"Naguib Al-Mana" cannot be reduced to the phrase "writer, critic, translator and journalist". This Zubayri of origin, Al-Basri and Al-Baghdadi, of Saudi origin, is much more than that and deserves to be described as an encyclopedic personality that will not be repeated and time will not be generous to us with the same, being the owner of a brilliant biography and a long path of creativity and exploration in world cultures, not to mention his good qualities and qualities, and his passion since His youth in everything that is beautiful and enriches the thought and conscience.
Fortunately, Al-Manea wrote a book published after his death, titled “Memories of an Omar Devoured by Letters”, in which he wrote down his autobiography in an interesting way and without gossip or self-aggrandizement, recording everything that was remarkable and interesting in his life through a straight line from birth and childhood to youth and old age with some graceful leaps. And he drew beautiful pictures and poetic pauses for aspects of his intellectual career and his preoccupations and opinions in poetry, literature and music, and broke the barriers of fear, silence and sensitivities that some people encounter when publishing his memoirs.
Fortunately also, the Saudi writer Muhammad bin Abdullah Al-Saif issued a book entitled “Naguib Al-Manea, His Life and its Effects”, through which he tried to fill the gap, and gave us a panoramic picture of the man, so he enriched with his work all that was previously published about him and corrected some common mistakes about his work, his personality and the circumstances of his life within Iraq and beyond. From these two books and dozens of press articles that dealt with Al-Manea, we present this detailed article about him.
Najeeb Abd al-Rahman Muhammad al-Manea was born in 1926 in the town of Zubair, adjacent to Basra, the son of a family that left its original home in the Najd town of Rawdat Sudair, and moved to live in Zubair alongside those who preceded them there from the people of Najd who fled to escape from drought, epidemics and wars, or to seek trade. Education and a comfortable life. At the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, his grandfather Muhammad Al-Manea migrated to Al-Zubayr, where he gave birth to his two sons, Abdulaziz and Abdul-Rahman. As for Abdulaziz, he worked in the horse trade and had 3 children, Muhammad, Adnan and Abdul Hamid. As for Abd al-Rahman, he worked as an employee in Basra customs and married the daughter of a Kurd named Murad Agha. The Ottoman state had sent him from Sulaymaniyah to Basra to take over an administrative position, so he loved the city and settled in it, so she gave birth to him. Naguib, and Hisham (he studied medicine in Germany and settled there until he died several years ago. He is a writer and author. He published a number of books, in Arabic and German, in the fields of medicine, diseases, and health care). Abdul Rahman also had two daughters: Fatima, who is married to an Iraqi residing in the United States. And Samira, a well-known writer and writer, was married to Dr. Salah Niazi, a colleague at Dar Al-Moaleen Al-Alia College (currently the College of Education) in Baghdad, and has lived with him in London since 1965.
Al-Mana narrated about his childhood and his studies in Al-Zubayr, so he told us that he saw in his childhood in Al-Zubayr two worlds: a world in which children attend Al-Najat Al-Ahlia Primary School, where they study Sharia sciences, memorize the Qur’an, understand the most accurate issues of grammar and poetry metres, and practice accounting and bookkeeping, and a parallel world in which children go to the government primary school in Basra They study the decisions of the Ministry of Education, which he described as “lessons that touch the water without floating in it.” And because Al-Mana was one of the students of Al-Najat School, which he described as elementary in name only, while its subjects exceed the ages of its students and their level is close to the secondary level, he developed strong linguistic and literary talents early on, and he was acquainted with the Arab heritage, before he penetrated deeply into the English and French cultures.
Al-Manea Al-Zubayr left for Basra to complete his studies at “Al-Ashar High School” because there was no secondary school in Al-Zubayr at the time, and in it he distinguished himself from the rest of his peers by excelling in literature lessons, to the extent that he used to embarrass his teacher, “Muhammad Al-Sanea” with his questions and inquiries, according to his colleague, the late Iraqi/Canadian historian. Touma Al-Shamani. Since then, he did not return to Al-Zubayr, which he described by saying: “Al-Zubayr is a desert town, but the hearts of its people are blessed with gentleness of feeling, and crime is almost non-existent.” After graduating from Al-Ashar High School, in which he fellowshiped the poet Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab, he went to Baghdad to continue his university studies. In Baghdad, he tended intellectually and emotionally to its simple villagers, because – according to him – he did not find in its affluent people what he found in its simple people of the secrets of life, the richness of language, and the history of the arts.
The interest in reading from a young age, which is surprising here, is that Al-Mana was important during his secondary stage by reading the most important books in Arabic literature, especially with his possession of early literary and linguistic faculties, as well as an early passion for classical music and Western symphonies, as the presence of the British Shuaiba base close to Al-Zubayr had an important role in his appearance. On Western music and attachment to it, and learning and proficiency in the English language, as the local workers working at the base used to bring to the Al-Zubayr market what the English soldiers threw of books and lyrical records, and Al-Mana used the opportunity to acquire them because of their cheap price.
Thus, in that early period of his life, he became acquainted with the works of Huxley, Shakespeare, Thomas Harry, the music of Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart. Not only that, but he also tried to promote it among his peers, as evidenced by what his sister Samira said that he “wanted his family to listen to classical music with him, and to share his love and new hobbies with him.” I hear them at the beginning of the pieces “Shaherazade” and “The Blue Danube”, in the courtyard of Bayt Al-Zubayr in the evening, then the melodies gradually reached the symphonies of Beethoven and others, flowing or thundering in the atmosphere of Bayt Al-Zubayr’s shivering, bewildered voice. He continued, as usual, acquainting himself with the subject with sufficient knowledge with diligent patience, until the cylinders and recordings piled up with him, and their numbers exceeded the thousands. The house has become books and records wherever one walks, in the last years of his life. Accordingly, a person with this literary and artistic background was supposed to continue her university studies in the Faculty of Arts or Arts, but he preferred to enroll in the Faculty of Law, without noticeable enthusiasm, as evidenced by the fact that the time he spent reading human heritage exceeds what he devotes to pursuing his law lessons. Perhaps the reason for his preference for studying law over studying literature or the arts was what the Iraqi novelist, Ali Abdel-Amir Ajam, told us, that Al-Manea “was not burdened by anything like his sense of prestige in front of writing, and fear of it.
He graduated from the University of Baghdad in 1948, but his affiliation and pride has always been in what he called “the university of myself,” a metaphor for being self-taught. For example, while studying law, he learned the principles of the French language from a Tunisian refugee residing in Baghdad named “Ali Al-Hamami”, and as soon as he made his way in it, he completed it with his individual efforts.
He returned to Basra with a law degree, but he failed to practice law, despite his relationship with Abd al-Latif al-Shawaf, who was a justice of the peace in Basra and a friend of his uncle, Abd al-Aziz Muhammad al-Manea, and notables of Zubair such as Hamad, Suleiman al-Thukair, Muhammad al-Aqil and others. In other words, his relationship with Al-Shawaf did not have an impact on his career as much as it had another effect represented in his deepening in poetic culture, due to Al-Shawaf's obsession with Arabic poetry, as evidenced by Al-Manea's saying that after his acquaintance with Al-Shawaf, "Arabic poetry became inhabited by him with a new depth that he had not known previously." . The truth is that Al-Mana did not forget Al-Shawaf’s literary virtue over him, describing him in his writings as a wonderful person and praising his generosity, morals, and chivalry, which was manifested in his intervention with the leader Abdul Karim Qassem to send his friend Al-Siyab to England for treatment at the expense of the state.
After the high school seats and the university fellowship that brought them together, the job brought Al-Manea and Al-Sayyab together again. After obtaining their university degrees, they worked together at the Basra Oil Company in dull clerical jobs in the warehouses. And about this, the Syrian writer Muhammad Abdelaziz said: “The British did not care about their diplomas and considered them merely seeking to obtain a monthly income. They were asking them to wait for the lorries that would take them to the company at dawn when the sun had not yet risen, and on the way they saw other lorries carrying sheep, so the barrier was saying (at least the sheep are slaughtered once, but we slaughter every day) ».
In the fifties, Al-Mana emerged in the field of film criticism, as he turned into a voracious follower of international cinema, and a passionate viewer of English, Italian and French films, which enabled him to provide critical readings of films through articles and studies that he published in “Al-Shaab” newspaper, “Radio and Television Magazine” and the magazine The Iraqi “Films” and the Egyptian “Al-Kawakeb” magazine. Simultaneously, he published articles and literary and critical studies in the magazines “Al-Adab”, “Al-Aqlam” and “Al-Mawakif”.
His interests in Arabic literature and its pioneers at the time led him to the works of Akkad and Taha Hussein, so he examined them with a critical eye to find in them – from his point of view – flaws and loopholes, especially with his extensive knowledge of the writings of senior English and French writers. He took Taha Hussein, for example, for ignoring Anglo-Saxon literature and focusing on French writers who are known for clarity, such as Descartes, Molière, and Voltaire, without its famous writers with the language of ambiguity, such as Rimbaud and Proust. As for Al-Akkad, he took upon him his transcendence and his excessive self-confidence, and he did not take from the Anglo-Saxon trend anything but prose writings from the 19th century.
Hater and critic of revolutions
In the winter of 1961, he was appointed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an employee in the consular department on the recommendation of Hashem Jawad, the first foreign minister in the republican era, but he was dismissed in the summer of the same year while Hashem Jawad was in New York. It is likely that the reason for his dismissal is that he wrote and published an article in which he described the regime’s decision to execute the two nationalist officers, Nazem al-Tabaqjali and Rifaat al-Hajj Sirri, as “an assassination and not a punishment for a crime because there were no legal trials.” To remain unemployed without work until the overthrow of Qasim in 1963, that was really a paradox! The monarchy, which he criticized and described as an agent for colonialism, embraced and employed him and opened the door for him to develop his administrative and practical expertise, while the republican regime that applauded his arrival is the one that dismissed him from his work. However, this paradox is what turned him, for the rest of his life, into a hater and critic of revolutions and progressive regimes, as evidenced by his rightful pessimistic stance on what happened in Iran in 1979, describing it as "a gateway to a black death that will reap our country and its people."
Moving to London
His move to London constituted an important turning point in his life, although it did not give him everything he deserved. It was a pleasure for him to stay in it, and he became aware of the presence of a large segment of Arab intellectuals who emigrated there, especially from Iraq, so he decided to settle there. In 1987, he joined the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper at the invitation of its editor-in-chief at the time, Professor Othman Al-Omair. He did this despite his belief that publishing in daily newspapers is a waste of good content because no one reads them and they are soon thrown into the rubbish bin. And he continued until his death came on November 2, 1991, due to a sudden heart attack while he was sitting on his rocking chair. It is believed that his hypersensitivity, anxious spirit, the departure of most of his friends, and the tragic situation in Iraq contributed to his deteriorating health.
Al-Mana left behind upon his departure a single novel, “Contact of Cities”, and a book “On Literature and Music”, elaborate translations of thirty books on music, literature and politics, hundreds of articles, a number of short stories, a detailed research on Hemingway and another on the philosophy of Arabic sound and singing entitled “Umm Kulthum, The Impossible Absence and the Sentimental Institution.
Written by: Dr. Abdullah Al-Madani abu_taymour@