A House of Infamous

He was receiving a torrent of memories as he looked at the chair from which she had looked at him, with a face that retained only the faintest trace of his past. A widow, worn down by fatigue and mourning, but proud of her true victories. Memories surrounded him like flocks of violets. He remembered how the daughters of the house of infamous marriage married one after another, despite what he had heard repeatedly that these girls were not meant for marriage and that no one would seek to marry them. Every time he heard news of their successful marriage, he was astonished and lost his balance. In the evening, he secluded himself in his study, while his wife and daughters were busy preparing for the awaited ballet evening. It was not strange for him to take out his old diary from the drawer where valuable papers such as the land ownership contract and the insurance policy were kept. Since his adolescence, he had been accustomed to recording his emotional and social events day after day. He saved its pages to go back to 1925 and around it, even the telephone number alone, and out of an motive he did not know the nature of, his hand reached out to the telephone dial and dialed the old number. A voice came to him, “Hello?” So he asked it, smiling mischievously, “Beit Halawa?” The voice hit him harshly: “No, sir… This is the Tambali shop for selling burlap.”
“A House of Bad Reputation” is a collection of short stories that tells some of the stories of the people. Naguib Mahfouz meticulously drew its characters, moving them within frameworks that reflect their inner selves, expressing their pain and dreams, and their natures, which are often hidden behind multiple masks. However, most of these masks are required by social customs and traditions. Therefore, Naguib Mahfouz’s narrative performance, in addition to his wonderful literary style, his gentle expressions, his enjoyable atmosphere, and his engaging events, contains within it treatments that delve deeply into psychology, sociology, and… and…, creating in his stories spaces for psychological and social studies, and, first and foremost, a space for enjoying an engaging literary work of fiction.