Two by Parker Bilal

I've gotten a little behind on both reading and writing lately, and have 2 books by Parker Bilal to report on, Dogstar and The Burning Gates, the 3rd and 4th in the series featuring Sudanese refugee Makana, a former policeman who now ekes out a living as a private detective in Cairo. The series begins years before the Tahrir Square rebellion and its collapse into the current regime, and Dogstar ends with Makana hearing news that the World Trade Center in New York has been attacked. Burning Gates begins with a scene from the subsequent American invasion of Iraq.

I was struck in reading this pair of novels by how much Bilal (who also writes as Jamal Mahjoub) has created a modern, Egyptian equivalent of classic noir. Dogstar begins with kidnapping and murder of young boys, and suspicion cast on the Christian community; Burning Gates deals with theft of artworks and archaeological antiquities in which an Iraqi military man is implicated. Makana continues to be close to the archetype of the noir hero as described by Raymond Chandler in his famous essay on The Simple Art of Murder: the honorable loner in the mean streets of, in this case, Cairo. Makana lost his wife and daughter in their flight from Suday, and he continues to be haunted by that loss (a major factor in the plots of both the recent novels). He also remains, despite adversity, true to humanistic principles. The mystical overtones of the plot in Dogstar and the focus on corruption in the second add depth to  both stories.

Makana's room in a floating house, his landlord's family (especially the young daughter), and various running characters enrich the stories, but the voice is Makana's (though the stories are told in the third person). The vividness of the writing, the pessimistic portrayal of social and political conditions, and the dour Makana are the key attractions, in addition to some humor and a glimpse (from an outsider's point of view) at the distinctive quality of life in Cairo. These are not short books, but the story flows aloong in a compelling way: I highly recommend the whole series.