Abstract :
Like W. B. Yeats in many of his poems, Mah: fu¯z:
in The Harafish is concerned with the
nature of leaders, the creation of heroes, the dangers of rigidity and the inevitability of
change. The novel’s structure is important in its portrayal of relationships between
leaders and their constituents, drawing not only on older fictional trends such as the
popular epic, but also on cinema and in particular Egyptian gangster movies. While
sometimes mirroring contemporary events in Egypt, the action remains mythical as it
dramatizes the reigns of clan chiefs in the same Cairo neighbourhood over several
generations. The novel acknowledges the attraction of heroic figures and displays a
fascination with the different ways they are created. At the same time it shows vividly
what can happen when the leader/hero is obsessed with his own immortality, and
suggests that ordinary people (the ‘harafish’) have more responsibility for the making and
unmaking of these heroes than they imagine.
