Snooping

“The lottery vendor has his tickets pinned to the wall. My father takes two tickets from his pocket and his reading glasses.
He compares their numbers with the vendor’s ledger, crumps them up, and throws them out on the road. He buys two new tickets, one blue, the other red.
A row of antique sellers and shoe shiners piles old glasses on a newspaper on the floor. The vendor wears prescription glasses broken in half and welded to a protruding piece of tin.”
The novel offers you many fine details of the Egyptian neighborhood in 1948, told through the eyes of a young nine-year-old boy, always walking around holding the hand of his elderly father, who was over sixty-five years old. It’s as if you’re watching an old Egyptian movie shot in the Egyptian neighborhood during that period. Many scenes are photographed with great precision, and Sonallah Ibrahim narrates many of the conversations that were being circulated at the time, relating to political affairs, the establishment of the State of Israel, the whims of King Farouk, the public’s mockery of him, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, talk of high prices, the economic situation, and other topics that were prevalent in the Egyptian streets at the time. This light and enjoyable novel narrates the details of Egyptian daily life, which have now disappeared, but Sonallah revives them with his usual skill.