41 pages • 1 hour read
Alaa Al AswanyThe Yacoubian Building
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Yacoubian Building
The building that gives the book its title, the Yacoubian Building is a physical manifestation of many of the narrative’s preoccupying themes. The architecture is an old European style, symbolizing the colonialist legacy that touches the lives of the characters. The crumbling façade represents the fading glory of downtown Cairo, which has seen its riches evaporate over the decades. Even the layout of the building represents an attempt, and failure, to create a delineation between the rich and the poor, embodying the fact that society cannot truly separate the lives of the rich and the poor.
As well as a motif for the themes of the text, the building functions as a stage. It is the setting for much of the novel’s events, providing a familiar backdrop that presents several issues endemic to the tightly packed urban society in which the characters live. The rooftop homes, for instance, are never private. There are always people listening, prying, and keen to involve themselves in other people’s business. The neighbors have a keen sense for which marriages are in trouble, who is having an affair, who is committing crimes, or who is anything less than an ideal moral being. This lack of privacy is an issue affecting many people in a cramped modern city, in which perpetual surveillance and diminished privacy are simply facts of life.
However, the occupants of the building represent the human core of the novel’s themes. Considering the building as a metaphor for the cramped city, for instance, gives a perpetual sense that while the occupants are aware of every little secret, they are happy to permit these secrets to continue. Activities such as homosexuality and alcohol use might contravene accepted moral codes, but the occupants of the roof are unlikely to care. If they like a person—such as Abduh—then they are willing to overlook such issues. Perhaps if they were more effusive about Malak (or if Malak himself were a warmer person), his arrival on the roof would not have been met with hostility. Though there is little privacy, the building and its occupants adapt and change to accommodate this. In this sense, the building and those within it represent humanity’s ability to endure almost anything.
Contracts and Paperwork
Contracts and paperwork are a mundane fact of life in Cairo’s modern bureaucracy. However, they come to represent a great deal more. While they can be considered an official way to cope with the stress and complications of existence in the city, contracts and paperwork are at times wielded like weapons, allowing for insidious activity, revenge, moral policing, and all manner of uses for which they were never intended.
A chief architect (and victim) of this issue is Malak. Born into extreme poverty, Malak is a hustler. He knows that he needs to work hard to make his money and is willing to do almost anything to claw his way out of hardship. One of his major stepping stones in this regard is being awarded the store on the roof of the Yacoubian Building. He knows that he will need to do this officially, so Malak and his brother bribe a lawyer in order to be made official occupants of the room. On arrival, they encounter hostility. They are not wanted, so one particularly pernicious civil servant uses bureaucracy to try and undermine the contract. In this respect, bureaucracy is used as a kind of moral policing. The occupants of the roof may dislike paperwork, but they are happy to use it to get what they want. Malak finds himself in danger of losing everything but knows that bribes can almost always help circumvent even the most obstinate contracts, paperwork, laws, or anything else.
After this close run-in with the bureaucracy, Malak learns his lesson. He chooses to wield paperwork to his advantage, and as such, his actions mirror those of Dalwat. Both Malak and Dalwat set their sights on Zaki Bey’s apartment, hoping to use twisted interpretations of paperwork and contract law to acquire Zaki’s home after his death. Malak employs a girl to seduce Zaki, while Dalwat bribes police officers to have her brother declared legally unable to manage his estate. In these instances, paperwork and bureaucracy come to represent the cutthroat nature of the society: These characters are willing to do whatever they must to better their situation in life. The contracts and the paperwork are weaponized forms of social betterment, symbolizing the extreme lengths people will go to in order to escape poverty.
Cigarettes and Alcohol
Typically considered vices, cigarettes and alcohol function as motifs within the novel. Tobacco products (cigarettes and cigars) are widely used, the particulars of their use often denoting social status. Alcohol, though illegal, is also widely used, and its use represents characters’ willingness to circumvent the law in the pursuit of pleasure and social bonding.
Tobacco products are the most rampant of the typical vices. Zaki Bey’s introduction notes that he is rarely seen without his trademark cigar. However, the quality of this cigar has changed over the decades. When Zaki was more successful, he smoked high-quality Cuban cigars. As the situation in Cairo has changed, and Zaki’s social position has declined, he has switched to cheaper alternatives. The cigar becomes a clear metaphor for Zaki’s changing fortunes: Once hugely successful and full of the vigor of youth, he is now older, less successful, and still clinging to the affections of his spritelier, ebullient self. Zaki is bitter about his lost youth and cannot let it go; all of this character detail is found within his choice of tobacco product.
Despite its illegal status, alcohol is also widely used. While it was once freely available, the changing social conditions of the country have forced alcohol consumption underground. It can now be found only in bars of dubious quality or places that are off-limits for many. A woman from such a dubious bar robs Zaki Bey, while the latter places are split into two groups: bars catering to the rich and bars catering to marginalized social groups. Those bars that cater to the rich (in hotels, for instance) represent the extent to which laws do not apply to those with money. Bars that cater to marginalized social groups, however, have a different metaphorical use for alcohol. In the bars that primarily cater to a homosexual clientele, for example, alcohol is just another vice among many. Simply by being present in the bar, the patrons are breaking a number of morality laws. Thus, the alcohol becomes a means of social bonding, allowing those marginalized by society to come together and forget about their problems. To them, alcohol use is just another example of society’s rejection of them. To imbibe alcohol, then, becomes at one a more complicated act of rebellion and a declaration of identity.
