The Childhood of Tarek Eltayeb (Cairo, 1959) is a memoir of the Ayn Shams neighborhood in the Egyptian capital. His world was reduced to him for many years. At its streets full of sand and dust, at the smell of dung from palm groves and crops and at the burning heat. There were the patios where the trees grew full of mangoes or guavas, or the sparse orchards where the tomatoes he and his friends had stolen ripened. Then came Koran school, where he learned to read the letters of the Arabic alphabet. And that filled him with pride. Endlessly he read the posters he found, or the inscriptions on the cones of pipes or peanuts, and then the books he found in his father’s library. He didn’t understand this language, which was so different from the Cairo dialect that everyone around him was using. His mother, who never went to school, would translate those words for him to learn.
Many years later, faced with the criticism that his first play El Ascensor received for being written in dialect and not in classical Arabic, he had to remember those reading afternoons and position himself as a clear defender of his mother tongue, it is the same as the People speak For there are expressions that if not said in them die. In addition, language is an anchor for a person who is forced to live far from home.
Eltayeb’s memories also include the Husayniyah neighborhood where her grandmother and great-grandmother lived. It is the place of pilgrimages to the tombs of saints and festivals. It is also the place where the radio series and the stories and narrations of the family saga were heard. Then there are the transfers to El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula. The “Happiness without Borders” room, where the family spent the long summer months by the sea and under palm trees.
Faced with the criticism his first play, El Ascensor, received for being written in dialect rather than classical Arabic, Tarek Eltayeb had to establish himself as a defender of his mother tongue, which is the same language that people speak
And so, until university, when a change in the law considers him a foreigner and he cannot continue his studies. The reason: his father was Sudanese, although he worked for the border police. He had emigrated to Cairo, where he met his wife. Consequently, he too was considered Sudanese, although he first visited the country at the age of 20. From there came the passport that accompanied him for so long and caused him so many problems when crossing the borders. Now, with Austrian documentation, he doesn’t have them, but others exist because of his skin color. Boundaries, whether physical or psychological, were created for this. Marginalize the majority of world citizens.
This is how Eltayeb winds his autobiography Stations (Editions of the East and the Mediterranean, 2022. Translation from Arabic by M. Luz Commander Perez). A work that covers the author’s first 25 years, a period full of colors, smells, tastes and sensations, bathed in the light of Cairo. The next 25 where he is forced to adapt to the cold of Vienna. And then, after years of being away, returning to the city he grew up in and the confirmation that everything is smaller than he remembered.
I started writing so my family could be with me, come to me. Here is my father when I write, and here are my sister and brothers
Tarek Eltayeb, writer
The desire to continue his studies made him emigrate. Just as his father had already done. And following the course of the Nile, which, unlike other rivers in the world, flows from south to north, he left his country and came to Vienna, on the banks of the Danube. There he was welcomed by silence, cold, lack of sun, family and friends. Also, he had to face the lack of a language to communicate with and the hard work reserved for the last to arrive. In the midst of this solitude, Eltayeb began writing about the familiar scenes and characters that, due to the distance, began to move from the world of memories to that of dreams. “Writing saved me from getting lost in Austria,” he says with a big smile, before adding: “I started writing so that my family would be with me, come to me. Here is my father when I write, and here are my sister and brothers. Like they’re sitting with me.” And he recalls, “Every week I had someone from the family and that’s how I felt with him. Just on paper… but it was enough.”
Over the years he has delved into those writings that have finally been forged into this atypical autobiography, in which chronology is not respected but sensations are played with. Where the author enters into conversation with himself and with the reader. A work written in simple language that reflects the style of the stories that little Eltayeb heard or that he made up for his friends. It’s a book that exudes memories and emotions that intertwine as if they were the spikes of an electrocardiogram.
The 25-year-old, stranded in Austria, quickly learned German, studied at university, found love and got better jobs. Today he is a university professor in Vienna, but continues to write. And he continues to do it in Arabic: “The language is like my voice. It’s like my color. It’s part of me. German is like new clothes. If I were completely naked it would be me and this is my tongue. I feel very happy using my language. When I write in German I think more about the grammar than the content, while in Arabic the words are inside me. When I write one, I know what it means.”
It’s worth taking the ride that Tarek Eltayed suggests in stations and getting off at all the platforms he stops at.
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