The city and its martyrs: Cairo as the site of an alternative historiography in Omar Robert Hamilton’s The City Always Wins

Abstract

Omar Robert Hamilton’s semi-autobiographical debut novel The City Always Wins (2017), presents the most recent fictional depiction of the Egyptian capital. The novel is based on the writer’s personal first-hand experience of the city, which predominantly staged the 2011 Egyptian version of the “Arab Spring”. In this context, it witnessed the people’s euphoric revolutionary spirit, as well as their subsequent sense of disillusionment. In the wake of the Revolution, Hamilton delineates the city as a palimpsestic site upon which the revolutionists attempt to commemorate their martyrs as well as to secure their imprint on its urban locale. The paper envisions Cairo as a city with a double entity, which manifests the contention between the official overpowering voice of an indifferent city, and the repressed “other” voice of the martyrs of the Revolution. The paper, thus, depicts the central character as a historiographer, whose mnemonic rhetoric portrays the martyrs as spectres returning from the dead. Hamilton’s novel, therefore, lends itself to a critique in the light of the concepts of mnemohistory and hauntology, against a challenging urban backdrop, so as to engage with an alternative historiography of the 2011 revolutionary outbreak and its aftermath.

Keywords:

• The city
• hauntology
• mnemohistory
• spectrality
• time
• urban space

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A great amount of literature has been produced about Cairo. Cairo: My City, Our Revolution (2012), a mémoir by Ahdaf Soueif, the author’s mother, also addresses the 2011 Revolution. Two of the most recent works are The Literary Atlas of Cairo (2010) and The Literary Life of Cairo (2011), which are edited anthologies by Samia Mehrez. Among the works addressing this historically and culturally rich city is Khairy Shalabi’s Riḥlat al-ṭurshagi al-ḥalwagi (1991) (The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets: A Novel) and Gamal al-Ghitany’s malamiḥ al-qāhira fi alf sana (1997) (Traits of Cairo in One Thousand Years). Shalabi’s novel is a work of fantasy, which moves back in time. He presents an anachronistic set up, in which the central character meets with prominent figures that mark Cairo’s long history. Al-Ghitany’s endeavor in Cultural History sheds light on the history of the city through an elaboration on cultural features, which are idiosyncratic of the city of Cairo, such as coffee houses, old houses and old market places, among many others.

2 Omar Robert Hamilton, British-Egyptian filmmaker and novelist, is the son of the late critic, biographer and poet Ian Hamilton, and Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif. Hamilton was an active participant in the Egyptian 2011 Revolution, founder of Mosireen, a non-profit media collective, which, during the revolutionary fervor launched campaigns against unjust trials for civilians and sexual harassment. He also held what was called Tahrir Cinema, featuring documentary films about the revolutionists’ struggle in the eponymous square. Hamilton is the cousin of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the famous Egyptian political activist, to whom the novel is dedicated and who verily epitomizes the Egyptian revolutionary spirit.

3 In the Muslim culture, there are many reasons for which a human being is considered a martyr. Among them, if a person is killed without being able to defend him/herself, s/he is considered a martyr. Protesters, unarmed and unaware, who were particularly killed by snipers, were counted as martyrs.

4 Mohamed Mahmoud Street branches off from Tahrir Square and grants access to the Ministry of Interior, which is located at the intersection of a parallel street. Mohamed Mahmoud became particularly famous on 19^th November, 2011, when the clashes between the security forces and the revolutionists became violent and many people were killed. Since then, it marked the most vigorous revolutionary momentum after the first 18 days, in and during which the demonstrators, involved in the clashes, were shot by snipers, who specifically targeted the demonstrators’ eyes. Back then, it was suggested the street should be renamed “The Eyes of Freedom,” an idea which never materialized. The street’s walls were known for the best graffiti and most creative murals of the whole city centre.

5 The reference is to a line (“the flowers that blossomed in Egypt’s gardens”: al-ward illī fattah fi ganāyen masr) from a poem by the late poet Ahmad Fouad Negm. In it, Negm honors and celebrates courageous late teen-aged young men, who were unjustly arrested and imprisoned during the Nasser era. The line was conjured up once again in the wake of 2011 to refer to the martyrs of the Revolution.

6 The Tower of Shame refers to an ugly 50-story incomplete cylindrical building constructed in Zamalek, a posh district of Cairo. The building has been condemned both as an eyesore by the residents of the distinguished neighborhood, as well as a manifestation of corruption. For more information on the Tower of Shame, see Samir Raafat, “Zamalek’s Tower of Shame”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hala G. Sami

Hala G. Sami is an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the English Department, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Egypt. Her PhD explored the re-signification of female cultural myths in contemporary Western literary fairy tales. Her field of specialization includes fairy tales and folklore, mythology, fantasy and gothic literature. She has conducted research on women and the poetics of space, the representation of women in literature and popular culture, women’s role in resistance and revolution, semiotics and literature, as well as dystopian fiction. Her current research interests focus on Mythology, Neo-Orientalism, urban narratives, Cultural and Middle Eastern Studies.