds influence their impressions and understandings of the other.

There are so many layers of power dynamics at play here. They speak in her broken Arabic because he does not speak English. She trades on his in-group status as they walk through the streets of Cairo, feeling safer but also more authentically Egyptian in his presence. She comes to Cairo with her parents' money and connections, and she funds a lot of his life, as someone who is struggling without consistent work. He has a tendency toward violent language and behavior.

I think the most interesting part of their dynamic centers around the Arab Spring. He was in Cairo, photographing the anti-government protests, the murders, and the unrest. His identity has been shaped by what he saw during those protests, and he holds fiercely to the idea that if you were not there you could not possibly understand what it was like. It creates this crack in this relationship — a resentment he feels toward Egyptians who have emigrated, and those foreigners who returned after the Arab Spring for a new chapter of Egyptian modernism, only to leave within a few years.

As they get to know each other, the romance blooms and then becomes all-consuming within the walls of her fancy apartment in downtown Cairo.

Structurally, this is one of the most experimental and fascinating books I've ever read. Each of the three parts takes a different structure. For example, in part one a rhetorical, somewhat philosophical question leads off each POV, and then you cut to the perspective of one of the narrators.

I will resist my desire to spoil something for you, but I think part three is really what cinched this book as an all-time favorite for me. Stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled:

__

Part three blew my mind. In part three, the story you read in parts one and two is presented at a critique in some MFA program, with the author herself entering the book as the author being critiqued. What you read then is a sort of stage play, with feedback from different MFA students discussing the literary merits of the choices she made in parts one and two, and the structure of her storytelling. On the one hand, how cool to hear others put forth questions that you have been considering for 150 pages. On the other hand? Bringing this story into the classroom opens it up to critique from Western writers, who at various points in the classroom discussion willfully misunderstand what Noor Naga (in the book) is trying to do.

Structuring part three this way really exposes what I think is a big goal of this book. Exposing the stereotypes and judgements that Western readers might lob at a book about a complicated Egyptian man living in a poor and politically-fraught country. I really am obsessed with Noor Naga's (in real life, not Noor in the book's), decision to do this, and the way it challenges the reader to consider their own prejudices toward the boy from Shobrakheit and their impulse to sympathize with a survivor of domestic violence.

I continue to think about this book a lot and I doubt that will stop anytime soon. Five stars, fantastic book. I am endlessly impressed by what it did.

[Alisa]

Similar to how Bo Burnham makes jokes about being aware of making inappropriate jokes, hoping that the meta awareness works as a defense of continuing to make said jokes, this book hopes that the final meta writing workshop of the book will smooth over its problems. Like "I'm aware and ploughed ahead anyways, therefore it's an intentional choice and you didn't read it appropriately." Le sigh.

The main thing I disliked about this is that the Egyptian characters, even when given a first-person voice, seem to come from the American girl's perspective. For example, when the Shobrakit guy says that the revolution fizzled out because the foreign money dried up, and it left a lot of drug addicts in its wake. Is that really a common belief among lower class participants who actively participated in the revolution, like this character? Later we learn that the American girl is an autofiction of the author and the book is based on her experiences, so I guess that's why the Egyptian characters never really leave an American perspective.

Tbh I read this book to complete a reading challenge but it just strengthens my decision that I need to stop reading 2nd / 3rd gen American immigrant stories for a while. It makes me bitter that the characters often spread a colonialist and privileged American perspective but argue that because they too are damaged by that ideology they could not possibly be an active participant in it. That "hypenated identity" and passport makes you a participant, and simply being aware of it isn't enough to erase culpability. Idk what the answer is here, I just know I need to take a step back for a while. Maybe I shouldn't even read books by American authors for a few months. I'm sick of the discourse.

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complicated account of a doomed affair between two complex and aching souls in contemporary Cairo. Experimental in format and perspective, we delve into the very tumultuous concepts of addition, abusive, obsession, and identity, the many shades of gray that influence culture, normalcy, attraction, and power between two places, two points of view, two desires. This novel is layered and personal, dark and honest in its rambles, it’s questions, it’s secrets. If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a powerful example of the power of narratives, of trauma, of transformation.

[Hazem Walid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know how to feel about this novel, do I love it, or hate it, is it mind-blowing or a very narrow-minded depiction of Egypt existing in the field of stereotyping, this novel is full of questions that are answered, other that are not, footnotes that are weird, a story within a story, lies upon lies telling us the truth, this novel will keep your mind thinking it is one of the smartest things that I read or the dumpiest…

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” – Albert Camus.
It is all about perspective...
Alternating perspectives between the American girl, and the boy from Shubrakheit, we are experiencing what it means to live in Egypt after returning back, a failed revolution, and the feeling of what comes next. Drawing pictures and layering the characters chapter by chapter for us to have their perspectives and point of view trying to understand them and how it comes to this, and what it means living in Cairo as a foreigner -as the two are not from Cairo-, and Cairo is a city with its own personality.

“So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.” – Neil Gaiman.

“Cairo is not what I expected, but the shock is one of scale rather than content.”

Why did the American girl returns, how she started this relationship with the boy from Shubrakheit, was it doomed to fail because of the very different backgrounds that they came from, what an outside perspective will say about this relationship and its power dynamics, and how everything in the story turns out to be, and that age-old question we do we belong?

Some of these questions will be answered some you will have to figure out; some will end up with no resolution as real as it gets in life.

“I’m caught between my desire to understand and my desire to appear as though I already understand.”

What is this novel about?
I had this question when I start any novel, what is the bigger picture, what does the author want to say?
Was this novel about the outside eye coming to Egypt, making us see parts of Egypt, that everybody knows, but trying to escape, or acting is not there?

“I can’t blend in. I’m recognized as an outsider and keep getting asked by complete strangers where I’m from. To my answer Here, I’m smiled at magnanimously, as in Of course you are”.

Is it about the revolution and how someone having lived it, and how it comes to be, can do to his soul, the frustration, and defeatism that he feels?

“For every Egyptian of my generation, this will be the greatest political event of their lives, the drama they return to and repeat to their children and to their children’s children to explain the world they are born into.”

“In 2011, we really believed we were birthing a new order, that everything would change and the corruption that had seeped through the veins of the nation, poisoning every organ, would be flushed out at last … Six years later, it’s embarrassing to remember just how innocent we were—not naive so much as innocent.”

Or is it about who tells the story, and has the power to tell it, so holding the truth in their hands?

“If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?”

Or it is simply a love story when two people from different places came to know each other, and what challenges will they face.

“Our relationship is fragile, sustained by habits we intuited from the beginning and now adhere to.”

This novel has more questions than it has the right to be and I loved it for that.
Two more points to talk about, and then getting this story out of my system till I get a physical copy, and then I will annotate the shit of it.

The characters, the American girl, and the boy from Shubrakheit; these characters are filled with life and realism, I have a very clear image of them, even if I don't know their names for the most part. These characters are real having names or not. You feel their joy, sadness, frustration, and love, you connect with them so much that it sometimes hurts.

The structure of the novel is simply amazing and thought-provoking with twists that will let you change the way you are thinking about the novel as a whole.


"What binds people here to one another here is the pointless struggle for quality of life.
It turns out that to be clean in Egypt is just to be free of Egypt, to exercise the choice to stay or go elsewhere, which most of the population cannot do.”

[آلاء · Rating 3 out of 5]

مذكرات تدور أحداثها في وسط البلد بالقاهرة، على غلاف الكتاب مكتوب أنها رواية ولكن بالحوار الأخير تمت الإشارة لها باعتبارها مذكرات شخصية للكاتبة.
تقييم العمل محير بالنسبة لي، لكن استمتعت بقراءة القسم الثاني أكثر عندما بدأت العلاقة بين الشخصيات تتضح.
بدأت الرواية بدون تمهيد أو حتى استطراد وعودة لتوضيح شيء عن الشخصيات وإنما تقدمت بالأحداث حتى اعتدنا على الشخصيتين الرئيستين من عالمين مختلفين كليًا إلى أن يجمع بينهما مقهى في وسط البلد..

في الفصول الأولى كتن الانتقال بين حكايتي الشخصيتين بدون توضيح لمن يتحدث وهذا أخذ بعض الوقت لاكتشف أن هناك شخصين مختلفين في طريقهما للقاهرة..
لو كان الفصل عنوانه باسم الشخصية مثلاً كان هذا سيجعل الأمور أوضح.

الأحداث عادية لكن أسلوبها الهادئ في الكتابة به ما جذبني لإكمال القراءة.
حديثها عن مقاهي وسط البلد والعنصرية والطبقية الراسخة في أذهان بعض الطبقات الاجتماعية من رواد تلك الأماكن.
شعرت أن الرواية موجهة أكثر للقارئ الأمريكي خاصة الهوامش التي توضح معاني بعض المصطلحات المصرية والأمثلة الشعبية والمصادر التراثية لبعض الجمل والأمثلة والتي لم أسمع عن كثير منها من قبل فبعض الأساطير التي ذكرتها الكاتبة باعتبارها من التراث الشعبي أو الإسلامي وجدتها غريبة وغير مألوفة
وهناك معلومات الخطأ فيها واضح جدا بشكل مريب فيمكن ببحث بسيط تتأكد الكاتبة من صاحب أغنية واسم كاتب نوبي وأبطال فيلم مصري ما..

ولكن عندما بحثت عن موضوع الهوامش هذا قرأت أن الكاتبة تعمدت اختلاق تلك الهوامش وذكر معلومات خاطئة حتى توصل فكرة جهل الفتاة الأمريكية بالتاريخ المصري والحكايات الشعبية والفن وتصديقها للقصص التي يرويها الفتى من شبراخيت..

وجعلني هذا أحب فكرة الهوامش أكثر وأجدها ذكية..

جاءت النهاية أسرع مما توقعت وشعرت أنه تم اقتصاصها أو أن هناك صفحات مفقودة ولكن في القسم الأخير أثناء نقلش الكاتبة مع بعض الأشخاص حول الرواية تأكدت من انه تم حذف باقي أحداث القسم الثالث وترك نهاية الرواية عند الحادث حسب نصيحة أحد الأشخاص المتحدثين..
وجاءت بعض تفاصيل الجزء المحذوف في حوار الكاتبة مع الفريق..

ومن هذه النهاية نشعر أنها مذكرات أو رواية عن علاقة حب سامة بين اثنين وانتهت، لكن في القسم الأول والثاني كانت تبدو القصة حول حياة الشخصيتين في القاهرة وعلاقتهم بها من منظورين مختلفين تماما هما أمريكا وشبراخيت.

لو أن هذه مذكرات وليست رواية فإننا في الفصول اللي يرويها الفتى من شبراخيت، كنا نقرأها حسب رأي الكاتبة في أحداث ليست مطلعة على أغلبها،
ولكن كتبت عنها بلسانه مثل حديثها عن رؤيته لعلاقتهما، ورأيه في مواضيع كثيرة عايشها بعيدل عنها وحتى عندما كان يراقبها دون معرفتها.

ولكن بما أن الراوي الوحيد هو الفتاة الأمريكية فنحن مضطرون لسماع صوتها فقط حتى لمشاعره وأفكاره وذكرياته، والتي لا يوجد دليل على معرفتها بها إلا بعض ما حكاه لها.
وهذا مع عنوان الرواية يمكن استنتاج غرضه
If An Egyptian cannot speak English.
أرى أنها ان فكرة قوية وتستفز القارئ بشكل إيجابي.

ولكن لم أستطع تقبلها أخلاقيا بشكل تام فلو أن هذه مذكرات حقيقية فهذا الشخص مهما بلغ من السوء غير موجود ليدافع عن نفسه أو يرد على ما رُوي عنه من أفكار وانطباعات وهذا مقارب لفكرة طرحها أحد أشخاص المناقشة الاخيرة.
أحببت النقاش الأخير وفكرة الانتقال من أحداث الرواية إلى ورشة عمل ونقاش حول الآراء قبل نشر الكتاب وكأنه نادي كتاب حول الرواية، طرح به الكثير من الأسئلة التي قد ترد بذهن القارئ،
وان كان ببعض الآراء مبالغة كبيرة حول مدى مأساوية الأحداث المذكورة والتي لم تكن تحتمل هذا الرأي الحماسي لتلك المرأة بالمناقشة.
Tue, Feb 14, 2023

[layla · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm starting to think that diaspora authors shouldn't be allowed to write about the motherland and its people. At least not the upper-class American ones, anyway.

This read like a 19th century exercise in Orientalism. Where the fabric of Egyptian society is woven with threads of mysticism; religious chauvinism; licentiousness; debauchery; erotic familial relations, etcetera, etcetera. Alienating our Egyptian-American lead from a society she thought was hers to belong to. When really she is most comfortable - and safest - in the embrace of post 9/11 NYC.

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a blatant case of beating down the Orient to uplift the Occident. And its done in such a hateful manner that lacks any nuanced understanding of what life as an Egyptian is like since the return of military authoritarianism. Our closest look at Egypt is through the POV of the Boy from Shobrakheit: an amalgamation of Orientalist stereotype that exists about Arab men. He is passionately romantic, but also violently possessive; he is an impoverished revolutionary, but also believes himself too good to work at an ahwa; he hates women, but bears an almost incestual worship of his late grandmother. He is a dirty, homeless, junkie, but a beautiful, imposing presence with a mind spilling forth creativity. He is a caricature. A walking exotic erotic. The symbol for misogyny in Arab society. He is not a person, but he is every Egyptian in this novel. Suffering from poverty, food insecurity, medical negligence, the threat of the military police disappearing them in the night. But none of that matters, because what matters most is how all of these things make the American girl feel.

She can escape to her fancy apartment with rent that costs more money than most Egyptians will see in their lifetime, whilst pretending to be self-aware about this. Heck, she can even escape the country in ways ordinary Egyptians living under military surveillance cannot. Reading this felt like experiencing someone else's utter resentment towards her own Egyptian identity as well as Egypt's (and its peoples) failure to live up to her expectations. She reduces the entirety of Egypt - from Cairo to the Deltas - to a toxic, failed relationship with one man. Its harmful projection that feels written for the colonial gaze.

Something even more emphasized during Naga's whole woe-is-me, I escaped NYC for Cairo because I was "cancelled" for wearing box braids because I let my boyfriend call me Black when my parents are racist, chapter. Its not even tongue-in-cheek. Its just corny. lol

What even is this? A novel? A memoir? The publisher classifies it as the former, but the third part would suggest the latter. Which makes the perspective of the male character even more egregious. I can't believe Naga's got me out here defending what is meant to be an abusive man, but if he's meant to be a depiction of her abusive ex, why does the American woman's perception of him expand him in a way that establishes him as a representative symbol of Egyptian revolutionary men? Why does she keep using the revolution and political context of Egypt as a symbol for her own, highly individualized, experiences when the majority of the population continues to suffer and die under the weight of the REALITY. This could have worked if the American woman was the sole POV character. I understand wanting to explore the rationale in one's abuser's mind. It could be both thought provoking and healing. But in this context it just serves to degrade and ridicule those suffering the worst affects of Egyptians sociopolitical and economic climate.

Its so self-absorbed and infuriating. It hurts even more because my own family were involved in the revolution. There's good, bad, ugly to every society in the world. But the ugly is all we get here. Mean-spirited and cruel depictions of the under-class where criticism is shut down with a masturbatory third part that serves as some sort of meta-commentary whereby Naga's critics are ridiculed and dismissed for their lack of vision or understanding of what it means to be a WOC. Or whatever the fuck it was she was trying to say.

Thanks, I hate it.

Signed,

An Egyptian Who Cannot Speak Arabic.

[Nour (FREE PALESTINE) Books]

i feel the obligation to read this... I mean this book was basically made for me...
fmc? egyptian american. me? egyptian american
author's name? noor. my name? nour
mmc? cocaine addict. me? c- I’M JUST KIDDING I SWEAR

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Question: If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?

_______________________________

We fall asleep in each other’s arms. We watch a film together and fall asleep in our outdoor clothes, in each other’s arms, her scratchy head beneath my chin. The grief numbs us both. I find myself measuring for the first time how far America is from Cairo, let alone Shobrakheit. How to bridge this ocean? How to explain all I left behind to get even this far?

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English had me captivated from the start: Throwing us into a disorienting, alternating POV — between an Egyptian-American woman who decides to move to Cairo against her immigrant parents’ wishes and a poor cocaine-addicted Egyptian photographer from the countryside who became disillusioned after the fizzling out of the Arab Spring revolution — author Noor Naga creates a freighted love story that explores power imbalances, identity politics, and the absolute inability of anyone to understand life from a different culture’s lived experience. And just when a reader might get too relaxed with the novel’s unusual format (each short section starts with a puzzling “koan” as in the opening quote, followed by quick jumps between the POVs; a format that eventually becomes rote), Naga flips the script in the second section (omitting the introductory questions) and begins to insert frequent footnotes (which even retroactively explain undefined terms from the first section), and I was further intrigued by the change in the format. When the third section changes format yet again, I was gobsmacked by how, in a fairly short work, Naga was able to demonstrate just how hard it is to tell a relatable story: not touch nor words nor photographs can be understood separate from the entire history of the person who offers them. From the sentences to the overall effort, I loved absolutely everything about this novel.

We believed, we really believed that the revolution would succeed on the strength of our brotherhood, and the nobility of our cause. Had we been less occupied with documenting the losses, circulating names and dates, video footage, we might have noticed earlier that everything was not as it seemed. There was money pouring in from overseas, along with vested interests. We thought we were toppling a regime, but the whole world was involved. It seems so obvious now, but if you weren’t there, you can’t possibly judge. I can’t tell you what it was like.

The unnamed “boy from Shobrakheit” happened to arrive in Cairo before the start of 2011’s revolt; and while he was able to sell his photographs to the foreign press for an unimaginable price, he became disillusioned when he learned that in the revolution’s aftermath, his pictures had been used to identify — and penalise — activists, and as the novels opens, he has not taken a picture with the camera he still wears around his neck for eleven years; living in a rat-infested rooftop shack, he has decided to cold turkey his addictions just as he meets a beautiful young foreigner at a friend’s cafe. As the (also unnamed) young woman decides to return to her roots — living in an airy Cairo apartment and working as an English teacher; both of which her mother arranged for her in advance — she meets the photographer, and with her “baby Arabic” that doesn’t quite create understanding between them, she finds herself performing a subservient role for him (cooking and cleaning and washing his shabby clothes after working all day as he — unbeknownst to her — detoxes and watches videos on his phone in her apartment all day), and they spend their time both loving one another and using one another until the disconnect reaches a breaking point. The results are explosive.

William doesn’t even realize what’s at stake when I am asked by shopkeepers and street children and sugar-cane juicers where I’m from. And why should he realize? They ask him too. Those outside of a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of view, and that they can always be more deeply inside.

I’ve read reviews by readers (presumably authentic Egyptians) who are offended by the female character’s cultural ignorance and poor opinions regarding Cairo’s underclass residents, but to me, this feels like the point: she had ideas about who she was (a lost Egyptian who was actually a privileged American slumming her way to authenticity), and without a true language or lived history in common with those around her, her disdain of her freedoms and advantages were bewildering and off-putting to life-long Egyptian residents (and especially to her outcast lover). The fact that the third section of this novel dissects those ideas felt brilliant and elevating; as much as Naga (who is also an Egyptian-American who has made the move to Cairo) might be accused of not understanding the true Egyptian experience, I believe that this novel is an acknowledgement of the impossibility of anyone achieving precisely that understanding across cultural lines. This is a bold and subversive novel of social and literary commentary and it all worked for me.

[Elizabeth (Plant Based Bride)]

This was such an interesting read!

Reading Vlog with full review: [https://youtu.be/z87Modokypw](https:/...

Written review to come!

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was so good until the end. It was reaching a climax where I thought the protagonist was going to find her voice and figure out who she is, what was important to her, how to stand up for herself, articulate why she is in Egypt, etc. Instead, just when it was getting good, the writer took a cop out and framed it in a way that gave her permission to explore topics that she was too embarrassed to admit she wrote about because she wanted to write about them.

Really angry about the end. Felt like I wasted my time. Kept waiting for it to turn a corner back to being good. Really wanted the author to recover from a very lame and awkward excuse she was laying down on top of. Ugh!!!!

[Nada Elshabrawy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh no.
I really had high hopes for this book. I understand that this cairo is not necessarily mine, however, I think the city wasn’t the problem here.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 3 out of 5]

In recent memory I cannot recall a book that vacillated between exceptional and disappointing. Unfortunately, for me, it ended on the later; with a strange metatextual writer’s group critiquing the piece. I always dislike this because it feels it should be tongue-in-cheek statements about some of the stylistic and distinguishing choices, but actually ends up just pointing out some legitimate flaws. It always ends up being more of a detractor than a foil to make things blatant to the reader—but that is just me.

However, it does have some soaring sights. Certain sections are wildly, keenly well-observed. The macro dynamics of the character arcs work well, I think—though, as short as it is, seems dragged out, at points. Profound to almost inane, back and forth. Safe to say I only really understood a portion of the author was intending. Though it could be that sour taste in my mouth from the ending, especially.

[Aisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noor Naga's If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English purports to tell the story of two people, The 'American girl' and the 'Boy from Shobrakheit', who meet at a cafe in Cairo and shortly after begin seeing one another. Basically, disillusioned millennial girl returns to her roots. Therefore, at first glance, its landscape is familiar; we know these characters and we hate them. The New Yorker girl with Egyptian origins who decides life in Egypt would be rosier than America and moves to Cairo, shaved head and all. On arrival, it's an immediate culture shock; from questions regarding her origin at the border to the sexism she perceives, this does not feel like the diasporic fantasy land she expected, and it never gets better. While the boy, a photographer, is said to have moved to the city from a small town following his grandma's death and was actively involved in documenting the events of the Arab spring. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣
Naga's prose is the star of the novel, sharp and loaded; the language sings right off the page. It utilises form and structure in ways that though not particularly new, provide a dynamic telling. We get unnamed characters, no quotation marks, footnotes, a three-part division and told from the POV of both characters, sometimes unsure of which is speaking. Each new chapter begins with a question it tries to tackle in the content.⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣
The time is post-Arab spring revolution, but if you were expecting realistic insight into what life is like in Egypt post-2011, then I suggest you kill those ideas. Naga's Cairo is a skewed vision. Dirty, ugly and full of danger at every turn, never mind the smear of Western interference, drug addiction and hopelessness. Right down to the craven fantasies of staging an abduction from potential rapists to enable a man to swoop in to save the day. Fairly certain many will take umbrage with this depiction, especially of the 'Boy from Shobrakheit' and the reliance on negative stereotypes of people from the countryside and arab men are misogynistic tropes, among other things.⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣
However, it's also smart. It tries in rambling, pseudo-philosophical - 'thoughts?' approach to explore beyond binary considerations of power, who wields it and against who in different contexts, from class to national identity and gender. Who’s story is this, who is doing the telling, from what lens, who grants access, who is silenced as opposed to voiceless, and who controls the narrative?

The diasporic girl has economic power and that of nationality, class and sexual identity, which she wields in multiple contexts. The boy has power on account of his gender and culture - but does he truly have this? There are also probings re identity, otherness, belonging and the diasporic experience, but those are of little interest to me. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣
The content is uncomfortable, love gone wrong, abuse, addiction, obsession, poverty and even death. In the final part, we are taken out of the novel into some other context, unravelling this story we have come to know. This new knowledge adjusts our vision but also implicates the reader. And while I loved the style and prose, it's a novel I left with the question, does being self-aware of a problem negate harm done in its depiction? I think there will be many people inclined to disagree.

[Hannah (hngisreading) · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I was reading this, I perused the reviews (which is not a great idea but alas!) and I think…

I think those who had issues with this didn’t get to the third part. That third part! What the hell. It changed everything about this book for me. It changed how I felt about the characters (“characters”) and the setting and the story.

I literally just finished and I’m sitting here just absolutely floored by the journey the writer took me on. I don’t know how I feel yet. This book is short — 200-ish pages — but there’s a lot here to chew on. Wow.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A genuinely fantastic debut novel that is as beautifully written as it is hard to swallow. I don’t usually bash other readers, but you have to be genuinely daft to come out of this with the sort of awful takes I’ve read on this app. Irony isn’t for everyone!

[Aurora · Rating 5 out of 5]

questo significa essere provocatori - mi stamperei alcuni passaggi dietro le palpebre e altri nello stomaco per ricordarmi sempre come mi hanno fatto sentire

[Shaelin Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow wow wow this was stunning

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

How are you responding?

Trauma happens once. And then a thousand times more. It rips questions out of you until you are too exhausted to answer.

But when we do answer, or try to answer, it is in the attempts, the grappling, do we find that the questions are in ways creating a common earth in making it safe enough to take footsteps forward, how little or far they may be.

Part I: Questions. They begin before every account in perspective.

Part II: Footnotes. To fill in missing context, understanding outside the given text.

Part III: Existing outside of context (and text). To see the larger picture.

There are many ways in which a novel can be constructed. Here, we are given three different versions to make up an entire whole. And yet, it is only a piece of many that responds to the single trauma. It is through this questioning, these different receptacles, these many versions, these ways in drafting questions or answers in response to a hurt that cannot be answered. We become the question mark. And we live as a question. There is no answer. But we can get mighty close to one.

[Khai Jian (KJ) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When the foreigners left, it all went to shit. When it all went to shit, the foreigners left. The sequence hardly matters, the result was the same"

Set against the backdrop of Cairo, post-2011 Egyptian Revolution, an unnamed narrator returned to Cairo from America (known throughout the book as "the American woman"). She met another unnamed narrator (known throughout the book as "the boy from Shobrakheit"), a photographer of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution who is now unemployed and living in a rooftop shack. Both characters developed a romantic, yet dark and violent relationship.

The plot sounds simple enough. But what is remarkable is Noor Naga's attempt to experiment with the form and structure of the novel. The story is told in 3 parts: Part 1 consists of the POVs of both characters which open with a series of philosophical questions which relate to the content of each POVs (for instance: "If you are competing to lose, what do you win if you win?"; "What if male arousal is only a gasp misplaced in the body?"); In Part 2, the questions were stripped off but long footnotes were inserted to introduce the Egyptian culture, language, and slang; Part 3, consisting of dialogues, is where readers got to know the name of the "American woman" and discovered that Parts 1 and 2 consist of the memoir of the "American woman". The dialogues in Part 3 took place in a writing class where the ending of the memoir was read out by the "American woman" and the students were giving feedback on the said memoir. Part 3 is definitely impactful, metafictional, and inventive! The other highlight of this novel would be Naga's ability to create 2 very distinct voices and characterizations: through the "American woman" Naga explored issues such as identity, cultural roots, classism, and discrimination against females in Cairo; through the "boy from Shobrakheit", Naga explored the aftermath of the revolution, toxic masculinity, male egoism, machismo, poverty. The power dynamics, abuse, and violence between the 2 characters were delicately fleshed out by Naga, amidst the inventive form. Observations on the failure of the Revolution and aftermath of colonialism were on point: "In 2011, we really believed we were birthing a new order, that everything would change and the corruption that had seeped through the veins of the nation, poisoning every organ, would be flushed out at last...Six years later, it's embarrassing to remember just how innocent we were - not naive so much as innocent"; "We thought we were toppling a regime, but the whole world was involved"; "Those outside of a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of view, and that they can always be more deeply inside". A very impressive debut and as a huge fan of fiction that experiments with form and structure, this is a 5/5 star read to me! Glad that this made it to the shortlist for the 2022 Giller Prize!

[eleonora reggiori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non penso si potesse fare un lavoro peggiore di quello che è stato fatto con questo libro, tra la scelta incomprensibile di una copertina dai toni pastello e quella scriteriata di affibbiargli questo titolo che non restituisce nemmeno per sbaglio il senso di un romanzo che fa della difficoltà di comunicazione, a vari livelli, il fulcro della sua (meta)narrazione. Ma Feltrinelli che cazzo???

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't really a fan of the writing style for most of it. The conversation at the end was honestly my favorite part of the book when it comes to actually enjoying the writing. The romance part felt flimsy, and I think it's mostly because of the style that things got sort of lost.

[Nashwa S · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like the only reason I finished this book was because I listened to the audiobook. Weird book, had very strong Mohsin Hamid vibes and an extremely obnoxious ending.

[G. · Rating 1 out of 5]

So a millennial from Al Buhayrah is a vulgar, indecent and uneducated person who cannot speak English and does "bodra"?
As a millennial from Al Buhayrah, I think the writer needs to familiarise herself with how people are living there before writing this shit. This novel is purely a series of offenses and exaggeration.

The language felt non-idiomatic as if she was translating an Arabic text into English. Sounded like a literal translation most of the time!

What made me laugh out loud is how she forced the story of the woman who couldn't see the Ka'ba into the novel by saying that it was a sheikh from Shubrakheet who told her that she put "work"-lol- in the mouth of a corpse. dude, please do yourself a favor and make up your own stories because this one has been everywhere, and what you did here is ridiculous.

كله بقى كوم و"أحوى" في النسخة الصوتية كوم تاني
يعني انت كدة بتبين إنك بتتكلم عربي لما تجوّد على حرف الهاء تنطقه حاء؟
أنا فضلت فترة أبحث في قاموسي العربي والإنجليزي إيه ممكن تكون الكلمة دي لحد ما أدركت إن -جيس وااااات- أحوى is actually قهوة lol

This is a novel written and read by Egyptians about Egyptians, but obviously for non-Egyptians who know nothing about Egypt. أو "سكان إيجيبت" الحقيقة ممكن برضه اللي شايفين الأقاليم inferiors.
محاولات الكاتبة لانتقاد الطبقية الحقيقة لم يسفر عنها إلا إبراز إنها نفسها طبقية (لا أزعم إنها كذلك لكن النص دة نص طبقي وغير مدروس لم يتحقق الكاتب مما يكتب حتى!)