NAPHTALENE A NOVEL OF BAGHDAD ALIA MAMDOUH
Translated by Peter Theroux
FOREWORD BY HÉLÈNE CIXOUS AFTERWORD BY F. A. HAIDAR Published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406, New York, NY 10016 Paperback published in 2006 by the Feminist Press Hardcover published in 2006 by the Feminist Press First published in Arabic as Habbat-al-Naphatalin by al-Hay’ah al-Masriah al-Amah li-al-Kitab, Cairo, 1986. Original text © 1986 by Alia Mamdouh Translation © 1986 by Peter Theroux Foreword © 2005 by Hélène Cixous Afterword © 2005 by F.A. Haidar All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Mamdauoh, ‘aAliyah. [oHabbaat al-naftaalain. English] Naphtalene : a novel of Baghdad / Alia Mamdouh ; translated by Peter Theroux. p. cm. I Theroux, Peter. II. title PJ7846.A543H3313 2005 892.7’36—dc22 2005000682 eISBN 978-155861-712-4 This publication was made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
12. Chapter Six 13. Chapter Seven 14. Chapter Eight 15. Chapter Nine 16. Chapter Ten 17. Chapter Eleven 18. Chapter Twelve 19. Chapter Thirteen 20. Chapter Fourteen 21. Chapter Fifteen 22. Chapter Sixteen 23. Afterword 24. About the Author 25. About the Feminist Press 26. Also Available from the Feminist Press NAPHTALENE Naphtalene repels moths. But this Naphtalene preserves the remnants, clothing, and memories of two powerful sites of childhood: a little girl and the great city of Baghdad. And this Naphtalene also recalls its chemical origins, its relationship to gasoline and fire, and its links to perfumes, dyes, and odors. This Naphtalene causes the closet in which it is kept and from where it keeps watch to erupt in flaming sentences. What Naphtalene protects is destruction, dislocation, and the pain of love and hate. Naphtalene sings life at its most intense; for here the singer of life’s opera is the most poetic being in the world: a child, and what is more—a child half-boy, half-girl. Alia Mamdouh’s stunning gesture is to have turned over the keys of the narrative to the violent sensitivities and superior intelligence of childhood. Seen by the untamed, wild, immediate, and uncalculating eyes of a youth, the world appears in monstrous forms, in all its naked extravagances and cruelties, and making no excuses. All the actors are superhuman characters, surging forth from the terraces and public baths of the neighborhood to enter into eternity, smoking and stinking. Naphtalene is an extraordinary book about Beginnings, a kind of Bildungsroman of Baghdad (a narrative which assembles all the fragments of a prophetic childhood, and which, in remembering the primary elements of subjective life, proposes a vision of the world and an art form). The expression “Bildung,” which speaks of genesis, of formation, and of education, is not, however, sufficient for Naphtalene—for here genesis is also chaos, and apprenticeship is constantly turned upside down, while a wind of revolt blows, shatters, and scatters each scene at the very moment it begins to crystallize. Naphtalene is volcanic; the narration and its narrator are perpetually exploding. Neither family structure, nor institution, nor streets, nor feelings—nothing at all—can resist the fireworks of the naphtha named Huda—genial Huda, devil of society, of the City, and of the novel—a trail of gunpowder. She gives 
