Trigger warnings for rape and torture.
Alaa al Aswany paints a depressing picture of life in Cairo around the turn of the twenty-first century in The Yacoubian Building (solidly translated by Humphrey T. Davies). Corruption is everywhere in this novel, in spite of this novel’s deceptively sensual beginning. This unusual book jumps from character to character to paint a portrait of modern Cairene life. The characters—a poor, young woman; a young man who wants to be a police officer; a philanderer; a businessman who goes into politics; a gay newspaper editor; and others—show us different slices of that life. Even though they are all of different classes, genders, and ages, they are all linked because they live, at one time or another in the 1930s era Yacoubian Building, in what used to be a fashionable part of the city.
It seems that one needs two things in abundance to make it in Cairo: luck and hustle. The hustle is expected. Bribes are necessary to avoid ending up on the wrong side of a legal dispute, to open a business, or to find a place to live. Women are subjected to constant sexual harassment; if they don’t go along, they’re fired. Marriage, as we see in one blunt subplot involving the businessman-turned-politician, is just another form of prostitution. It all comes down to what a person is willing to sell themselves for. As long as they can put up with the emotional price of selling their bodies or their independence, a bit of luck might mean that they become the person pulling the strings for once.
Over and over, The Yacoubian Building shows us injustice. The young man who wants to be a police officer is turned away because his father is a doorman, even though he worked incredibly hard to get top marks on his exams. His first love is bluntly told by her mother to get a job and stick with it, even though all her bosses are lechs. The businessman-turned-politician twists Islamic law to get himself a second, younger wife, then cruelly and brutally send her away when she gets pregnant. The only bright spots (relatively speaking) lie in parts of the plot dealing with the sensualist and failed engineer we meet in the opening chapters. This man is the only one who is open about pursuing his desires and struggles.
I picked this book up on a recommendation from Smithereens, who commented about this book in a post I wrote about my love for books built around people who happen to live in the same building. While The Yacoubian Building is frankly depressing, I grew attached to some of the characters, rooting for them to find a bit of happiness and peace with the world. I also enjoyed the way al Aswany used the titular building as a central point for so many plots, subplots, and characters. The building, from its rooftop colony for the lower class to the decayed but still elegant apartments inside, feels like geology come to fictional life. The building’s history is like the history of the city and the variety of people are like organisms evolved to survive in the harsh environment of an economically depressed, authoritarian, schizophrenic society.