Book Review and Reflection of If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

Published: 2022
Accolades: [As listed on Amazon]

• Winner of the 2022 Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize
• Winner of the 2023 Arab American Book Award for Fiction
• Shortlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize
• Shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
• Shortlisted for the 2022 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

Genre: Fiction (This becomes confusing towards the end, but research confirms it is fiction.)
Buy the book HERE

Country: Egypt

Introduction

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is framed around two individuals from vastly different backgrounds meeting and forming a relationship. What a book! The first thing that struck me, and I loved it very early on, was how it was written. The story is narrated by the boy from Shobrakheit and the American girl. It is lyrical and poetic.

Book Summary and reflections

The book is divided into three parts. Every section in Part One begins with a question, such as, “Question: If you’re waiting for the Other Shoe to drop, Have you not dropped it yourself?” Part Two consists of 36 short chapters. Part Three is a discussion about the book and its themes.

The boy is from a village called Shobrakheit, a photographer and former activist during the revolution, now unemployed, addicted to drugs and clearly suffering from some deep-rooted mental health problems. The woman is an American-born Egyptian who returns to Egypt to reconnect with her roots despite her parents’ protests. Her Arabic is infantile, but she is eager to improve it. Because she is different from all the rest, with her American ways, she is othered, labelled an outsider – people do not really believe she is Egyptian. As she navigates Cairo, her sense of belonging and identity are at the core—people continue to ask where she is from, and the boy simply calls her “the American girl.” She, in turn, calls him the boy from Shobrakheit, without using his name.

The boy is essentially homeless. Without any prior agreement, he moves into the girl’s apartment and rapes her on the very first night. The language is subtle, and it is unclear whether the girl acknowledges the act as rape, she never brings it up again. When this unsolicited cohabitation happened, I panicked for her. I held my breath; she was essentially letting a stranger into her home. It felt opportunistic on his end, and it probably was. A means of survival. But it was also uncertain on her end, as she was reluctant to give him a spare key.

He becomes trapped in her apartment without the key, and she becomes his entire world. He spends the days doing nothing, waiting for her to come home from work. At one point, he describes her as drained after a day’s work, yet he does not help with cooking or cleaning. The girl is jolted out of her American norms and tolerances. Their living arrangement becomes something patriarchal or more abusive than anything else—she is doing everything: earning, paying the bills, and catering to him, taking care of him.

Burdened by addiction and past trauma, the boy is deeply troubled. He begins to take out his frustrations on her. The violence builds slowly. He grows restless and increasingly aggressive, resentful of the fact that she goes out to work and sometimes socialises while he stays at home, afraid to leave as he has no key to return. Eventually, the socialising stops, and he isolates her. He also starts to feel detached from himself, never having considered himself violent. Thankfully, he leaves—but is it really over? The girl’s flat has many balconies, which take on symbolic significance in various ways until the end.

This is as far as the spoilers go. I encourage everyone who hasn’t read the book to grab a copy and discover how the story unfolds for themselves.

Final Reflections and Recommendations

This book is jam-packed with themes. So many themes—identity, belonging, survival, self-discovery, poverty, domestic abuse, delusion. I was wide-eyed when the boy from Shobrakheit refused a job because he believed it was beneath him, despite being homeless, clinging to delusions about his status and worth, instilled by stories his grandmother told him years ago.

Noor Naga delivers a gripping read. The writing is beautiful. Poetic, methodical, and rich. Readers will not want to put this down, especially since it’s short enough to read in just a few sittings. However, I believe this masterpiece deserves a slow read, part by part, to truly let it all sink in. That said, it will be hard to pace yourself because you’ll constantly be afraid for the girl, urging you to read on and find out how it all ends.

About the Author

from her website:

Noor Naga is an Alexandrian writer who was born in Philadelphia, raised in Dubai and studied in Toronto. Her work has been published in Granta, LitHub, Poetry, BOMB, The Walrus, The Common, The Offing, and more. In 2017, she won the Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry, and in 2019, she won both the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award and the DISQUIET Fiction Prize. Her verse-novel Washes, Prays was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2020. Set in Toronto, this genre-bending work follows an immigrant woman’s romantic relationship with a married man and her ensuing crisis of faith. It won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, as well as the Arab American Book Award, and was listed in the Best Canadian Poetry of 2020 by CBC.

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