Book
Review; Nuqtat Al-Nour (The Point of Light), Bahaa Taher, Cairo: Al-Hilal
Novels, 2001. pp238
source
Al-Ahram Weekly
By
Youssef Rahkha
In
Nuqtat Al-Nour, his latest work, novelist Bahaa Taher explores what for
him is new territory, placing less emphasis on his usual concerns --
human beings and places -- and concentrating instead on "the
spiritual thirst" of a brand new cast of characters.
While at
first glance the novel's subject matter may seem familiar to admirers of
the now-veteran novelist in its depiction of the fortunes of two
Egyptian families during the 1970s, at a deeper level the novel is more
concerned with what Taher understands by spiritual thirst, the hankering
towards an extraphysical fulfilment or the lack thereof, demonstrating
how this shows through and eventually breaks the novel's dramatic
surface.
Dedicated
to the renowned novelist and master of modern Arabic prose Yehyia Haqqi,
Nuqtat Al-Nour actually deals with the mystical search professed by the
old, quiet characters who populate Naguib Mahfouz's late novels, in
which the predicament of death is confronted head on, professing a
heightened knowledge of mortality and the quest for the meaning of life.
Divided
into three, roughly equal parts, Nuqtat Al-Nour tells its story from the
viewpoint of three closely related characters depicted mainly in the
third-person: Salem, a lower middle class university student who lives
with and is much influenced by his grandfather, a retired bashkateb
(senior scribe in a government institution); Lubna, an upper middle
class colleague of Salem's (their troubled love plays a central part in
the unfolding of events); and the bashkateb, the patriarch of an
extended family resident in a house built in the early 20th century in
the middle class-turned-popular neighborhood of Sayeda Zeinab, Haqqi's
locale. The choice of Sayeda Zeinab indeed comprises the most obvious
link with Haqqi, whose memory the novel thus invokes.
The
bashkateb's fight to rebuild the house following a derelict notification
from the authorities, in the face of his son's ambition to pull down the
edifice and replace it with a lucrative high-rise apartment block,
provides the backdrop to Salem and Lubna's painful love, complicated by
each of them being psychologically disturbed. Lubna, the only child of
two successful physicians, now divorced, suffers a chronic existential
fear. Combating this fear through engagement in the student movement,
Lubna's brief arrest results in a nervous breakdown; and for a long
while she is institutionalised in Rome. Salem, a Dostoevskian idiot,
breaks down when their relationship is at the point of consummation.
Eventually he too is institutionalised for treatment. It is the
grandfather, however, whose Sufi search for love brings them back
together while on his death bed. The novel ends with a Sufi insight:
"Lubna asks Salem, 'Tell me, what did your grandfather say about
spirits?' 'He said all spirits are beautiful and good.' 'But did he tell
you what saves the spirit?' 'Yes, he said it was love.'"