Midaq Alley

Almost the whole of Mahfouz's novel happens in one cul-de-sac of old Islamic Cairo, Zuqaq al-Midaq, a real alley off the Sanadiqiyya near al-Azhar. Its café, barber's shop, bakery and the flat of the beautiful, restless Hamida make a world unto itself, jolted by the Second World War and the money of the British camps. When Hamida is lured out of the alley into the modern city, the closed world of Midaq Alley cracks open.

Hamida

Midaq Alley (Zuqaq al-Midaq)

Chapter 1

The book opens with a slow walk down the alley at dusk, cataloguing its handful of houses and shops and the people who fill them. Hamida, the alley's beauty, watches the street from her window, hungry for a bigger life than the one these few metres of Cairo can offer.

Chapter 1

explicit The alley of the title is a real dead-end lane, Zuqaq al-Midaq, in the old quarter off the Sanadiqiyya near al-Azhar in Islamic Cairo; nearly all of the novel takes place along it.

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