"We Need More Transnational Stories" Doma Mahmoud on CAIRO CIRCLES
wust el-balad #3
Egyptian media is dominated by upper-class Egyptians, and yet it is still somewhat uncommon for the routine lives of that segment to be represented so clearly on the quotidian level as in Doma Mahmoud’s debut novel Cairo Circles. Set in between Cairo and New York, the book follows the turbulent and interconnected lives of a handful of characters navigating class tensions, and the respective violence of each society. The story kicks into gear when our protagonist, New York-transplant Sheero, is horrified to learn that a terror attack in New York was orchestrated by none other than his own cousin. In the chaos that follows, Sheero must confront his own complicated relationship with his family, as well as the socioeconomic background he yearns to shed.
In the Egyptian context, in particular, the story is refreshingly adept at exploring the nature of material and social capital, and how in some circumstances the latter can even be more important than the former. Rabidly self-hating, Sheero is desperate to escape the shadow of his middle-class background and family ties to the countryside. As such, he believes that:
“In America, we were free—free to wear whatever clothes we wanted and believe in whatever we liked and have sex with as many girls as we please. And not only did no one have a problem with it, no one even noticed, because no one cared. In America, there were a million ways of being a person and you could simply take your pick. In America, you could snort cocaine off the nipples of strippers and take videos as you did it if you were generous with your tips. In America, girls weren’t urged to lose their virginity after marriage, they were encouraged to lose it before college, and not only were most of them having sex, they were proud of it.” [59]
Mahmoud’s prose is stunningly adept at capturing the shallow hedonism of such an archetype of a diasporic Egyptian man, one who wholeheartedly subscribes to the binary of bashawat and ghalaba, and will do anything in his power to hold on to his relationship with the former. Additionally, Mahmoud captures the inherently right-wing and reactionary nature of middle-class Egyptians who align themselves with the rich and powerful. Sheero complains about “overpopulation,” abhors all markers of his own family’s more modest background, and fixates on the shortcomings of the working class men in his life while conveniently ignoring the fact that his best friend’s parents are among the most corrupt individuals in the country.
The cherry on top, of course, is Sheero’s own comically surface-level nationalism. His “loyalty” to the country is based on a handful of clichés concerning Egyptians’ “sense of humor” and the “pride” of watching the national football team win a match. Sheero ultimately admits himself that it is his desire to live in a gated upper-class community upon his eventual return to Egypt. At the end of the day, it was never actual life in the country that he missed, but rather the specific power and social prestige granted by his status, whose equivalent he could never access in America. It was my pleasure to discuss some of these thoughts, and more, with the author. The following is a condensed and edited version of that conversation.
HAZEM: When did you know this was a novel?
DOMA: This novel actually began as a short story I wrote for a creative writing class I took as an undergrad. The original idea was that two characters would start as close and similar friends, but then would end up on separate ends of Cairo’s class divide. Then I kept rewriting it and at some point the short story turned into a hundred pages and then into a novel.
H: What made you keep coming back to it?
D: I just developed a curiosity around the characters. Who they were trying to be and what they were trying to tell me. I think writers come back to the desk every day ultimately out of curiosity. Which isn’t all that different to the reason a reader keeps reading.
H: Did you always know this story would exist in English? Did you feel like the choice of language provided some kind of expansion of the novel’s narrative possibilities?
D: It was always going to be in English, which made it inherently targeted at a particular crowd: English speakers in the West, the Muslim diaspora, and Egyptians who read and write better in English than they do in Arabic. I wouldn’t say it expanded the novel’s possibilities, but it steered the novel in a certain direction, for sure. In English, you have a little more freedom to discuss what could be too taboo in other languages like Arabic. You also have to do a fair amount of cultural explanation you wouldn’t have to do in a country’s native language.
H: How do you think the characters and story were shaped by that need for cultural explanation?
D: I wouldn’t say that the characters or story were shaped by it, but if you’re writing about a place to an audience that isn’t native to that place, you’re ultimately going to spend a certain share of your time explaining the culture and giving background, which takes away from the space you have to do other things. One of the things I had to figure out, like all writers, was the economy of the novel: how to spend my hundred and twenty-thousand words. You don’t want to do too much cultural explanation but you don’t want to do too little either.
H: Given Sheero’s class position and interest, he thinks of the US as this land of unbridled individual freedom. Had he spent longer in the country, do you think he would have maintained that illusion?
D: It is somewhat of an illusion and it doesn’t take him too long to figure that out. It’s a common realisation among immigrants, I think, that in the West the chains are still there around your neck, but are maybe a little less apparent and explicit, which you could argue is a worse form of oppression.
H: This is certainly a tension that is often very prevalent in diasporic Egyptian circles. From your experience, do you think that conversation has shifted in any significant way since you yourself were a student in the US?
D: I could be wrong, but when I think of the POC and immigrant narratives that have been put out in recent years, it feels like people are moving away from assimilation as a goal towards something like multiculturalism. I feel as though a show like Ramy would've only been made ten years ago if the narrative was that of a young Muslim man moving away from his religion, which is the opposite of what the actually show is.
H: Was this always a transnational story? Obviously there’s no Cairo Circles without Cairo, but was there ever a version of the book without New York?
D: Originally it was two separate books! Sheero’s story in New York. And then the other characters in Cairo. Then one of my professors saw all these similarities and suggested that I merge them into one novel, which I’m really glad I did. We need more transnational stories and I’m happy that Cairo Circles is one.
H: Are there transnational stories and/or novels that you’d count as influences on Cairo Circles?
D: The writers that immediately come to mind are Khaled Hosseini and Junot Diaz.
H: What was it like working with an independent press? Do you feel like it afforded you more freedom to develop the novel as you saw fit?
D: In retrospect, I feel like this novel was always going to end up with an independent press. It’s fairly experimental in its structure and form, and more than half of it is set outside the US. I could be wrong, but I don’t get the impression that big publishers often bet on such projects, which I hope will change soon. Regardless, the experience of working with Unnamed was truly special. I couldn’t have gotten any more personal attention from the editor and publicist. The entire team is completely behind each novel they put out.
H: That’s always wonderful to hear! Big publishers have certainly demonstrated a penchant for particular kinds of work from the region. The book’s emphasis on class dynamics specifically within Cairo, for instance, is certainly not a theme that conforms to normative depictions and/or discussions of the area at large, let alone Egypt. When did you know that class would play such a central role in the book’s story and ethos?
D: From the very beginning! Class dynamics have influenced my life and thinking since as far back as I can remember.
H: In a post-9/11 world, literature (or any art, really) from groups broadly affected by the so-called “War on Terror” which deals with “terrorism” is often fetishized and distorted. Did you worry about that as you went through the process of preparing and pitching the book?
D: Yes I did. I hesitated to tackle the topic of terrorism in the first place. But at some point I realized that I really wanted and needed to try to tackle it with a little more nuance and humanity. I tried to create a character that doesn’t quite fit into the trope of the long-bearded terrorist because I had become tired of coming across it all my life. White criminals and serial killers have been afforded such empathy and nuance by Hollywood and traditional publishing, which is a good thing. But it’s time for us to tackle minority criminals the same way, and that’s what I tried to do with the character of Amir.
H: Do you see yourself revisiting these characters, or setting, in future work?
D: Not the characters. They took five years of my life! Which is a healthy amount, I feel. It's time to think of others. As for the setting. Cairo is home so I can't say I'll never write about it again. I'd probably be wrong.
Doma Mahmoud is an Egyptian novelist based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and currently teaches fiction and rhetoric at the American University of Cairo. Cairo Circles is his first novel.
Hazem Fahmy is a writer and critic from Cairo. You can find his work here and follow him on social media here.
Cairo Circles is out now by Unnamed Press. You can find it here, as well as in local bookstores and libraries across the US.