In Search of Ali Mahmoud

Vivian Gornick lived with an Egyptian physicist for six months in Cambridge, Mass. They broke up but she kept wondering what made him the way he was. She decided to go to Egypt to see his family and try to understand that small fraction of Egyptian society (upper class) that they represented. She went with a contract to write a book. If you think you can imagine a Jewish woman going to Cairo in 1971 and living with an Arab family, forget it. You can't. This is a very sensitive, intelligent book which brings to the fore the basic humanity of one Vivian Gornick, whoever she may be. (Seems she has written a lot of books, judging from the entries here, but I've never heard of her except for this book.) Perhaps Ms. Gornick never finds Ali Mahmoud, but she certainly gives a very close-up picture of his family and friends, exaggerating neither faults nor virtues. Perhaps Ms. Gornick never found Ali Mahmoud, but she did find herself. While the description of the whole process can get a bit gossipy at times, in the end the book is deeply worthwhile as that rare kind of book in which the author openly reveals her own mistakes, flaws, and anger along with the portraits of the others, the foreign 'subjects', thus making herself part of the story rather than just an "unseen observer"--detached and uninvolved. Though the title resembles many others--books by Americans who wandered here and there around the world--few, if any, are so shatteringly honest about what happened to them in the societies they visited. This person really was IN Egypt, not just getting her photo taken riding a camel by the pyramids. Certain stylistic tendencies may rub you the wrong way, but you can't fail to be fascinated by her experience.