Karnak Cafe by Naguib Mahfouz

Karnak Cafe by Naguib Mahfouz (1974, translated 2007)
Read: May 2010

A short story, retold to the narrator from three different perspectives.
Karnak Cafe hosts the young and the old, those who sit and drink tea, those who come for shisha, those who come to talk, those who come to look and those who come to be alone. Mahfouz's descriptions takes me to any number of cafes that I see along the streets (those of real Cairo) as the locals while away their time their. The characters too are fascinating to read. I think I see them in the cafe's themselves, but to have them translated into print means I do know when I am looking at the hostess, the lady who runs the cafe and then the man who runs after her, the quiet and regular and the outspoken. But the outspoken can't stay for long and soon the cafe's dynamic is turned upside down after police raids. Young friends and lovers aren't the same and its' only once we get the second story starting do we begin to understand why. It is then the final story that lets us see the full picture of the cafe. Everyone has a different desire and a different price they can pay.
A really great book here that paints a stunning picture of this cafe and the life that takes place in, around and through it.