The End

The end

Some of the novel's more remarkable pages describe the boy's own unwitting transformation into a master of deceit, although he sensed hypocrisy and inequality in his dealings with Saul who represented the paradox of the rich in his Fabian ideals which nowadays is dubbed as compassionate conservatism " If Saul had paid so little for his photographs, how could he possibly believe in a commune of happiness and purity ? If, as Saul said, wealth belonged legitimately to the poor, then why not hand his shop over to them, or open his residence to the downtrodden and impoverished? Ismail believed his logic and comparisons were sound. He learned that by using the appropriate phrases and the right gestures and facial expressions he could seem one of the rich. In short, he could become someone else. Ismail's initial conclusions awakened his predatory instinct; he wanted the best of life without having to work for it. One morning Saul walked into the shop and wept over the fate of a hero in a novel he had read the night before. Bewildered, Ismail imitated him, trying to imagine what it would be like to see the world with Saul's eyes. Mime was the best way of turning the tables on his benefactor and becoming a better master to deceit. The moment Abdel Rahman Sartre returned from Paris and set up shop in the coffee houses of Al-Sadriyah, Ismail teamed up with him and became his "de Beauvoir". He affirmed what Saul had known all along : humanity would sacrifice nothing except for monetary gain. Four years later, Ismail was to start an affair with Abdel Rahman's wife. Nausea permeated all Abdel Rahman's activities: sex, voraciously eating a tender steak and washing it down with red wine, smoking expensive cigarettes, even looking at a pair of patent leather shoes - all these things made him nauseous. Nausea became permanent and contagious. Dalal Masabni's night club, where he lovingly hung the portrait of his Existential idol and had his reserved "philosopher's table" exuded over-emotional nausea. Analysing Abdel Rahman's sexual preferences, the narrator applies a somewhat unconvincing Freudian text-book interpretation and traces a genuine nausea back to the time in Abdel Rahman's childhood when he sneaked in on his parents having sex. The exaggerated odour and the moaning of his mother shocked and nauseated him. His whole life was then a violent rejection on the perceived pretension purity of his mother. Filth represented an antidote, a form of purification, a crude and cruel beauty, desolate, uncivilized. In his world of sexual chaos, filth exited him; debauchery was the closest image to himself and symbolized Existential isolation: cheap, enjoyable, illicit, while the deeper loathing for his body was symptomatic of existential sickness. Abdel Rahman Sartre's wealth allowed him to reinvent his pain, his inadequacies, his persona. With groupies living off the largesse of their philosopher king, no one contradicted him even in the simplest matters. This, the narrator maintains in sweeping statement, characterized the entire generation of the 1960s. A difference of opinion implied rejection; it annihilated and humiliated the contender which inevitably resulted in an endless round of insults. So much for discourse. Papa Sartre is a compelling novel because the plot expose the conscious invitation of an identity. The many transformations of Ismail Haddub multiply invented persons. One can argue that Abdel Rahman Sartre's glamorized intellectual stature is pathologically extreme as he nominates himself the look-alike of the original. Abdel Rahman Sartre does not fully embrace the francophone world-he would have been unable to with his linguistic inadequacies-he only embraces one aspect of it and imagines the rest. In other words, the parody is not a total mimesis. His Existentialism, as shallow a version as it may be, legitimizes way of life. Others might also object to the inaccurate depiction of the Arab intellectual scene in such broad superficial lines. Yet groupies that surround acclaimed figures are often lesser immulations[check spelling] of the charismatic figurehead-these days one need go no further than an academic conference to spot them. It is the more important theme of identity that Ali Bader addresses in his fictional biography as he explores its many changing variants adaptability. What eventually shatters the world of Abdel Rahman Sartre a week before his suicide the sensational scandal of the illicit affair between Ismail Haddub and his wife. The true nature of the business deal to write the philosopher's biography is revealed when the tow charlatans Hanna and Nunu Biha attempt to blackmail no other than Ismail Haddub in his new persona as Sadeq Zadeh. After being swindled out of his manuscript and his money, the narrator encounters Nunu Bihar in another guise. Sporting a short hair-cut, loose white shirt covering her ample breasts and tight men's trousers and shoes, with no make-up, she offers him another deal. And Ismail / Sadeq Zadeh emerges in a third manifestation-totally bald and wearing silver -rimmed glasses, his new project being to construct the Structuralist of al-Waziriyah". The team impresarios dream now of creating the "Arab Structuralism" where all men resemble Michel Foucault and all women wear men's trousers with boyish haircuts. We look for-ward to the sequel on madness as social construct.