Free That Smell and Notes From Prison by Sonallah Ibrahim Page B

a copy of the confiscated novel in front of him,
with the margins of most pages marked in red. He asked me, contemptuously, “Why
does the hero refuse to sleep with the prostitute his friend brings him? Is the
hero impotent?”
    I wasn’t especially interested in arguing the point. I’d managed to
rescue a few of the confiscated copies and began distributing them to writer
friends and journalists, asking those with some influence to get the novel
released. The late Zaki Murad and I went to see Ahmad Hamrush, then
editor-in-chief of Ruz al-Yusuf . Hamrush welcomed me
very warmly and showed me proofs of the magazine’s new issue, which included a
short essay by him on my novel titled “The Language of the Age.” When I told him
about the confiscation he was visibly surprised. He picked up the phone and
called his friend Hamdi Hafiz in the Information Bureau; he listened for a
moment, and then without replacing the receiver he called the magazine’s printer
and requested the article be removed.
    The news didn’t reach most writers and journalists in time, however.
A number of magazines and newspapers published reviews, all while the book
reposed in the storehouses of the Ministry of Interior.
    Yahya Haqqi was one of those to whom I gave a copy of the book. We’d
become acquainted a few months earlier, following my release from prison in the
middle of 1964. I went to his office at al-Majalla ,
where he was editor-in-chief. He’d opened the magazine’s doors to all writers,
especially young ones, and would usher them behind the expensive wooden desk at
the center of his room, making do with a comfortable leather armchair placed to
one side. The first time we met, I brought him my piece on a recent book by
Stephen Spender, the British literary critic. I sat and read the article aloud
and Haqqi listened intently, studying me with his intelligent eyes and gently
correcting my errors of pronunciation. When I’d finished reading, he said he’d
take it. It was the first thing I published after my release from prison and I
made ten guineas, which covered a month’s expenses.
    I had gone to see Haqqi with a copy of That
Smell . He took it from me in a friendly fashion and after reading the
title he said, very amiably, that the room was perfumed by the pleasant
fragrance emanating from its title.
    But it wasn’t long before he realized his mistake and wrote a
violent review in his weekly column for al-Masa’ ,
where he said:
    I am still distressed by this short
novel whose reputation has recently become notorious in literary circles. It
might have been counted among our best productions had its author not shown such
imprudence and lack of good taste. Not content to show us his hero masturbating
(if the matter had ended there it would have been of little importance), he also
describes the hero’s return a day later to where the traces of his sperm lie on
the ground. This physiological description absolutely nauseated me, and it
prevented me from enjoying the story despite its skillful telling. I am not
condemning its morality, but its lack of sensibility, its lowness, its
vulgarity. Here is the fault that should have been removed. The reader should
have been spared such filth.
    So the great writer was asking my opinion of what he
called, in his article, my “physiological” style. But while we talked, I began
to think about the incident in broader terms. I told him I felt that I was only
now learning how to write. Each new book revealed something new to me about the
art, exposing the limits of my abilities, my weak points. And it increased my
esteem for those writers who boldly confront the blank page, bristling with the
weapons of their craft. This is not at all how I felt when I began writing.
    When I wrote That Smell , I had just
gotten out of prison and was under house arrest, which required me to be at home
from dusk to dawn. I spent the rest of the day getting to know the world I’d
been away from for more than five