News of the Dervishes

Author's name: Abdel Wahab Al-Aswani

Is the novelist a historian? A philosopher? A sociologist? Or an anthropologist? Or an opinion writer? Or a psychoanalyst? Or someone concerned with mythology, the legends of nations, the epics of peoples, and the biographies of their symbols? Or is he the priest who carries the commandments of humanity from generation to generation? He is all of these, in addition to his gifted ability to create beauty, shape consciousness, and sharpen the conscience... I heard this statement from the great novelist, Professor Abdel Wahab Al-Aswany, more than once, perhaps in different formulations, when he defined “the novelist.” My belief, which has become a certainty confirmed by evidence, is that he was describing himself. Although I find this description applicable to a few of humanity’s great immortal writers, it is most clearly applicable and most evident to Al-Aswany, with his unique ability to create his worlds, shape their details, and infuse their characters with lifeblood, relying on a broad, solid, and multifaceted culture. Fate brought him to this culture from multiple, contradictory sources since his birth in 1934 in an Arab tribal environment in the far reaches of Upper Egypt. His childhood and early youth were torn between that environment and the city of Alexandria in its cosmopolitan era. Then he moved to live in Cairo and other Arab capitals. Throughout his life and travels, he was accompanied by an insatiable appetite for serious reading, which made him gather history, geography, and the human dimension between them in the palm of his hand, studying them, contemplating them, deducing from them, recording them, and creating.