39. Sufism:   Islamic mysticism.

40. taamiyya:   a pâté made from crushed beans, onions, garlic, and parsley.

41. Tanta:   a town on the railway line midway between Cairo and Alexandria; a center of pilgrimage in Egypt.

42. twenty-third of July:   1952. The day on which the Army officers took over the government, disbanding Parliament and outlawing the parties.

43. ulama:   religious scholars, particularly those who have studied at Al-Azhar, a mosque and university in Cairo which was long the center of the Islamic intellectual world.

44. umda:   the head of the village community in Egypt, responsible for such things as tax collection and drafting villagers into the Army.

45. Urabi Pasha:   the hero and martyr of nineteenth-century Egyptian nationalism of the 1880s, when the autonomy of the country was threatened by European concerns over investments. The nationalist movement was crushed, but never forgotten, in 1882, when British troops defeated the Egyptian Army. This uprising was also characterized by fires, as Alexandria was set ablaze by the fighting.

46. Ustaz:   literally “professor,” but used in Egyptian colloquial dialect to mean little more than “Mr.”

47. Wafd:   “delegation”; the name of the political party founded in 1919 by Saad Zaghlul which was the major political force in Egypt before the 1952 revolution.

48. Al-Wayiliyya:   a district of Cairo.

49. Zaghlul, Saad:   the famous Egyptian nationalist leader and Prime Minister, 1924–27; founder of the Wafd Party, to which Isa belonged.

50. Zizinia:   a district of Alexandria.

Naguib Mahfouz

Autumn Quail

Naguib Mahfouz was one of the most prominent writers of Arabic fiction in the twentieth century. Born in Cairo in 1911, he began writing when he was seventeen. Over his long career, he wrote nearly forty novel-length works and hundreds of short stories, ranging from re-imaginings of ancient myths to subtle commentaries on contemporary Egyptian politics and culture. His most famous work is The Cairo Trilogy (consisting of Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street), which focuses on a Cairo family through three generations, from 1917 until 1952. In 1988, Mahfouz became the first writer in Arabic to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in August 2006.

BOOKS BY NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

The Beggar, The Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (omnibus edition)

Respected Sir, Wedding Song, The Search (omnibus edition)

The Beginning and the End

The Time and the Place and Other Stories

Midaq Alley

The Journey of Ibn Fattouma

Miramar

Adrift on the Nile

The Harafish

Arabian Nights and Days

Children of the Alley

Echoes of an Autobiography

The Day the Leader Was Killed

Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth

Voices from the Other World

Khufu’s Wisdom

Rhadopis of Nubia

Thebes at War

Seventh Heaven

The Thief and the Dogs

Karnak Café

Morning and Evening Talk

The Dreams

Cairo Modern

Khan al-Khalili

The Mirage

THE CAIRO TRILOGY

Palace Walk

Palace of Desire

Sugar Street

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