IDRIS, Yusuf

Nationality: Egyptian. Born: Bairum, Sharqiva Province, 19 May 1927. Education: Cairo University, M.D. (specialized in psychiatry) 1945-52. Career: Physician, Kasr el Eini Hospital, 1952; practiced medicine, 1952-66; literary editor, Ruz al-Yusuf, 1953; health inspector, Ministry of Health, Darb al-Ahmar, 1956-60; editor, Al-Gumhuriya newpaper, Cairo, 1960-68; joined Algerian freedom fighters, 1962; columnist and literary editor, Al-Ahrā m, Cairo, 1973; imprisoned several times for political reasons. Awards: Egyptian Order of the Republic, 1966; Hiwar Literary prize, 1965 (refused); Medal of Republic, 1966. Member: Communist Party, 1954-56. Died: August 1991.

Publications

Short Stories

Arkhas layālī. 1954; as The Cheapest Nights and Other Stories, 1978; revised edition, 1978.

Al-Batal [The Hero]. 1957.

A-laysa kadhālik? [Is That Not So?]. 1957.

Hādithat sharaf [A Matter of Honor]. 1958.

Qa'al-Madina [Dregs of the City]. 1959.

Al-Harqām [Guilt] (novella). 1959.

Akher al Dunya [End of the World]. 1961.

Al-'Askarī al-aswad [The Black Soldier]. 1962.

Al-'Ayb [Sin] (novella). 1962.

Lughat al-āy āy [The Ay-ay Tongue]. 1965.

Qissat hubb. 1967.

Al-Mukhattatīn. 1969.

Al-Naddāha [The Siren]. 1969.

Mashuq al-Hams [Ground Whispers]. 1970.

Al-Baydā'. 1970.

Al-Mu'allafāt al-kā milah. 1971.

Bayt min lahm [House of Flesh]. 1971.

Modern Egyptian Short Stories, with Nagīb Mahfūz and Sa'd al-Khādim. 1977.

In the Eye of the Beholder: Tales from Egyptian Life from the Writings of Idrīs, edited by Roger Allen. 1978.

Rings of Burnished Brass. 1984.

A Leader of Men; and, Abū al-rijāl (novella; bilingual edi-tion). 1988.

Novel

Al-Hara 1959; as The Sinners, 1984.

Plays

Jumbūriyyat Farahāt [The Republic of Farhāt]. 1956.

Al-Lahza al-harija [The Critical Moment]. 1957.

Al-Farāfīr (produced 1964). 1964.

Al-Mahzala al-ardiyya [The Terrestrial Comedy]. 1966.

Al-Jins al-thālith. 1971.

Other

Bi-sarāhah ghayr nutlaqah (essays). 1968.

Iktishā f qārrah (travelogue). 1972.

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Critical Studies:

in The Style of the Modern Arabic Short Story by Jan Beyerl, 1971; "Language and Theme in the Short Stories of Idrīs" by S. Smoekh, in Journal of Arabic Literature 6, 1975; introduction in In the Eye of the Beholder edited by Roger Allen, 1978, and Critical Perspectives on Idris by Allen, 1991; The Short Stories of Idris by P.M. Kurpershoek, 1981; Studies in the Short Fiction of Mahfouz and Idris by Mona N. Mikhail, 1992; Egyptian Drama and Social Change: A Study of Thematic and Artistic Development in Yusuf Idris's Plays by Dorota Rudnicka-Kassem, 1993; Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris, 1994.

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A medical student who initially wrote short stories as an avocation, Yusuf Idris burst onto the Egyptian literary scene as its enfant terrible in 1954, at the age of 27, with his first collection, Arkhas layālī (The Cheapest Nights and Other Stories). The volume, which caused a literary uproar, boasted a laudatory introduction by the doyen of Egyptian letters, Taha Hussein, who pronounced its author a new major talent. Though he worked as a physician and psychiatrist for more than a decade, Idris gave up his medical career in the middle 1960s to devote himself fully to writing. The author of novels, dramas, and various journalistic and political tracts, Idris is best known in modern Arabic literature as its premier short story writer.

Most of Idris's most memorable characters, especially in the early works written in the 1950s, are drawn from the working class and lower socioeconomic echelons of Egyptian society, fellahin from small towns and the rural countryside, where Idris spent most of his youth. In "All on a Summer's Night," from the collection Qa' al-Madina (Dregs of the City), Idris conjures up the musky smell of cut hay, male sweat, and adolescent sexuality when one night a group of fellah youth share a sexual fantasy and then disappointment as they comprehend the despair in their lives. Caught up in what seems to be an inexorable cycle of poverty and ignorance, these youth, like the characters in other stories, not only fight hard to survive but struggle to carve out for themselves a small sense of self-respect.

Idris often describes the numbing poverty and plight of Egypt's underclass in uncomfortable detail, probably based on his medical experience and work as a health inspector for the Egyptian Ministry of Health. In "Hard Up," from The Cheapest Nights, Abdou starts out as a cook but eventually works his way down the occupational scale to doorman, porter, vegetable hawker, and waiter, and finally he ends up selling his blood. Eventually, however, he develops anemia, for which he is dismissed from his "job." The extraction of Abdou's blood for a price is a powerful metaphor for society's exploitation of the poor. When his blood is no longer acceptable, he is turned out and made to fend for himself.

A doctor who signs death certificates narrates "Death from Old Age." The poignant, satiric story depicts the work of funeral assistants—elderly, underfed retirees who, to stay alive, toil at low wages to prepare corpses for burial. Funeral directors for whom they work call them "boys." In their day-to-day struggle for subsistence, these men treat death casually and have little time for courtesies and kind words that are usually offered in such circumstances.

In "The Errand," also from The Cheapest Nights, the long-suffering policeman El Shabrawi, longing to get to the Cairo of his youth, takes a mad woman to an asylum there. Not realizing what he was in for, he finds the "errand" a dark, taxing ordeal, especially his dealings with bureaucracies at both the police station and the hospital. He cannot wait to return to his home village.

Often, not much happens in Idris's stories; little changes between the start and the end, except perhaps for insight on a character's part, if he or she is fortunate. In "The Cheapest Nights," one of Idris's most famous works, Abdel Kerim, who on a cold winter night is kept awake by a strong cup of black tea, has nothing to do and nowhere to go except home. There, as usual, he will engage in sex with his large, fecund wife, his cheapest entertainment.

Later stories written in the 1960s take on a highly symbolic, even surrealistic, quality. Often set in cities, these stories have as protagonists alienated bureaucrats and other such hallow persons instead of farmers and workers, as in "The Omitted Letter" from the 1961 collection Akher al Dunyg (End of the World). "House of Flesh," the title story from the 1971 collection Bayt min lahm, frankly treats the centrality of sex both within and out of marriage. The three grown daughters of a widow convince their mother to marry the blind Korean reciter who comes to their one-room home to pray. They reason that with a man in the house suitors will come. After the marriage no suitors come, and each of the daughters, envious of her mother, wishes to share her husband, to which she tacitly agrees. It is not certain that the blind man knows what is going on, and the morality of and responsibility for these actions is left ambiguous. Unlike in earlier works, these characters are nameless, as if to suggest anyone could be caught up in the same, or analogous, situation.

Early critics of Idris's work objected not only to Idris's depiction of the underbelly of Egyptian society, but also to his literary style, which mixed classical Arabic in the narrative with highly colloquial, often offensive, language in the dialogue. This duality of styles, called diglossia, is a familiar feature of many languages (Greek, Swiss German, Tamil). In such cases an older, "pure" form of the language is used for formal situations such as literary pursuits, recitation, and broadcasting, and a contemporary, highly colloquial form of the language (which includes curses and obscenity) is used in everyday discourse and conversation. Many critics felt Idris's use of colloquial language was unliterary but eventually came to realize that the juxtaposition of the two styles added strength, texture, and realism to his works. This later became an acceptable feature of modern Egyptian fiction.

Idris's characters seem to possess a spirit that refuses to accept their condition as permanent and unchangeable. Though often born into dire circumstances, they fight against destiny—their kismet—demonstrating, on the one hand, a seemingly infinite capacity for suffering but, on the other, an indomitable sense of hope. Commenting on Idris's contrition to modern Arabic literature, the prominent author and critic Tawfik el-Hakim stated in the introduction to The Cheapest Nights, "Yusuf Idris, in my opinion, is the renovator and genius of the [Arabic] short story."

—Carlo Coppola

See the essay on "The Cheapest Nights."