The Naqib's Daughter [Hardcover]

Two hundred years ago a Western power - France - invaded an Islamic country - Egypt - and tried to run it. A prise of idealism flavoured nitty gritty imperial ambitions mixed with cupfuls of arrogance and ignorance. The enterprise ended in military and political disaster. How were the invaders perceived, and how did people adapt to it? In the wake of today's equally well-meaning invasion of Iraq Samia Seragaldin sketches an answer, both human and historical, of the upheaval that shook Egypt to the core and left Cairo in ruins. Rulers - the Mameluks - and high placed women are both given a voice. The ordinary people are a motley crowd, now gawking, now grumbling, and now revolting for reasons that remain inchoate. The result is a well balanced mix of fictious individual destinies against a well-structured historical backdrop. An entertaining read that is more than a ripping yarn, though less than a full-fledged historical novel.

At the time of the invasion the Mameluks ruled Egypt - a self-replicating class of slaves brought at tender age from the Caucasus into the country and trained for eventual military and political power. The nominal rulers - the Ottomans - hade lost all influence, though the mullahs wielded moral power.

Early in the novel Zeinab - the Naqib's barely pubescent daughter - is given in marriage by her scheming father to a distracted Napoleon, who ignores her. Now part of the French camp, Zeinab is slowly given a role as translator to M. Conté, the brilliant, middle-aged Chief Engineer. Romance ends in a short-lived marriage. Conté is forced to leave together with the remains of the French Army of the Orient as Zeinab begins her pregnancy.

In the second half of the book Egypt falls into in the hands of the rapacious Ottomans and their Albanian troops, from which Mehmet Ali, the eventual ruler of Egypt will emerge. Sitt Nafisa the White, the all-powerful widow of past ruling Mameluks, saves Zeinab from certain death at the vengeful hands of the incoming Ottomans only to send her to England as translator to Elfi Bey, one of the chief Mameluks, as he tries to enlist British assistance in repelling the Ottomans. Somewhere on the British coast she chances a brief reunion with Conté, but she realises that the romance has burned out. Zeinab returns to Egypt, where she marries another Bey and raises Conté's child for eventual scholarship in France.

The transition of French rule from naïve to inept to cruel is well sketched out. One wishes for more. The destruction that the French wrought on Cairo was horrific, though they are credited with helping to control an outbreak of the plague.

Zeinab's tale of budding love is fresh and with just the right measure of raciness and romance. After the French leave, however, her story begins to unravel. Improbabilities are stacked on improbabilities in order to keep Zeinab in the tale, despite her wish for homely anonymity.

Written by a woman, the book focuses on the role and the plight of women caught between two civilisations as they clash. Their charms predestine them for bridge-building, to which on must add curiosity and adaptiveness. Others - like Zeinab - are pawns in the hands of male greed, manipulated and then discarded when they are no longer useful. Seragaldin's homage to these victims of conflict and power struggles is most wonderful and welcome.

Islam, whose role is predominant in coalescing resistance to the invaders, is lacking in the personal sphere. Zeinab hardly prays or takes the Koran as her guide. Sitt Nafisa's vast good works might be interpreted as piety as much as her way to sustain her political role under changing rulers.

As Zeinab watches Conté sketch, she asks him how he chooses his subjects. He answers: "It depends: sometimes they are important, beautiful, or then exotic." This novel is a remarkable blend of all three. A good read.

The Naqib's Daughter is a fascinating and absorbing historical novel, set at the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. The title character is a young girl from a prominent Cairo family who was married off to Napoleon for a political alliance. Ignored by Bonaparte, she fell in love with another Frenchman, who also abandoned her when the expedition returned to France. The girl's story is one of adaptability, survival, loyalty, family and betrayal.

There are many other dimensions to the book, too. It is rich in historical detail about this important but little known episode of French, Egyptian and European history, and how it related to the geopolitical rivalries of France, England, and the Ottoman Empire. It brings into focus the difficult cultural encounters of the West with the Muslim and Arab World, both then and now. Serageldin often hints at the parallels between Napoleon's expedition and the U.S. invasion of Iraq as, for example, when the girl's lover muses that "such arrogance, such ignorance on our part, the French, to think we could remake the world in our image."

The Naqib's Daughter also has many intriguing parallels with Serageldin's wonderfully evocative autobiographical novel, The Cairo House, which is set at the time of Nasser's revolution in the 1950s--another wrenching and important chapter of Egypt's history.

In The Naqib's Daughter, Samia Serageldin weaves a tapestry that is as wide as history itself. The novel chronicles the 1798 invasion of Egypt by Napoleon and his "Armée de Terre." The conflict is seen through the eyes of Zeinab, a young Egyptian girl. Zeinab is betrothed to and then cast aside by Napoleon. Later she falls in love with Nicolas Conte. (1755-1805, a French Army officer, balloonist and inventor of the pencil.) Zeinab marries Conte in a secret ceremony and bears him a child. The magic of the novel is that Serageldin melds the larger story of the French invasion with the story of Zeinab's love and personal growth. That Serageldin can achieve this melding of the historic grand scale with the love story of a young girl is an accomplishment. That she can do it without villainizing the French is nothing short of amazing.

It has been said that "You cannot understand the present without understanding the past." Likewise you cannot understand Egypt today without understanding the effect of the French occupation on one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. The Naqib's Daughter opens a wonderful window on a little known period in history, however, it's moral runs deeper. The novel is not just about Egypt but carries forward implications on the recent Western invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. There is much here for the thinking person to ponder, and it is all wrapped in a swashbuckling story of war, love, and intrigue. The Naqib's Daughter is a "Must Read!" and in a word, a "Treasure!"