The story is set in a distant future Egypt, after modern civilisation as we known it has collapsed in a cataclysmic nuclear war over oil and other scarce resources. The climate is completely different. It’s cold, even the daytime. Egypt is shrouded in clouds, leftovers of a nuclear winter. The water of the mighty river Nile is tepid and yellowed now. The only safe heaven, in the North, is the aptly named city of Malaaz. A walled-in Medieval city ruled by the warrior class, the so-called Hunters, people who live off of the civilian population – protection money, forced labour in the mines and fields and rock quarries, exploiting the outlying villages.
Everyone in this society knows his or her place. The job of women is to breed, cook and clean. The blacksmiths have their own caste. The foragers looking for scrap metal in the ruins of Cairo have their own caste. Even the ‘outcasts’, leaving beyond civilisation in the hills, have a caste. But things were not always so. The Hunters, when they first emerged after the collapse, were noble warriors concerned with saving lives and repopulating the villages and cities, before the reign of their leader Rakin. Amorality is the rule of his city. Prostitution is rife, people eat anything with four legs – dog meat is just as welcome as goat meat – and people no longer pray and fast and given thanks to an Almighty God.
Enter the hero, Qasim, a disgruntled youth who – despite his poverty – can read and write. He knows things weren’t always this way and busies himself ignoring people’s feeble lives, through his inventions. He’s an expert mechanic and self-taught metallurgist. His only friend, Uways, is the local blacksmith, and puts up with Qasim’s eccentricities. He’s also the only one who consoles him whenever he gets roughed up for defying the Hunters. Qasim’s grandfather is practically the only Muslim there, praying and reminding Qasim of the importance of faith. As if things weren’t bad enough, Qasim is going to have to mend bridges with the Hunters as a new threat emerges on the horizon. The arrogant boy prince Seya from the rival city of Abydos, from the South where the old gods of ancient Egypt have been dusted off and reign supreme once again. He’s hell-bent on conquest and murders his own father, the mini-Pharaoh that he is, on this quest for power and glory.
Malaaz is a treat. It’s quite fast paced and doesn’t bog itself down in unnecessary details. This gives it a youthful flavour, especially compared to the usual narrative style prevalent among Arabic authors, with excess linguistic flourishes at the expense of pacing, atmosphere and mood. The opening chapter, “The Lone Wolf”, tells you everything you need to know about the daily life of the Northern city and the kind of inverted ecological system Egypt has found itself in. But it’s not just the geography of Qasim’s world that is mapped out in bits and pieces. It’s the themes and characters as well.
Lone wolf or no, it’s only when Qasim joins the Outcasts that he can save Malaaz from the impending threat. Working with the people was a persistent them in Naguib Mahfouz’s harafish epic, and you can guess from early on that the dastardly Hunters are modelled on the Mamluks.
Note also that you have a girl warrior, Jihad, the daughter of the leader of the outcasts who saves Qasim’s life at one point – and from a wolf no less. The citizen of Abydos also worship a goddess of war and the war machine prince Seya forges is also called Rabat Al-Harb (the war machiness). Mr Al-Mahdi is clearly giving proactive roles to women here instead of consigning them to support roles. The names have a religious significance too since the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) was called Abu Qasim and the hero’s grandfather is called Mahmoud, so Islam still lives in these desperate times. Reviving religion is a must with the revival of the old technologies, since science can be used for good or evil. Qasim uses a nuclear fuel cell to power his machines and has to battle a giant black serpent to find it, a ‘dark’ reminder of the evil ambitions that destroyed the world.
We tend to think of post-apocalyptic novels as the exclusive preserve of the modern world. We tend to think of science fiction in general as the exclusive preserve of the modern world. Not so, says Egypt’s youthful fantasy, SF author Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi. If anything, Aabs are better at post-apocalyse, since they’re living closer to the history that is resurrected in these future worlds – Mamluks, city-states, caste systems – and closer to apocalypse at the same time!