Translator’s Introduction

On Homo Sapiens and Other Species

Mohamed Makhzangi’s Animals in Our Days (original Arabic title: Ḥayawanāt Ayyāmnā) offers a striking example of environmentally concerned literature in Arabic, by an author with a keen and sensitive eye for the behavior of animals, including—or perhaps, especially—Homo sapiens. Originally published in 2006, this themed collection revolves around animals, without resorting to anthropomorphism or sentimentality. Each story focuses on a different animal species, whether water buffalo driven mad by a rural village oversaturated with electric lights, brass grasshoppers bought in a crowded Bangkok marketplace, or ghostly rabbits that haunt the site of a brutal military crackdown that took place decades before. In these tales, animals highlight the brutality and callousness of humanity, particularly when technology and capitalism sunder the ties between people and the natural world around them.

In the field of contemporary Egyptian letters, Mohamed Makhzangi is known not only for his fiction, but for his long career in science journalism. Born in 1949 in the city of Mansoura in Egypt’s Delta region, Makhzangi attended medical school in Cairo and trained as a psychiatrist. His political activism while he attended university coincided with Egypt’s leftist student movement. The student movement had emerged in 1968 as an expression of frustration with the Nasserist regime following the 1967 war, and it was increasingly repressed by Anwar Sadat’s government over the course of the 1970s.¹ In January 1977 Makhzangi was imprisoned for his political activism, when he, along with other university students, was accused of having instigated Egypt’s widespread bread riots.² In the mid-1980s, he lived in Kiev, Ukraine, continuing his studies in psychology and in alternative medicine. He was living there at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, an experience that formed the basis for a memoir, Laḥẓāt gharaq jazīrat al-ḥūt (translated as Memories of a Meltdown), and led to his becoming one of Egypt’s most prominent antinuclear activists. After twelve years of practicing medicine, he turned to writing, following the same career path as another notable Egyptian physician-turned-author, Yusuf Idris. For a number of years, Makhzangi lived in Kuwait, where he served as the science editor for al-‘Arabī magazine, which is now based in Egypt. He has authored ten short-story collections (two of them for children, including a 2010 collection of thirty-three stories on animals and nature),³ as well as books on travel and other nonfiction. He has also won two major Egyptian literary awards for his fiction.

First published in 2006, Animals in Our Days encompasses many of the themes and preoccupations that have marked Makhzangi’s writings throughout his career: a keen observation of the natural world, global settings that reflect the author’s wide-ranging travels across Africa and Asia, and a generous sympathy for the weak and downtrodden, whether human or animal.

The emphasis in these stories on animal species and humans’ often cruel and thoughtless behavior toward them places this work within the literary genre of ecofiction, a broad label applied to fictional works that emphasize the relationship between human societies and the natural world around them, often with a view to questioning or displacing a traditionally anthropocentric view of the world.⁴ The term ecofiction has often been associated with contemporary English-language fiction that contains overt environmental themes, such as Edward Abbey’s celebrated 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, or J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, a philosophical argument in fictional form.⁵ The term can also be applied to those works of fiction, like Animals in Our Days, that are concerned with tracing the numinous, almost supernatural, connections between our species and others. Other examples of this kind of animal-focused ecofiction include Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behavior and Haruki Murakami’s story The Elephant Vanishes.⁶

Contemporary authors from the Arab world have also turned to animals in their fiction, often with the aim—like Makhzangi—of highlighting the corruption and cruelty of human society. The Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni, for example, frequently contrasts the natural world of the Sahara with the menace of modern life, at times employing magical realism (one character in his novel Nazīf al-Ḥajar [published in English as The Bleeding of the Stone] transforms into a Barbary sheep to escape being conscripted into the occupying Italian army.)⁷ Similarly, in the 2016 novel al-Sabīliyyāt (published in English as The Old Woman and the River) by the Kuwaiti novelist Ismā‘īl Fahd Ismā‘īl, the protagonist has a closer emotional relationship with her donkey than with other humans in the novel, including her own family members. Muhammad Afifi’s fictionalized memoir Tarānīm fī Ẓill Tamārā, posthumously published in 1984, also places the nonhuman natural world as its emotional center, as the narrator affectionately observes the lives of the animals and trees that inhabit the garden behind his house.

But if animal-centered ecofiction is a fairly new development in contemporary Arabic fiction, animals themselves have a long history in Arabic’s written heritage, a link that Makhzangi makes clear to his readers through the epigraphs he chooses for each story in the collection. Through these epigraphs, he points his readers to a rich tradition of writings on animals from premodern Arabic, such as the wide-ranging anthology Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (The Book of Animals) by al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868 CE), the ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt (The Wonders of Creation) by the Persian cosmographer al-Qazwīnī (d. 1283 CE), and the zoological encyclopedia Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān al-Kubrā (Major Compendium on the Lives of Animals) by the Egyptian scholar al-Damīrī (d. 1405 CE).

In addition to serving as the object of study by writers examining and explicating the natural world, animals also appeared in early Arabic literary texts as speaking characters: one example would be Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s Arabic adaptation of Kalīla wa Dimna, a much-translated work originally from India in the mirrors for princes genre, which offered moral lessons couched in the form of stories, ostensibly written to instruct rulers on how to be wise, generous, and effective. The prevalence of animals in premodern Arabic writings also reflects their prominent place in Islam. As the scholar Annemarie Schimmel has pointed out:

Animals form an important part of Islamic tradition: they are mentioned in the Qur’an far more frequently than they are in the Bible, and all of them can serve as symbols for a spiritual truth and as warnings or admonitions for those who understand.⁸

In contrast to this literary and religious past, in which animals were held in high regard, and even taken as symbols of the human soul, Makhzangi posits a modern world characterized by heartless authoritarianism and a disconnect from the natural world. When humans fight each other, Makhzangi suggests, it is inevitably animals that suffer. As an indictment of Homo sapiens, Animals in Our Days offers a modern counterpart to the narrative known as The Case of the Animals against Mankind before the King of the Jinn from the tenth-century CE theological text Rasā’il ikhwān al-ṣafā’ (The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), in which animals plead their case of ill-treatment at the hands of humans in a lawsuit, with the king of the jinn acting as judge.⁹ In Makhzangi’s stories, however, animals are not anthropomorphized. Instead, they offer silent witness to human actions, both good and bad, while opening to humans a window into a stranger and sometimes kindlier world.

In addition to an epigraph taken from a premodern Arabic text, most of the stories in the collection also open with an excerpt from a recent work of scientific journalism, highlighting current research on that animal’s behavior or emotional life. By juxtaposing these epigraphs, Makhzangi seems to be drawing links between the Arabic past and modern science’s understanding of animal behavior and psychology, a focus that reflects his own professional background. In a public panel in 2018, Makhzangi stated that his work in both fiction and journalism grew out of his interest in science, which remains his greatest passion.¹⁰ His writing career suggests a harmonious marriage of C. P. Snow’s famous two cultures of science and the arts, and Makhzangi has spoken about his optimism about the third culture anticipated by Snow, one that merges an appreciation and understanding of both arts and sciences.

Makhzangi’s curiosity about and sensitivity to animal life parallels his interest in other cultures and regions of the world: unsurprisingly, his stories are wide-ranging in their geographical settings. Some stories are drawn from his own extensive travels in Asia and Africa, such as Little Purple Fish, about a visit to Ho Chi Minh’s former home in Hanoi, or On an Elephant’s Back and White Bears/Black Bears, both narrated by a traveler in India. Some stories reflect international events and American imperialism, beginning with the trio of opening stories—Deer, Foal, and Puppies—all of which are set in the immediate aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Others directly touch on historical events (such as the American war in Vietnam) or are otherwise recognizably tied to real-world locations and specific histories: The Sadness of Horses, for example, seems to be about Egypt’s Tiran Island in the Red Sea, which was occupied by Israel between 1967 and 1982 and was heavily mined. Mules is even more oblique about its setting: the description of the two bordering countries suggests Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan after the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq was subject to international sanctions, but its tale of smuggling, secret orders, and impersonal violence has universal resonances.

A standout in the collection is Enchanted Rabbits, which combines in one story almost all the themes that preoccupy Makhzangi, from humans’ wanton destructiveness to the supernatural qualities of animals that can surprise or confound. In recalling his role in a nearly forgotten political uprising from his university days, the narrator describes the stark differences between the city square of twenty-six years ago and its current state, now surrounded by lofty new architecture, in place of the working-class quarters that were bulldozed long ago. The ghostly white rabbits, however, suggest a past that cannot entirely be suppressed, a marginalized counterhistory that stubbornly returns. While the mass uprising is portrayed as cathartic and politically justified, Makhzangi does not paint the mob in an entirely positive light—the righteous protest quickly turns to chaos, as looters swing from chandeliers and protesters snatch up the helpless rabbits to eat. No matter which side of the political divide humans land on—whether policemen swinging nightsticks or hungry protestors—the rabbits suffer.

The phantom rabbits that bring the narrator back to the city square, however, remain beyond human control, and indeed, beyond the realm of the explicable. They are just one example of the elements of the uncanny and the magical that Makhzangi includes in his fiction. Similarly, the metamorphosis at the heart of The Elephants Go to Drink and the ghostly gazelles hovering at the edge of The Sadness of Horses give the reader glimpses of an animal world that exists beyond our rational framework. Youssef Rakha referred to this as Makhzangi’s interest in the relation between the seen and the unseen, an interest perhaps unsurprising in an author whose writing suggests a curiosity about what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge.¹¹

Other Arab authors have explored in their fiction the tension between modernity and tradition. In these stories, Mohamed Makhzangi approaches this tension from a slightly different angle, in which animals illustrate not only the negative impact of modernity, but of humanity itself. By unleashing the potent forces of mechanized warfare, unfettered capitalism, and powerful technology, modernity has not so much introduced a new amorality into the world as empowered a distinctly human tendency toward brutality. Despite this grim outlook, these stories offer moments of astonishment and grace, and encounters with animals provide a small space for wonder (to borrow the title of another of Makhzangi’s books). If humans have an innate tendency toward oppressive behavior, Makhzangi suggests, it is animals that can reawaken our dormant capacity for awe and humility.

Works Cited

Abbey, Edward. The Monkey Wrench Gang. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Abdalla, Ahmed. The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt: 1923–1973. London: Saqi Books, 1985.

Afifi, Muhammad. Little Songs in the Shade of Tamaara. Translated by Lisa J. White. Fayetteville: Univ. of Arkansas Press, 2000.

———. Tarānīm fī Ẓill Tamārā. Cairo: Dar al-Shurūq, 1984.

Coetzee, J. M. The Lives of Animals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999.

al-Damīrī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā. Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān al-Kubrā [Major Compendium on the Lives of Animals]. Edited by Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ. Damascus: Dār al-Bashā’ir, 2005.

Ibn al-Muqaffa‘. Kalīla wa Dimna: akmal al-nusakh wa aṣaḥḥuhā wa aqdamuhā. Edited by ‘Abd al-Wahhāb ‘Azzām. Beirut: Dar al-Shurūq, 2007.

Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’. Rasā’il ikhwān al-ṣafā’ wa khullān al-wafā’ [The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity] 4 vols. Beirut: Dār Bayrūt, 1983.

Ismā‘īl, Ismā‘īl Fahd. al-Sabiliyyāt. Kuwait: Nūvā Blus li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzī‘, 2016. Translated by Sophia Vasalou as The Old Woman and the River (Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2019).

———. The Old Woman and the River. Translated by Sophia Vasalou. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2019.

al-Jāḥiẓ. Kitāb al-Ḥayawān [The Book of Animals]. Edited by ‘Abd al-Salām Hārūn. 7 vols. Cairo: Maktabat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī wa Awlāduhu, 1938–1958.

Johnson-Davies, Denys. The Island of Animals. London: Quartet Books, 1994.

Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. New York: HarperCollins, 2012.

al-Kawnī, Ibrāhīm [al-Koni, Ibrahim.] Nazīf al-Ḥajar. Beirut: Dar al-Tanwir, 1992. Translated as The Bleeding of the Stone by May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2002.

———. The Bleeding of the Stone. Translated by May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2002.

Levin, Jonathan. Contemporary Ecofiction. In The Cambridge History of the American Novel, edited by Leonard Cassuto, 1122–36. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011.

Makhzangi, Mohamed. Funduq al-Tha‘ālib: 33 Ḥikāya ‘an al-ṭabī‘a wa-l-kā’ināt. Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2010.

———. Ḥayawanāt Ayyāmnā. Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 2006.

———. Laḥẓāt gharaq jazīrat al-ḥūt. Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1998.

———. Memories of a Meltdown. Translated by Samah Selim. Cairo: American Univ. in Cairo Press, 2006.

———. Misāḥa ṣaghīra li-l-dahsha: tajriba fī l-maqāl al-qiṣaṣī. Cairo: Markaz al-Ahrām li-l-nashr, 2015.

Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002.

Murakami, Haruki. The Elephant Vanishes: Stories. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,