“My name is hardly mentioned except and this novel is mentioned with him as if I did not write another.” This is how the Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi summarizes what the novel “Qandil Umm Hashem” did with his long literary career .. It illuminated the way for him and at the same time brought darkness to a unique balance His various books are in the fields of story, translation and criticism.
That paradox, which made the influence of "Qandil Umm Hashem" as flashes of a lamp playing with the air, as the walls do not block its light, nor is it safe for its continuity without strong literary texts that make the great project to live up to my right, has remained in the writer's life the dilemma of credit and revenge at the same time.
With the twenty-eighth anniversary of Haqqi's passing, as his pen creativity stopped at the age of 87 on December 9, 1992, "Qandil Umm Hashem" remains a symbol of the novel as it should be, and also a place of astonishment at what she did with the rest of its author's books.
Qandil Umm Hashem
Despite the abundance of texts in Arabic literature that address the problem of the conflict between authenticity and modernity, the novel “Qandil Umm Hashem”, written by Haqqi in the 1940s, remains peculiar as it is an original reference in refuting that conflict.
Despite the novel's shortness of no more than seventy pages, Haqqi succeeded in showing the gap between modernity linked to the glorification of science at the expense of disbelief in all that is old, and the belief rooted in heritage, through the hero Ismail, who was raised in the neighborhood of Sayyida Zainab but traveled and studied medicine in Europe to return to his homeland. And it is located between the hammer of what he grew up on and the anvil of what he tasted in Western countries.
Ismail, a specialist in ophthalmology, believes in science as the only way to treat people from blindness, while the blind themselves pin all their hopes on oil that collects in a lantern in the Sayyida Zeinab mosque, and with the escalation of events, the hero does not find a solution to the conflict except to spin a thin thread that connects him between what he has reached Science and what people believe in.
It seems that what happened to Doctor Ismail is a recycling of what the author himself went through, and if he did not explicitly announce this, then my right is the son of Hay al-Husayn near, in spirit and the site of the Sayyida Zaynab neighborhood, and he traveled in his youth to several European countries due to his work in the diplomatic corps, to return after that and settle in his homeland Through his literary projects, he adopts resistance to ignorance that people consider faith.
In his autobiography, “Let it be upon God,” he said about the years he spent in Europe “Throughout those years I never stopped thinking about my country and its people. I always yearned for those multitudes of defeated and needy people who lived on a day-to-day livelihood. And when I returned to Egypt, it was a year. 1939 I felt all the emotions that I expressed in the novel. "
And the great success of "Qandil Umm Hashem" in using literature to present the problematic of contemporary and authenticity, paved the way for her to transfer it to the cinema screen, to turn the novel into a famous film starring Shukri Sarhan, Amina Rizk, Samir Ahmed and directed by Kamal Attia.
Novel fame
Haqqi was not aware during his writing "Qandil Umm Hashem" that it is like a lamp that will illuminate his literary journey along its length. Rather, it will be a distinguishing mark in it to the point that his other texts will become subordinate to it as if it is an index of the novel, which will cause inconvenience to the writer after that.
Perhaps the literary critic Fouad Dawara was a summary of the power of the novel’s influence when he said in an article that “it did not happen in the entire history of Arab literature, and perhaps in the history of world literature within the limits of my knowledge, if a story in less than 70 pages could move alone with its author from the world of the unknown to the summit Fame, to become a well-known writer after he was unknown to anyone. "
Indeed, Haqqi himself said about his narration, "My name is scarcely mentioned except with" Qandil Umm Hashem "as if I had not written anything else.
And that unique success of "Qandil Umm Hashem" raises a legitimate question about the secret of comparing this novel to the rest of its author's works, which suffered reading in the shade or marginalization.
Haqqi tried to explain the matter through a press interview conducted with him in 1964, when he said, “When I try to search for the reason for the strength of the influence of“ Qandil Umm Hashem ”, I find nothing to say except that it came directly from my heart like a bullet, and perhaps for this reason it settled in the hearts of readers in the same way. ".
And he continued: It is a very strange story. I wrote it in a small room I was renting in the Abdeen neighborhood, and I lived in it an emotional stain that was expressed in the "between me and you" songs that you find at the end of "Qandil Umm Hashem".
So, Haqqi wrote what he felt honestly, spontaneously and under the influence of a true love story, which reached the readers with the same degree of sincerity and spontaneity, so they were affected by the glow of love and fell into the whim of the novel.
But on the other side of the fame of the novel, there were upsets. According to Noha Hakki’s daughter in one of the press interviews, her father was sad because people did not pay attention to the rest of his books and the works that he translated and deal with “Qandil Umm Hashem” as his only literary work. While he thought that the jewel in his crown was his novel "Sah al-Nom", which he wrote in 1955.
The Egyptian novelist Youssef Al-Qaid pointed out what he considered to be the reason for the diversion of light from the rest of Haqqi's works, explaining that the publishing market has erased the memory of Yahya Hakki's creations, despite the fact that the complete works were issued to him during his life.
He attributed the waste of my right's treasures to the habit of forgetfulness among Egyptian and Arab readers and the decline in reading rates in general, stressing that the owner of "Qandil Umm Hashem" was dealing with reality with a severe childhood and a sense of astonishment with it, and his literary glory lies in his magic eye and his vision of all the details about it.
Away from the lantern
Far from "Qandil Umm Hashem," the literary career of Yehia Hakki was characterized by great diversity, in addition to the great care he was famous for in the language, although he was of Turkish origins, to the point that linguists nominated him to head the Academy of Arabic Language, but he refused the position.
He enriched the Arab Library with collections of stories, novels, studies, critical and historical articles, and went to what no one of his generation had gone to, which is the translation of classics from world literature, where he was fluent in English, Turkish and Italian.
Despite this diversity, the short story remained the most important for my right, but he was considered a pioneer and founder of it, and this is evident from the abundance of his production in it and his statements about it. He said about it, “The short story remains my first hobby because talking about it is based on personal experiences or Watching directly and the element of imagination in it is very little, its role is almost limited to linking events and never seeps into the core. "
Among his fictional works are "Umm Al-Awjir", "The Kohl Thief", "Antar and Juliet", "Teardrop with a Smile", "Asan", "Poor Woman", "Vacant Bed", "Blood and Mud" and "Dunya".
In addition, Haqqi held the position of Director of the Arts Department at the Ministry of Culture upon its founding in 1958, and headed the editor-in-chief of the Egyptian magazine magazine in 1962.
Through "The Majalla", Haqqi played his well-known role in nurturing young literary talents. He presented a large number of names that subsequently soared in the sky of creativity.
Haqqi won many prizes in recognition of his literary career, so he won the State Appreciation Prize in Literature in 1969, and the French government awarded him the Knight Medal of the First Class in 1983, and in the same year Minia University awarded him an honorary doctorate, and he won the King Faisal International Prize in 1990.