Half a Day

“School’s not a punishment. It’s the factory that makes useful men out of boys. Don’t you want to be like your father and brothers?” 

Although it’s intended as praise, the father’s description of school reveals Mahfouz’s skepticism not just of the educational system, but also of the other institutions that monopolize our time in modern society. Mahfouz, who worked for many years as a bureaucrat, here depicts school as a dehumanizing process concerned only with producing people who serve a “useful” purpose in society. In comparing school to a factory, he also implicitly associates this tendency with industrialization and its demand for a compliant labor force. It’s also noteworthy that the narrator’s father needs to reassure him that school isn’t a punishment; combined with the narrator’s sense that he’s being expelled from his home, this idea of punishment recalls the story of the Garden of Eden.

“The men began sorting us into ranks.” 

Once all the children have arrived at school, a group of men divides them into different “ranks.” Literally speaking, these ranks presumably correspond to classes or grades. In the context of the story’s broader symbolism, however, they perhaps represent social class, or any other societal order that humans are born into; these “ranks,” which are often hierarchical, shape a person’s entire experience of life in much the same way that being assigned to a particular class shapes a student’s experiences of school.

“We submitted to the facts, and this submission brought a sort of contentment.”

The narrator’s description of resigning himself to school is symbolically significant in at least two ways. For one, it helps to establish school as a metaphor for life, which humans are similarly “thrown into” and forced to make the best of. The passage also subtly reinforces the story’s religious themes through Mahfouz’s choice of words; in Arabic, the word “Islam” literally means “submission” (i.e. to God’s will), so in describing the students as “submitting” to their situation, Mahfouz is hinting at the work’s status as a spiritual allegory.

“As our path revealed itself to us, however, we did not find it as totally sweet and unclouded as we had presumed. Dust-laden winds and unexpected accidents came about suddenly, so we had to be watchful, at the ready, and very patient. It was not all a matter of playing and fooling around.” 

The narrator’s language noticeably shifts as he settles into his first day at school. Where he previously provided concrete details regarding his clothing, his environment, and his conversation with his father, the narrator now speaks in more abstract terms, referring to “unexpected accidents” without specifying what they consist of. In addition, he begins to speak in the first-person plural, describing the collective experiences of the students rather than his own particular ones. All of these changes further the work’s allegorical message by implying that the boy’s time at school is representative of broader human experience. In this passage, for instance, Mahfouz uses the nature of school to underscore the idea that we spend much of our lives preoccupied with obligations, worries, and problems.

“In addition, the time for changing one’s mind was over and gone and there was no question of ever returning to the paradise of home. Nothing lay ahead of us but exertion, struggle, and perseverance.”

In this passage, Mahfouz makes the work’s religious allegory explicit by likening the boy’s home to the paradise from which, in Islamic tradition, humanity was expelled. Likewise, the narrator’s description of the “exertion, struggle, and perseverance” facing the students parallels the consequences of this expulsion as depicted in the Qur’an, where God warns Adam, “Let him [Satan] not turn you both out of Paradise and plunge you into affliction. Here you shall not hunger or be naked, you shall not thirst, or feel the scorching heat” (The Koran. Translated by N.J. Dawood. Penguin Books, 1990, 20:117-19).

“I peered around but found no trace of my father, who had promised to be there.” 

There are a couple of different ways to interpret the failure of the narrator’s father to return at the end of the school day. Given what Mahfouz later reveals about the amount of time that has actually passed, the most obvious explanation is that the father has died; in fact, Mahfouz foreshadows this possibility earlier in the story when a boy the narrator meets at school tells him that his own father is dead. As an allegory of human life, the moment therefore dramatizes the all-but-inevitable rite of passage of losing one’s parents. To the extent that the work is a religious allegory, the father’s absence is harder to explain, particularly because Islam describes humanity’s relationship to God as unaltered after the expulsion from paradise. However, the episode may reflect an idea that surfaces in several of Mahfouz’s other works—namely, that humanity has distanced itself from God.

“Where was the street lined with gardens? Where had it disappeared to? When did all these vehicles invade it? And when did all these hordes of humanity come to rest upon its surface? How did these hills of refuse come to cover its sides? And where were the fields that bordered it?” 

The narrator’s alarm when confronted with his changed surroundings is partly a symbolic lament for the changes modernization has brought to Egypt, including overcrowding, pollution, and estrangement from the natural world. His confusion, which Mahfouz dramatizes here in a series of questions, also speaks to the story’s interest in how humans experience time; the fact that the narrator’s boyhood feels so recent to him makes it all the harder for him to comprehend the societal transformation that has occurred since then.

“Then there was a band announcing the opening of a circus, with clowns and weight lifters walking in front. A line of trucks carrying central security troops crawled majestically by. The siren of a fire engine shrieked, and it was not clear how the vehicle would cleave its way to reach the blazing fire.” 

The chaos the narrator encounters as he makes his way home is partly a matter of perception: Because he isn’t used to the sights and sounds of a late 20th-century urban environment, the scene strikes him as overwhelming. Nevertheless, there’s a real element of alarm to Mahfouz’s portrayal of modern Cairo. For example, the reference to “central security troops” reflects Mahfouz’s own disillusionment with the various regimes that took control in the wake of Egyptian independence and the force they used to maintain their own power. The generally tumultuous atmosphere also lends the scene an apocalyptic tone that underscores the story’s religious themes, framing the narrator’s experiences over the course of a day as an allegory for humanity’s relationship with God from the beginning to the end of time.