Under the Umbrella

“Then, many construction workers arrived, followed by trucks laden with stones, cement, and construction tools. With astonishing speed, they built a magnificent tomb. Nearby, they erected a large bed of stones, covered it with sheets, and decorated its legs with flowers. All this under the rain. They went to the wreckage of the two cars and extracted the bodies, their heads smashed and limbs burned. They added to them the body of the man lying face down from under the two lovers who had never ceased to make love.”
Naguib Mahfouz wrote this collection of short stories and plays between October and December 1967, immediately after the setback. In them, he expressed what was on the minds of many Egyptians and revealed many of the mistakes that led the country to this devastating defeat. In his story “Under the Umbrella,” he discusses the absurdity of the regime and the chaos of the political scene through an absurd, irrational scene witnessed by a group of people standing under an umbrella, who believe this scene cannot be real and must be a staged scene. In his story “Sleep,” he tells the story of a man sitting in a casino when a girl approaches him, seeking help from a madman trying to kill her. However, the man is asleep and does not hear her screams, so the madman succeeds in killing her. This symbolizes the state of apathy that led to defeat… and other stories and plays laden with symbolism.