Midaq_Alley

Midaq Alley Naguib Mahfouz’s Motivation for Writing Midaq Alley: World War II and the British Occupation’s Impact Upon Egyptian Society Naquib Mahfouz surely had multiple factors motivating him to write Midaq Alley, but the main one was his distain for British occupation during World War II and the effects this occupation had on Egyptian society. “During WWII, Egypt became a vast army camp for the Western Allies… Under Nazi threat, thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the British Commonwealth (and the Unites States) poured into Egypt.#” In his book, Mahfouz showed the increased instability and corruption that fell upon his country during this tumultuous period. He used the story of a small Cairo alley and its inhabitants to paint a more intimate picture of a slipping society. He presented what (at first) appeared to be a typical, friendly, respectable neighborhood and slowly unveiled an underworld of pimps, whores, grave robbers, and even a homosexual pedophile. Mahfouz used certain characters to exemplify the sickness of this society. Some were already this way when the story started. However, Mahfouz really emphasized the characters that changed over the course of time as a result of the events that took hamida, alley, abbas, men, midaq, mahfouz, army, society, kirsha, hussain, british, alwan, war, time, occupation, left, knew, salim, man, life, however, one, money, during, characters, came, before, while, wealth, umm, soldiers, owner, marry, join, heart