Naguib Mahfouz Quotes
We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big problems.
Mahfouz, Naguib. "Naguib Mahfouz, The Art of Fiction No. 129." Interview by Charlotte El Shabrawy. The Paris Review, vol. 34, no. 129, Summer 1992.
In a democracy, some politicians come to power in good or average times. Others, come to power with the nation in extremis. Churchill. Privately confided to a friend that he was not exactly happy. However, he had served as Prime Minister before and under the even more difficult conditions of WWII. In American, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Barack Obama all came to power when the nation was in great difficulty. In Lincoln’s case, there was secession and rebellion. With FDR it was the Great Depression. In Obama’s case, there were two wars and the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, yet all 3 men did not seem to have Churchill’s misgivings.
Since the Partition of India to create the state of Pakistan, Pakistan has wanted to integrate the Muslims—especially near the border. However, many Indian Muslims did not choose to leave India for the new Islamic nation. Pakistan has had designs on some of the Indian areas and has maintained a very large army.
ONLY DANGER SAN FRANCISCO STRIKE IS THAT MAYOR IS BADLY FRIGHTENED AND HIS FEAR INFECTED ENTIRE CITY
In July of 1934 there was a general strike in San Francisco while the President was on a Pacific vacation cruise. Hiram Johnson and Cordell Hull saw a "revolution" in the making and urged Roosevelt's return. His chief assistant, Howe, urged him not to return, so not to allow people to think it was anything more than a local labor dispute:. The President remained at sea and the labor dispute was resolved through normal channels.
Nazi Germany was overrunning Europe and WWII was well under way in Europe.
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.
