He is deputy chief editor of the Radio and Televisionmagazine in Cairo. Tareq Imam is an Egyptian novelist and journalist, born in 1977.
The young director’s face withered, as if she were his own reflection, and she gradually transformed into a ghost, as she waited for that horrifying moment when she would see him alone in the mirror. It went on growing larger and larger until, after a while, it almost replaced her. His power was unrealized, even though it was undeniably vivid. This man, who had no real existence in the world, had such a strong visual presence that he could never be removed from his place. And just like a dream, this fear never stopped crawling along, until it devoured wonder and disbelief.Īnd so Nude came to realize early on that she didn’t fear the things that couldn’t be believed, and that horror- real horror, fatal horror-lay in the things she witnessed in her everyday life. Her fear of losing him magnified and, with the passing of days, it became even monstrous. The two of them had grown up together: she in reality, and he behind the border of glass. She had witnessed his childhood, and now she saw him as an adult, and she expected to watch him grow into an old man, even though she assumed she would die before him. Or, to be more accurate, he had now become a man for when he appeared before her the first time, he was still a kid, just like she’d been back then. This cruel apparition invaded her most private moments, as when she was turning over naked in bed, or when she sat half-nude on the toilet stall in a mall bathroom. That reflection was intensely concrete for a person who had never existed, at least in the reality where Nude abided by its laws. Suddenly, she was surprised to see the mirror’s surface reflecting another body.Įver since that day, she had surrendered to this mysterious partnership and sacrificed having an individual reflection and just so, the other reflection would never step outside the mirror. This realization came one long-ago day, when she was standing in front of her bedroom mirror, alone and completely naked. When it comes to the documentary filmmaker Nude, she has a problem with mirrors, which see in the following excerpt: An excerpt from the second chapter of The Cairo MaquetteĪt an early stage of her life, Nude realized that she would never have a single reflection in the mirror. Only then does Billiards realize that the eye he found is actually his own. There, he finds graffiti on the wall-a replica of himself drawn by his own hand-but with one eye. He picks it up and starts roaming the streets of Cairo until he reaches the façade of his apartment building.
As for the graffiti artist Billiards, he one day discovers a living eye, lying on the ground.
Uriga, for instance, accidentally killed his father when he was still a child: He pointed his index finger, imagining it a gun, at his father’s forehead and said, “Boom!” Although they were playing a game, it became deadly real, as Uriga’s index finger was in fact a gun. Tareq Imam’s The Cairo Maquette, shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction, explores the lives of three main characters: Uriga, Nude, and Billiards.Įach of the three opening chapters recounts a personal incident that relates to each of these three characters.
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