“Can an Egyptian speak English?”can an American woman speak Arabic?, “if the shoe doesn’t fit, should you change feet ? “. Noor Naga bombards her reader with questions in a magnificent text, far from any didactic or moralistic pretension, rather paving the way for reflection and questioning of oneself and one’s values, without falling into the trap of sterile cultural relativism.
An American narrator, Egyptian by blood, settles in Cairo to dig up her roots after a small career as an influencer that turned sour. Her political and ethical convictions are quickly put to the test by this society to which she only half belongs. “When I get out of the taxi [après m’être fait sermonner pour une énième fois par un chauffeur sur le fait que j’ai le crâne rasé]after paying less than a dollar for a half-hour ride, I no longer know if I have the right to be outraged, just as I no longer know if drinking is an act of resistance.
The young woman’s speech will be followed, alternately, by the voice of the “boy from Chebreiss”, a photographer of the 2011 revolution, a villager who arrived in Cairo years earlier. Now idle, he fights a cocaine addiction and his pride. Because the boy from Chebreiss does not let people walk all over him.
The American woman will strike his imagination for the first time in a stationery store, she will not notice him. He will court her in a café, she will end up giving in. Their romantic relationship will be woven around a disturbing cultural gap.
The boy from Chebreiss senses that she will quickly tire of him, of his exoticism, but he is nevertheless fascinated by this girl with dual origins. “She was Egyptian enough to wax her arms, but American enough to shave her head. She was Egyptian enough to sit at the ahwa [un café typiquement égyptien] under the bridge, but American enough to believe that a silk negligee was appropriate attire for the ahwa under the bridge.” Yet when he addresses her, he can only reach her Egyptian side; the second belongs to a deep mystery, which hours spent on YouTube cannot shed light on.
Their love story, captivating in its own right, also serves as a pretext to explore questions of privilege, class, wealth. “We hide our finances from each other, but the numbers rub against each other’s bodies in our sleep, so that we wake up staticky, agitated, and making everything we touch crackle. I didn’t even have to apply for a job at the British Council. My mother put in a call and it was all set up before I even got to Cairo.” […] [Mon salaire]that’s more money than he’ll ever see at one time. But what can I do? Whose fault is it? ” And the questions remain open – it’s up to the reader to answer them.
The writing suddenly takes on the trappings of theatre in the third part, which disrupts the flow of the reading for a few moments, before then imposing itself as obvious, as the only possible solution to the problem. climax narrative of the second part, like a stroke of literary genius highlighting the tenderness and ridiculousness of contemporary Western morality in comparison with the complexity of reality, of experience.
In Can an Egyptian speak English?Noor Naga immerses us in the reflections of two deeply real characters, mirrors of their own contradictions and those of their respective cultures. We love them and hate them both, we designate them guilty then victims in turn.
This novel — whose translation, by Marie Frankland, is also excellent — is undoubtedly a must-read for the literary rentrée. It won the Arab American Book Award in 2023.