From Sunrise to Sunset: Toponymic Allegory, the Parodic Riḥla, and the Deferral of the Ideal State in Naguib Mahfouz’s The Journey of Ibn Fattouma

Abstract

Naguib Mahfouz's Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (1983) is usually read as a political allegory in which a traveller visits the great systems of government in turn and finds each one wanting. This study argues that the novel is doing something else. It shows that the perfect state the traveller seeks could never appear among the others, because it is the standard by which they are judged.

The novel parodies the classical Arabic travel account, or riḥla, which assumes the traveller sets out from a secure home and returns to it, but Mahfouz withdraws both assumptions. The paper also recovers the Arabic place names, left opaque in English translation: sunrise, bewilderment, arena, safety, sunset, mountain. In sequence they turn the journey through political history into a single day and a single life. Thus, arriving too late is built into the design of the novelette. The hero's name, given as a slur on his mother, sets up a treatment of women the novel works through across six lands, and his patriarchal outlook is exposed rather than shared. Derrida's distinction between reversing a hierarchy and dismantling it explains why the apparently liberated land of Mashriq repeats what it inverts.

Keywords: Naguib Mahfouz; Riḥla; Postcolonial Allegory; Translation and Toponymy; Deconstruction