The Nobel 'Owner' of Cairo
The Day the Leader Was Killed, a work by the Egyptian novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Naguib Mahfouz, is now available in Indonesia. He is a writer whose previous works were censored by his own country and people. The following are excerpts from a special interview by TEMPO’s reporter with Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt.
September 25, 2000
One Friday afternoon in Cairo, October 14, 1994, an 82-year-old man stepped outside his apartment. Carrying a cane and wearing dark glasses, he strolled up and down the pavement. As usual, he was waiting for his veterinarian friend, Fathi Hashem, to pick him up. Every Friday, Fathi would go with him to relax at the Café Kashr Al Nil, on the banks of the River Nile in Cairo.
For close on 30 years he always went there on Fridays. Toget
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