Traveler Mohamed Al-Makhzangi pours out his life in lines spread across the paths he took, the cities he inhabited, the ports he crossed, the stations he stopped at
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
The traveler pours out his life in lines spread across the paths he took, the cities he inhabited, the ports he crossed, the stations he stopped at, and most importantly: the people he met, who in turn represent added lives. And our traveler I got to know him at the beginning through literary creativity as a talented storyteller, with his own language, eloquent and scientific at the same time, and his wise philosophy, but I see that his achievement in travel literature has benefited from his experience in literature and science together to create for us a unique heritage of his own.
Our traveler, Mohamed Al-Makhzangi, was a young man in his thirties when he received a scholarship to study medicine in the Soviet Union (formerly), but his physical and psychological energy was still full of the spirit of the boy he was in his city of Mansoura in the Nile Delta, Egypt. He did not miss an opportunity to travel around that vast country, from Eastern Europe to the Western Pacific Ocean.
Mohamed Al-Makhzangi, was a young man in his thirties when he received a scholarship to study medicine in the former Soviet Union
However, these were repressed trips that almost killed the joy of adventure due to the atmosphere of a society governed by heavy bureaucracy and a police nature. These were trips that left their fragments in memory, because the most important trip in his early biography was on board a white passenger ship called “Bashkir”, which carried him within a month to most of the ports of the Mediterranean.
With a hundred dollars (as a graduate student), he was able to stay in that luxurious floating hotel between Varna, Piraeus, Istanbul, Naples, Malaga, Marseille, Tangier, Algiers, Tunis, Alexandria, Larnaca, and Latakia.
Al-Makhzangi writes: “Here I learned about my temptation and the focus of my passion in this world, which manifested itself recklessly when I joined the editorial staff of Al-Arabi magazine, and my joining resulted in these journeys that this book includes.”
The book that Mohamed Al-Makhzangi refers to has a main title (South and East) and a sub-title (Travels and Visions). It comes in almost 500 pages, with selected pictures (in black and white). Its pages are distributed among 28 chapters, with inspiring titles such as “Namibia – Africa’s Forgotten Jewel”, “South Africa – What’s Going on in the Head of the Storms?”, “Morocco – The Embrace of Land and Sea”, “Zimbabwe – Where the Rainbow Never Disappears”, “Gori – The Colorful Rock of Groaning!” And so the titles go on as if they were titles of novels or poetry collections.
Apart from the economy and rhetorical abbreviation in the titles, the traveler mostly takes us on a journey that swings us between two worlds
The craft of cultural journalism has bestowed on the pen the blessing of suspense, just as the short story has bestowed on the traveler the value of abbreviation, so that the economical words are transformed into explanatory and revealing titles, exciting to read and expressive of the writer’s innermost feelings and the content of the writing.
Apart from the economy and rhetorical abbreviation in the titles, the traveler mostly takes us on a journey that swings us between two worlds, different, compatible or contradictory: “The spaciousness of the place… the ports of time”, the gift of rain, the sorrow of people”, “the feat of people and stone”, “All this beauty, all this violence”, “A port searching for a port”, the enchantress of the ocean… threatened by the two suspenseful advertisements of an adventure film, pushing the reader’s panoramic view to anticipate the texts, anticipate them, and hope for visual pleasure and spiritual enjoyment, piling up in one giant paragraph the features of the secret of exploration or the journey, without revealing them; this is the role of texts.
“Transparent bays for hordes of flamingos, and wilderness for flocks of free gazelles, deserts from which tropical palm oases emerge, and forests with red soil that touches the clouds, cities that preserve the architecture of the nineteenth century European, and sidewalks teeming with sculptures of ivory and African ebony, a black government with ministers Eggs, a democratic model that respects diversity, a deep-rooted heritage of racial oppression, and a good tendency to transcend the past towards a present that does not know discrimination, a newborn university that speaks the language of the age, and students who have not forgotten their African roots. These are some of the faces of Namibia that resemble a jewel in which a hundred surfaces and surfaces shine, but it is a forgotten jewel of a forgotten continent, forgotten by us who are accustomed to our seasons of migration being towards the north and the abysses of our hearts towards the north, while the friendly south abounds with a thousand joys and delights for the sight and insights, and a thousand of warm shy calls. And the Arab answered the call, despite the low voice and the shyness of the caller.”
In his travels, Mohamed Al-Makhzangi always summons investigative sense that links the past to the present, interrogates history with geography, and explains the relationship between the popular and the imperial, as in his trip inside the Chinese capital:
“We had an appointment with Chinese food at the “Listen to the Whistle” restaurant in the heart of the “Summer Palace”. It was as if we were preparing for the meal with introductions of the old and new Chinese creativity to taste the philosophy of this food with its delicious taste and the elegance of its presentation and consumption. On the way, we saw the peasant houses in the villages located on the outskirts of Beijing, small and modest, as if to highlight the majesty of the walls of the nearby palace. When we turned to enter the palace from its northern gate, my attention was drawn to vast square and rectangular spaces covered with water. I realized that these water spaces were what caught my attention and raised my questions as we flew before landing in Beijing. At the time, I thought that they were rice fields covered with water in the seedling stage, but it was not the time for “rice seedlings”. I ruled out that they were swimming pools or water storage tanks, of course, due to their striking abundance, which is an atmospheric feature that I had not seen the likes of in any country whose skies we had flown before. Our companion, Guang, explained: These are fish ponds. Beijing, far from the sea and deprived of natural rivers, has compensated for itself by digging several artificial rivers lining the banks on the outskirts of the city, and has created giant fish ponds that are almost complete lakes. In order for fishing enthusiasts to practice what they want, they are allowed to fish from these ponds in return for a certain fee that they pay. This Chinese, popular, modern solution finds its objective, ancient, imperial equivalent dating back to the eighteenth century in the “Summer Palace” through whose northern gate we passed.
In his travels, Mohamed Al-Makhzangi always summons investigative sense that links the past to the present, interrogates history with geography
The palace, which consists of a series of imperial buildings amidst gardens, extends over a huge lake called Lake Kunming, which was dug by a hundred thousand people, in addition to entire corps of imperial naval personnel.
Interestingly, the buildings of this palace were rebuilt in 1888 by order of Empress Sissi, using what had been allocated in the imperial budget to build a modern navy. Sissi’s behavior is now described as foolish, but what remained of the “modern navy” compared to what remained of stunningly beautiful architecture, gardens that enriched the soul, and a lake that delighted the eyes and was sailed by colorful boats of lovers and children frolicking in other boats in the color of orange and twilight and in the shape of laughing dragons. It is true that the Empress, as a woman, went too far in splendor, as she built a marble ship called the “Stone Boat” at the edge of the lake and placed giant mirrors at the corners of the lake that filled the lake and the surroundings with brilliance. However, she did not neglect the throne room and the hall of longevity. The towers that were destroyed by the Anglo-French forces and restored, and the Buddhist Temple of the Sea of Wisdom. Perhaps the thing that the present will remain indebted to the past, to the obsession of the Empress, is that “long corridor” on the northern bank of the lake, as the colored wooden ceiling of this 700-meter-long marble corridor tells the colorful drawings on its ceiling all the fairy tales of China and the tales of the ancestors, and the adults still take the hands of the children, fathers and sons, or students and teachers, and you see them in the “long corridor” walking slowly with their faces towards the colored ceiling. They contemplate the drawings and listen to the stories they represent. Doesn’t Sissi’s extravagant folly deserve some gratitude? Yes. ”
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However, the unique narrative sense of the short story writer never leaves the imagination, because our traveling writer establishes the scene of his journey by evoking a local character whom he gives the heroine of his journey, or his story or his short novel. This character will be the heroine of one or more scenes, moved by the writer as a great director moves his puppet on the stage of the place, so it says what he wants to say, and narrates what he wants to narrate, whether the character is a woman or a man, and whether the hero is a boy or an old man.
Anthem of Creativity and Simplicity
In the journey entitled “China – Anthem of Creativity and Simplicity”, our heroine is the singer “Ten Bi Chen”, the beautiful star who stopped singing professionally while she was at the peak of her youth and glory. Because she got married:
“I was surprised by a reason like this that would prompt a singing star to retire. I learned that she “devoted herself to her home” but sometimes sings as a volunteer to collect donations for the afflicted, whether they were in China or abroad. Victims of an earthquake, flood or fire. I don’t know why I saw in that personal behavior, of that singer with a delicate face and voice, a consistency with Chinese spiritual and cultural data that seemed distant, in the philosophy of Taoism that the Chinese adopted as a religion since the sixth century BC until Emperor Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, banned it, and it says that the being is purely subjective and whoever obeys it is emancipated towards the Tao (the path and the ultimate power), and in the beliefs of ancestor reverence that originated in the Bronze Age and the Chang era and are still valid in the folds of contemporary China – despite everything – and in it a woman – when she marries – reveres her husband’s grandfather. And in Buddhism – the dominant Chinese religion – which recommends asceticism and enlightenment, and in the moral code of Confucius that the “Cultural Revolution” fought and was unable to uproot, and he says among his commandments “If the house is built on a sound foundation, the world is safe and peaceful” and by that he meant respect for family hierarchy and family life. Thus, he takes from the biography of his heroine what he uses to establish social life in China, linking the present to history, and the material to the spiritual and philosophical.
Between the River and the Bay
In Poland, we meet another narrative hero, carefully chosen by the travel writer, namely “Sebastim… a handsome boy, about twelve, bold with delicacy and kindness, and surprisingly sweetly tame, whom we met on his bicycle while we were lost in the small winding streets of the new port district “Novi Port” in “Gdańsk”. We were looking for the ferry station that crosses the Motława River heading towards the Gdańsk Bay, meaning that spot on the other bank, between the river and the bay that opens onto the Baltic Sea. From Sebastim’s movement in the travel text, we will approach the objective equivalent of the traveler; because Sebastim, the handsome, tame, delicate Sebastim, was standing on his bicycle in the shade of one of the old, green-laden walls, and his simple, clear English was quite enough, saving me the trouble of talking to people in sign language and saving me from the squinting looks when I had to speak Russian, which many Poles understand and hate to speak. The boy described the way to the ferry station, and we had hardly gone far along the road that skirted the beach and was shaded by wild chestnut and poplar trees when we heard the ringing of little voices behind us: “Click tin tin. ”Click Tin Tin” Sebastim was following us, the colored beads (strung) in the spokes of his bicycle wheels, going up and down with the rotation of the wheels, making this cheerful little tune. The boy did not leave us, and continued to walk slowly with his bicycle next to us, going ahead of us to make sure that our path was correct from the sailors and fishermen on the beach that we walked parallel to, and he would return to reassure us of the correctness of our endeavor. We would talk to him and he would talk to us, and his talk was sweet and sometimes heart-wrenching: – “What is your father’s profession, Sebastim?” – “I have no father. He left my mother and went away when I was very young. My mother raises me and my sister, and she works as a computer programmer.”
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There was no dejection or melancholy in his talk. But I noticed a small nervous twitch in his beautiful, pure face. He was studying at a language school and, surprisingly, he was heading towards specializing in cooking. He attended practical lessons in the restaurants of Gdansk and sometimes on board passenger ships anchored in the port. Sebastim did not leave us until the ferry came, and the funny thing was that he entrusted us to a friend he had met at the dock. The new boy explained the geography of the place to us, pointing to the shipyard on the eastern side where the solidarity movement had begun. He said proudly that his father had worked with Lech Walesa and that he knew him personally, having once come to their house for dinner. We bid farewell to little Sebastim with emotion and he kept waving to us as we walked away until he became a distant point… a point of pure life that had a small dream… to grow up and work as a cook on a ship sailing God’s vast and beautiful world. Now he would eagerly await the arrival of a message in his name from a distant land… from people he had met once in the river of life and who were heading towards the other shore searching for the spot from which the fire that was about to devour humanity and burn God’s good world had begun, more than half a century ago.
Mamado Al-Makhzangi!
Thus, by choosing a local character, the traveler will be able to take us from the particular to the general, and from the biography of his hero to the biography of the nation of the place as a whole, which was clearly evident in his journey to Senegal, and specifically to Goré, where he reveals the secret in this diagnostic treatment:
“Allow me to divide before you into two, for I have undertaken this journey emotionally as two persons, so that I may dive – even a little – into its forgotten and painful depths. The first person is who I am, with my usual name as an explorer. The second person is a black Negro, whom I called – after a slight distortion of my name – (Mamado), perhaps to enhance my embodiment of a black African entity – a color as beautiful as the night – who comes from three centuries away to accompany me in this exploration with his story, a journey that calls for another, a time that sinks into a distant time, a present that opens up to a past, and a past that I think opens up to some of the mysteries of our days, and our future as well. I promise you one thing, which is to be precise, so I do not allow Mamado’s story to be except by drawing from documented historical facts that I summon in a manner that is almost literal, so that I may hear you this groan. And I break the rule and specify my most important sources for the story of Mamado in the text, not the footnotes. They are (Black African World) by Joseph Ki-Zerbo, translated by Youssef Shalab Al-Sham, (Slavery) by Maurice Langley translated by Elias Marqus, and (Goury) by Jean Claude Blanchard in English.
By choosing a local character, the traveler will be able to take us from the particular to the general, and from the biography of his hero to the biography of the nation of the place as a whole
Thus, what was a sign in many surveys to summon a hero and investigate facts, became a landmark, especially as we tell a painful story about Goré (Goury in English) about the suffering of slaves who would be shipped across the Atlantic after being stamped with hot iron seals bearing the logos of the merchant owners:
“The screams were rising, slaughtered and muffled, while the burning skin smoked under the glow of the seals on the chests, buttocks, breasts and arms. Carrying until death marks that would not disappear except in the graves of the distant black diaspora in the American continent behind the waves and storms of the sea of darkness.”
Two Trips to the Emirates
In this travelogue, we conclude with two trips to the United Arab Emirates, the first entitled “Sir Bani Yas… The Island of Wisdom”, and the second entitled “Flying in a Green Horizon”.
Al-Makhzangi writes in the summary of his trip to the Island of Wisdom:
“Caring for the environment is not a (romantic) infatuation for some, but rather it is saving, investment, and a kind of wise future intuition that we should stop at, and indeed all those interested in environmental affairs in the world should stop at, for the experience is worthy of this level of attention, as it offers tangible hope to ward off the horror of desertification that frightens humanity that never stops multiplying. For this reason, I suggest that the island be a global station for environmental studies, where a center for environmental creativity is established, whether this creativity is science or art, that gives the worthy the opportunity to devote themselves to creativity in the embrace of this island, and presents a prize for environmental creativity in literature and art, a branch that seems to be nascent on the global level, and seems almost nonexistent on the level of Arab creativity. … I was filled with emotion as I left the island, and as our flying boat drifted away over the waves of the Gulf, the island sank into the depths of the horizon, appearing like a dreamy specter, or rather like a distant dream, a dream that contains much wisdom for those who contemplate its aspects. For he who learns to be kind to plants, gentle to animals, and compassionate to birds, must be kind, gentle, and compassionate to man and the land on which man walks, and then to his society. This is how I understand the feat of “Sir Bani Yas”… a feat that deserves a grand prize from the World Peace Prizes. Peace is no longer just peace between humans and humans, but it is essentially a necessary axiom between humans and the earth.”
Thus, Mohamed Al-Makhzangi’s journeys go south and east, forward-looking, founded on optimism in the power of science and humanity, and rationality fueled by reading history. We always find his letters between sound and echo, in eloquent dualities that call for contemplation, reflection and action, and the pursuit of similar journeys to discover more, for man does not only discover places, but he rediscovers himself, and the path is made by walking.
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Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is a renowned Egyptian poet, journalist, novelist, travelogue writer and translator. He is author of around three dozen books and Editor-in-Chief of Silk Road Literature Series.