Dr. Hanan Alghafari Associate Professor of English and Comparative Studies University of Leeds / England Currently teaching at Damascus University/ Department of English Language andLiterature Email: alghafari.hanan7@gmail.com

Salmawy 's Theatre of the Absurd THE REALISTIC AND THE FANTASTIC

Mohammad Salmawy

Ionesco: "I can quite readily conceive a theatre without an audience."Salmawy: "I do not believe Ionesco."1

In a face-to-face meeting, Salmawy's genial personality is immediatelyrevealed. Witty, quick at repartee, humorous at times, courteous, highlyarticulate and eloquent, Salmawy by no means falls in line with the image of anutter cosmic nihilist of the Absurd, who is obsessed with the threat of thenothingness of death. Even when Salmawy defines death, he seems to defynihilism as he contentedly states that to him "death means immortality."2 Howcomes it then that Salmawy is a major dramatist of the Theatre of the Absurd inEgypt, the only Egyptian writer who has expressly captured some of the elusivefeatures of the Absurd? This is the question which, I hope, will become clearby the end of the chapter.

Various conditions shaped the thinking and literary output of MohammadSalmawy. Although he belongs to an aristocratic family, his work is suffusedwith his feeling for other classes. And although his class suffered greatlosses through the Revolution of July 1952 in Egypt, primarily after theimplementation of the Agrarian Reform Legislation which affected him in person,and also through Nationalization, yet Salmawy has always maintained his beliefin Nasserism as an ideology and a conduct.3 If Idris suffered from censorshipbecause of his opposition to Nasser, Salmawy had a similar experience withcensorship, but for being a Nasser advocate during the time of Al-Sadat. He

was, therefore, transferred or dismissed from his work as a journalistthroughout the years 1973, 1977 and 1981.4

Nasserism manifests itself in the thinking of Salmawy who has alwaysexpressed his belief that salvation can only be achieved by the ordinarypeople, the masses who, perhaps, do not understand politics, but who speak itand live it every day. Salmawy also thinks that Egyptian society has noconfidence in politicians, and that people are discovering forever that a manof politics is no more than a trader or a speculator who is after theattainment of his self-interests. And it is only when people sense thesincerity of a ruler that they can give wholeheartedly, Salmawy concludes.5Salmawy's work as a whole does express a view of Nasserist thinking withoutbeing direct or didactic. A reference to Arab Nationalism, Arab Unity and Arabidentity occasionally crops up in his work. And in some of his plays, there isa yearning for the Nasserist era.6

We catch another intimate glimpse of Salmawy's personality through hisrecollections of the era of Al-Sadat, which became a target for his attack onmore than one occasion. When Al-Sadat came to power, Salmawy felt frustratedand embittered by the fact that the principles and values of the 1952Revolution had been entirely violated. This was the reason why, after writinghis play I Shall Tell You All in 1967, he suddenly gave up writing, along with hiswork as a teacher of English literature at Cairo University, and moved to workas a journalist on Egypt's main national newspaper - Al-Ahram weekly - in 1970. Hesays: "I found that teaching English literature in Egypt, with the bulk ofproblems in society, is a kind of luxury."7 Salmawy became involved inpolitical activities and was consequently arrested in 1977. He took up writingagain at the beginning of the eighties and after the death of Al-Sadat; onlythen did the battle end for Salmawy who, between 1967 and 1980, was fightingeverything that al-Sadat's era stood for. Among the many faults that he foundwith this era, he was particularly critical of the oppressed state of thetheatre for which he blamed the government:

During the seventies, the government was responsible for whathappened to the Egyptian theatre. The closure of theatres and thepressure which censorship exerted upon intellectuals caused a mood offrustration, which led some - such as Alfred Faraj - to emigrate, anddrove others to madness or death, as in the case of Najib Sarour andMahmoud Diyab.8

Salmawy firmly believed that theatrical degeneration reflected the generalsocial and political conditions of the country. But he was happy to state thatthe theatre recovered in the eighties, particularly because, along with manyfundamental changes, "the Arab identity of Egypt which some have tried totrifle with was reinforced". And

I particularly stress the question of identity because of itsimportance to art. Ultimately art is a reflection and an expressionof some sort of identity - if one loses one's identity, one won't becapable of artistic creation. And with the recovery of this identity,many basics in the political and cultural life of Egypt were alsoredeemed - one can mention here the interest in and encouragement oftheatres.9

Salmawy describes what he sees as three distinct historical periods in thecultural and political life of Egypt in the latter half of this century: thesixties which he considers as an era of formation; the seventies, one ofchallenge to the values installed throughout the sixties; and, as a result offormation and challenge, a new era characterized by genuine and exuberantproduction emerges in the eighties.10 However Salmawy confirms that emotionally"I belong to the generation that grew up under the 23rd July 1952 Revolution."11

Besides being a dramatist, Salmawy is a short-story writer, and as such heturns to good use the quality of condensation characteristic of dramaticwriting. He has also written twelve books on political affairs, journalism andliterature, including The Foreign Editor (1986), and Origins of British Socialism (1987).His dramatic output is all written in colloquial Egyptian, with the exceptionof one play in English, and two plays written in classical Arabic: Salome 1 andSalome 2. He told me in his sarcastic way, "I have spent years saying that thecolloquial is the only valid and credible language for modern drama until Ifound myself writing two plays in the classical."12 He justifies this lapse fromhis principle by the historical nature of his subject-matter, whichnecessitated a more classical form of language. (However, in his play The Flowerand the Chain he goes back to the colloquial.) Although the Salome plays draw on ahistorical theme or a religious myth frequently dealt with, Salome becomes, inSalmawy's work, a symbol for the conflict between the Arabs and Zionism13.Indeed, the symbolism was so obvious that the Israeli Embassy in Cairoprotested against producing the play.14 Salmawy has also admitted to this:

In Salome, I went beyond those frequent historical, religious andromantic dimensions and presented a conflict of a different kind, andone which reflects the contemporary reality of the Arab World in itsstruggle with Zionism - this historically reactionary ideology whichhas been trying to obstruct our dreams of development and freedom andto impede our attempt to achieve an Arabic Unity.15

What Salmawy did in Salome is most intimately related to the essence of hiswhole work and it recapitulates his general view of the function of a literarywork which, he believes, must emerge from the present reality and draw oncontemporary issues even when it is set in the past:

I do not think that anybody can write a historical play as such. Itis for the historian to write about history but when the playwrightwrites, whether he is writing about a historical incident or apresent-day one, he has his eyes mainly on reality.16

Although Salmawy tends to speak at great length about his own work, cluesto his intentions can best be found in his plays. The moral values of his ageand society, with an emphasis on inevitable suffering, remain a central themeof Salmawy's drama. Approaches to this theme are of a variety of kinds, notall fitting the description "tragic" as might be expected, but pertaining inmany cases to the other extreme, to comedy - extended, furthermore, quite oftento its limits in the form of farce. The plays which exemplify Salmawy'sAbsurdist methods and which will be dealt with in what follows are: I Shall Tell YouAll (1967), Come Back Tomorrow (1983) and Next in Line (1983) (two one-act plays),Two Down the Drain (1987) and Murderer At Large (1986). A synopsis of each play willserve as a preliminary clarification of Salmawy's work.

I Shall Tell You All takes place in a desert abounding with desiccated trees andplants, and bare rocks. When the play starts, no one is seen on stage for afew seconds and suddenly a noise, as of an old man laughing, lengthily andscornfully, is heard from backstage. An old hunch-backed woman and a ten-year-old child enter. "The old woman looks nineteen hundred and sixty-seven years old" - the yearthe play was written. She carries with her an old bag containing some fruitsand coloured ribbons with which she will decorate a lectern. The child and theold woman wait for Lazarus throughout the whole play. When the old womanfinally rests in her coffin, reassured that Lazarus has come, he turns out to

be a shaggy old beggar who holds hands with the child while both go skippinground the coffin. They leave the stage skipping, and a bottle of wine is leftsitting on the coffin.

Come Back Tomorrow deals with a young graduate who, going to a governmentalestablishment to get some papers stamped, is shocked by the ill-treatment andthe negligence he suffers at the hands of the employees. They not only declineto stamp his papers for him but proceed to interfere with his personal life andquestion him about the reasons behind his wish to get his papers stamped andthus be able to travel and work abroad. The employees' cruelty culminates inthe brutal action whereby they strip the young man naked and stamp his back andbody with a gigantic seal till he dies.

In Next in Line, the curtain rises displaying a crowd of people standing in aqueue which supposedly extends backstage and beyond, for we are told that thenumber of the people waiting in line exceeds a million. The characters whom wesee on stage do nothing but wait for some unknown purpose. The play ends withpeople still waiting while the queue does not advance at all.

Two Down the Drain tells the story of two young people, a man and a woman,who fall down an open manhole and find themselves in a sewage cistern. Thefarcical and nightmarish experiences that the action generates lead to thecouple, having got married, retiring for good in their new place which theyhave come to consider as warmer and more secure than the outside world.

Murderer At Large starts with the imprisonment of a young man on theaccusation of killing - the killing of whom? he does not know, nor do we knoweither. Having been subjected to mental torture by the court's unbearableinsistence on driving him to admit the crime, he suddenly and unexpectedly(being the naive person he is) bursts out with brave criticism of the horriblepolitical practices of the regime. Unknowingly the experience he undergoestransforms him into a politically aware rebel who, after being released,decides to undertake the task of capturing the killer outside the prison.

I Shall Tell You All (1967) establishes Salmawy's absurdist attitude early in hiswriting career.17 The title of the play is a tribute to Eliot from whose "TheLove Song of J.Alfred Prufrock" it is quoted: " 'I am Lazarus come from thedead/ Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'."18 In the play, we get

intimations of the atmospheric dimensions of Eliot's poem in which Prufrock,the anti-hero, symbolizes the alienation of modern man perishing of hunger forsome sort of belief that can give his life a meaning. Many of the themes thatEliot grappled with in this poem, or for that matter in The Waste Land, crop upin Salmawy's play. The vision of metaphysical despair, the persistent sense ofaimlessness, the ghastly futility that swallows everything around, all hauntthe sterile and gloomy setting of the play. Thus, in the title, Salmawy hascaught a glimpse of the Absurd which shaped not only his play but also thedirection his life was taking when he wrote it. The title can, therefore, beused as a springboard for the exploration of deeper realms of the Absurd.

The distinctive feature of this play is that it is written in English, andit draws upon a Western/Christian tradition.19 Like his later plays, itpossesses originality of tone and treatment, but in this case the passionateassertions are mainly blasphemous; religious references certainly take on asacrilegious character in almost all instances, where they feature in thisplay. Salmawy's use of English/Christian tradition is not only the result ofhis familiarity with and fondness for English language and literature (which hestudied in England),20 but perhaps also arises from a wise desire on his part tohide the blasphemy running through the whole play, which could certainly beoffensive to the feelings of the religious community in which Salmawy lives.Being written in English, the play was made accessible only to a smallaudience; it was presented in the English language at the American Universityin Cairo.21

The use of English for the Biblical references contains a greaterindirectness of statement than does the use of Arabic for qur'anic references,which will, in such a case, be more comprehended by and accessible to thewidest sectors of society. In other words, had Salmawy made qur'anicreferences in Arabic, they would have deeply shocked an Arab-speaking audience.The use of English also makes the play less accessible to the Arab Christianswho, like their Muslim compatriots, view religion with reverence and awe.Hutchins rightly comments:

The use of English for I Shall Tell You All was presumably in part theresult of a youthful fascination with the English language and itsfolklore. The author's refusal to create an Arabic version of theplay, however, makes it clear that it was also a pragmatic decision.

In Arabic the references would need to be qur'anic. The play'srejection of taqlid would then be too clear for comfort.22

In an interview with Salmawy in his office in Cairo, on 26 December 1994,the author told me that if there was a decision on his part to protect hisintention behind the English language, he was not consciously aware of it. Inexplaining why he did not translate it into Arabic he said it would have been avery difficult task since what was needed was not just a translation but anequivalent to the English nursery rhymes which he was not sure was possible.

To understand how irreverence could so easily inflame the feelings of anArab community, one need only think of Ala Hamed's book entitled A Space in the Mindof a Man. The writer of the book was severely attacked and imprisoned becausehis book was considered as a call to atheism. Kamal Al-Najmi launched a severeattack on Hamed describing him as "this shallow illiterate writer who turns hishorns directly towards 'the rock' of religion in order to butt it."23 However,atheistical views and arguments did not always stir up such an insultingtreatment when presented by well-known writers within a philosophicalframework. Note for instance Najib Mahfouz's fiction Qashtumur, and IsmailAhmad Adham's book Why am I an Atheist, which was simply answered by the writing ofanother book entitled Why am I a Believer.24 Speaking of censorship and its negativeeffect on Arabic drama, Ali Al-Rai considers the attitude of the religiouscensor as devitalizing as that of the political censor:

Alongside the secular censor comes the religious censor's attitudetowards the writer which usually takes a relentless stance to anysort of theatrical art which attempts to use religious subjects...onthe pretext of preserving the sanctity of religion...The result ofsuch an inflexible attitude would be shutting the religious missionitself out of modern and effective means by which it could presentits case to people, and also depriving all arts, and particularly thedramatic art, of a strong and vital source which, striking roots inthe depth of the Arabic psyche, could contribute to increasing thenumber of theatre-goers and attracting many different types of peoplewho do not take an interest in this beautiful art.25

At this stage, however, and with regard to Salmawy's play, it is necessaryto realize that, even though the Muslim community would be much incensed by adirect critical reference to the qu'ranic verses, their attitude would be more

tolerant to general references concealing blasphemous undertones. Moreover, adenunciation of the institutionalization of religion is not uncommon in theArabic milieu. Yousif Idris, for example, expressly and openly states hisdisagreement with the avowed opinions of Sheikh Sha'arawi (an Islamic religiouspersonality in Egypt), and goes as far as disapproving of "the Muslim Brothers"(a fundamentalist movement) which he regards as unqualified for rule due totheir inexperience in politics. In another context, he objects to "the literalunderstanding of Islamic wording and instead affirms the necessity tounderstand its spirit". Furthermore, "he condemns the Kkumaini regime of Iranas racialist."26

Salmawy's religious emphasis comes out challengingly in his portrayal ofthe image of Lazarus who, in the play, symbolizes the knowledge of the futilitythat encompasses so much of life, the nothingness that awaits man at the end ofthe road, the absence of God. To fill their pointless and monotonous void, theold woman and the child wait for Lazarus in the same way that Vladimir andEstragon wait for Godot, but when Lazarus comes, he turns out to be completelydifferent from the sacred image that the old woman held of him: Lazarus is nomore than an old drunken beggar who, holding hands with the child, goesskipping round the coffin in which the old woman lies, singing "Humpty Dumptysat on a wall/ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall". A dramatization of thedesolate despair felt in a world abandoned by God indicates Salmawy'sAbsurdism, the essence of which has been expounded by Glicksberg:

In the twentieth century man, deprived of God, appears in his truealienated state, suffering extreme despair in the very triumph of hiswilled assertion of autonomy. Once God dies, man is seen as abiological organism whose behavior is represented as an adaptation toenvironment. Though he is a creature of instinct, his metaphysicalcraving gives him no rest. He feels himself to be isolated, astranger in a mysterious, if not hostile, universe.27

The death of God has been a common theme of existential literature and formsthe crux of the theatre of the Absurd.28 The play, therefore, gives expressionto the motif that is at the heart of all Absurdist literature: man'srealization of the emptiness of life when the abyss of death opens up toswallow us all. Few Arab writers have dealt more poignantly with such anexperience of spiritual emptiness than has Salmawy in this play.

I Shall tell You All is a dramatic embodiment of the grievances of a sufferinghumanity too often misled by empty slogans and promises of the hereafter. Theiconoclastic image at the end of the play voices mockery at the disappointmentof the old woman (standing for humanity) who has suddenly and overwhelminglybecome aware that her waiting has been purposeless. Salamawy attempts toincorporate this message within the body of the play in a less subtle mannerwhen he contrasts the nursery rhymes with the biblical commandments. Thecontrast reveals the intense conflict that goes on within the self, itsstruggle to come to grips with ultimate spiritual reality. It also voicesrevolt against fossilized religious conventions. Throughout the whole play,the old woman tries to force her Biblical learning on the child whorebelliously insists on singing his nursery rhymes. The child also rejects theapple the woman offers to him - the apple standing in this case for thescriptural form of knowledge. The nursery rhymes, in contrast to the Biblicalstatements, prove to have more life and value than the inherited religiouscreeds which appear to have lost meaning and prestige as a result of themindless interpretations to which they have repeatedly been subjected. Thisattitude is reflected through the parrot-fashion by which the old woman triesto teach the commandments to the child. To illustrate this gradual interchangeand intermingling of extracts from the Bible with the child's nursery rhymes -the play relying, for this purpose, on the device of intertextuality - it isnecessary to quote at length from the play:

Old Woman: ...(Counts on her fingers - to herself) Thou shalt have no other Godsbefore me. Child: (Moves away singing) Hey diddle diddle-Old Woman: Thou shalt not commit adultery.Child: The cat and the fiddle-Old Woman: Remember the Sabbath day.Child: The cow jumped over the moon. Old Woman: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house.Child: The little dog laughed-Old Woman: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Child: To see much sport.Old Woman: (Finding that she has counted only five fingers) Five? Where are the rest?Child: And the dish ran away with the spoon.Old Woman: Maybe they're just five commandments.Child: Hey diddle diddle-Old Woman: But they've always said...Child: Hey diddle, diddle.

Old Woman: The ten commandments. Ten's the number that sticks in my head.(p.124)

Finally when, under the child's questioning, the old woman becomes confused anduncertain about the commandments, the child takes over the woman's role andbegins reciting them. The scene culminates in the appearance of Lazarus who isdescribed as "bare-footed and [carrying] with him an old bottle of wine and a loaf of bread. He isobviously drunk".(p.127). Apparently the bread and wine symbol here loses itssacred significance as it is reduced in value by its frivolous connection. Atthis stage, the ritualized action, produced by the repetitive nature of thecharacters' exchanges, is pushed to a farcical degree. The ritual employed bySalmawy not only uncovers obsessions in their extremity, turning the effect offarce into something closer to tragedy, but also reinforces the satirical andsarcastic effect that results when the farcical situation emerges out of apotentially religious one. This is why Salmawy subtitles his play "A ReligiousFarce." It becomes apparent that the playwright's intention is to ridiculereligion and reduce it to the worldly status of farce, traditionally definedas: "broad, physical, visual comedy, whose effects are pre-eminently theatricaland intended solely to entertain; comedy which is slapstick, if you like, in amore or less coherently amusing narrative."29 The blend of farce and religionis derisory; farce subverts the religious ritual. So it might be said that IShall Tell You All has a place within the new developments that took place in thefield of tragic farce with the introduction of the Theatre of the Absurd. Itparticularly fits into the domain of farce originated by Arrabal, whoseparticular contribution consists, like that of Salmawy, of the juxtaposition ofmoods, and the combination of tragic farce with ritual, best manifested inArrabal's play L'Architecte et L'Empereur, described by the playwright as "tragicfarce". In the work of both dramatists, farce is of a very dark kind.

The influence of Arrabal makes itself felt in various other ways. Eventhough Salmawy's work does not manifest immediate parallels with that ofArrabal, the two writers are linked by fundamental concepts. The ceremonialpresentation in I Shall Tell You All, the mysteriousness in the evocation of theBible, the nightmarish quality that defies rationalisation, the coffin, and thechild, all recall unmistakably Arrabal's Oraison which is also structured bychildhood and childish games. However, to a much greater degree, Salmawy's playhas a superficial resemblance to Arrabal's The Solemn Communion [La CommunionSolennelle] (1963), which Salmawy says he had not read. This play, which takes

place in a funeral space, involves the dressing of a little girl by hergrandmother, in preparation for her first holy communion, and as sheceremoniously dresses her, she proffers advice on how to become the perfectsubmissive housewife. This intermingles with another scene in which anecrophile slowly undresses in preparation for his "rite". Theinterpenetration of the world of dream with that of reality is keenly felthere, as in Salmawy's play. The communicante actually perceives the two typesof vision - her preparation for her communion and her hallucination of anecrophiliac making love to a dead girl in a coffin - as equally real. Coffinscontaining dead bodies, children being initiated into a "panic" universethrough sacred ceremonies, all are elements that force the spectator to also beinitiated into this panic universe and obliged to live in it for the durationof the play. Another striking similarity between Arrabal and Salmawy emerges aswe note the use of biblical overtones and resonances in most of Arrabal's work,such as the symbol of the city of Tar in Fando and Lis. The same atmospherepresides over their work - an atmosphere of panic and cruelty. The cruelnightmarish world of fantastic spectres terrorizes the characters in theirinnocence.

In my interview with Salmawy he said he was more influenced by Arrabalthan by any of the other Absurdists, (as second to Arrabal he mentionedIonesco, then Jean Genet in his ritualistic aspect), and that he wasparticularly attracted to the naive, innocent world of childhood contrastingstrongly with the adult world of law and order - a contrast which receives anAbsurd rendering in Arrabal's work. Salmawy thinks that Arrabal views the worldthrough the point of view of a child who, in his innocence, may ask his motherquestions that embarrass her and, by his attempt to understand the world, mayunwittingly expose it. "In my play the child reflects such a conception,"30Salmawy concludes. Salmawy has taken from Arrabal the nucleus of ideas fromwhich he later developed his own theatrical syntax. His theatre owes a debt toArrabal not only in its use of language and its reliance on ritual, but also inthe insertion into the action of stylized acts of physical cruelty (which thediscussion of his other plays will show in more detail).

Other influences are strongly felt in Salmawy's work. The type of farcethat unfolds in I Shall Tell You All is not alien to Ionesco's vision in hispresentation of grotesque comedy which sometimes underlines the sense oftragedy. Ionesco explains that he has sometimes called his dramas "tragical

farce", "for, it seems to me, the comical is tragic, and tragedy of man,derisory."31 Moreover, many of the dominant ideas in I Shall Tell You All bear theclear stamp of Beckett. Much of the work draws heavily on the waitingsituation and the child expresses an attitude to life that one tends toassociate with Beckett's boy who presumably brings the message from Godot. Itis interesting to note here that Salmawy had once "rejected a playfulsuggestion to rename his play 'Waiting for Lazarus'."32 The use of the Biblicalreferences is also in keeping with Beckett's various references to the Bible,and Salmawy's employment of the nursery rhymes could be compared with Beckett'suse of the verse about the dog in the kitchen.

Moreover, the image of the tipsy saint and the emergence of the nurseryrhymes as more radiant with truth than the commandments may suggest a Sufiattitude which usually sees heavenly truth and radiance in the humblest andsimplest aspects of life and nature, and according to which God is no more thanan idea of the highest perfection. The image of the intoxicated "Sheikh" isnot alien to the Sufi tradition, as a Sufi usually seeks escape from strictphysical reality through some sort of intoxication or pantheistic rapture inorder to attain some contact with the true essence of the heavenly presence.Classifying into five "orders" the qualities of the Sufis, with respect totheir doctrine and manners, Fani explains:

Another order endeavors to comprehend, to fix and to explain theattributes of God;...by continual mental excitement they produce inthemselves, according to their own phraseology, a state ofintoxication; in the full enjoyment of their liberty, they approachthe Supreme Being, and finally fancy an intimate union with theircreator. These are the mystic Sufis.33

One of the Sufis, Jelal-Eddin El Rumi, says in his verses:" O Moslims! I amintoxicated by love in the world/ I am a believer - an unbeliever - a drunkenmonk". Sufi literature is full of such ironies, all of which are aimed attranscending the normal limits of daily existence. Salmawy's rejection ofinstitutionalized religion also manifests a Sufi attitude:

Transacting as it were directly with the Divine being, the Sufisthrow off the shackles of the positive religion; pious rebels, theyneither fast nor make pilgrimages to the temple of Mecca, nay, theyforget their prayers; for with God there is no other but the

soundless language of the heart. From excess of religion they haveno religion at all. Thus is confirmed the trite saying that"extremes meet."34

In presenting the edifying spectacle of the religious truth-seeker who mustcarry the dialectic of doubt to a nihilistic extreme and thus rise above thelogic demanded by a conventional affirmation of faith, Sufism has caughtglimpses of the epitome of the Absurd. The dilemma of the Absurdist hero, likethat of the Sufi, seems to be a determined and never-ending quest for ultimatemeaning. Like the Sufi, the dramatist of the Absurd can find nothing to affirm.Therefore, when Salmawy derives ideas from Sufi sources, he has not abandonedhis Absurdist role. Hutchins makes the point: "If Sufi's goal was in part topoint towards a truth lying beneath a surface scum of pat phrases, that aim isnot outside the limits of Islam, particularly, not from a Sufi perspective."35

Beyond this point, however, Hutchins's contention that the play "is tied toArabic and Islamic literature and to Egypt", and for that matter his casualremark that the play "may stand for the image of an autocrat who claims to havethe answer or offering" (attempting to link the play with the politicalcircumstances of Egypt), have little support in the play. At base, as seenalready, all the characters are representative of humankind, and the play issymbolical at this level of the human condition in its timeless essence.

As is the case in the dark comedy which shifts the emphasis from theabsurdity of human behaviour to that of the human condition, Salmawy's playfocuses less on the idiosyncrasies of individual type-characters, and more onthe preoccupations of everyman-characters. This explains why the child emergesas both a girl and a boy, while the old woman addresses him/her using differentmale and female Biblical names. The figure of the child is, therefore, notonly of no particular sex but also of no specific individuality. Salmawy'scharacterization is thus ambivalent in that he shows us characters who seem tobe both real and unreal, both life-like and creatures of a dream world.

The distance in time between I Shall Tell You All and the plays of the 80's meansthat Salmawy's techniques have matured, while his vision has entirely changed.Among the many changes that occurred in Salmawy's thinking is, as he admits,the relinquishment of the atheistic outlook. When he wrote I Shall Tell You All,Salmawy was sensitively aware of the traumatic changes in the spiritual climateof the twentieth century, of the decline of religion in the modern age. "As ayoung man I was then fascinated and amazed by many ideas which viewed the world

in terms different from the traditional religious standpoint". However, "awriter's personality and thinking constantly develop and change", Salmawy adds.His characters also grew and matured:

With the passing of years, the child of I Shall Tell You All must have grownup while still facing the society which has been trying to impose itshold on him, and we find ourselves in Come Back Tomorrow (1983) infront of Ahmad - a university graduate.36

At this point, one may rightly pause to ask in what way this new direction inthe thinking of the writer has affected his work. Certainly the realizationthat God does exist must have meant more than the acceptance of a life-sustaining concept. The answer to this question makes itself felt, obtrusivelyor obliquely, in the transformations sustained between I Shall Tell You All and hislater work of the eighties. It invariably emerges in the following three majorways.

T.S. Eliot, who was keenly conscious of the devastating changes in thespirit of the modern age, says: "When religious feeling disappears, the wordsin which men have struggled to express it become meaningless."37 In accordancewith this view, the language of I Shall Tell You All suffered, as we have seen, agreat deal of dissociation in its abrupt and frequent shifting between twocompletely different forms of speech. In his later drama, and even though hislanguage is not entirely free from irrationality, it is deliberately employedby the dramatist (as the following study will show) to serve a pre-meditatedpurpose and is therefore far from being described as meaningless. Thus thewriter's new faith appears to have transformed not only his whole consciousnessbut also the language that is his medium of communication.

Secondly, I Shall Tell You All is characterized by a pessimistic outlook asdepressing as its bleak atmosphere:

Without the presence of God, even if only immanent in the heart ofcreation, without the horizon of the absolute, the dimension of theeternal, the writer beholds a world no longer held together andtransfigured by the sense of the divine. It is changed, alas, into abare, alien, desolate universe of sense data and quantum mechanics.38

Later on, the writer's vision of life on earth was drastically altered. Aradical change occurred in the atmosphere of his new drama - from thebarrenness and gloom of I Shall Tell You All to the sprightliness of his moreoptimistic plays of the eighties. His new certainty has changed the way heinterprets the nature of man and the world.

Thirdly and most importantly, there is the obsessive concern in I Shall TellYou All with metaphysical questions. This is in complete harmony with the visionof the writer; "why should he concern himself with the social, economic, andpolitical problems of the hour when he knows that we are slated to die and thatno revolution can save us from death."39 However, Salmawy's later plays aremeant to bring about greater awareness of the painful realities of contemporaryand local conditions. Now that faith has cured despair, the Absurd in Salmawy'swork goes below the realm of metaphysics to the more immediate reality ofEgypt. And according to Salmawy, "what was a one-way street became a two-wayroad;"40 i.e., while he is now acquainting an Arabic audience with a Westerntradition, he is simultaneously giving expression to a wholly Egyptian content.

Although Salmawy does not offer any real promise of escape from humanmisery, his plays of the eighties represent an optimistic version of the Absurdtradition in their avoidance of the almost inevitable conventional Absurdconclusion that the human condition has reached an unalterable point of decay.At the heart of his work rests the conviction that Man's condition is of hisown making and is, therefore, susceptible to change. Salmawy makes thisconviction explicit in his comment: "Perhaps what I write is realism itself,since our reality today is so absurd. For us to change it, we must first grasphow absurd it is."41

The sort of Absurdity we are confronted with when dealing with Salmawy'splays is derived from the particular and actual circumstances of Egypt in thelate seventies, which are as absurd as anything the Theatre of the Absurd hasever represented. Salmawy's characters are, therefore, not simply oddcharacters but are pretty well the norm in an odd city. It is true, as Salmawysays:

In Egypt...we do not have to import the "Absurd" or even look aroundfor it. You would be lucky if you can avoid stumbling over it atevery step or bumping into it at every street corner.42

Consequently, "an accurate depiction of this daily absurdity can never beachieved through a classical convention and requires instead an Absurdist styleand technique", says Salmawy who also stresses on more than one occasion therealistic nature of his Absurdity, or the fact that he has never sought towrite Absurdist drama but rather wanted to be a realistic writer.43

Realism and Absurdism are identical in Salmawy's plays: Two Down the Drain,Next in Line, and Come Back Tomorrow. This may appear to be a contradiction in termswhich could only be resolved if we know that under such conditions as thoseprevalent in Egypt, it is not very uncommon to hear about sewage pipes havingburst and been left unmended for months, or to see people queuing for ages toget a loaf of bread (and sometimes find a cockroach or a pin in it), or to knowthat citizens, at times, wait for months, or maybe years, to sort out somepapers in a governmental office. As corruption, bureaucracy and negligence inthe system have gone to extremes, and as realism may have failed to registerthe protest against the tragicomic topsyturvism of the country (as faithfullyas Salmawy does in his plays), it must have seemed reasonable for the dramatistto consider a dramatic treatment that would take the plays beyond the scope ofthe realistic theatre. Salmawy, generalizing his particular case, explains:

I am uncertain whether what I write actually falls under the headingof the Theatre of the Absurd. If that characterization made by somecritics is correct, then, in my opinion, the Theatre of the Absurd isthe best way to express some aspects of our contemporary Egyptianreality.44

This shows that Salmawy is not merely an experimenter, and therefore does notrun the risks which Al-Hakim, for example, ran by becoming overwhelmed bytechnique itself. According to Salmawy, "a writer does not choose the techniqueby which he communicates with the audience; rather the nature of the problemsof the audience is what dictates a certain techique to him."45 While Al-Hakimwrote Absurd plays only to prove that he was keeping up with the latestdramatic fashions, Salmawy's Absurd drama rather involves a thorough andsustained commitment - when nonsense is pushed to an intolerable limit, onlythe theatre classified as "the Absurd" could best express the dramatist'scritical attitude.

The difference between Al-Hakim's Absurdity and Salmawy's could also beaccounted for, as Salmawy says, by the fact that the two writers wrote in two

different eras.46 In the sixties, Egypt witnessed its most active andprosperous period on a political, social and cultural level. The country, whichhad just been freed from colonialism , was rebuilding itself and lookingforward to a total Arab unity. During this "golden era", as Salmawy describesit, the Egyptians built the "High Dam", won the "Swiss War" and there was noroom for pessimism. (This maybe generally true, but it must be remembered thatSalmawy himself wrote I Shall Tell You All in this period.) This is why the theatre ofthe Absurd could not have taken root in the Arab World at the same time that itwas spreading extensively in its contemporary Western World.47 The generation ofthe eighties, however, lived in a less stable and less optimistic era; it wasalso more rebellious against the existing conditions than that of the morecontented generation of the sixties. The writers of the sixties, on the otherhand, were concerned with establishing some of the basics of the dramatictradition recently introduced to them, and which have become axiomatic for thewriters of the eighties. Therefore, when Al-Hakim once complained to Salmawythat, having failed to derive "the Absurd" from everyday life, he was impelledto refer to mythology in order to be able to write The Tree Climber, Salmawyresponded reassuringly "but your age was different"; "in my age the Absurd hasgone to such an extreme that I do not find it difficult to write an Absurdistplay at all."48 This has prompted many critics, such as Khairi Shalabi, forinstance, to consider the eighties and not the sixties as the starting point ofthe Absurd Egyptian Theatre.

To go back to Salmawy's work, it may be possible to add that thedramatist's Absurdity not only emerges as a natural and spontaneous expressionof his perspective on the state of things in Egypt, but is also motivated byhis familiarity with the Western Absurd tradition made clear in his declarationthat, in the sixties, he read Arrabal, Ionesco, Genet, Beckett, and Adamov, andtook upon himself the task of translating two plays by Albee. He also readVaclav Havel whose depiction of bureaucracy strikingly resembles Salmawy's.49But Salmawy has always maintained that regardless of this influence, there is afundamental difference between him and the Absurdists. He admits to havingborrowed certain techniques from the Theatre of the Absurd in Europe, but onlyto serve a different purpose in a different context. I believe, Salmawy says,that

life has a meaning and a purpose and it is only our sins and mistakesthat have made our life absurd. Therefore it is us and not the cosmoswhich is the source of this Absurdity... God has not created

bureaucracy nor Has he brought into being tyranny and oppression;these are all things that can be changed if we want to.50

Putting the Theatre of the Absurd to use in the light of the requirements ofhis own society, Salmawy transcends the sheer observation of chaos by plunginginto it in an attempt to shock the reader/audience and consequently stimulateawareness or motivate change. Doing this, he takes a major step towards theAbsurd, which is, as Camus says, "the awakening that occurs when the stage setscollapse and Man is forced to ask why?"51

However, Salmawy's Absurd vision escapes from the pitfalls of extremedespair through the balance maintained by the dramatist's acute comic vision.One may well ask: if all these malpractices that prevail in Egypt have such agrave aspect, what, then, will transform all this despondency into a comedy?One need only recall here that the serious and the comic may meet and interactin dark comedy52 - the gravest and funniest form of comedy. Therefore, comedydoes not contradict the grave conditions and the collective imperfections whichSalmawy critically portrays in his drama but is the best way to make themstarkly visible and thus call for an immediate corrective. It is also inharmony with the seriousness of the writer's purpose and the gravity of hisattitude, since "genuine humour and true wit", as Landor says, "require a soundand capacious mind, which is always a grave one."53

Salmawy's strength lies in his cynical and seemingly realistic observationof people's imperfections, and his comedy combines bitterness with humour,astringency with laughter, and therefore the term "dark comedy" is readilyapplicable to his dramatic vision. The most bitterly comic element inSalmawy's plays belongs to the two main characters in Two Down the Drain, wherethe couple, once they have been swept down into a drain, choose to stay there(for the place seems to be the only peaceful haven in a cruel world) with theirminds firmly withdrawn from the horror outside. Salmawy's Absurd drama displaysthe dark comedy tradition in various ways which will unfold as we examine hisworks.

One of the ways Salmawy attains his bleak comic vision and achieves hisderisive ridicule is through caricature, as is prominently noticeable in ComeBack Tomorrow where Salmawy views the prevailing corruption in Egyptianofficial life through detached and mocking eyes, abandoning the realm of

realistic photography for that of caricatural disproportions. Salmawy'sconcern to substantiate the negligence that spread in the offices like anepidemic and the disdain with which Egyptian citizens are treated ingovernmental establishments prompted him to present in Come Back Tomorrow apicture of an asylum-like place instead of an office. The portrayal, which isbitterly and shockingly funny, reflects the duality of two worlds which existside by side - the world of ordinary everyday experience and that of theAbsurd.

The fusion of these two worlds emerges at the beginning of the play whenwe are confronted with a room where heaps of files are all over the place -some of them reaching up to the ceiling, covering all of Abdel-Salam's desk.There is further employment of expressionistic properties as the seal used inthe office is described as "gigantic...with a long wooden handle about twometres high". The shocking element is reinforced when the characters exhibittheir abnormal behaviour: Abdel-Salam greets the chief employee by putting hishand to his forehead in a military salute, and, always holding a ruler, treatsthe lower employees as a headmaster treats his pupils. We are further takenaback to see one of the employees is wearing a galabieh (an informal Egyptiandress), another pyjamas, while a third one is falling into a deep sleep on hisdesk. When the employees decide to send a cable to the minister, we are evenmore disturbed to learn that the cable will be sent "on the occasion of theadvent of Saturday". Salmawy's bureaucratic machinery functions still moresenselessly at times; Abdel-Salam, hearing that Ahmad wants to buy a car, crieslike a child: "I want a car!". The scene culminates in Abdel-Salam'sappearance on the wedding balcony "wearing a short wedding dress that revealshis hairy legs", while Abdel-Al tries to convince Ahmad to accept Abdel-Salamas a bridegroom. The exaggerations of speech and gesture in the scene furtherdistances any quality of realism in the action. The rapid building up of absurdincidents continues, creating a comic tone which finally becomes hysterical,and the hysteria is increased by the singing of the wedding chorus and theswift dialogue of the "court scene" in which the four employees question Ahmad.The absurdity of the questions and the torrent of irrational accusations growin intensity and viciousness, climaxing in outright threats of violence:

Employee (4): Who are you? Employee (3): What's your name?Female employee: Who sent you? Employee (1): Man of ill-fame!

...........Abdel-Al: Question: why did you come hear?Ahmad: I wanted some papers stamped. Abdel-Salam: Liar!Employee (2): He's in someone's employ.Employee (1): His metal is an alloy.Abdel-'Al: Confess, Boy.Employee (3): What have you brought?Employee (4): Arms.Female Employee: Armaments.Employee (2): Weapons.Female Employee: Weaponry.Abdel-'Al: Where did you put them?Employee (4): Upstairs?Employee (1): Downstairs?Employee (2): In the dust bin?Employee (3): On the window sill? (p.64)

Maybe it is not an accident that this scene in Salmawy's Come Back Tomorrow ( andthe scene in The Killer At Large where the chief character is brain-washed by beingthrown into a whirlpool of questions) brings to mind certain images fromPinter's The Birthday Party in which "victim" is bombarded by his persecutors:54

McCann: Why did you leave the organization?Goldberg: What would your old mum say, Webber? McCann: Why did you betray us?Goldberg: You hurt me, Webber. You're playing a dirty game.McCann: That's a Black and Tan fact.Goldberg: Who does he think he is?McCann: Who do you think you are?Stanley: You're on the wrong horse. Goldberg: When did you come to this place?Stanley: Last year.Goldberg: Where did you come from?Stanley: Somewhere else.(p.58)

Later on McCann and Goldberg begin an interrogation that takes the form of akind of "litany" in which serious and frivolous charges are balanced in thedenunciation:

Goldberg: Where is your lechery leading you?

McCann: You'll pay for this.Goldberg: You stuff yourself with dry toast.McCann: You contaminate womankind.Goldberg: Why don't you pay the rent?McCann: Mother defiler!Goldberg: Why do you pick your nose?McCann: I demand justice. Goldberg: What's your trade?McCann: What about Ireland? Goldberg: What's your trade?Stanley: I play the piano.Goldberg: How many fingers do you use?Stanley: No hands!(p.61)

But while Pinter's interrogators could be either officials in some secretorganization Stanley has betrayed or nurses from an asylum he escaped from,they are more clearly identified in Salmawy's play. However, in both plays, thepersecutors, vicious and cruel as they are, emerge as equally insecure. Wefrequently see one tearing a newspaper into strips, an act that indicates hisrestlessness. Similarly, Abdel-Al is himself subdued and frightened by hiswife, which is notable during their talk on the telephone. Unlike Ahmad andStanley who are portrayed as threatened by an outside force, the persecutorsare seen rather as the victims of forces within themselves. The menace isinternalized in this case. Both plays go beyond depicting particularpsychological features of characters, to the presentation of types moving inritual patterns. The sameness in the characters' behaviour, which has been madeuse of in the ritual patterning of many Absurdist plays,55 is what createsSalmawy's ceremonial atmosphere, and, in this case, the satirical and mockingcriticism of the brutal forces embodied and served by Abdel-Al, Abdel-Salam andother bureaucrats.

The use of props to create a ritualistic effect is clearly noticeable inboth plays. There is the use of the drum in The Birthday Party where Stanley beatshis birthday gift in increasing frustration and anger, and as Thompsonexplains: "the drum becomes a more primitive ritualistic symbol of hatred anddefiance; we are indeed now closer to the ritual, classical theatre ofheightened emotion than to the circus ring."56 In Come Back Tomorrow, aritualistic effect is achieved through the use of the gigantic governmentalseal with which the Chorus brands Ahmad's naked back, his face to the wall and

his arms outstretched as if he were being crucified.(p.68). The comedy thatemerges at this grotesque exaggeration is akin to the one provoked by the sightof Pozzo mistreating Lucky. Salmawy's presentation of this final scene takesthe form of an organized collective expression of clerkship, which almostsuggests that the Chorus's ceremonial behaviour is no more than a manifestationof an acceptable common custom (as is the case in rituals). Therefore,Salmawy's employment of ritual or, of "inverted ritual",57 seeks to ridicule,for there is a touch of irony in finding a ritual value in such ridiculous"secular" behaviour as that of the Chorus. Even the Chorus's words recur almostritually. Sentences grow in length, and the dialogue not only reflects arepeated and patterned behaviour but is also strengthened by obsessiverefrains:

Chorus: One, two. Nabila: Ahmad.Abdel-'Al: Tighten the screw.Chorus: Three four.Nabila: Ahmad.Abdel-'Al: Stamp some more. Nabila: Ahmad.Chorus: Five, six.Nabila: Ahmad.Abdel-'Al: Give him some licks.Nabila: Ahmad.Chorus: Seven, eight, make him wait..

(Ahmad slumps over unconscious)Nabila: Ahmad, Ahmad, Ahmad...(Like a dirge or elegy.)(p.70).

Salmawy mockingly condemns the celebration which accompanies the enactment ofsuch a cruel ritual within which Ahmad naturally emerges as a scapegoat ofdominating malicious powers. Therefore, his "crucifixion" which is too brutalfor celebration, creates another sort of ritual - a sacrificial rite. Theinterpenetration of the daily secular ritual with the "sacrificial rite" givesexpression to Salmawy's tragi-comic vision: the mocking denunciation of officecorruption combined with the sympathy with the suffering that it entails.Obviously, in the use of ritual and pure, stylized action, there is a return toearlier non-verbal forms of theatre, which constitute the essence of the "anti-literary" attitude of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Salmawy's ritualistic element transcends situation and extends to languagewhen he makes Abdel-Al use an elevated form of language to describe the seal:

Abdel-'Al:....The government seal is the symbol of authority. He whoholds it, holds the keys to power. The bearer of the seal has theauthority to permit or deny. It is he who validates the document,hence giving it life. If he doesn't stamp it, it dies. The bearerof the seal is nothing less than the holder of the sceptre and theorb.(p.54)

The form of speech here gives a heightened tone to the scene for the "sceptre"or the "orb" is too grandiloquent an expression for a trivial object like theseal. The comic meaning emerges from the sharp contrast between the Absurd ideaand the form in which it is presented. The ritual acquires a particular comicdimension because the "primitive action" takes place in a modern office amidstfiles and papers rather than in a primitive or heroic setting. Salmawy's witexcells in this parody where the tone is grotesquely out of harmony with itssubject.

A comic effect is obtained in the play by the use of a form ofconversation in which the language changes key, moving from one register toanother, such as from sacred to profane, or from colloquial to highly formal.The juxtaposition of phrases in the scene where Ahmad is cross-examinedprovides an example:

Abdel-'Al: Then we'll continue the interrogation...Take that down, Abdel-Megid Effendi: The defendant refused to plea bargain. Question: What areyour political views?Abdel-Salam: A communist!Employee (1): A Reactionary!Employee (4): A Nasserist!Employee (3): A Muslim Brother!Abdel-'Al: Who's paying you?Employee (1): The Soviets!Employee (2): The Americans!Female Employee: The Chinese!Employee (3): The Antarcticans!Abdel-'Al: Who are the rest of your comrades? Where are the details of theplot?Employee (1): Upstairs!

Employee (2): Downstairs!Employee (3): In the dust bin!Employee (4): On the window sill! (p.67)

Salmawy's use of language obviously breaks with realist conventions in thesense of abandoning an explicit, discursive dialogue that emerges from mutualresponses among speakers. Here Salmawy's characters talk past each otherrather than to each other picking up each other's speech in mid-sentence:

Abdel-'Al: (On the telephone) Come on talk to Abdel-'Ati and be sweet to him,you know how to play the game.

Female Employee: (To Employee (3) At the beginning I didn't know how to playthe game. But now it's different. I'll show you what I'm going to dowhen I leave.

Abdel-'Al: (On the telephone) Otherwise all our work will be delayed and thatwill be catastrophic. There won't be any trips to Europe this year.Neither will there be any supermarket project. We won't be able to do athing.

Abdel-Salam: (Dictating) Therefore, anyone violating this decree will besubjected to a penalty not excluding dismissal...(p.39).

There is little verbal communication between the characters. However, onecannot describe Salmawy's particular use of language here as a dialogue of non-communication. The function of language in this context is not to establishnon-communication in the manner done by Al-Hakim in The Tree Climber, for instance.Salmawy does not seem to say that language is incapable of establishing truecommunication between human beings; he merely emphasizes the fact that people,in everyday life, do not usually employ or interact through discursive andlogical language. This is in keeping with one of the aspects of the Theatre ofthe Absurd which promoted the realization that people in real life do notcommunicate in terms of well-thought-out speeches. Esslin explains:

Only when it was recognized that the verbal element need not be thedominant aspect of drama, ...and that inarticulate, incoherent,tautological and nonsensical speech might be as dramatic as verbalbrilliance when it could be treated simply as an element of action,only then did it become possible to place inarticulate characters in

the centre of the play and to make their unspoken emotionstransparent.58

Salmawy is among the Arab dramatists who discovered this significant aspect ofdrama. Evidence of this is his use of the economical and unadorned prose ofthe colloquial language. In real life, people do not use the written,rhetorical, classical Arabic the structure of which tends to be logical, whilethat of spoken casual Egyptian dialect is associative and, therefore, fit for apiece of the Absurd.

Salmawy's tendency to establish his ironic tone by the absurdity ofcharacter behaviour together with the very absurdity of an incident ismaintained in his other plays. Parker once wrote:

There are two sorts of absurdity to be distinguished in the Theatreof the Absurd: on the one hand, the absurdity of people ... who hidefrom the terrors of isolation and choice behind complacent routines;and, on the other hand, the conscious absurdity of men who haverealized and accepted their inescapable autonomy. By combining thetwo kinds, the Theatre of the Absurd produces a sort of black farce -basically depressing yet often wildly funny?59

Both kinds of absurdity are concentrated in the attack on the pointlessness ofhabit in people's lives in Next in Line where the situation serves to intensify thepathetic as well as the comic, and the characters are shown as victimized notonly by the predicament they are caught in but also by their own naivety, greedand ignorance. Even though their physical situation evokes laughter, theirmetaphysical situation evokes pity. The characters's situation on stage, inall its unalterability, becomes a metaphor for existence. This is symbolicallyexpressed as one of the characters says: "You see the line has to move, Mrs.Hamida. Every time someone falls, the next in line necessarily takes hisplace."(p.78)

There is no action in the play, and, like much of the dialogue, itdepends for its comic effect upon incongruity. Most of Salmawy's charactersbehave clumsily or engage in inconsequential and trivial speech: a woman isseen bringing food for her husband who has been waiting in line for a longtime, another is spreading out a mattress and a blanket, a man keeps speakinginto an old telephone with a cut wire from his pocket, while another objects to

the suggestion that the people in the line should have a referendum, thinkingthat the word refers to a disease, "referendix", and so on. It is only throughthese comic characters and situations that the dramatist keeps us entertainedby watching characters doing nothing but simply waiting - a passive activity.As is evident in Salmawy's play, "waiting, both as an idea and as a situationof enduring pain and fugitive expectations, materializes theatrically as anightmare."60 The technical difficulty here is to dramatize boredom withoutboring the audience. And as Ronald Hayman explains:

The act of waiting is itself a contradictory combination of doingsomething and doing nothing, and if you put a pair of characters onstage, with no apparent objective except to wait for someone, thecontradiction can come playfully into play. If the characters areaware that there is nothing they can usefully do, this gives them thebasis for a theatrical action. The medium abhors a vacuum, and evenif they sit on stage trying not to move and not to talk, the effortto make no effort becomes a game, and the game fills the space.61

Salmawy deliberately emphasizes the duration of the waiting business, incontrast to and at the expense of the action. On a metaphysical level, thepeople in the line seem to be trapped between birth and death and they, likeBeckett's heroes, fill the time by trifles. But unlike the case in Beckett'swork, the absurdity of the situation in Salmawy's is not an inalienablecondition of life but is man made. The people in the line are themselvesresponsible for their predicament. They actually invite Dr. Hamed to exploittheir lot. Here Salmawy is touching on the idea that dictators and opportunistsare made, not born:

Here I am trying to say that society is largely responsible for thetragic circumstances it is suffering from. Perhaps, in itspassiveness, it does not actually make this tragedy. Yet this verypassivity is what makes the other side stronger.I am here portrayinga ruler who does not want to rule, but is forced by people to sit onthe chair and exercise authority. It is inevitable, then, that hebecomes a dictator. The exaggeration in the projection of this ideacan only manifest its absurdity.62

Salmawy's concern to show people engulfed in trivia, for his satiricalpurposes, is also expressed with meticulous accuracy in Two Down the Drain wherethe trivia incorporates a good deal of slapstick, as when the coquettish

television presenter beats her maid and the greedy Sheikh is beaten by the twocivil servants, along with other similar antics, including much falling down orrunning away. Here Salmawy verges on the borders of physical comedy but doesnot indulge. The audience usually fails to identify with farcical characters;if we identify with the figure of the television presenter, the Sheikh, or eventhe employee who wears a pyjama in his office and the one who falls asleep athis desk, we should feel embarrassment and, perhaps, shame. Moreover,unexplained actions usually prevent identification, which is why we laugh atthe predicament of the characters waiting in line. Then, how does Salmawy savehis attitude from detachment? This achievement in this regard is mainly relatedto the nature of his subject-matter. For a more intensified effect of horrorand bitterness, the playwright relies on the audience's familiarity with theimage of the absurd milieu in Egypt. Such familiarity may enable us to seewhat is happening to the characters we are observing as relevant to our ownlives, so what makes us laugh at first could be interrupted by our suddenrecognition of the potential tragedy of the projected human situation. In TwoDown the Drain, even though Salmawy confronts the audience with illogicality -two people in a drain - the audience's expectation is soon undercut by aperfectly realistic explanation of this seemingly absurd scene; in Egyptiannewspapers one sometimes reads about waterpipes bursting, and on severaloccasions people have actually slipped down a manhole into a drain. This iswhy one might say that Salmawy's drama transcends the category of tragedy orcomedy and combines laughter with horror. In other words, Salmawy attempts todeprive his audience of true relief of tears or laughter, so that the audienceremains suspended between complete detachment and involvement. In commenting onCome Back Tomorrow, Salmawy gives expression to this vision:

In this play I was not concerned with offering solutions but indepicting the tragedy afflicting the Egyptian young generation of theseventies...I only allowed a ray of hope to emerge in the end. But ifI had put forth a solution, then I would have been producing a"theatre for catharsis" in which the audience is relieved. But I wantmy spectator to leave the theatre in a state of anger from watchingman intruded upon only for the curtain to be lowered on him at theend. The spectator will then go back home and try to sleep, but willnot be able to.63

An important part of Salmawy's technique is his transformation of afamiliar situation or phrase into an unfamiliar or grotesque one, or the

depiction of a common attitude which is slowly disrupted, which allows a senseof anti-climax to be dramatized in the play. For example, the term "come backtomorrow" is not laughable in itself, because any Egyptian citizen seeking tosort out official papers in a governmental establishment would have heard itfrequently. But it makes us laugh because, as the play unfolds, this termbegins to symbolize the stiff and starched bureaucracy of the Egyptian offices,and to stand for disrespect for individuals and the violation of their rights.The same dramatic technique is achieved in Next in Line where a common situation isdepicted (a queue) then expanded to verge on the grotesque as the audience isdrawn into another dramatic convention by the discovery that the queue is madeup of "fifty million, seven-hundred-and-twenty-three-thousand, nine-hundred-and-seventeen", which directly records of the Egyptian population at the time.A similar but reversed method is employed in Two Down the Drain, which begins witha peculiar incident by which two people slip into a drain, and this peculiaritygradually becomes the common normality as (we learn from the play) more andmore people undergo the experience of falling into manholes. As we can see inthis instance, Salmawy borders on Ionescan comedy - for instance, Rhinoceros,which starts with an unfamiliar incident by which a person or two change intorhinos, and as the play progresses, this uncommon happening becomes the normwhen more people are caught up in the epidemic. Moreover, Salmawy switchessuddenly from the familiar to the abnormal in a way most of all reminiscent ofArrabal who tends to switch from serenity to evil in one single situation.

Plunging into comic techniques, Salmawy must have realized that extremesof the Absurdist vision would have repelled the Egyptian audience. Hisflexible adaptation of the Absurd made the initial strangeness of this theatremore familiar and acceptable. Salmawy says that "if a dramatist is unable tocommunicate directly and constantly with the audience, then he has to look foranother job."64 In accordance with this belief, Salmawy sought to present onthe stage what the greater portion of his audience wants to see:

With the bulk of political problems that overwhelm our life, andwhile our countries are mercilessly violated, it is ridiculous totalk about the relation of the sexes or some other philosophicalissues. The political problem should have the priority in our ArabWorld. And when the spectator goes to the theatre he expects thewriter to talk to him about his immediate concerns.65

To hold the attention of the audience and reduce its resistance, Salmawyadopted stylistic methods that would create a kind of screen of theatricalitythrough which the absurdity of the play could be filtered. For instance, inTwo Down the Drain, Salmawy criticizes the hypocrisy of the two-faced professor byintroducing two characters named Labib 1 and Labib 2; "Labib 1 wears a checked jacketand doctor's spectacles and is smoking a pipe and carrying a briefcase [while] labib 2 wears a galabiyya[an informal Egyptian village dress]". In other instances, a character's faceis seen peering through a huge newspaper page on one side of the stage, whileanother character's head appears floating in a pool of sewage on another side.In Next in Line, Salmawy's characters are presented in a sort of tableau whichcontains all of the ridiculous details of their physical situations: a farmworker is squatting on the ground, a man is sitting on a gilded armchair(similar to those used in weddings and funerals), a waiter dressed like amilitary recruit is serving the people standing in the queue, and so on. InCome Back Tomorrow, as soon as Ahmad's picture of his fiancée is taken out of hispocket, Nabila appears on the wedding balcony and speaks with the othercharacters. This sort of theatricality employed by Salmawy is not redundant,but is naturally motivated to serve the comic and Absurdist purposes of thedramatist.

Moreover, Salmawy's theatricalist artistry exhibits itself in the adoptionof techniques that rely on abstraction and non-realistic theatrical forms.Such techniques fall within the concerns of the Theatre of the Absurd in so faras it tended to move away from "literary" theatre towards more emphasis on formand movement. For instance, in Next in Line, Salmawy crowds characters on to thestage, all of whom seem to be clinging to their positions in the queue. Theirmotives and actions remain largely incomprehensible, for the audience cannotfigure out what these people are queuing for. Before the introduction ofAbsurdist endeavors, such a technique would have been considered faulty andtherefore unacceptable to Arab writers and dramatists. Bradby's explanationsums up Salmawy's general achievement:

The Absurdists, being tired of the realist play, they had chosen tomake the lack of plot and the impossibility of character into theessential subject-matter of their dramas. So they took characterlesscharacters, linked them in a plotless plot and endowed them with aseries of apparently senseless movements.66

In an Absurdist play, concrete images replace discussion. Accordingly, theAbsurdist impact of Next in Line emerges from the image of the queue and thecircular shape of the play itself, which suggests suffering without end. Thereis also the style of many individual speeches, which adds poignancy to thestark realities being demonstrated on the stage. In Murderer At Large, Salmawycreates the nightmarish horror of the prison environment and the disintegrationof order and values through the manipulation of a completely illogical,unjustified act: a person simply finds himself in prison for no offencecommitted.

In his plays, Salmawy has made frequent use of a typically sensitive,patriotic, and innocent figure: Ahmad in Come Back Tomorrow, Hassan and Mona inTwo Down the Drain, Nabil in Murderer At Large. All of these characters share thesame critical views of the social and economic conditions of their country, andengage, at times, in stating their opinions (without preaching). However,while the characters of the Theatre of the Absurd appear to have no awarenessof the tragedy of their plight or the grotesqueness of their situation, some ofSalmawy's characters shatter the Absurd vision by displaying their recognitionof the grotesque reality. The most starkly prominent example could be takenfrom Come Back Tomorrow:

Ahmad: This is absurd. Who needs imported Theatre of the Absurd whenthe country has "civil servants" like you?

Abdel-Salam: (proudly) Yes we invented it. We originated absurdityhere long before Europe had dreamed of it. How about that?

This is not only meant as a humorous comment by the dramatist, but is also atrick to acknowledge the audience's presence and emphasize its physicalpresence in a theatre. This appears to have an alienation effect, but theeffect of such alienation is paradoxical in this instance; by reminding theaudience that it is in a theatre, the theatrical illusion is not diffused butreinforced, because the theatre is revealed as a real-life experience.Apparently Salmawy is trying to awaken the audience to the logical conclusionof Absurdity, to confront it with the stage event in the hope that ultimatelyit will become more aware and sensitive. The theatre of Salmawy is by far themost self-conscious of all those Arab dramatists who wrote within the Absurdconvention, not only in terms of self-referentiality, but also in its overallassertion of theatre as an audience-orientated entity. Salmawy's rejection of

Ionesco's claim that he can conceive of a theatre without an audience istherefore not unexpected.

It has often been argued that, because Salmawy takes a moral stand, he isnot in line with Absurdism.67 In fact, the familiar assumption that theAbsurdists do not moralize but simply dramatize the Absurd condition is self-contradictory, for there is an implicit moral stand in the very presentation ofnihilism. As Chiari correctly points out: "one can only convey the lack ofmeaning through some kind of meaning."68 By implication, this seems to refutethe claim that what the Absurdists wrote was entirely an anti-play, because thedramatist's projection of images of life - be they nihilistic or not - and hisintegration of them into the pattern of a play does give them a meaningfulcoherence, which contradicts the content that appears to have no logic ormeaning. Moreover, one of the subtle paradoxes of the theatre of the Absurd isthat, despite its emphasis on abstraction, it was meant at the same time tobring about greater awareness of the painful realities and uncertainties of thehuman condition and thus ultimately sought to change the lives of the audience.Even strict Absurdists like Adamov and Ionesco reverted to political themeswhen they felt that, in their depiction of the metaphysical issues, they wereisolating drama too much from the immediate concerns of society; one ofArrabal's plays, ...And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers, was inspired by hisexperience in jail and it contains documentary evidence of atrocities committedduring and after the Spanish Civil War. Therefore, to speak of a theatre ofdespair is not always true with respect to Absurdism. Camus clearly defineshis own attitude to the so-called "literature of despair":

Real despair means death, the grave or the abyss. If despair promptsspeech or reasoning, and above all if it results in writing,fraternity is established, natural objects are justified, love isborn. A literature of despair is a contradiction in terms.69

Richard N. Coe expounds a similar opinion in his discussion of Beckett's drama:

It is trying to define that which, created and defined (the void),ceases to be what it must be if it is to reveal the truth of thehuman situation: Man as nothing in relation to all things whichthemselves are nothing... As soon as the void is realized in concreteterms (paint or words) it ceases to be itself. Consequently, it mustfail.70

To return from this digression to Salmawy's plays, it would seem to beclear that Salmawy's characters approximate, in some ways, to the stereotypedcharacters of much Absurd drama. In Next in Line, all of the characters (portrayedas having no history or ancestors) seem as if they were photocopies of a singletypical character; they are so alike as to be interchangeable. Not only dothey have names which are all derived from the author's own name Mohammad(which is reminiscent of Ionesco's use of the name Bobby Watson in The BaldSoprano, or the use of the name Jacques in Jacques or Obedience), but they are evenreduced to the level of numbers, which deprives them of any clear identity. Acharacter says:

All names are equal....the important thing is the number, whatdifferentiates a person in the line isn't his name, or his features,but his number. Of course those in the front are more important thanthose at the back.(p.98)

The individual is crushed and brought down to the dehumanized state of"products in a factory that produces thousands or millions of bottles and cansevery day."71 Even this individual - this number - is disregarded asnonexistent in some cases:

Mahmud: The last number we have is fifty-million, seven-hundred-and-twenty-three-thousand, nine-hundred-and-seventeen.

Dr. Hamid: No.No.No. Forget those extra digits. Cross them offcompletely, so the sum will be a nice round one of fifty million.(p.102)

The characters do not engage in earnest debates and their personalities andattitudes are not revealed. Stereotyped, unindividualized and dehumanizedfigures reappear in Come Back Tomorrow where the four employees (nameless and ofany age) are viewed as parts of a large machine (the bureaucratic system withits monotonous routine) whose only function is to crush the individual."Numerical" characters are also presented in Murderer At Large where, through theinvestigators (who all have similar names), Salmawy seeks to condemn politicalcorruption. These two plays are particularly characterized by their "twistedlogic" - a method which entails that every attempt made by a character todefend himself is taken as a condemnation. The absurdity of these two works

results from the shocking perversion of values - as in so much of the work ofAdamov's Professor Taranne or Arrabal's The Two Executioners.72

It will be obvious by now that Salmawy's work is part of a recognizableAbsurdist tradition of the "anti-hero" acted upon by the grotesque, the comic,and the pathetic. Therefore the tragic element in Salmawy's plays cannot becalled tragic by conventional definitions of the word, in the sense of having anoble hero suffer a fall to a lower status due to misfortune or a characterflaw. In this age of ours, classical tragedy has ceased to be capable ofreflecting the problems of modern man. The concept of tragedy has radicallychanged together with society; as Draper says: "Tragedy does alter its shapeand meaning from one century to another with chameleon variability."73 TheTwentieth Century has witnessed the death of tragedy for, as Leonard Pronkoexplains, tragedy can only exist in a world with clearly defined ideals andabsolutes.74 Yet it would also be said that tragedy has been "democratized":dealing with ordinary people and situations, in a less elevated style. In thissense, the terrible events or circumstances in Egypt become worthy of the nameof tragedy. The characters, even though they are stripped of the superiorquality which the classic tragic hero possesses either in behaviour or rank,are also worthy of our sympathy. This change in the concept of the tragic herohas made it possible for us to identify even more closely with him as our focusis no longer on the "heroism" but merely on the suffering which is perhaps theonly element that has survived from classical tragedy. Salmawy's plays, intheir variation on a basic tragic theme fused with comic form, produces severalplanes of meaning. It particularly relates to the suffering of ordinarypeople, with emphasis on their frustrations, their doubts and uncertainties,and on their coming to terms with deterioration and decay. Mostafa Abdel Ghanirightly explains:

In Salmawy's plays, the defeated hero actually represents thecollective hero for whom we all cherish a sort of "concealedallegiance", and therefore we tend to sympathize with him when we seehis confusion and perplexity. However, when the situation he findshimself in assumes the state of "inverted logic", the audience'slaughter is evoked...but it is a tearful laughter, for comedy here isa dark comedy.75

In a sort of comic astringency, Salmawy mixes the sardonic and theanguished in a way that presents a substantiation of Beckett's analysis of thetragicomic vision in Watt:

The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethicallaugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is theintellectual laugh...But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh[...] that laughs [...] at that which is unhappy.76

To summarize Salmawy's dramatic achievement, one can say that these threetypes of laughter are merged in his plays: the ethical laugh is aroused bycruelty (Come Back Tomorrow, Murderer At Large), the intellectual laugh by hypocrisyand ignorance (Next in Line, Two Down the Drain). However, cruelty, hypocrisy andignorance dissolve in suffering which evokes the dianoetic laugh. Of all thecomic devices already considered in Salmawy's work, it is incongruityfrequently exaggerated into absurdity, that evokes most of the laughter.However, Salmawy laughingly denied to me any exaggeration of bureaucracy inCome Back Tomorrow, saying that when he spent over a year as UnderSecretary ofState for Culture (1988) he found out that the reality of governmentbureaucracy is beyond any dramatic imagination.77 And as Colin Duckworth says "it takes an ironic turn of mind to write a play depicting a bitter wranglebetween disembodied solitary souls in limbo, and call it comedy."78

An interesting juxtaposition exists in the theatre of Salmawy as a whole.The first play that he wrote in 1967 touched on religion as a metaphysicalconcept, and his latest play The Flower and The Chain (1994)79 deals with religion asa political movement. Such juxtaposition sheds light on the nature of thedevelopment of Salmawy's concerns through the years between 1967 and 1994.While most of Salmawy's plays had some claim, however various, to Absurdism,this last play cannot be classed in this category. Originally intended as anattack on the absurdity of the fundamentalist movement, it abandons even thatdevice.

Salmawy has now turned to writing a direct political drama, and heexplains this change in direction in terms of the democratic atmosphere thatprevails in Egypt in the nineties. He says that, since the writer is nowallowed more political freedom, there is no need for him to conceal his messagebeneath indirect or symbolic disguises.80 This implies that the Absurd has been,for Salmawy, a temporary disguise that he no longer needs to wear. Now that the

stress is removed, the drama goes back to its conventional form. The Flower and TheChain, the first and only Egyptian play on the question of Fundamentalistterrorism, is a realistic melodrama presented through a traditional plot andlogically structured language and events.

However one cannot rest reassured that the Absurd has really becomehistory for Salmawy, simply because this latest play attacks a bitter enemy ofthe Egyptian government and therefore cannot be taken as a true testimonial tothe democracy of this government. More important still is the fact that many ofthe reasons that prompted the writer to write Absurd drama in the firstinstance have not disappeared. In my interview with Salmawy, he said:

My Absurdism is not motivated by a psychological reason as in thecase of Adamov for whom writing was a kind of therapy - as he wasadvised by his psychiatrist to keep writing until he was cured. Andhe actually stopped writing when he was cured. In my case, our every-day reality in Egypt is what prompted me to write Absurd drama for Iwanted to express this Absurd reality. Therefore, I should keepwriting Absurdist plays until that reality changes completely.81

Since we do not know when Arabic society will be cured of the ills afflictingit, we cannot speculate when Salmawy will stop writing Absurdist plays.Probably in the near future he may surprise us with a new play of the nature ofhis plays of the eighties.

Chapter 4

1. From an interview with the author in his office in al-Ahram headquarter on the 26th of December 1994.

2. Salmawy interviewed in Tishreen by Taleb Omran, 10.6.1990. 3. In his book Assura al-Jamahiriya li-Jamal Abdel Naser [The Public Image of Jamal Abdel Naser] (Cairo: Dar al-

Mauqif al-Arabi, 1977), Salmawy attempts to define some of the tenets of Nasserism,but he appears to be more concerned with the personality of Nasser and Nasserism as a wayof life rather than as a political ideology.

4. Fann, 43, Year 3, Monday 26.November 1990, p.39. 5. Ibid, p. 41. 6. See, for instance, the talk about Port Sa'id in M. Salmawy, Come Back Tomorrow,pp. 47- 48.7. Al-Yaqaza, 22/28.5.1992, p.60. 8. Al-Ahram, 3 February 1987. 9. Okaz, 7432, Year 27, Sunday 2 November 1986, p.6. See also the interview with Salmawy inal-Ahram, 3 February 1987. 10. "Hiwar", Interview with Salmawy in Sawt al-Kuwait International, Saturday 8 August 1992. 11. Ibid.12. My interview with Salmawy in his office on 26. December 1994. 13. Mounira Gamal Soliman, "Mohamed Salmawy's Salome: the Political and the Social Focus",

Salome Between Oscar Wilde and Mohamed Salmawy (Cairo: American University, 1993), pp. 35-51; p.45.

14. Al-Yaqaza, 28.5.1992, p. 61. 15. Salmawy, interviewed in Funoun, No. 17 (25. 11. 1991), p. 10; see also al-Sharq, 1086,

year 4, Sunday 3 March 1991 (Qatar: al-Dawha, dar al-Sharq) where Salmawy speaks ofhow the idea of Salome emerged in his mind upon a visit to Jordan; and see also theinterview with Salmawy in Tishreen, 10.6.1990. This is also published as an introduction

to M. Salmawy, Salome 2 (Cairo: G.E.B.O, 1994), pp. 7-10. 16. Quoted by Mounira Soliman, p.50. 17. He wrote the play early in his twenties when he was a student in the Department ofEnglish at Cairo University. 18. T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950

(New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1952), p.6. 19. In my interview with Salmawy, he states: "the reason why I used Christian and not Islamic

tradition is because I was brought up in a Western atmosphere and studied in foreignschools. Therefore Christian tradition was more alive in my mind. Besides, I was notpersonally religious" - in the sense that he was not a practicing Muslim.

20. Salmawy had a BA in English literature, Cairo university (1966), Diploma of EnglishCivilization and History, Birmingham University (1969); Diploma in Shakespearean Drama,Oxford University (1970). It is important to remember that Salmawy's early intellectualdevelopment was almost wholly shaped by Western culture. He first discovered the majorAbsurdist writers in their original language.

21. The American writer and critic, Robert Penn Warren, who was invited by the American University to deliver lectures, attended the play. And after the show has ended, he

expressed his admiration for the play, which, Salmawy states, has encouraged him to writefor the theatre. Al-Majaless (magazine), 885, 23.7.1988, p.30.

22. William Hutchins's introduction to Mohammed Salmawy, Come Back Tomorrow and Other Plays (ThreeContinents Press, 1984), p.7. "taqlid" means commonly accepted traditions In herintroduction to Two Down the Drain, trans. Roland Trafford-Roberts (Cairo: G.E.B.O, 1993),Nehad Selaiha makes the comment:

The shockingly iconoclastic nature of the work, however, was wasted on alargely non-English speaking audience, since the text was written originallyin English and performed at the American university in Cairo". (p.9).

23. Kamal al-Najmi, "Kitab Tafeh Walaken La Tasuh Musadaratuhu [A Trivial Book...But Should not be Confiscated], al-Hilal, No. 8, August 1991, p.94.

24. Kamal al-Najmi, al-Hilal, No. 8, August 1991, pp. 93 & 95. See critics's vehement reactionto the publication of Taha Husayn's controversial book Fi al-Shi'r al-Jahili (On Pre-IslamicPoetry)1926; See also Ali Abd al-Raziq, al-Islam wa-usul al-Hukm (Islam and the Foundations of PoliticalAuthority), 1925; Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini (Critique of Religious Thought), 1970; MohamadAziza, al-Islam wal Masrah (Islam and the Theatre), translated by Rafiq Sabban (Cairo:al-Hilal, April 1971).

25. Arabic Theatre between Imitation and Authenticity, Al-Kitab al-'Arabi, No. 18 (Kuwait: 15 January, 1988),p.167. 26. Mahmoud Fawzi, Yousif Idris 'Ala Fawhat Burkan [Yousif Idris on a Crater], (Cairo: Ad-Dar al-Masriyya

al-Lubnaniya, 1991), pp. 42 & 49; 5- 59; & 60. 27. Charles I. Clicksberg, "The Self Without God", The Self in Modern Literature (Pennsylvania,

the Pennsylvania State University Press, 1963), p.3. 28. See Charles I. Glicksberg, Modern Literature and the Death of God (The Hague: Martinus Nijhaff,1966). 29. Cited in Peter Norrish, New Tragedy and Comedy in France 1945-70 (Canberra: the Australian

National University, Macmillan Press, 1988), p.124. For details see J. M. Davies, Farce(London: Methuen, 1978)

30. My interview with Salmawy.31. Ionesco, "Discovering the Theatre", translated by Leonard.C. Pronko, The Tulane Drama

Review, Vol. IV, No 1 (September 1959), pp. 3-18; p. 11. 32. Hutchins' introduction to Come Back Tomorrow, p.11. 33. The Religion of the Sufis: From the Dabistan Of Mohsin Fani, trans. David Shea & Anthony Troyer,

introduced by Idries Shah (London: the Octagon Press, 1979), p.20. 34. The Religion of the Sufis, p.23. Such an attitude could be found in the works of Jubran Khalil

Jubran who - in adopting the voice of the madman - discards the traditional relationshipbetween the human being and God. For him madness, unlike the traditional sense of it,symbolizes freedom from traditions on perception and indeed from limits of any kind. SeeMounah Khouri, Studies in Contemporary Arabic Poetry and Criticism (Piedmont: JahanBook Co., 1987), p.17.

35. Hutchins's introduction to Come Back Tomorrow, p.13.36. Mustafa Abdel Ghani, Masrah al-Thamaninat [The Theatre of the 80's] (Cairo: Dar al- Wafa', 1985),p.106.37. T. S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1957), p.15. 38. Charles I. Glicksberg, Modern Literature and the Death of God (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1966), p.3. 39. Charles I. Glicksberg, The Literature of Nihilism (London: Associated University Presses, 1975),p.227. 40. My interview with Salmawy. 41. Hutchins's introduction to Come Back Tomorrow, p.12.42. Nehad Selaiha's introduction to Two Down the Drain, p.9. 43. Fann, No. 43, p.40. 44. Hutchins's introduction to Come Back Tomorrow, p.11. This statement also appeared in the

brochure distributed on the occasion of the production of Come Back Tomorrow in the year1984: M. Salmawy "al-Abath wa-l-waqi' [Absurdity and Reality] Program Statement, Masrahat-Tali'a, Cairo, 1984.

45. al-Nahda, 540, year 18, Tuesday 2 July 1991, p.29.

46. Fann, No. 43, p.40. 47. Sawt Al-Kuwait International, 7.10.1991. 48. Fann, No. 43, p.40. 49. Salmawy speaks of the influences of Havel on his work in Al-Jazira, 7276, 30 August 1992;

see also al-Seyassah, Saturday 28.3.1992, p.12. 50. Fann, No. 43, p.40. 51. David D. Galloway, The Absurd Hero in American Fiction, p.55. See also Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus;

John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (Oxford University Pres,1959)

52. See J. L. Styan, The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1968), pp. 251-299. 53. George Meredith, "The Idea of Comedy", An Essay on Comedy: and the Uses of the Comic spirit

(London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1919), p.37. See also A. E. Dyson (ed.), Comedy:Developments in Criticism, A Casebook (London: Macmillan, 1984); and Herbert Blau, "ComedySince the Absurd" in Modern Drama, xxv, 4 (December, 1982) pp. 545-68.

54. See Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party and Other Plays (London: Methuen, 1960). 55. See C. Innes, Holy Theatre: Ritual and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1981).See also The Roots of Ritual, ed., J.D. Shaughnessy (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmanspublishing co., 1973).

56. See David T. Thompson, "The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis in Ritual", Pinter:The Player's Playwright, (The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1985), p. 136.

57. Jean Genet excelled in the use of "inverted Ritual" in his Absurd drama. See J.L. Styan, Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Symbolism, Surrealism & the Absurd, Vol. 2 (Cambridge

University Press, 1981), p.145. See also Lewis Cella, Profane Play, and Jean Genet.58. Martin Esslin, Pinter: The Playwright (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1970), p.240. (Previously

published under the title Pinter: A Study of his Plays).59. R.B. Parker, "The Theory and Theatre of the Absurd", Queen's Quarterly, No. 3, Vol. LXX III,Autumn, 1966, p.424. 60. Nehad Selaiha's introduction to Two Down the Drain, p.10. 61. Ronald Hayman, Theatre and Anti-Theatre: New Movements Since Beckett, (London: Secker & Warburg,1979), p.2. 62. Fann, No. 43, p.41. 63. Ibid, p.41. 64. Al-Majaless (magazine), No. 885, 23.7.1988, p.31. 65. Fann, p.41. A similar opinion is manifested by Salmawy in Al-Masrah, March, February,

January 1988, p.116, in which he considers a love story as a sort of luxury. 66. David Bradby, Modern French Drama 1940-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.58. 67. See Funoun, No. 17, p.10; also the introduction of Louis Awad to Al-Qatil Kharij al-Sijn

[Murderer At Large] (Cairo: Dar Alef, 1985), pp. 5-8. All criticism published onSalmawy's work is combined by Nabil Faraj in al-Abath wa-l-waqi': Masrah Mohammad Salmawy[Absurdity and Reality: The Drama of Mohammad Salmawy] (Cairo: Alef publishing house, 1992); seealso Abd al-Aziz Hamuda's introduction to the Arabic edition of Salmawy, Fut Alayna Bukra![Come Back Tomorrow], pp. 3-18.

68. Joseph Chiari, Landmarks of Contemporary Drama (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1985), p.65. In tunewith this, David. I. Grossvogel thinks that the notion of a gratuitous movement, of

new anti-plays , is so difficult a notion to conceive that even enlightened readersof Ionesco (such as Saurel) are tempted to see the development of a specific idea inthese "anti-plays". Renee Saurel detects in La Cantatrice Chauve the embryonic tragedy of themarried couple, and indeed, the play expresses this idea if it has any claim at all tovalidity. [David I. Grossvogel, 2oth-Century French Drama (New York & London: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1958), p.317] The question of anti-play" or anti-novel" generated a

great deal of critical comment. See Richard N. Coe, "The Art of Failure" in Beckett(Edinburgh, Oliver & Boyd Ltd., 1964); and John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature ofRevolt(Oxford University Press, 1959). See also Albert Camus, The Art of the Novel, pp.142-188.Ramona Cormier's comment is also useful to cite here:

There is no such thing as antiplay except in case we judge a play bythe conventional standards of what a play is...the play, though it mayintend to negate theatre (art), nevertheless is a play, does haveform, just as the motifs built on the meaninglessness and futility oflife are charged with meaning. [R. Cormier & J.L.Pallister, Waiting forDeath (The University of AlaBama Press, 1923), p.108]

69. John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt, p.3.70. Richard N. Coe, Beckett, p.4. 71. Nabil Faraj, ed., The Drama of Mohammed Salmawy: Absurdity and Reality [al-Abath wa-l-waqi'] (Cairo:

Alef publishing house, undated), p.35.72. The use of inverted logic and perversion of values is clear in these two plays. See

Fernando Arrabal, "The Two Executioners" in Four Plays by Arrabal, translated by BarbaraWright (London: John Calder, 1962); also T. J. Donahue, The Theatre of Fernando Arrabal: A Gardenof Earthly Delights (New York and London: New York University press, 1980); for a more generalinterpretation see P. L. Podol, Fernando Arrabal (Boston: Twayne Publisheers, 1978). Andfor "Professor Taranne" see Four Modern French Comedies, translated by A. Bermel (New York:Capricorn Press, 1960) or Professor Taranne, translated by P. Meyer in Two Plays by Arthur Adamov(London: John Calder, 1962).

73. R. P. Draper (ed.), Tragedy: Developments in Criticism (London: Macmillan, 1980), p.12. 74. See Leonard Cabell Pronko, Avant-Garde: The Experimental Theatre in France (London: Cambridge

University Press, 1962), p.205 where the following comment is made: In a universe without absolutes tragedy is impossible. In such auniverse pure comedy is no longer possible either, for man seems tobelong nowhere, is the constituent of no hierarchy, either divine orsocial. Man examines himself as a peculiar suffering animal in thezoological garden of the world, and the result is often amusing. Butwhen he turns to the infinities that surround him, the result isdisquieting. Precisely because the dramatists of the avant-gardeusually see man not only in a horizontal context but in the verticalone as well, they blend the amusing with the disquieting. Those whoare the most hopelessly pessimistic and the most clearly "meta-physical" are often the most laughable, perhaps because theirpessimism leaves them no recourse but laughter.

See also G. Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London: Faber and faber, 1961); W. Kerr, Tragedy andComedy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967).

75. Mustafa Abdel Ghani, The Theatre of the Eighties, p.30.76. Samuel Beckett, Watt (London: John Calder Publishers, 1963), p.47.77. My interview with Salmawy. 78. Colin Duckworth, Angels of Darkness: Dramatic Effect in Samuel Beckett with Special Reference to Eugene

Ionesco (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1972), p.77. 79. Mohammed Salmawy, El-Zahra wal-Ganziir [The Flower and the Chain] (Cairo: G.E.B.O, 1994), translated

by Roland Trafford-Roberts as The Flower and the Chain (translation unpublished). 80. Fann, No. 43, p.41. 81. My Interview with Salmawy. Adamov has been well-known for his use of farce out of

desperation. Describing one of his plays, M. le. Modere (1968), as "a farce, a piece ofclowning", he writes: "That's the way I wanted it; surrounded by misfortune, I either had

to burst out laughing or kill myself". (Peter Norrish, New Tragedy and Comedy in France, p.91).