Milestones

By Paul Theroux

To me, Naguib Mahfouz, who died last week at 94, was a true hero in this Islamophobic age, the sort of brilliant, embattled writer and public intellectual who has almost ceased to exist. Prolific and serene, Naguib-bey stood his ground, which was Egypt. He did not leave, even to collect his Nobel Prize. He wrote about growing up in Cairo, about movie stars, madmen, beggars, pashas, gods and religion. His bravest book is Children of the Alley, with its parable of Islam--banned in most Arab countries. Condemned to death in a fatwa issued by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, he continued defiantly walking the streets of Cairo until one day in 1994 he was stabbed by a fanatic.

When I visited him in the hospital after the attack, he was ailing. Diabetic, deaf and almost sightless--yet he was, in his way, full of life. For years afterward, he held salons at which he encouraged people to discuss literature and world events. "I feel no hatred," he told me once, "but it is very bad to try to kill someone for a book you haven't read."