Truth is a Mango
I can’t think of any literary genre that lies as habitually about its subject, or is as artistically lazy while claiming authenticity, as prison literature.
Prison literature presents itself as offering up a truth which the ordinary reader could never otherwise obtain. The prison writer demands humility and deference of their reader. I have been through hell, declares the writer, I have no reason to lie. I simply record. I write out of loyalty to my cellmates and everything we went through together. And since the prison experience is so noble, so venerated, the writer doesn’t see why they should be bound by considerations of craft or aesthetics. Some even argue that to aestheticize prison in one’s writing is a dereliction of the duty to reveal the truth, and that the beauty of the text lies in its honesty and authenticity. There’s a saying in Arabic, al-sidq mangah: the truth is a refuge. Or, as one of my cellmates pronounced it, in colloquial fashion: al-sidq manga. Truth’s a mango.
Egypt’s experiments in prison literature are full of contradictions. In the 1960s, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s prisons were home to both Islamists and communists, and the two movements record their experiences so differently you start to wonder how truthful they are; it sometimes feels like they’re deliberately attempting to frustrate any understanding of what prison was like at the time. But their dissimilarity is a reflection of how individual they are, not how truthful they are. There can be no universally acknowledged truth when every prisoner goes through a different experience and feels a very personal pain.
Truth demands consensus and proof. But prison writings rely on personal narrative alone. Any untruth or inconsistency can be explained away as the work of prison itself, and when the story doesn’t make sense or its plausibility is called into question, the writer-narrator still has honesty on their side. Contradiction and error can’t be helped when prison puts people under such extreme pressure.
Then there’s the dead weight of ideology that drags on these writings. Prison literature has always been part of political conflict in the same way prison itself, in the mind of the political prisoner, is an unavoidable part of the political struggle. Most Arabic prison literature I’ve read has been produced by political prisoners for whom writing is just an extension of their activism. It stops them going crazy, or keeps their soul from going dead, while they wait for the better future they’re going to build with their party or organization when they get out. Or if they’re writing after the fact, then they do so to inscribe the experiences of their movement on the walls of history, to make a scratch—however small—on the towering façade of power and the narrative it imposes. So the artistry of whatever’s written about isn’t what matters to the imprisoned activist writer; the important thing is the documentary content of the text, and what it can do to serve the literary-political cause.
But documents and testimonies aren’t literature and are certainly not art. And if art has documentary value, it is only secondary. A document attempts to explain, to educate the public. Literature exists unto itself; its essence lies in its singularity, not its expository abilities. And it’s from works of literature that writers learn their craft. In a work of literature, form is central, indeed form and content are one—that’s what makes the work. In documents and testimonies of imprisonment, content dominates, and form is just a means to an end.
A political prisoner is never on their own in prison, even if they were arrested and interrogated alone. In the writings of political prisoners, there’s always the moment when the writer meets their comrades on the inside. There’s always a clear distinction drawn between political and criminal imprisonment, too. Political writers like to make it clear they’re different from the criminal prisoners, even when they share a cell.
Prison, for these writers, is a crucible in which the political collective is forged, its members’ commitments put to the test, and the bonds between them strengthened. Only the symbolism varies: with the Islamists, tears flow as they bow and kneel together for the dawn prayer; with the communists, members quiver and burst into flaming orgasm when their comrades’ voices join together in a Sheikh Imam song.
In the end, the prison writings I’ve read aren’t really about prison. They’re extended analyses of the political moment in which they were written, with prison just another arena in which political conflict plays out. It’s an arena that sees the writer defeated yet defiant, but nobody prepared me for that moment, and nobody told me what the experience would be like. I always expected I’d end up in prison, like anyone involved in public life in Egypt, but I never imagined it would be art, literature, a novel, that would put me there. I’d ended up in prison as a writer, not a political activist.
