A Comprehensive Study of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel the Journey of Ibn Fattouma
The Hero’s Journey as expressed in Naguib Mahfouz’s The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
UCSB – Comparative Literature 33: African Literature with Professor Jude G. Akudinobi
In the novel, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma by Naguib Mahfouz, Qindil Muhammad embarks upon a journey of self-discovery, traveling from his Homeland to the mysterious famed land of Gebel. Qindil Muhammad embarks on what Joseph Campbell would call “the Hero’s Journey,” in which the hero leaves home to return with the newfound knowledge discovered on his journey. In a manner of knowing, and not-knowing, Qindil sets off. In order to discover knowledge and to seek the answers to his nation’s problems, he must embark on a journey to distant lands with varying governmental, religious, & societal ideals unique to his known perspectives, on how to handle human-life and formulate a nation free from poverty and ignorance—all of which awaits him in Gebel.
Before commencing, Ibn Fattouma (ibn: Arabic word for “son of”), the eighth son of a wealthy merchant discusses with his father the issues that their nation of Islam faced. He asks his father on page 4, “If Islam is as you say it is, why are the streets packed with poor and ignorant people?”
“Islam today, […] skulks in the mosques and does not go beyond them to the outside world.”
“Then it is Satan that is controlling us, not the Revelation,” [Qindil] said.
“I congratulate you on your words […] They are greater than your years.”
His father continues to tell him of a journey he had taken in his youth through the lands of Haira, Halba, and Aman where he had to stop due to a civil war so was never able to reach the Land of Gebel. Intrigued, Qindil asks his father what is the significance to the Land of Gebel. To which his father replies, “It’s as though it were the miracle of countries, as though it were perfection itself, incomparable perfection” (page 6). To fit the hero’s journey model, this conversation between Qindil and his father can be seen as the “call to adventure” stage, in which our Hero Qindil Muhammad’s interest in the Land of Gebel is first aroused.
In his search for a utopian society, Qindil makes many stops along the way. He stops at the Lands of Mashriq where he discovers a sexually libertine society where partners are shared, and they live their lives according to the cycles of the moon. They think of the moon as a God, and it is according to its cycles that the people plan their lives. This varies and goes against the preordained Islamic monotheistic views that Qindil comes with. It’s as if he had gone from one end of the spectrum of liberality to its polar opposite. In this land, people walk around nakedly with no shame. On his first night in Mashriq, he meets the father of a girl who sets him to stay with her in their tent. Her father mentions that according to the current phase of the moon, that it was nigh time for his daughter to be arranged with a man, and sees Qindil fit to be that man.
The man’s daughter, Arousa and Qindil make five babies. He ends up spending a lot more time in Mashriq than anticipated. Qindil allows himself to be in the realm of what he does not know, and offers himself to the Mashriq people’s way of life. His openness allows him to find a lover and settle with a celebratory people. However, eventually he becomes absorbed back into the realm of what he does know—Islam. He wants to teach his first born son the ways of Islam, but is shunned to Haira and separated from his family for attempting to do so.
To elaborate on these two realms, the realm of knowing and the realm of not knowing, I am referring to Qindil’s mind and his perception. In his realm of knowing, there lies the knowledge of his Homeland—the doctrines of Islam. In his realm of not-knowing are the ideals of the Mashriq society, what to expect in Gebel, and all else that can be comprehended. One could argue that in a sense, he already knows all that in his realm of not-knowing—only he has not yet arrived to that point. Throughout his journey, the items in his realm of not-knowing eventually transfer over to his realm of knowing. Now, in his knowledge bank account he has gained the knowledge of what it is like to be a citizen of Mashriq, and what not to do when in Mashriq. What he chooses to do with his newfound knowledge in entirely up to him and to chance. This knowledge in the realm of knowing, is the knowledge that he will take back with him to home.
In the end of the novel, Qindil never actually returns home, as his mission the entire time is to get to the Land of Gebel and find the perfection he was looking for. But, where is home really for Qindil? One would argue that this image of perfection he is striving for is his notion of “home.” For home is where the heart is, and in his Homeland he found poverty & ignorance. In his home, his mental state of being, his pure consciousness, is where he seeks to find perfection. This mental image of home is where our hero will return to at the end of his journey.
In the novel, we never get a sense of how Qindil’s life is before he realizes that there is poverty and ignorance in his Homeland. However, one could argue that this poverty and ignorance is a product of his own Self. In order to escape this poverty and ignorance, he sets out away from home, but in the process he is only running away from himself. When he finally gets to where he is going, is he really there? What’s the point? Is this poverty and ignorance he noticed at home related to an inner struggle of his own, as reflected by the society he lives in? Why does he choose to teach his first son with Arousa they ways of Islam when he has seen how it has failed his people before?
This notion of “home” as a mental space makes it so that our hero never actually leaves home, but has merely created in his own mind an illusion of being lost. He has placed the solution to his confusion and invested the knowledge that he does not know (though in the realm of all-knowing, he knows) into this image of an ideal society—a perfect land, a utopian paradise, perfection—in the Land of Gebel. According to the hero’s journey, there is a mentor—an overseeing figure that knows, but may pretend to not know for the sake of the hero’s self-exploration. One could argue that this mentor for ibn Fattouma is his father. As in the beginning of the novel, his father mentions Gebel with a sense of awe and mysteriousity. He leaves Qindil’s interpretation completely open and allows him to dream and imagine what that Land may be—what utopia might feel like… home. This feeling is first created in the beginning of the novel by his father and mentor and is the driving force for our hero’s journey., Halba, Aman, and Ghuroub until he finally reaches the Land of Gebel.
