Mawal Al-Bayat Wa Al-Naum

Khairi Shalabi's Mawal Al-Bayat Wa Al-Naum is a journey into the depths of Egyptian life, where the writer weaves a world where reality blends with fantasy, reaching the lives of the simple and marginalized. Shalabi reviews the details of the daily lives of figures from multiple social classes, with a clear bias towards the lower class. The narrator, who comes from rural origins but lives in the city, portrays a society full of contradictions and conflicts. Here is the city that attracted the narrator with dreams of success, revealing its cruel and opportunistic face, and shattering his romantic perception of it, as he feels lost in it. In the words of Dr. Amani Fouad, “Like a thread of smoke that sloughs off from heavy structures, one wishes to sleep with the embrace of a descending cloud from above.”

The narrative in the novel is built on ironic paradoxes, as the narrator's vision of society unfolds through passing life situations. Shalabi takes the reader through the streets of the city, to cafes where politics and literature are discussed, and to the joints and alleys that become a haven for the homeless and the poor. Thanks to Shalabi, these places turn into vibrant spaces, full of characters that seem to have emerged from the world of fiction to reality. Shalabi makes sure to present the characters of his novel in minute details, drawing their external and internal features very carefully, making them close and real. Each character carries its traits, ideas, and conflicts, and embodies human suffering. Shalabi sees himself as an “candid storyteller”, combining madness with creativity, to present a different and unique narrative that mixes myth and reality, pain and sarcasm.

The novel is a testimony of the writer's brilliant linguistic skill, as he mixes the classical with the colloquial, and this combination perfectly mirrors the life of the Egyptian ghetto highlighting its fragility, poverty, and corruption. Shalabi succeeds in presenting a historical narrative experience of places and people living on the fringes of society, dusting them off, and exposing their cruel reality.