“Cairo Maquette” by Tariq Imam.. The Courtyard Game
Tariq Imam’s novel, “Cairo Macet”, never ceases to amaze us. She does it from the very first lines. The strange thing here is the starting point. It is the beginning and what follows it and what is built on it. It is the game of the novel in which it expands and accumulates on it, so that it continues and continues in that one thing after another, and so that everything else comes out against it, or after it or above it or below it. It moves and changes, turns into something else, or disappears from its foundation.
Thus, we are facing uninterrupted magic, in front of a volatile, changing, and mystical world, which is constantly moving, surprising, and wondrous. The novel is this magic, and it is this supernatural reproduction, and it is this transition from one strangeness to another. We will not wait for the novel to settle on something, we will not expect it to find conclusions and endings. It is only this miraculous reproduction, which does not stop and continues to surprise us. It is its game, and its buildings from each other, and from schisms, shocks and changes.
From the very first lines, we encounter names that are not names, of persons who are not persons, they and their names are the result of this free and limitless imagination. Orega the child aims his finger at his father, playing the gun game, but the finger really becomes this gun, and a bullet comes out of it, killing his father. We would like to sleep in her room, and on her mirror, with a person who does not leave her, and she is used to him and is with him. Then there’s Billiards who goes after a giant eye. We are like this, from the beginning, out of the ordinary, normal, regular and consistent. The reins have slipped, and we will wait for this moment for the surprises to continue, and for us to build strange upon strange, strange upon strange.
Here we cannot trust anything, or stop at something
The context of the novel is certainly this, but is this the whole of the novel, is it just this strange transformation? Tariq Imam will not leave us time to think in this way, the novel goes on in that way that leaves us no room for a question, or questions of this kind. The speed and surprise of things makes us drown in this game, which never ceases to reproduce, never ceases to amaze and amaze. So it takes time to feel that this game has some context, to discover that behind it, not only questions and perceptions, but also a vision and ideas.
Here we cannot trust anything, or stop at something. Things contain or contain their opposites. Things in their game, in their noise, reproduction, speed and tumult, still have their secrets and paradoxes. The game passes from negative to negative, from against to against. There is reality, i.e. reality at bluff with fantasy. There are things, with their willingness to transform and overturn. There are things in front of her imagination, in front of her shadows, but rather in front of her negligence and non-existence. Things with that ability to transform, even to disappear.
Reality is like this, if it is permissible to call it a reality, present in front of its dispossession, but rather present in front of its non-existence. However, something like myth, or rather something like religion, is out of the game. Thus, we find that the three with whom the novel begins are a family, that the murderous child is the son of No and Billiards. Family, this is how the game narrows down to a family. But it doesn’t stop here, there besides the three, someone is Mrs. The name is a snap again. Mrs. is the one who supervises the “Cairo maquette” project, in which each of the three has a share.
Each of the three makes a maquette for a section of Cairo that may be his home. In a way, it might be related to it. But Mrs. who looks half a woman. Knowing everything, she answers what comes to everyone in his secret, answers what he asks without saying it. There is also Mansi Ajram, and the game of names here is apparent. We are facing a distortion of the name of the well-known singer Nancy Ajram. Mansi Ajram in the novel is the author of a book that addresses every person, with what he is in, addresses him with his tongue and his words, meaning that each person has his own speech in the book of Mansi Ajram.
Here we are not mistaken if we say that we are facing a religious insinuation, we are not mistaken if we find in Mrs. and Mansi Ajram two personalities outside of religion. Mrs. and Mansi Ajram are here above the game that ends or hints at an end, which is the demise of the maquette, the demise of Cairo, and the demise of the whole game, meaning that the game thus turns into incompleteness. We, even if we are still in the game, are facing death, facing all existence that has faced its negation, facing death that overwhelms and swallows the world and existence.
* My Lebanese poet
