Slipping

April 1, 2021
Contemporary Egyptian life glimpsed through a magical realist lens. At the heart of Kheir's first novel translated into English are the meanderings of young journalist Seif and his subject, Bahr, an enigmatic collector of stories who has returned from several years in Europe to the Egypt he dismisses as a "shithouse of a country" in the wake of the revolution. As the pair visit Alexandria, where they engage in a daredevil game with passing streetcars and cross the Nile River on foot, Bahr spins out tales that blend concrete detail with fanciful elements, offering bits of his melancholy perspective on life along the way. Among them are the account of his arrest and brutal treatment after a street demonstration and an oddly charming parable involving a bureaucrat named Yehyia who becomes part of a government effort to waste citizens' time on purpose. Spirits and voices are recurring elements. There is the story of Ahmed, who is called upon to communicate with his late father to help his impoverished fellow villagers make a collective decision about whether to abandon their homes. Seif's girlfriend, Alya, possesses an unusual talent for re-creating any imaginable sound while Salaam, a young man with a persistent stutter, can only overcome it when he sings. Some of these fragmentary, dreamlike anecdotes are loosely connected, but those links are elusive at best. Then there are promising premises--like the one involving Ashraf, the young doctor recruited as a member of a medical staff at a private clinic whose work involves caring for a single patient, a wealthy businessman who has "resolved not to die"--that are introduced, never to be revived. For a Western audience lacking Kheir's cultural context, it's likely that many of these episodes will prove more puzzling than resonant. Despite a handful of evocative moments, a novel that fails to cohere into a meaningful whole.

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April 26, 2021
Egyptian writer Kheir’s enchanting English-language debut follows a journalist and a tour guide full of fantastical stories through a series of strange locations. The story unfolds in Cairo and nearby Egyptian towns during the Arab Spring, when grief-stricken, ennui-ridden magazine writer Seif, whose girlfriend, Alya, was recently killed during a protest, is assigned to accompany Bahr on excursions to unfamiliar places. Bahr leads Seif to an Alexandrian site where two streetcar trains narrowly miss striking them, and later shows him how to appear to walk on water at the Nile (it’s an illusion, as an upriver floodgate’s closure drops the water level). Along the way, Bahr tells of a befuddled soon-to-be groom who wakes in a garbage-ridden trench in an unfamiliar neighborhood after missing his wedding three days earlier, among other stories. Bahr’s tales trigger memories in Seif—such as one about a man whose father dies and whose mother began receiving messages from the dead man, and another about flowers falling from the sky, which reminds Seif of being separated on the street from Alya before she was killed—and soon his sense of reality becomes increasingly blurred. Throughout, Kheir demonstrates a marvelous imagination and harnesses the magic of storytelling. Readers are in for a treat.