Book title: The Yacoubian Building

Author: Alaa Al-Aswany

Reviewed by: Musabi Muteshi

A master of characterisation, Alaa Al Aswany entwines the reader in an all-engaging story that revolves around inhabitants of a single, dilapidated, apartment building, The Yacoubian Building.

The story begins with the main character, an old man, Zaki Bey el Dessouki ,walking slowly down the street in old Cairo. The short 100 metre walk takes him an hour, because he stops to greet and chat with almost everyone on the way from his home to his office. The length of the walk is an indicator of the physical breadth of the landscape of the story and its inhabiting characters.

The authour opens a peephole into a by-gone Cairo where inhabitants, like Zaki, still consider the good old days to be a time of French influence. A time when the upper middle class spoke French and old Cairo evoked elegant Parisian streets and buildings. Zaki is an impoverished dandy in a 3-piece suit whose fall in life reflects the changes in Eqypt, post revolution. No, not the 2011 uprising, but rather the 1952 revolution.

Zaki lives a life of impoverished gentility. A much loved man by all, he is considered an expert on women even though at this advanced age, he has never married. The book brings to life the social complexities of class, wealth, poverty and opportunity, or lack there of. One character, the doorkeeper’s very bright son, Taha, encapsulates the biases that renders worthless the efforts of those without economic power. "Teach not the children of the lowly!” is a reaction of the better off tenants in the building.

The authour’s trademark warmth and deep insights into character had me strongly identifying with each character in the novel. Be it Taha’s struggles to become a policeman, to win his love and his final desperate reactions. Or the young, financially impoverished Busayna who discovers "that her beautiful and provocative body, her wide, dark-brown eyes and full lips, her voluptuous breasts and tremulous, rounded backside with its soft buttocks, all had an important role to play in her dealings with people.”

The book delves into human vices of greed, drugs, deception, theft, corruption, moral ambiguity, hypocrisy and lust in a richly told, authentic, colourful yet humorous style. Politics, religion, dysfunctional family life and inheritance battles are weaved into the whole.

With the Gulf war period as the backdrop, the book reflects the political, economic and social changes from the Christian but secular European lifestyle to the increasing Muslim influence over society and the resultant shifts in power. The 10-story, once elegant, Yakoubian building has seen its middle class mostly flee to be replaced by military families. The rooftop terrace’s sheds provide slum living conditions for the beggar-like, countryside migrants.

Zaki’s loneliness at 65 years old, with friend dying off makes him morbid and he asks, "...does death have a special smell that a person exudes at the end of his life, so that he becomes aware of his approaching end? And how will the end be?” The reader is left wondering if there is any chance that love will win the day.

The author in an interview when asked, given the global success of this book, when he would give up his day job, responded, "But where would I get my characters from if I didn’t engage with all these different personalities on a daily basis?”. Who would have thought a dentist’s job would be so full of such rich characters. If that is indeed the case, then may he stay a dentist and continue to share this richness with the rest of the world.