Page 97 - مدارات ونقوش عدد 26_27ط

History

Coronavirus disease has become a source of terror for mankind, as it
is the largest biological calamity scientists are puzzled about

The plague was not confined to the Islamic Orient for it came from
Western Europe

“The plague is not an infectious disease, and most of the
doctors who examined it in recent years and studied it
carefully share this opinion.”
However, Clot Bey finally responded to his command-
er’s orders.

Epidemics and literature
Just as epidemics were a material for historians, they
also provided fertile material for Arab and internation-
al writers. In his autobiographical novel, Al-Ayyam (The
Days), the Dean of Arabic literature, Taha Hussein, presents Ahmed Khaled Tawfik
the spread of cholera epidemic in his village at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century: “It descended to in Egypt, Not far from the Arab world, the novel “The White Cas-
killing the population, devastating cities and villages, and tle” by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk addresses the spread of
wiping out families.” cholera in Ottoman Istanbul and the decline of numbers of
The cholera epidemic claimed many lives when it those who perished in the epidemic after the application
reached the Arab region in several waves, starting in the of quarantine procedures in the country.
nineteenth century. Cholera was portrayed in Arab litera- Cholera has killed millions of people across the world,
ture, specifically poetry that depicts the state of panic and its name associated with death, but in literature it has
terror that has engulfed entire countries. found its way to be associated with love as well. In his mas-
We find this, for example, in Nazik Al-Malaika’s “Chol- terpiece “Love in the Time of Cholera”, the Colombian writer
era” which deals with the spread of the epidemic in Egypt Gabriel García Márquez makes a fictitiously yellow-flagged
in 1947, and as in a poem by the writer and poet Louis Sab- ship a haven for the beloved Florentino and Fermina.
ounji that talks about the spread of the epidemic in the
Levant and its arrival in the Arabian Peninsula at the end of Epidemics in Horror Fiction
the nineteenth century.
When horror and literature are mentioned, we cannot
but mention Ahmed Khaled Tawfik whose famous series
“Safari” included a number of books talking about epi-
demics. We cannot talk about the epidemics the world has
known without talking about the Spanish flu that spread
between 1918 and 1920. We find a wonderful portrayal of
Gabriel
García the events that accompanied the spread of this in Kather-
Márquez ine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”.
Another example is Rabie Jaber’s «America» where we
find harsh images of this epidemic including cars passing
by every day calling on people to throw the bodies of their
dead from the windows after the outbreak of influenza.

16 Issue No. (26 - 27) April - May ( 2020)