Rama and the Dragon: An Avatar too Short of the Truth
The fifth edition of Rama w al-Tineen or Rama and the Dragon by Edwar al-Kharrat, published by Dar al-Mostaqbal. The cover art is by Egyptian artist Ahmed Morsy.
This is part of the #100ArabNovels project, where I try to revisit the Arab Writers'Association's list of 100 most significant novels, as part of trying to understand the Arab imaginary post-2011
Rama w al-Tineen reads like the feverish hallucinations of a disappointed heterosexual man. As such it is frustrating and alienating to about 50% of its potential readers. Its Edwar al-Kharrat's (1926-2015) debut novel, and was finished and published by the time he was in his fifties, its a trilogy of the short-lived love affair of its titular character, Rama and the dragon being every setback that stood in the way of its protagonist Mikhail Qaldas, the middle-aged, introspective Copt. Mikhail, the namesake of the archangel Michael (hence the dragon reference) suffers the insecurities and uncertainties of love, and through the motif of the six days of creation, borrowing the Genesis creation narrative, tries to recreate the notion of a story of origin, premised on his two characters, Rama, the primordial female archetype and Mikhail, the unusual, unassuming male protagonist. But unlike the Genesis story and more similar to other Mesopotamian mythology of the time, Mikhail tries to battle and subdue the female primordial principle to create the world as he would like it to be. The notions of myth, primordial battles and legends of gods are central to Kharrat's novel. In trying to ground his story in sources not immediately Arabic/Muslim, Kharrat goes out on a limb to reclaim this so-called 'Coptic imaginary'. The novel is often hailed as being one of the few instances where a Coptic imaginary comes to the foreground dominating the linguistic and symbolic order of the narrative.
One should always be very wary in using 'Coptic' to mean something ethno-linguistically distinct, but rather Coptic as in a subculture that existed and continued to exist in different ways, over time. In that sense Kharrat's novel does bring a 'Coptic' sensibility by rejecting the typical Muslim/Arab ethical, moral and even historical imaginary, sometimes in very superficial ways (simple allusions to the Pharaonic past doesn't make a very convincing parallel or alternative imaginary) and other times more convincingly so. It is understandably a deeply contested issue as Copts claim themselves separate from, and distinct from the Arab, Muslim majority, such claims naturally being politicized, specifically with the rise of the Islamic revival movements from the late 1970s and the waves of Islamization that plagued Egyptian society and naturally alienated and threatened and continue to threaten its Coptic minority. The truth about such identity is probably somewhere in the middle (there is a rich Coptic culture, however, it most likely borrowed from and influenced the Arab, majority just the same. Such essentialist distinctions and claims to difference don't hold much in the practice of the everyday or the traditions that mixed with each other for over a thousand years).
In 349 pages, and 14 chapters, Kharrat seemingly tries to adapt 'stream-of-consciousness', تداعي المعاني أو التداعي الحر, style of writing to the Arabic novel. But this is not exactly what he did. He rather did the more accurate translation, سيل الوعي ,'flood of consciousness'. The novel is weighed down by this flood of verbosity, of interior monologues that run on for pages on end, comprising just the voice of the narrator and him answering his own voice. A rather intimate, although claustrophobic format. One feels constantly hostage to one man's deeply personal inner monologues, that can be tedious as it is distracting. Kharrat tries to achieve this transparent quality, of making his narrator truly himself, by alternating between the voice of the narrator and him questioning himself. A literary device that has the unforunate effect of creating a sense of uneasiness and a jagged quality of the novel. What ends up happening is that it transforms the narrative into something extremely self-indulgent.
Yet Coptic or not, Kharrat's misogyny is all the same. Instead of judging his primary female protagonist, Rama through the typical Arab/Muslim ethical and moral lens, he judges her in polytheistic, animist frame. Rama is not a dishonourable woman for sleeping with as many men as she pleases, Rama is a dishonourable woman, because she is a "sacred whore", who knows none of the moral sanctification of monotheism (Kharrat goes out on a limb, towards the end of his novel, contrasting his monotheistic tendency as one that doesn't allow for the permissibility and animism of polytheistic thinking of his unchaste beloved). To dedicate oneself to the one true God (who is naturally heterosexual and monogamous), is Kharrat's point of contention with his more polygynous lover. One can sense that Kharrat was battling with himself not to fall in the easy trap of demonizing women for according themselves the same right that men take and have taken for granted for millennia. The moral hypocrisy of this would damage any meaningful ethical or moral sense to the novel.
However, like any other Egyptian man, Kharrat is deeply puzzled by how a woman would allow herself to use men instrumentally or to objectify them as means for her own pleasure or personal amusement/interest. The violence of objectification that is so alien to most men, is incomprehensible to Kharrat as well. So although he does not condemn his Rama in the same way a typical Arab or Egyptian writer might (calling on this Arab/Muslim sense of honour and chivalry and conceited masculinity), he uses a more complex method of accusing her of insincerity, cowardice, lack of true of knowledge of self. Rama becomes a vessel for her 'insatiable sexual appetite'. She is a nymphomaniac, with a childish personality and almost no depth, acting on impulse and maintaining a childish fear of death and loss of those whom she loves. A true narcissist, who fears death, growing old and being alone.
One then wonders whats left to like? Well, apparently Rama is a sexy woman, who knows what she likes and is good at it. There is definitely no dearth of sex scenes in Rama w al-Tineen. There is plenty of sex, that is written in the most prolix, mystified language one can ever read. Never was cunnilingus described in such botanical and topographical idioms. To escape censors? Maybe. To add a bit of artistic flare? Probably. But the result is that Kharrat's erotics, like almost all other Arab erotics (Coptic or otherwise), cannot be understood without this constant referral to divinely sanctioned moral order. The world was conceived as heterosexual and its fecundity can only be sustained by continuous, satiating, heterosexual intercourse. That is a poor universe indeed. Halfway through the novel, the reader starts to think, but what does Rama enjoy? Aside from the insatiable desire to be penetrated by the largest number of men. What excites her? Whats her fantasies like? We don't know.
All we know is, what Mikhail thinks. What Mikhail thinks she enjoys. What Mikhail thinks her past sexual experiences were like. What Mikhail thinks he should subject her body to. Rama's body is present alright, her softness, her suppleness, her round breasts, her sculpted thighs, and coarse long hair. Thats it. We never know what actually goes through Rama's head. We never know if she likes her body, or what she likes about her body. We don't know what she thinks of Mikhail's ministrations to her body and his magical sex techniques. Rama only speaks when Mikhail allows her to. And out of 349 pages, she really doesn't say much about who she is.
The remainder of the narrative has sudden bursts of clarity and that transparent quality that Kharrat tried to effect with his character (and failed), that is manifested in his relationship to the world around him. Kharrat constructs cities and landscapes that are strikingly vivid as they are magical. Whatever clarity is missing from his characters (both protagonists), is acutely developed in the way he describes downtown Cairo and the bygone beauty of Alexandria. The capricious skies of Alexandria, its whimsical sea, its narrow streets and alleyways lined with neoclassical villas and residential buildings. Of course all of that is gone now, since most of Alexandria's architectural heritage has been systematically destroyed (like many of parts of Egypt). But its a world that Kharrat inhabited and he preserved in moving detail.
When not mixing between the dreamworld and reality (including bizarre scenes of strangling swans and orgies under the moonlight in the desert) there is some token politics in the story. Kharrat belongs to the generation that grew up in the early days of the July State, shaped by its endless war rhetoric (1955 Tripartite Aggression, Six-Days War, War of Attrition, 1973 War) and clearly leftist-socialist, anti-colonial struggle left a far-reaching effect. But Kharrat is obviously disenchanted, not just with the socialist struggle but politics as whole. For that reason, we see this profound subjective turn, the unravelling of these endless monologues of individual consciousness. An oppositional stance at odds with the more populist and collective worldview of his fellow friends and comrades, as they appear in a few scenes. We don't get to know Kharrat's or his protagonist's grievance against the July state, its hypocrisy, its moral vapidity is implied, hinted at, but never truly explained.
A break-up story rarely tries to be ambitious enough to retell the story of creation or the story of the primordial conflict between the sexes (a conflict that is always instigated by women's refusal to completely submit to the desires of men). Kharrat's protean imagination goes back and forth in time, sometimes at a dizzying pace and not with very coherent results. His indignant claim to Coptic uniqueness and grandeur falters under the inconsistencies of many of his claims, but its rather what Kharrat points out to, that is remarkable (a way to write and think that speaks of and to another history and another experience). His torrents of expendable inner monologues and poorly developed female characters, of course undermine this attempt. And rightly so. But if we take the creation narrative motif, we can think of this as a primary manifestation, of a truth yet to come.
*The novel was translated to English by Ferial Ghazoul and John Verlenden for the AUC Press in 2002