Thill al-Afaa (Shadow of the Viper); Dar al-Hilal, Cairo 2005;
Dar al-Shorouq; Cairo 2008
WATANI International
9 August 2009
Youssef Zeidan latest novel Azazil (Beelzebub), a best-seller and winner of the Arabic Booker Prize for 2009, aroused great controversy and has been harshly attacked by the Coptic Orthodox Church. Church leaders were furious with Zeidan for failing clearly to state that his novel was fictitious—Zeidan’s position as head of the Manuscripts Department at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina lent historical credibility to his novel, which was narrated as material from a surprise discovery manuscript. They accused Zeidan of exploiting the history of the Coptic Church, presenting his novel against the backdrop of some fifth-century historical events which the Church insists he presented erroneously and maliciously. The theological scholar Anba Bishoi, secretary-general of the Coptic Church’s Holy Synod, took it upon his shoulders to publish a 380-page book in which he refuted, one by one, the historical errors in Zeidan’s Beelzebub.
Contentious
It appears everyone on the Cairo literary scene was too engrossed in the ongoing controversy on Beelzebub to give a thought to an earlier novel written by Zeidan but which, in my opinion, dwarfs the furore over the book that won the Booker prize. That novel is Thill al-Afaa (Shadow of the Viper) which has not had its fair share of literary analysis.
It seems Zeidan likes writing about highly contentious topics and producing shock effect as he attempts, in fictitious form, to destroy some static axioms long latent in our society.
Shadow of the Viper is an epistolary novella in two parts. It looks like a historical social study about the female cult and the status of woman in ancient history, as compared to the present-day. The protagonist, Abdou, is obsessed with the idea that his wife appears to have lost all interest in a physical relationship with him. He associates this with the fact that his wife has recently received a number of letters from her mother, whom she had not seen since she was a child. The mother had been deprived of her children because she was accused of being an atheist. She accordingly left the country, travelling abroad to conduct studies about women. We learn that she was intrigued by how, throughout human history, ancient communities turned from worshipping women to suppressing them and relating the female figure to the serpent and the devil, considering woman an enemy of masculine ideologies.
Forced relations
Abdou turns to his wife’s grandfather complaining about his spouse’s attitude, but the grandfather fails to persuade his granddaughter to be pleasant to her husband. Abdou then consults a friend. The latter gives him hashish which Abdou burns in the presence of his wife. The smoke turns his wife insensible so he is finally able to begin making love to her but the scene ends in a big fight as soon as the wife recovers sufficient consciousness to realise what is happening. Abdou tries to get hold of the ‘culprit’ letters, which, he is convinced, alienated his wife. Some of these letters are torn in the fight.
The wife decides to leave him and free herself from the sexual role she has long been playing. This narrative part is saturated with sexual connotations, reflecting the status of woman as a sex object.
Ancient cult
The second part of the novel is entitled Letters and refers to the letters the mother sent to her daughter. The letters serve as a study of the history of the female cult and how, ultimately, the masculine began to marginalise and despise the feminine. In ancient times people recognised the value of blood and termed it the ‘fluid of life’. They understood that the woman’s menstruation meant she was full of life, and when she became pregnant the blood disappeared to create a new life inside her womb. People no longer worshipped godesses when men began to regard menstruation as a sign of impurity. Zeidan attributes the notion of belittling women to the Jewish religion, which anoints only men as priests and allows the High Priest alone into the Holy of Holies.
Zeidan also discusses in his novel the idea of killing baby girls during Jahiliya (pre-Islamic period). In one of the letters, the mother quotes Sarah Adam, a European specialist in Eastern cultures, who believed that the custom of killing baby girls was not necessarily associated with Jahiliya Arabs since the word “Arab” was not mentioned directly in the Qur’an. Zeidan supports this idea by stating that if baby girls were really buried alive on a wide scale, how did it come about that Arabs married more than one woman at a time. Zeidan argues that women were revered in Arab tribes and were consulted on important issues, so would they consent to killing baby girls? Zeidan furthermore points out that some Arab family names were matriarchal.
Historical doubt
Zeidan casts doubt on the credibility of the Torah through condemning the incest between Lot and his daughters. He furthermore claims there is no historical proof of the existence of Sam, Ham and other characters mentioned there. He seems conveniently to forget that many Torah stories appear in various ancient cultures.
Zeidan is definitely entitled to his opinion regarding the various religions or holy books, but after reading his book, one cannot help wondering if he realised it would not sit well with the public openly to flout Islam, and therefore decided it would be easier and more lucrative to attack Christianity and Judaism instead. Considering the prevalent climate of sectarian sensitivities and anti-Zionism, it is not surprising that his books ruffle not quite a few feathers.