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 The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr: Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz's aṭ-Ṭābūr

THE QUEUE AS A DYSTOPIAN TAḤRĪR:

BASMA ʿABDALʿAZĪZ’S AṬ-ṬĀBŪR1
https://doi.org/10.31577/aassav.2022.31.2.02

Katarína BEŠKOVÁ
Institute of Oriental Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia
katarina.beskova@savba.sk

This article deals with the dystopian novel called aṭ-Ṭābūr (The Queue) written by the
contemporary Egyptian writer and psychiatrist Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz. The article briefly discusses the
emergence of dystopian fiction in Egypt, especially from the point of view of its assumed
connection to the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution of 2011. It focuses on the examination of
ʿAbdalʿazīz’s depiction of a dystopian reality in the novel, with special emphasis on moments of
rupture that are often mentioned but never shown. The article argues that the portrayal of the Queue
in the novel can be interpreted as a reversal of the positive literary image of Taḥrīr Square that
appeared in many revolutionary diaries and memoirs. Both sites are analysed not only as places but
also as time-spaces or chronotopes. The aim of the article is to explore the ways in which these sites
are contrasted, juxtaposed and presented in a dialectical relationship with each other to point to the
reversal of the utopian reality to dystopian nightmare. It also seeks to show that in spite of its
dystopian character, the novel actually articulates a certain degree of optimism.

Keywords: dystopia, Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz, queue, Taḥrīr Square, chronotope, Arabic literature

Despite the fact that dystopian fiction emerged in Arabic literature only at the
beginning of the new millennium, the roots of the utopian imagination in the Arab
world can be traced back to philosophical treatises like al-Farābī’s (872 –

1
This article was prepared within the framework of VEGA grant project no. 2/0040/21
and APVV grant project APVV-15-0030. Parts of the article were written during a
research stay at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences,
which was enabled by the exchange programme Action Austria-Slovakia (2021/2022)
funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic
and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research of the Republic of Austria
and arranged by Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD).

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Asian and African Studies, Volume 31, Number 2, 2022

950/951) Mabādiʼ ārāʼ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila (Principles of the Opinions of the
Citizens of the Virtuous City), with elements of early utopian fiction also present
in fantastic stories about adventure voyages to remote corners of the (imaginary)
world, like the tales from the Thousand and One Nights and especially those of
Sindbād the Sailor. These narratives depict imaginary societies and cultures that
are presented either in a positive or a negative light and sometimes the difference
between a utopia and a dystopia is only a matter of perspective or depth of
understanding of a given society:2 what might look like a dream world at first
sight can turn into a nightmare when observed more closely. Nevertheless, either
a positive or a negative portrayal of foreign societies often depended on the
religious beliefs of their inhabitants. As I. Campbell, R. Irwin and others
observed, unlike Western utopias, which have been largely secular in character,
utopian thinking in Arabic literature has often been linked to religious belief and
has reflected the idea of a perfect society rooted in Islam.3 After all, the principles
of an ideal Muslim society have already been established in the Holy Qurʼān.
That is most probably one of the reasons why, as Irwin believes, there were
considerably fewer examples of utopian fiction in Arabic literature than in the
Euro-American environment. The dawn of Arab modernity witnessed the renewal
of utopian imagination, especially in connection with the so-called tamaddun
(civilization) debates. As Wen-Chin Ouyang observed, during the modernization
period, utopian thinking became closely related to the notion of a nation-state and
especially in the form of its imagined literary representation.4 In the period that
witnessed the formation of the concept of a nation, especially in terms of Benedict
Anderson’s imagined community,5 the notion of utopia acquired a more secular
character, even though it often remained rooted in religious values.

The Turn to Dystopia in Modern Arabic Literature

Humankind seems to have always been fascinated by visions of ruin, horror and
death, with images of apocalypse and hell proliferating not only in theology and
philosophy but in literature and art too. While dystopia has its roots in satire and
the apocalyptic imagination, according to G. Claeys it is mostly “a modern

2
Such as for example the Fourth Voyage of Sindbād the Sailor.
3
See IRWIN, R. The Arabian Nights: A Companion, p. 207; CAMPBELL, I. Arabic
Science Fiction, pp. 66–67.
4
OUYANG, W.-Ch. Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel: Nation-State, Modernity and
Tradition, p. 46.
5
See ANDERSON, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, 1991.

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 The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr: Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz's aṭ-Ṭābūr

phenomenon, wedded to secular pessimism”. 6 Often considered a dark twin of

utopia which depicts an ideal society, the term dystopia7 (Arab. dīstūbiyā; adab
al-madīna al-fāsida; ʿālam al-wāqiʿ al-marīr; naqīḍ al-yūtūbiyā) refers to a non-
existent society that “the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as
considerably worse than the society in which the reader lived”. 8
The turn from utopian thinking to anti-utopianism and dystopian fiction in
Euro-American writing was largely a result of horrors of the 20th century, that
were accompanied by the loss of belief that our world can be a better place.9 After
the utopian imagination was discredited by totalitarian regimes, utopias came to
represent a stagnant, rigid and undesirable state of affairs in a society.10 Once a
genre that promoted social transformation, as R. Levitas has put it, it has lost
much of its changing capacity and become only a form of escapism or instrument
of social critique.11 Moreover, utopianism has come to be deemed as dangerous
and writers and thinkers have become wary of its possible authoritarian tendency.
If a single version of a utopia is imposed on all the people in a given society,
especially when combined with ideology, it can easily become a tool of
oppression and tyranny, turning the vision of an ideal society into a nightmarish
dystopia instead.
In the Arab world, the inclination towards dystopian fiction in literature can
be seen as the result of several interconnected factors. First and foremost, the
long-lasting existence of authoritarian regimes, an atmosphere of repression, the
constant violation of human rights, deteriorating living conditions, proliferating
corruption, increasing income inequality and the dead-end situation especially of
the younger generation of educated but unemployed individuals condemned to a
protracted “waithood”12 in all spheres of their lives, all these factors have
contributed to an ever-deepening frustration among the population towards the
political authorities, economic situation and the overall status quo.

6
CLAEYS, G. Dystopia: A Natural History, p. 4.
7
The term dystopia was coined in the 18th century. See CLAEYS, G. Dystopia: A Natural
History, p. 273.
8
SARGENT, L. T. Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited. In Utopian Studies, 1994, Vol.
5, No. 3, p. 9.
9
MOYLAN, T. Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia, p. xi.
10
BOOKER, K. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social
Criticism, pp. 16–17.
11
LEVITAS, R., SARGISSON, L. Utopia in Dark Times: Optimism/Pessimism and
Utopia/Dystopia. In MOYLAN, T., BACCOLINI, R. (eds.). Dark Horizons: Science
Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, p. 14.
12
SINGERMAN, D. The Negotiation of Waithood: The Political Economy of Delayed
Marriage in Egypt. In KHALAF, S., KHALAF, R. S. (eds.). Arab Youth/ Social
Mobilisation in Times of Risk, pp. 67–78.

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Asian and African Studies, Volume 31, Number 2, 2022

One of the inherent traits of dystopian fiction is its ability to reflect upon
contemporary issues in a society, to identify potential threats, harmful tendencies
and possibly also to uncover the hidden source of social evils.13 Arabic literature
has a long history of addressing socio-political issues through creative writing,
which was the result of decades of state surveillance and strict censorship,
especially during the eras of JamālʿAbdannāṣir and Anwar as-Sādāt. This kind of
criticism usually took the form of allegory, fables, folk stories and historical
fiction, but not dystopias.
In an article the Egyptian writer Aḥmad Khālid Tawfīq (1962 – 2018) poses
the question of why the genres of science fiction and dystopia14 are so
underrepresented in Arabic literature and comes to the conclusion that it could be
the result of the relatively late emergence of the genre of the novel in the Arab
environment.15 Referencing several professionals from the field of Arab cultural
production, Tawfīq explains that genres like sci-fi have often been viewed as
“inferior” or “low” literature (adab dūnī).16 The reason for this was most probably
that in other parts of the world as well, both dystopia and sci-fi have for a long
time not been considered a part of serious literary production with artistic value,
as Campbell and others have pointed out.17
The rise of dystopian fiction in Egyptian literature came about thanks to a
change of approach to creative writing. With the dawn of postmodern literature,
the reverence of authors for grand narratives and serious literary genres
dissipated. At the same time, most of them rejected the idea of committed writing
and literature with a message that ruled the Egyptian literary scene for decades.
Instead literature acquired a post-political character, as the Egyptian writer,
journalist and literary critic Y. Rakhā put it. Writers no longer turn away from
political issues, as was the case of literature of the 90s, but they “never endorse a

13
MOYLAN, T. Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia, p. xii;
see also BOOKER, K. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social
Criticism.
14
Tawfīq considers dystopia a subcategory of science fiction (khayāl ʿilmī). See
TAWFĪQ, A. K. Khayāl ʿilmī ʿArabī… hal huwa khayāl ʿilmī? [Arabic Science Fiction…
is it a Science Fiction?] In Antologia.com, published on the website by Jīrān ash-
Shaddānī. 23 March 2016. [online] [cit. 18 April 2022]. Available from
https://alantologia.com/page/4370/.
15
TAWFĪQ, A. K. Khayāl ʿilmī ʿArabī… hal huwa khayāl ʿilmī? [Arabic Science
Fiction… is it a Science Fiction?] In Antologia.com, published on the website by Jīrān
ash-Shaddānī. 23 March 2016. [online] [cit. 18 April 2022]. Available from
https://alantologia.com/page/4370/.
16
Ibid.
17
See for example CAMPBELL, I. Arabic Science Fiction, pp. 7–10.

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 The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr: Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz's aṭ-Ṭābūr

political argument”.18 The younger generation’s protest against the cultural values
of the previous decades is manifest in their choice of language, style, use of irony
and satire and mixing-up of different literary genres. Dystopian fiction enables
writers of this “post-political” period to address critically specific problematic
political, social, religious, cultural, gender, economic, class or environmental
issues in a creative way without resorting to ideological writing. While the first
pioneering works to contain elements of dystopian fiction19 appeared in Egypt in
the second half of the 20th century,20 the rise of dystopian fiction in Arabic
literature in general and in Egypt in particular came only much later, in the first
decade of the new millennium, with works like Aḥmad Khālid Tawfīq’s Yūtūbiyā
(Utopia, 2008), ʿIzzaddīn Shukrī Fushayr’s Bāb al-khurūj (Exit Door, 2012),
Aḥmad Nājī’s Istikhdām al-ḥayāt (Using Life, 2014),21 Muḥammad Rabīʿ’ s
ʻUṭārid (Otared, 2015) and, last but not least, Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz’s aṭ-Ṭābūr (The
Queue, 2013).

“The Queue”

Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz (1976) is an Egyptian writer, psychiatrist, human rights

activist and artist.22 She started writing her first novel aṭ-Ṭābūr (The Queue,

18
RAKHA, Y. In Extremis: Literature and Revolution in Contemporary Cairo: An
Oriental Essay in Seven Parts. In The Kenyon Review New Series, 2012, Vol. 34, No. 3,
p. 161.
19
For more information see HILL, P. Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda.
20
Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Riḥla ilā al-ġad (Voyage to Tomorrow, 1957) combines elements
of dystopia and sci-fi, Najīb Maḥfūẓ‘s Riḥlat Ibn Faṭṭūma (The Journey of Ibn Faṭṭūma,
1983) oscillates between a utopia and dystopia and Ṣabrī Mūsa‘s (1932 – 2018) as-Sayyid
min ḥaql as-sabānikh, (The Man from the Spinach Field, 1987) is often read as an early
example of an Arabic dystopia.
21
In collaboration with the Egyptian illustrator Ayman az-Zurqānī.
22
‘Abdal‘azīz studied neuropsychiatry and sociology and works at the Nadīm Center for
the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture (an-Nadīm li-munāhaḍat al-‘anf
wa at-ta‘ḏīb) and General Secretariat for Mental Health (al-Amāna al-‘āmma li-aṣ-ṣiḥḥa
an-nafsīya), both located in Cairo, Egypt. She has published several scholarly books on
the topics of torture, power and subjugation and two collections of short stories – ‘Ashān
Rabbunā yusahhil (May God Make it Easy, 2008) and al-Walad allaḏī ikhtafā (A Boy
who Disappeared, 2008). In 2013, she published her debut novel aṭ-Ṭābūr (The Queue).
Her second novel Hunā badan (Here is a Body) was published in 2018 and her most
recent novel A‘wām at-tūta (Years of the Mulberry Tree) was published in 2022. For
more information see for example NADER, S. (Pseudonym). Basma Abdelaziz – A
Portrait. In Middle East – Topics & Arguments, November 2018, pp. 146–152.

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Asian and African Studies, Volume 31, Number 2, 2022

published in 2013) in 2012, shortly after the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood
candidate Muḥammad Mursī (1951 – 2019, in office 2012 – 2013) in the
presidential election. Despite the disenchantment that many felt over the results
of the election and what they saw as a threat to the secular values of the society
and a regression to Islamic conservatism, ‘Abdal‘azīz’s novel is not aimed at any
kind of religious government but at the dehumanized, oppressive, totalitarian
system. The writer admitted to drawing inspiration from the writings of George
Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett and also the Egyptian avant-garde
writer Ṣunʿallāh Ibrāhīm.23
Her novel aṭ-Ṭābūr is set in an unnamed Middle Eastern city resembling the
Egyptian capital and its events take place in an unspecified future which,
however, in many aspects alludes to a present-day reality. In this dystopian realm,
all aspects of life are monitored and strictly controlled by the state apparatus
called the Gate (al-Bawwāba) which uses various strategies to subjugate the
citizens. The novel tells the story of a 38-year-old sales representative Yaḥyā Jād
ar-Rabb Saʿīd who was shot during the anti-government protests against the Gate
labelled by the regime as the Disgraceful Events (al-Aḥdāṯ al-mushayyina). The
bullet lodged near his kidney and he needs to undergo surgery to have it removed,
but since the official narrative has it that no shooting occurred during the events,
such a procedure requires special permission (taṣrīḥ) from the Gate. Even though
the Gate has remained closed to the public ever since the Disgraceful Events took
place, Yaḥyā has no other option than to join the long queue that has started to
form in front of the eponymous building, in the hope that it will re-open before
his health condition severely deteriorates.
Yaḥyā is assisted by his girlfriend Amānī and his friend Nājī who on the one
hand try to help him obtain the documents that are required for the removal of the
bullet and on the other hand attempt to persuade the on-duty physician who
examined Yaḥyā on the night he was shot and took the X-ray picture of his pelvis,
Dr. Ṭāriq Fahmī, to perform the surgery without the permit. Whilst Ṭāriq takes
his medical duties seriously and genuinely cares about the wellbeing of his
patients, he is reluctant to break the law out of fear of the possible consequences
for his career and even his own life.
The novel offers insight into the psychology and motivations of a wide range
of other characters from different socio-economic strata, like the poor but
resourceful Umm Mabrūk, the idealistic school teacher Īnās, the liberated and
outspoken Woman with Short Hair, the religious zealot Man in Jallābīya, the
inquisitive journalist Īḥāb or the local villager Shalabī, seeking justice for his
cousin who died carrying out the orders of the Gate. The characters in the novel
oscillate between submission and resistance, often attempting to defy the

23
‘ABDAL‘AZĪZ, B. Personal communication, 27 November 2018.

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 The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr: Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz's aṭ-Ṭābūr

oppressive system only to be overpowered by the Gate’s manifold subjugating

mechanisms which include but are not limited to psychological manipulation,
propaganda, overcomplicated and incomprehensible rhetoric, gaslighting,
selective provision of health care and basic goods, intimidation, victim-blaming
and excessive (though ineffective) bureaucracy and administrative overload. As
a result, people become confused, anxious and mentally exhausted, drained of all
energy until they completely lose their will to resist. And in case this “strategy of
latent terror,” as S. Milich called it,24 does not suffice to maintain control over the
citizens, the Gate resorts to more tangible forms of oppression like violence and
torture.25
One of the examples that illustrate how these oppressive mechanisms operate
to control the people is the case of the destitute but resourceful Umm Mabrūk,
who tries to acquire a permit for her sick daughter to undergo surgery but finds
the paperwork procedures so complicated and overwhelming that she asks an
official for help. However, his speech is so perplexing and opaque that after he
basically instructs her to give up her endeavour to save her daughter’s life, she is
thankful all the same and even tips him generously.
Another storyline follows Īnās, an open-minded and emancipated school
teacher who gradually turns into a frightened and timid person under the influence
of continuous psychological manipulation and abuse on the part of a self-
proclaimed preacher, the so-called Man in Jallābīya (ar-Rajul ḏū al-jilbāb).
Driven by feelings of uncertainty, guilt and the fear of being ostracized by both
her family and society for her bold opinions, she alters her behaviour and the way
she dresses, and even agrees to marry the Man in Jallābīya, whom she once found
repulsive.
Arguably the most disturbing episode describes the transformation of Yaḥyā’s
girlfriend Amānī after she sneaks into the hospital to steal his X-ray picture which
he needs to get his authorization from the Gate. Once there, she is captured and
subjected to an extreme form of psychological torture that leaves her with post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. She is overcome with paranoia,
secludes herself from other people and in the end finds refuge in a complete denial
of reality.

24
MILICH, S. The Politics of Terror and Traumatization: State Violence and
Dehumanization in Basma ‘Abd al-‘Azīz’s al-Ṭābūr. In GUTH, S., PEPE, T. (eds.).
Arabic Literature in a Posthuman World, p. 146.
25
These are actually real-life strategies often employed by authoritarian regimes. For
more information, see ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Āliyāt at-taláʿub wa al-iqnāʿ fī khiṭāb al-iʿlām
wa al-sulṭa [Techniques of Manipulation and Persuasion in the Discourse of Media and
Power]. In Madā Miṣr. 26 January 2017. [online] [cit. 4 December 2019]. Available from
https://www.madamasr.com/ar/2017/01/26/opinion/u/ ‫اإلعال‬-‫خطاب‬-‫في‬-‫واإلقناع‬-‫التالعب‬-‫آليات‬/.

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Asian and African Studies, Volume 31, Number 2, 2022

Under the oppressive system, people become mere shadows of their former
selves, “not venturing beyond the lines their oppressor has drawn for them,” 26 as
the author of the novel commented on the profound changes in personality that
her characters go through. They become extremely passive and always expecting
that the situation will somehow improve itself. The society in which individuals
suffer from extreme forms of psychological and social alienation to the point that
they isolate themselves from others becomes atomized and unable to conduct any
kind of collective action to rise up against their oppressors.27
The novel can be characterized as a critical dystopia because it lacks narrative
closure and contains elements of textual hybridity.28 According to R. Baccolini,
in dystopias, especially the ones that belong to the genre of a critical dystopia, re-
appropriation of language together with recovery of memory can become agents
of change since they have the capacity to undermine the power of the authorities
and promote hope.29 Therefore, to change the status quo, the characters in
ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel need to regain control over memory (of history) and language
which have been both usurped by the tyrannical authorities and use them as
weapons against those in power. As A. Buontempo has noted, the bullet lodged
in Yaḥyā’s body is a reminder of the Gate’s shooting during the protests, which
makes the character’s survival a matter of preserving memory of both the
revolutionary event and the regime’s violent response.30

26
ABDEL AZIZ, B. Basma Abdel Aziz on Writing The Queue. In For Books‘ Sake.
Transl. JAQUETTE, E. 9 June 2016. [online] [cit. 14 January 2020]. Available from
http://forbookssake.net/2016/06/09/basma-abdel-aziz-writing-queue/.
27
Matthies-Boon and Head identified traumatization of citizens as one of the strategies
of the (post)revolutionary Egyptian government to create an atomized, depoliticized
society and prevent any possible future uprisings. MATTHIES-BOON, V., HEAD, N.
Trauma as Counter-Revolutionary Colonisation: Narratives from (Post)Revolutionary
Egypt. In Journal of International Political Theory, 2018, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 258–279.
28
The narrative also includes various announcements and decrees of the Gate. Moreover,
each chapter of the novel (faṣl) begins with one page from Yaḥyā’s medical file that
provides the reader not only with all kinds of information about the protagonist, but also
shows the extent of the regime’s surveillance system. It has to be noted that the file always
updates itself in a mysterious way, as if everything was written down by the invisible
hand of the regime.
29
BACCOLINI, R. “A useful knowledge of the present is rooted in the past”: Memory
and Historical Reconciliation in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling. In BACCOLINI, R.,
MOYLAN, T. (eds.). Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination,
pp. 124–130.
30
BUONTEMPO, A. The Egyptian Revolution and its Discontent: al-Ṭābūr by Basmah
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and al-Tamāsīḥ by Yūsuf Raḫā. In La rivista di Arablit, 2015, Vol. 5, Nos.
9–10, p. 48.

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 The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr: Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz's aṭ-Ṭābūr

Dystopia and Revolution

The emergence of dystopian fiction in the Arab world has often been interpreted
as a reaction to the largely disappointing outcome of the revolutionary events
often called the Arab Spring, with literary images of violence, terror, chaos and
death recalling writers’ own experiences during this tumultuous period. However,
the correlation between the historical event and the rise of dystopian genre is
actually not that straightforward. While dystopian novels share a bleak, even
apocalyptic vision of the future and a menacing atmosphere, most of them differ
in style, narrative structure, the portrayal of reality and overall tone, and many of
these works had substantial parts written well before the outbreak of the
revolutionary events,31 which would make them reflections of a wider socio-
political and cultural reality in the region rather than a reaction to a particular
historical event. T. Pepe and S. Guth have construed the tendency to construct
frightening and nightmarish futures in Arabic literature as a turn to
posthumanism, which can be perceived as a subversion of the grand humanist
narratives of the Nahḍa period.32 Z. Halabi too considers dystopian fiction in the
Arab world a reflection of the disillusionment with the failed ideals of the
enlightenment project during the Arab renaissance.33 Last but not least, as
crossovers between utopian and dystopian writing exist, not all dystopias
necessarily need to be interpreted in terms of writers’ pessimism.34 Nevertheless,
to say that the revolution had no impact on contemporary Egyptian fiction would
be far from the truth.35 B. Bakker assumes that there seems to exist a certain kind

31
AṬ-ṬŪKHĪ, N. How to Write about a Revolution without Making Any Statement about
It? In Beyond Text: Anthropological Approaches to Literature in Europe and the Middle
East [conference]. Prague, 18 October 2019; NĀJĪ, A. Personal e-mail communication,
January 2020.
32
GUTH, S., PEPE, T. Foreword/Introduction. In GUTH, S., PEPE, T. (eds.). Arabic
Literature in a Posthuman World, pp. ix-xviii.
33
MOUNZER, L. Apocalypse now: Why Arab Authors Are Really Writing about the
End of the World. In Middle East Eye. 1 April 2019. [online] [cit. 20 December 2019].
Available from https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/apocalypse-now-dystopia-why-
arab-authors-are-reallywriting-about-end-world-egypt.
34
One such genre is the critical dystopia, which manages to maintain hope for a better
future through resistance to closure. See BACCOLINI, R., MOYLAN, T. Introduction:
Dystopia and Histories. In BACCOLINI, R., MOYLAN, T. (eds.). Dark horizons:
Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, p. 7.
35
While many literary works were more or less directly influenced by the event, many
contemporary writers seem to struggle with the portrayal of the revolutionary events in
their fiction out of concern that “the big event” might overshadow other aspects of their
writing. See WĀILʾ, A. Muzannaq al-kitāba ʿan ḥadaṯ kabīr: aṯ-ṯawra maṯalan [The

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of affinity between the dystopian genre in the Arab world and the wave of popular
uprisings that swept through the region in 2010/2011.36 While this relationship
cannot be explained simply in terms of cause and effect, it has to be noted that
some Egyptian dystopias did indeed draw inspiration from the revolutionary
events of 2011 and their aftermath. One such novel is Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz’s aṭ-
Ṭābūr (The Queue, 2013) whose portrayal of the long, ever-growing queue
represents the atmosphere of stagnation and passivity and it stands in sharp
contrast with the elated spirit that prevailed in Tahrīr Square (Maydān/ eg. Mīdān
Tahrīr) during the 18 days often described as the January (2011) Revolution
(Ṯawrat Yanāyir).
Despite the fact that the dystopian reality in aṭ-Ṭābūr is not portrayed in such
a way as to be interpreted as directly connected with the 2011 uprising, the author
alludes to the historical event to explain the rise of the fictional yet very lifelike
dehumanized power apparatus known as the Gate. Even though the plot of the
novel is set outside any actual place and time and the references to the actual
events are given in a rather vague fashion without any factual historical details,
the reactions of people to these events, the narratives that surrounded them, the
fragmentation of the protest movement into different groups, the violent response
of the authorities to these expressions of dissatisfaction, as well as their strategies
to re-gain control and remain in power all reflect elements of the country’s real-
life experience with the (post-)revolutionary period. In the novel, two moments
of rupture are mentioned: a popular uprising called the First Storm which gave
rise to the Gate and the protests against the status quo labelled as the Disgraceful
Events, which happened much later. As for the Disgraceful Events, they are
reported to have happened more recently, as a response to economic and
administrative terrorization of the citizens by the Gate, which kept issuing
numerous bans and orders, and generated excessive paperwork and also levied
excessive taxes and fees for practically everything, including window-shopping.
The Gate came to control every single aspect of people’s lives, making businesses
and organizations go bankrupt and ordinary people desperate. Some of them
protested, but were quickly dispersed by the Gate’s security units. While the
reaction of the authorities to the First Storm was their retreat into anonymity and
the creation of the dehumanized power apparatus to tighten control over the
population, their response to the Disgraceful Events was to put the affairs (and

Bottleneck of Writing on a Big Event: For Example the Revolution]. In Madā Miṣr. 11
February 2019. [online] [cit. 20 October 2019]. Available from
https://www.madamasr.com/ar/2019/02/11/feature/‫مثال‬ً -‫الثورة‬-‫كبير‬-‫حدث‬-‫عن‬-‫الكتابة‬-‫مزنق‬/‫ثقافة‬/.
36
BAKKER, B. Egyptian Dystopias of the 21st Century: A New Literary Trend? In
Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 2021, Vol. 21, p. 84.

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lives) of the whole society on hold, pushing the citizens into an endless state of
waiting and inactivity.
The characters in the novel are not depicted as revolutionaries. Their attitudes
towards the moments of rupture range from indifference to ambivalence. Ṭāriq,
for example, is concerned only with his medical duties and has only a vague
understanding of what happened. He did not participate in either of them; his
memory of the First Storm (al-Habba al-ūlā) is limited to what he read about it a
long time ago and his knowledge of the Disgraceful Events is based on what he
heard from his colleagues and the media. He believes that the changes the
protesters demanded would make the regime “less authoritarian and harsh” (aqall
tasalluṭan wa tashaddudan), “more flexible and open-minded” (akṯar murūnatan
wa rubbamā arḥab ufuqan) but also “less disciplined and less stable” (aqall
inḍibāṭan wa istiqrāran).37 As for Yaḥyā, he was reluctant to participate in the
protest as he doubted its efficacy. However, he was also curious to see what
would happen and therefore decided to be present as an observer. When the
Second Disgraceful Events are rumoured to take place, again neither of the two
characters are involved; they are preoccupied with their own lives and problems.
While the idea of protest as well as allusions to revolution are an integral part
of the characters’ reality, they are always kept in the background, overshadowed
by the Gate’s omniscient presence that traps them in the ever-growing Queue,
unable to escape the bureaucracy and banalities of everyday life. As A.
Buontempo has noted, the novel focuses first and foremost on the aftermath of
the January Revolution,38 not on the revolutionary period itself, which might be
one of the reasons why the revolution is kept in the background. That being said,
I also believe that ‘Abdal‘azīz’s masterful portrayal of the relationship between
the people and the reigning powers, her depiction of the psychology of the
citizens and their path from passivity to action, as well as the strategies of
subjugation, including propaganda and manipulation, cover a larger period of
Egypt’s experience with authoritarianism, despotism and repression, including
that of the Mubārak era. Moreover, with her expertise in both psychiatry and
sociology, the author has managed to touch on some of the more universal topics
concerning the human mind and behaviour, especially in times of uncertainty and
fear. As Buontempo observed, ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel could almost be read “as an
essay on human rights in the form of fiction.”39

37
ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Aṭ-Ṭābūr [The Queue], p. 14.
38
BUONTEMPO, A. The Egyptian Revolution and its Discontent: al-Ṭābūr by Basmah
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and al-Tamāsīḥ by Yūsuf Raḫā. In La rivista di Arablit, 2015, Vol. 5, Nos.
9–10, pp. 48–51.
39
Ibid., p. 49.

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The Square and the Queue as Chronotopes

The main focus of the novel is undoubtedly the infamous Queue spreading in
front of the headquarters of the Gate. While its meaning can be understood in
symbolic terms since, according to A. Barbaro, it can be interpreted as an “iconic
representation of relations with power,” 40 it is also a site, which, despite being
located spatially, keeps expanding and changing its size and shape. In the novel,
the Queue gets longer each day until it reaches monstrous dimensions; whilst on
page 38 it is thought to be about two or three kilometres long, on page 76 it took
Yaḥyā a three-hour ride in a minibus to move from his position to the very end
of the line. The Queue is also a social unit and a place of everyday social
interaction, in which relationships, alliances and mutual animosities are formed
and developed. Barbaro considers a queue to be an “anthropological space” since
identities and relations as well as history are shaped there.41 In this regard the
Queue in ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel is not much different from the depiction of life in
Taḥrīr Square during the 18 days in January 2011 that can be found in Egyptian
fiction, newspaper articles and memoirs.
I would argue that in the novel both sites are contrasted, juxtaposed and
presented in a dialectical relationship with each other to point out the reversal of
a utopian reality into a dystopian nightmare and possibly also to suggest the way
out. Despite the fact that ʿAbdalʿazīz avoids direct description of revolutionary
events in her novel, I believe she has relied on the contextual knowledge of the
event engraved in the collective memory as well as on numerous literary accounts
of the revolution which were published mostly during 2011 and 2012.42
Both the Queue and Ṭaḥrīr Square can be defined not only as places, but as
time-spaces, or chronotopes in Bakhtinian terms, since the passage of time in both
of them is inseparably bound up with their respective geographical locations.
Bakhtin borrowed the term from Einstein’s theory of relativity and applied it to

40
BARBARO, A. In The Realm of Queuetopia: How to Give Physical Shape to Relations
with Power in al-Tābūr(s) by Yūsuf Idrīs and Basma ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. In Al-Karmil: Studies
in Arabic Language and Literature, 2019 – 2020, Vols. 40–41, p. 19.
41
Ibid., p. 23.
42
For example, Wael Ghonim (Wā'il Ġunaym) – Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People
is Greater than the People in Power, (2012), Abdarraḥmān Yūsuf – Yawmīyāt ṯawrat aṣ-
ṣabbār (Diary of a Cactus Revolution, 2011), Munā Brins – Ismī Ṯawra (My Name is
Revolution, 2012), Ibrāhīm ʿAbdalmajīd – Ayyām fī at-Taḥrīr (Days in Taḥrīr, 2011),
Aḥmad Zaġlūl ash- Shīṯī - Miʾat khaṭwa min aṯ-ṯawra: Yawmīyāt min Maydān at-Taḥrīr
(One Hundred Steps from Revolution: A Diary from Taḥrīr Square, 2011), Ibrāhīm Aṣlān
– Inṭibāʿāt saġīra ḥawla ḥādiṯ kabīr, (Small Reflections on a Big Event; published 2015),
Raḍwā ʿĀshūr – Aṯqal min Raḍwā (Heavier than Raḍwā, 2013), Ahdaf Soueif (Ahdāf
Suwayf) – Cairo: My City, Our Revolution (2012) and many others.

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literary theory to define “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial

relationships that are artistically expressed in literature”.43 In her novel Sījāra
sābiʿa (Cigarette Number Seven, 2012), the Egyptian writer Dunyā Kamāl (1982)
has likened Taḥrīr Square to one of Bakhtin’s chronotopes. She regards it a
particular segment of reality with a characteristic atmosphere and specific rules
bound to a delimited geographical location:

The square was powered by an innate honesty that filtered out lies from
facts. Leaving the square exposed you to frustration and despair. I
sometimes felt that it fell beyond the realms of geography and history, even
as it was closely bound to both. It was like a fictional chronotope in
Bakhtin’s sense: a standalone whole that, while influencing external events,
is hardly affected by them. […]44 The Square was a monumental, tangible
living entity. It had influence, spirit, and power. It provided us with support
and healed our wounds. It had a face, shape and tongue. It motivated us to
persevere and finish what we started, not allowing us for a second to give
in or succumb to despair. If you want the proof, just look at what happened
to the people as soon as they stepped out of the Square: their spirits broke
down and they were overcome with feelings of hopelessness and
pessimism. Only rarely did they keep that elevated mood outside the
Square.45

In fact, according to Bakhtin’s theory, a public square can be considered a

specific category of the so-called “adjacent chronotope”.46 In the times of Ancient
Greece, the public square (agora) was the centre of public life. It was a place
where free citizens gathered and all important public institutions were located.
The square was not only a space of social interaction but a locus of political as
well as religious, scientific and artistic life.47 In Bakhtin’s view, the square is
closely related to the autobiographical self-consciousness of an individual, which
“was first laid bare and shaped in the public square”.48 Considering the
interconnectedness between the public square and autobiography, it is not
surprising, that after Taḥrīr Square was both physically and symbolically (though
also temporarily) claimed by the protesters in early 2011, numerous diaries of the

43
BAKHTIN, M. M The Dialogic Imagination by M. M. Bakhtin: Four Essays, p. 84.
44
KAMĀL, D. Sījāra sābiʿa [Cigarette No. 7], p. 149, N. Youssef’s translation, p. 143.
45
Ibid., p. 164, my translation.
46
VLASOV, E. The World According to Bakhtin: On the Description of Space and
Spatial Forms in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Works. In Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1995, Vol. 37,
Nos. 1–2, pp. 44–45; BAKHTIN, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination by M. M. Bakhtin:
Four Essays, p. 131.
47
BAKHTIN, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination by M. M. Bakhtin: Four Essays, p. 131.
48
Ibid.

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revolution, memoirs and other writings of an autobiographical character were

published. D. Heshmat explains that the number of autobiographical publications
that appeared on the Egyptian book market after the revolution reflect the change
in Egyptian society and the attempt to reintegrate an alienated, disillusioned and
depoliticized citizen into public life and political action.49
The Queue can also be considered a chronotope since its existence depends
on the fulfilment of specific spatial and temporal conditions.50 As S. Fraser and
K. Valentine have put it succinctly, though in a different context, “the queue is
in itself an inherently spatio-temporal phenomenon in that it is the product of the
intra-action of specific temporal conditions with specific spatial arrangements”.51
But whereas the dominant characteristics of the literary image of Taḥrīr Square
could be specified as self-expression, freedom, solidarity and tolerance, the main
attributes of the Queue can be defined as submission, secrecy, paranoia, distrust
and fear. While the Square became an incentive for the people to express their
feelings and ideas, as it promoted both verbal and textual communication and
encouraged creativity, the effect of the Queue was quite the opposite. Even
though the restriction of the use of language is one of the fundamental attributes
of dystopian fiction in general, in ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel it becomes even more
pronounced in the direct location of the Queue. Most of the characters standing
in the line are reluctant to share private information about themselves, keeping
the real reason why they were forced to join the Queue a secret, with their verbal
interaction limited to small talk. After they realize that their conversations are
being recorded, they are alarmed and become even more cautious about the
content of their talk and some of them even become paranoid. Last but not least,
discussions about the recent development of the situation in the Queue as well as
asking questions are both considered as “planting seeds of evil among the people”
and “undesirable activities” (umūr ġayr muḥabbaba).52
If we consider Bakhtin’s theory, according to which a chronontope is
understood not only as a time-space but as “a structural pivot of the narrative,

49
HESHMAT, D. Egyptian Narratives of the 2011 Revolution: Diary as a Medium of
Reconciliation with the Political. In PANNEWICK, F., KHALIL, G., ALBERS, Y. (eds.).
Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the
1940s, pp. 67–69.
50
FRASER, S., VALENTINE, K. Substance and Substitution: Methadone Subjects in
Liberal Societies, p. 107.
51
Ibid.
52
ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Aṭ-Ṭābūr [The Queue], p. 193.

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 The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr: Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz's aṭ-Ṭābūr

which integrates and determines other aspects of the text,”53 as U. Terentowicz-

Fotyga has suggested, we might come to the conclusion that the chronotope of
the queue can be viewed as a variation on another of the adjacent chronotopes –
“the chronotope of the threshold”54 which can be defined as a place of transition
between the two different spaces, like entrances, doorways and corridors.55 No
matter how far the Queue keeps expanding, it is always positioned precisely in
front of the entrance to the Gate – i.e. on a threshold. Spatially, it comprises an
area that separates the ruling authority from the rest of the country while
temporally it can be considered an interlude. As soon as the characters join the
queue, their lives are interrupted and left in limbo, “on the borderline between
existence and nonexistence, reality and phantasmagoria, always on the verge of
disappearing like the fog and vanishing,”56 to quote the words Bakhtin used to
describe the chronotope in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but which are
perfectly applicable in this context. As long as Yaḥyā stays in the Queue, the
matter of his survival remains uncertain, his very existence suspended between
life and death. However, the state of transience and “inbetweenness” that is
characteristic of the chronotope of the threshold does not concern only the fates
of individual characters, which are left on hold, but since transition from one point
to another suggests a possibility of change, it raises questions about the future of
the whole dystopian system, including the very existence of the Gate.

The Queue as a Dystopian Taḥrīr

The literary image of Taḥrīr Square in both Egyptian fiction and autobiography
has often been depicted in utopian terms. Various accounts of the revolutionary
events from Taḥrīr Square report that it was a place in which people from
different socio-economic strata and religious backgrounds coexisted peacefully,
sharing food, medicine, and various acts of kindness. Participants freely
expressed their opinions and treated one another with tolerance and respect.

53
TERENTOWICZ-FOTYGA, U. Defining the Dystopian Chronotope: Space, Time and
Genre in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Beyond Philology, 2018, Vol. 15,
No. 3, p. 9.
54
VLASOV, E. The World According to Bakhtin: On the Description of Space and
Spatial Forms in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Works. In Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1995, Vol. 37,
Nos. 1–2, p. 45.
55
BAKHTIN, M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 149; VLASOV, E. The World
According to Bakhtin: On the Description of Space and Spatial Forms in Mikhail
Bakhtin’s Works. In Canadian Slavonic Papers, 1995, Vol. 37, Nos. 1–2, p. 47.
56
BAKHTIN, M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 167.

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Young people collected waste, keeping the public space clean, participants with
medical training tended the injured in improvised first-aid stations, others brought
blankets and mattresses for those who spent the night in the square. Those who
gathered in the square in protest against the corrupt regime managed to build a
community united by feelings of unparalleled mutual solidarity.57
Notwithstanding the violence that the protesters experienced on site, the pain they
suffered from injuries, and the grief over those who lost their lives, many authors
have created a utopian image of the square, at times attributing to it mythical,
even supernatural, qualities. For instance, Nādiya, the narrator and protagonist in
Dunyā Kamāl’s novel Sījāra sābiʿa (Cigarette Number Seven, 2012), believes
that the square provided the protesters with support and healed their wounds.58
The Egyptian writer Yūsuf Rakhā’s (1976) expressed the extraordinary
atmosphere on Taḥrīr Square through the words of the protagonist of his novel
at-Tamāsīḥ (The Crocodiles, 2012) who felt as if God appeared for real.59 The
prominent Egyptian blogger and political activist ʿAlāʾ ʿAbdalfattāḥ has defined
Taḥrīr Square as “a myth that creates a reality in which… [the people] long
believed”.60 Even the novelist May Telmissany described the group of protesters
who gathered on Taḥrīr Square in the early days of protests as “a utopian
community”61 as “the square strove to build a secular utopian space where class-
based, gender-based as well as religious-based relationships were briefly
discarded in favour of the call for national unity”.62
Indeed, many parallels can be observed between the literary portrayal of
Taḥrīr Square and ʿAbdalʿazīz’s Queue. However, the two sites are also in sharp
contrast with each other. In the novel, the characters remain in the queue for days,
even weeks, regardless of their age, education, religious views or their social
standing, as was the case in Taḥrīr Square.

57
See for example the memoirs of the Egyptian novelist and political and cultural
commentator SOUEIF, A. Cairo: My City, Our Revolution [mobi e-book], locations
1746–1775.
58
KAMĀL, D. Sījāra sābiʿa [Cigarette Number Seven], p. 164.
59
RAKHĀ, Y. At-Tamāsīḥ [The Crocodiles], p. 174, paragraph no. 158. The writer
himself expressed a similar sentiment in a personal interview with the author of this
article. RAKHĀ, Y. Personal communication, 12 June 2019.
60
SOUEIF, A. Cairo: My City, Our Revolution [mobi e-book], Epilogue: Alaa, 24 June
2011, Location 2099.
61
TELMISSANY, M. The Utopian and Dystopian Functions of Tahrir Square. In
Postcolonial Studies, 2014, Vol. 17, No. 1, p. 37.
62
Ibid., pp. 39–41.

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[Yaḥyā] passed most of the day there [in the queue] and sometimes even
spent the night, as many others did. Nagy [Nājī] had offered to bring him a
tent to sleep in, but he’d turned it down. He would rather be like everyone
else, chatting until the early hours of the morning and then nodding off for
an hour or two in his place. People around him stood there so resolutely, he
hadn’t seen many sleeping or even sitting down in recent days. Everyone
expected the queue to move at any minute, and they wanted to be ready.
He found himself doing the same, even though he didn’t believe what they
told him about the Gate – that it might open at dawn, or even deep in the
middle of the night.63

However, the atmosphere in the Queue is diametrically opposed to the one

pertaining to the square. That elevated spirit, feelings of freedom, optimism,
solidarity and the sense of belonging to a community which were prevalent in
Taḥrīr are replaced by passivity, lethargy, scepticism, mistrust and even hostility.
One of the main reasons for that is undoubtedly the fact that people did not join
the Queue out of their own will; they were forced to do so through denial of access
to their basic needs, medical care as well as requirements of all kinds of permits
and certificates. Whilst most of the time, people are polite to one another, they
are immersed in their own problems and almost never ask anyone for help or
share anything for free. Umm Mabrūk sets up her own small business of selling
tea and other refreshments and lets others use her mobile phone to make calls but
it is always for a small fee.64
As a result of the various oppressive mechanisms and subjugating strategies
of the Gate, the society in ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel is atomized, distrustful and
extremely passive, which is in sharp contrast with the collective spirit of Taḥrīr
Square. Individual citizens suffer from trauma, psychological and social
alienation, anxiety, PTSD, depression and mental paralysis. The totalitarian
system in aṭ-Ṭābūr is buttressed by both economic elites and religious authorities.
However, religion is not portrayed as a means to find solace but to exert the
latter’s power over the people and bring them to submission. For example, the
High Sheikh (ash-Shaykh al-aʿlā) suggests that the people who were killed during
the events actually deserved their lot because they were not religious enough and
“piety protects people from misfortune and evil”.65 The discourse of the religious
authorities induces and strengthens a fatalist approach to life, leading people to

63
ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Aṭ-Ṭābūr [The Queue], pp. 25–26. E. Jaquette’s translation, pp. 17–
18.
64
In fact, she has won unlimited phone credit in a competition, which is why she can
make calls for free. However, she keeps this piece of information secret and gains profit
from the small fees that people pay her for using her phone to make calls.
65
ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Aṭ-Ṭābūr [The Queue], p. 206. E. Jaquette’s translation, p. 181.

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view difficulties in life as God’s will that needs to be accepted. This kind of
fatalism, however, not only leads to excessive passivity among the populace but,
as recent scholarship in critical psychology has shown, also induces
“internalization of an oppressive social structure,” as it can be viewed “neither as
an individual attitude nor an internal cognitive process but rather a product of
power relations”.66 Yaḥyā’s friend Nājī is aware of the change in people’s
mentality and their turn to an extreme form of passivity, but admits that he himself
has been afflicted and is therefore unable to intervene:

He wondered what made people so attached to their new lives spinning in

orbit around the queue, unable to venture beyond it. People hadn’t been
idiots before they came to the Gate with their paperwork. There were
women and men, young and old people, professionals and the working
class. No section of society was missing, even the poorest of the poor were
there, not separated from the rich by any means. Everyone was on equal
ground. But they all had the same look about them, the same lethargy. Now
they were even all starting to think the same way. He had expected there to
be exceptions, that someone among them would come out in support of the
Riffraff, or even sympathize with their call to resist the absurd and
ceaseless situation – but no one did. The queue was like a magnet. It drew
people toward it, then held them captive as individuals and in their little
groups, and it stripped them of everything, even the sense that their
previous lives had been stolen from them. He, too, had been affected – he
knew it in his heart. Otherwise, he would have told everyone in the queue
to advance, promising them that if everyone took just a single step, that
single step alone could destroy the Gate’s walls and shake off this
stagnation. But the queue’s magnet held him captive. Maybe he’d
convinced himself that he was helping Yehya [Yaḥyā] by staying in the
queue, but the truth was he couldn’t leave it; his body came and went, but
his will was trapped there.67

Besides various forms of physical and psychological violence utilized by the

reigning powers, A. Barbaro also recognizes the “symbolic violence” that is
epitomized by the very shape and structure of the queue.68 Symbolic violence, as
defined by Bourdieu, “represents the way in which individuals can contribute

66
LACREDA Jr., F. Fatalism, Overview. In TEO, T. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Critical
Psychology, pp. 690–691.
67
ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Aṭ-Ṭābūr [The Queue], pp. 105–106. E. Jaquette’s translation, pp.
90–91.
68
BARBARO, A. In The Realm of Queuetopia: How to Give Physical Shape to Relations
with Power in al-Tābūr(s) by Yūsuf Idrīs and Basma ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. In Al-Karmil: Studies
in Arabic Language and Literature, 2019 – 2020, Vols. 40–41, pp. 25–26.

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toward their own subordination by gradually accepting and internalizing those

very ideas and structures that tend to subordinate them”.69 Unlike the mass of
people gathered in the square as a group of equals, with each individual able to
move freely all over the site, the shape of the queue is the one of perpetual
subordination – an individual is always in a subordinate position to the person(s)
standing in front of them and, at the same time, all of them are subordinated to
the Gate. Referencing W. Burroughs and L. Reed, Suzanne Fraser and Kylie
Valentine have characterized the time that people spend waiting in a queue,
uncertain of the results of their endeavour, as “junk time”.70 Taking into
consideration that for those who joined the Queue, the site has become the locus
of their everyday lives, with all other parts of their former lives, including work
and personal relationships, pushed aside, then the Gate has reduced them to
unproductive citizens, unable to contribute to society in any meaningful way.
In her article, May Telmissany identifies Taḥrīr square as a place of dichotomy
and discusses tensions between its utopian and dystopian functions in the
(post)revolutionary period. It has to be said that apart from her particular focus
on the threat of religious authoritarianism, all other dystopian functions she
assigns to Taḥrīr Square can be traced in aṭ-Ṭābūr as well. She believes that
unlike the revolutionary period, which she views as “utopian” during the post-
revolutionary period, the square became associated with dystopian features
whose aim was “to assert the domination of one particular group, seeking to
achieve total control over the society”.71 According to Telmissany’s article, the
square’s reversal from utopia72 to dystopia was accompanied by the formation of
negative attitudes towards the revolution. The authorities attempted to change
people’s view of the revolutionary events through restrictive measures that denied
them access to the public space as well as anti-propaganda, mostly aimed at
smearing the reputation of the protesters. The last dystopian function of the
square given by Telmissany is erasure of memory and an “un-learning revolt”,

69
CONNOLLY, P., HEALY, J. Symbolic Violence and the Neighbourhood: the
Educational Aspirations of 7–8 Year Old Working-Class Girls. In The British Journal of
Sociology, 2004, Vol. 55, No. 4, p. 513.
70
FRASER, S., VALENTINE, K. Substance and Substitution: Methadone Subjects in
Liberal Societies, p. 111.
71
TELMISSANY, M. The Utopian and Dystopian Functions of Tahrir Square. In
Postcolonial Studies, 2014, Vol. 17, No. 1, p. 42.
72
According to Telmissany, the utopian functions of the square can be summed up in the
following way: 1. Taḥrīr was a site of both resistance against the authoritarian regime and
of a struggle for democracy; 2. it was a place of communal living; 3. it was a space where
people received a moral and political education; 4. it was the site of a secular
(revolutionary) utopian project. See TELMISSANY, M. The Utopian and Dystopian
Functions of Tahrir Square. In Postcolonial Studies, 2014, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 49–51.

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both of which are realized through propaganda and through elimination of the
physical traces of the moment of rupture to prevent the sites from becoming lieux
de mémoire 73 or sites of memory as Pierre Nora has defined places, objects but
also intangible entities that have become “symbolic element[s] of the memorial
heritage of any community”.74
Telmissany’s analysis has shown that since Taḥrīr Square had been a site of
not only positive but also negative socio-political circumstances, it has acquired
both utopian and dystopian connotations. While the utopian face of the square
has been captured in many autobiographies and diaries of the revolution, its
darker side has been depicted in some of the examples of post-revolutionary
fiction. Even though the square is not physically present in ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel,
the connection, or rather the polarity, between the two sites has been expressed
through a subtler, less obvious approach. The author has managed to portray a
site, in which the very essence of the utopian spirit of the square, including the
change in interpersonal relations and mental mindset of the people, has been
reversed. Moreover, ʿAbdalʿazīz had good reason to exclude the actual site of the
square from the dystopian narrative. As A. Barbaro pointed out, the public space
of the square that the people re-appropriated in 2011 had been taken away from
them again, which is why the square is not visible and “spaces in general and their
contours have become increasingly blurred and indistinguishable”.75 In dystopian
reality, the city no longer belongs to the citizens and as long as they remain in the
Queue, both physically and mentally, waiting for the authorities to solve their
problems, those places will remain beyond their reach.

Conclusion

In her novel, Basma ʿAbdalʿazīz has painted a dystopian picture of post-

revolutionary Eygptian society, with the main focus on the image of the long-
stretching Queue, which can be viewed as the site antithetical to that of the literary
representation of Taḥrīr Square during the early days of the 2011 revolution. In
many aspects, she has managed to create a dystopian version of the square, in

73
TELMISSANY, M. The Utopian and Dystopian Functions of Tahrir Square. In
Postcolonial Studies, 2014, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 41–44.
74
NORA, P. Preface to the English Language Edition. In KRITZMAN, L. D. (ed.).
Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Transl. GOLDHAMMER, A.,
p. xvii.
75
BARBARO, A. In The Realm of Queuetopia: How to Give Physical Shape to Relations
with Power in al-Tābūr(s) by Yūsuf Idrīs and Basma ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. In Al-Karmil: Studies
in Arabic Language and Literature, 2019 – 2020, Vols. 40–41, pp. 19–22.

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which the utopian qualities of the revolutionary site are reversed. Nevertheless,
no matter how bleak the situation in the novel may seem, the author does not
succumb to pessimism. Despite the lack of any large-scale collective action
against the tyrannical system, the capacity for change is indicated on an
individual level through Dr. Ṭāriq’s shift from passivity to activity.
When at the end of the novel and after a long hesitation Ṭāriq finally decides
to operate on Yaḥyā to save his life but is unable to reach him, he opens his
medical file, in which he finds an enigmatic sentence suggesting, but not
confirming that something (bad) has happened to Yaḥyā: “[Yaḥyā Jād ar-Rabb
Saʿīd] spent one hundred and fourteen nights of his life in the queue”.76 In
reaction to what he has just read, for the very first time in the novel, Ṭāriq is
actually propelled into activity and dares to write something in the file himself.
What might seem like a small, even insignificant, act of personal resistance can
have far reaching consequences. In fact, through the act of writing Ṭāriq takes
control over the means of communication which up until that moment have been
monopolized by the regime, which is a first step on the path to the citizens’
reappropriation of language. In dystopian fiction, both language and memory
have transformative potential and serve as powerful weapons that can be used to
overthrow the oppressive regime. The revolutionary character of Ṭāriq’s simple
act of writing is emphasised in the choice of words in the last sentence: “He closed
the file, left it on his desk, and rose [qāma]”. The statement can be interpreted not
only in terms of Ṭāriq’s physical movement, but presumably it should also be
viewed as his act of rebellion against the dehumanizing system.77
As a critical dystopia, aṭ-Ṭābūr manages to preserve utopian hope through
resistance to closure. While B. Bakker interprets the lack of happy endings in
Arabic dystopias in mostly negative terms, as a manifestation of characters’
inability to be agents of change,78 according to R. Baccolini an open ending in
critical dystopias is actually more hopeful than a conformist happy ending, which
provides readers with a false feeling of security and relieves them of their anxiety,
because it has the potential to mobilize the readers and encourages them not only
to create their own ending but to take the necessary steps in real life to avoid the

76
ʿABDALʿAZĪZ, B. Aṭ-Ṭābūr [The Queue], p. 244; Jaquette’s translation, 217.
However, there appears to be a mistake in Jaquette’s translation, in which the number 140
is used instead of 114.
77
Arabic word qāma which the author uses in the last sentence of the novel has several
meanings. It means to stand up, but also rise from the dead and to rebel.
78
BAKKER, B. Dystopic Trends in Modern Arabic Literature. In Al Jadid, 2018, Vol.
22, No. 75. [online] [cit. 21 December 2019]. Available from https://www.aljadid.com/
node/2131.

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Asian and African Studies, Volume 31, Number 2, 2022

bleak dystopian future.79 As A. Buontempo has observed, “rather than calling to

action, [the novel] acts on the level of collective conscience and memory,”80
creating a counter-narrative to the official history, which helps dystopian citizens
to see through and confront the half-truths and propaganda spread by the reigning
powers. Despite the apparent impression that characters in ʿAbdalʿazīz’s novel
gradually adapt to the dystopian conditions, as Bakker has suggested,81 the novel
in fact depicts their slow but steady path to resistance.
Whereas the row of emotionally paralysed citizens, forever waiting in the
queue evokes an almost (post)apocalyptic image of zombies, the stagnation that
the society has fallen into is not permanent. From a chronotopic point of view,
the Queue signifies a state of transition and as such, it also possesses a subversive
potential to destabilize the whole system and lead to its overthrow. A mass of
people gathered together, never mind how passive and docile they may appear,
always poses a latent threat to the hegemonic order. The right impulse is all it
takes to ignite the revolutionary spark and turn the site of waiting into that of an
uprising. While the Square might have been temporarily reversed to the Queue in
aṭ-Ṭābūr, the open ending keeps alive the hope that winds of change have already
begun to blow.

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