Decoding the Underlying Narrative in Metro: A Story of Cairo
Amr Abbas
Introduction
On a surface
level, the graphic novel Metro -- and its English translation Metro:
A Story of Cairo -- presents little more than a secondary critique of the
socio-political and economic status quo of the late Hosni Mubarak (1928 – 2020)
era. Yet, with some knowledge of the period’s socio-political context, it
becomes more than a passing critique. The graphic novel borrows from Western
tradition when it comes to character design and the narrative course of the
graphic narrative. However, despite the Westernization of the narrative and how
it easily translates to a more Western style, particularly American, it is,
first and foremost, made for an Egyptian audience. Metro takes place
during the final years of Mubarak’s regime [he ruled from 1981-2011] and
shortly before the beginning of the Arab Spring and the 25th of
January Revolution [2011] in Egypt. This paper investigates and decodes the
underlying socio-political layer of the translated narrative through a close
reading of the graphic novel with knowledge of the cultural context. It thereby
aims to contextualize this layer of narration in both El Shafee’s Arabic
original of Metro (El Shafee, 2008) and the English-language translation
by Chip Rossetti -- Metro: A Story of Cairo (El Shafee, 2012), arguing
how familiarity with the socio-political and cultural context in which the
graphic novel is rooted is essential for a more fundamental understanding of
it.
Background
Metro has received
acclaim from Egyptian and Arab critics and has been translated into Italian and
English. However, ahead of that, the comic was ironically banned from
publication in 2008. The published copies were suppressed for the inclusion of “inappropriate
statements and pictures,” and the publication was considered “harmful to public
ethics.” (Hanafy, 2016: 421). The comic itself follows the straightforward
trajectory of an Americanized style of the action genre, where Shehab, a young
computer engineer, is chased after by a loan shark, pushing him to decide to
rob a bank using his advanced software. The narrative is structurally divided
by landscape markers, particularly in the form of Metro stations. However, the
simple and rather straightforward narrative is not the most intriguing aspect
of the graphic novel for a close reading; it is the implied villain that forced
censorship upon the work: corruption. Corruption in the graphic novel involves
itself heavily with the context of the late-Mubarak era, particularly during
the peak of police and government corruption. However, the interweaving of the
cultural background within the narrative is not clear-cut to the casual reader,
since many elements carry additional weight that capture the socio-political
anxieties of the late-Mubarak era.
Social Layer and Class Critique
The cultural
understanding of the graphic novel is implied early on with the appearance of
visions of material Egyptian culture, such as the ringing of mobile phones with
different songs as ringtones (El Shafee, 2012: 5). While on the surface level,
the ringtones only present the different norms of Egyptian society and Egyptian
culture, through a close reading, they present different social and age classes
of the individual, something which is almost all but missing in translation in the
English version. In Fig. 1, the first panel to the left presents a
middle-aged man who is likely a government employee,1 portrayed
through the way he holds his phone at a distance and the fashion style with the
suspenders, the high-up trousers, and the tucked-in half-sleeve shirt. The
choice of ringtone here is a traditional one, playing with the idea that a man
of that lifestyle is technologically challenged. The second and third panels
present younger generations, with the second panel playing a very popular 2006
romantic song by Mohammed Hamaky and the third likely playing a 2004 rap
boyband song by MTM that was most popular among young men. The fourth panel
plays more with the stereotype of the working class or unemployed strugglers,
often referred to as tramps in colloquial Egyptian. The final panel portrays an
older woman who visually resembles the stereotypical female government employee
or a housewife,2 with the stereotypical ringtone “Enta Omry”3
from 1965 by Umm Kalthoum. This decoding of the visuo-textual messages
within the graphic novel is re-coded through the translation, and that is where
some of the messages are lost in translation. Hall refers to the
misunderstanding of coded messages and points out the need to understand the
contextual socio-political situations, and even then, he refers to the “dominant”
and the “preferred” code, which can be lost through the “selective perception”
of the audience within the same language, let alone in a translated version
(Hall, 1980: 512–515). Similarly, Dittmar refers to the symbolic language in
comics and the role of signs in relating and expressing the idea or the concept
to the reader (Dittmar, 2020: 31). As Hall’s argument relates to audio-visual
communication, Dittmar’s focuses on the textual and the visual sequential
language of comics, which can be interpreted through the visual and lingual
codes layered within the narrative (Dittmar, 2020: 40–41). While the concept of
multiple signifieds on one signifier was originally developed for landmarks
(Dittmar, 2016: 209–210), Dittmar has since used the same concept -- which
describes a condition where a single visual and/or textual signifier
simultaneously carries several meanings depending on the reader/viewer -- in
relation to comics (Dittmar, 2020: 31–32).
While the
cultural context and understanding are much easier to grasp for an
Arabic-speaking reader from anywhere in the Middle East -- thanks to the high
popularity of Egyptian cultural output in film, song, and art in general -- the
context becomes harder to decipher for a non-Middle Eastern audience, and
practically impossible without aid for a non-Arabic-speaking audience. What is
lost in translation, in this case, becomes crucial to the overall tone of the
graphic novel and the underlying narrative within the folds of the chapters.
For example, the hardest part to decipher within the five panels is the third,
which reads “Ba-bump-a-bump-bump” in the English translation, yet, in the
original Arabic, it reads “Terrren terrelem terrelem-lem,” which could be a
reference to the music in MTM’s song “My phone is ringing.”4 The
interweaving of the cultural expressions and practices of different individuals
and groups in the narrative demonstrates the multidimensional fabric of
Egyptian society. The contrast between the younger characters in panels two and
three and one and five is demonstrated both visually, textually, and
contextually. However, situating the cultural context within those panels
requires a certain level of familiarity with the socio-political and
socio-economic dynamics of the period.
Fig. 1. Ringtones depicting different social and age classes of Egyptian society. (Metro, p. 5).
Music has always
been a symbol of culture, class, and lifestyle. Mobile ringtones during the
mid-2000s have also played a role in cultural expression, individuality, and
mood (Gopinath, 2013: xx–xxi). In addition to the inaudible lyrical (and
musical) signs, there are also the visual signs clearly present within the five
panels in both the way the characters dress and the way they stand (with their
mobile phones). For instance, the first panel signals the age of the character
through his bald pattern and the way he dresses, with suspenders and trousers
lifted a little too high. In the second, the pattern of the tight trousers and
the veil present a common critique of the way young women dressed during the
late 2000s, with the contradictory fashion of the hijab (veil) to
conceal the female, accompanied by tight trousers and tops and high heels,
which are often pointed out socially as pretentious. The third panel presents a
younger generation with rolled-up sleeves and a patterned shirt that is left untucked.
The fourth, as previously mentioned, refers to a particular layer of society,
often referred to as the unemployed, which ironically presents the most
working-class group in the city. The final panel presents a quizzical mixture
of upper-middle-class and nostalgic expression in the form of the woman’s
skirt, hairdo, and the ringtone in itself. The ringtone song in the fifth panel
refers to what was once considered high culture (Hammond, 2004: 144–146), but
it is now regarded as nostalgic.
The
translator’s introduction refers to some of the songs that are mentioned in
these panels (El Shafee, 2012: ix–x). However, even with these notes, the
cultural context can be misread and misidentified without the relevant cultural
knowledge. Additionally, there is a locational layer that plays a part in the
definition of the socio-economic classes of the characters within the graphic
novel.
Other signs
that are only recognized within sufficient cultural knowledge, understanding,
and background take shape in the visual form that El Shafee focused on in some
panels, particularly in relation to the more important secondary characters.
Mustafa, for instance, is signaled to be of a lower class, particularly by the
t-shirt he wears throughout the narrative. It reads “Nile” with the Nike
checkmark-like “Swoosh” [Fig. 2]. And, the distinction of the climbing
social class of the villain “Hagg Ghareeb” as seen through the Mercedes-Benz he
rides. The German automobile has been a strong social identifier of class in
Egyptian culture, often shown in TV dramas and films [Fig. 3].
Contextually, the Mercedes-Benz has long been used to signal a stereotypical
status symbol of a particular social class and is often used to pinpoint the
rich villain, such as is the case with the iconic Noor Al Sharif film, “The
Shame” (1982), where Al
Sharif’s character drove the same (but older model) vehicle.
Fig. 2. The Nike ripoff t-shirt with the “Swoosh” logo as seen throughout the graphic novel. Page 5.
Fig. 3. The Mercedes car. Page 7.
Cultural
knowledge is therefore essential to closely examine the different layers of the
graphic novel, aside from the work as a culturally independent work. The
snippet of cultural understanding that Rossetti shares with the reader in his
introduction, particularly in the references to the secondary character, Wannas,
is sufficient for the base level of understanding of the comic. Wannas presents
a crucial strand of Egyptians in many dimensions, which will be further
discussed in the following part of this paper. Rossetti writes, “Wannas is a
Sa’idi from Sa’id, or Upper Egypt, whose people are considered hicks and are
often the target of Egyptian jokes,” which explains the segment on page 19 -- that
the translator refers to in his note (El Shafee, 2012: ix) -- but only minimally expresses the interlinking
of the social class to the socio-political layer of the comic.
The
interweaving of social and age norms of the late 2000s in Egypt is not only
portrayed in the way those characters are designed, it is played with much more
in a socio-political context as a means of critique against the Egyptian
government and the stale Egyptian politics and political scene before the
Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The political interplay becomes much more evident
during the penultimate section (El Shafee, 2012: 65–80), particularly with the use
of the protest as a cataclysmic event in the narrative. Whereas the speculation
of a revolution was hard to imagine at that point, the comic depicts a much
smaller idea, referring indirectly to the numerous protests against the
government that occurred from the beginning of 2006 until the downfall of the
Mubarak regime on Feb. 11, 2011.
Interlying Socio-political Critique in Narration
After the
opening segment of the un-chaptered graphic novel, the first “station” appears
in the text, signifying a temporal and spatial shift. The stations, following
the title of “metro,” signal the different “chapters” of the graphic novel.
They also signal shifts of time and space and, more importantly, a succession
of events, which is not only crucial to understanding the underlying political
narrative but also refers to a speculation of a then future that already came
to be. The use of trains as a metaphor for arriving at a different stage in
space and time has been coded into the visual memory (Kilbourn, 2013: 317–318)
through other works from film and TV.
However, the
metro stations also convey a different narrative of the story, particularly, regarding
socio-economic classes and different levels of political or apolitical
engagement during the stale period of the Mubarak regime. Class-critique in
relation to particular areas of Cairo is harder to define without the cultural
context and the intertextual coding based on various works of different media.
The differentiation of class in the graphic novel serves as one of the many
interweaving layers of the political value of the work. The two secondary
characters, Wannas and Wael, present two sides of one coin in Metro: the
silent majority and the alignment to support or protest when forced to take a
side. Both characters take on unethical and illegal gigs: Wannas dislodges
himself from his shoe-cleaning work and opts for begging instead, which in turn
provides him with much more money, whereas Wael takes on a job as a National
Democratic Party thug5 to attack protestors during a demonstration
instead of his work as a wedding singer. Both characters, who represent the
poor and apolitical, return near the end of the graphic novel in the protest
section on opposite sides. Whereas Wannas finds his true calling in leading the
protest with his voice, Wael finds himself on the same side as before: a thug.
The concluding moments of their lives come in stark opposites despite dying at
the same protest. Wannas says, “In my life, death is the best thing to happen
to me. I’m a free man.” Whereas Wael’s last words are “I wanted to make a video
clip […].” (El Shafee, 2012: 76–77). And then, both characters face entirely
different endings: Wannas is redeemed, whereas Wael is forsaken by the very
party that caused his death. The significance and futility of the two
characters’ demise and the aftermath of their deaths show the precariousness
and the value of life; while one is celebrated for his moment of redemption,
the other is forgotten.
The demise of
Wael and his dissociation from the National Party is an act of betrayal and
scapegoating that was a common tactic used by the ruling regime and party.
While the events of the Camel Incident or Battle of the Camel (BBC News, 2012;
Wikimedia Foundation, 2024)6 occurred several years after the
release (and censorship) of the original version of Metro, the same
tactic has been repeated by high-up party members. While the signals are clear
in both the original language and the translation that the villainous party
members deny Wael’s involvement and recruitment, socio-political and cultural
understanding are crucial to connect it to previous encounters between thugs
and protestors in Egypt, as well as ones that happened after the writing of the
graphic novel. While readers who are unfamiliar with the relevant
socio-political and cultural context are likely to interpret this segment as
speculative or fully fictional, those who possess the necessary contextual
knowledge are allowed deeper insights by drawing a connection with factual
incidents.
Fig. 4. Thugs of the National Democratic Party. Page 76.
The levels of
political engagement are also shown to be based on class and lifestyle. For
instance, villains such as Ghareeb and the most corrupt, like the bank
director, are at the top of the economic class and have the most power, and at
the bottom of the economic class are characters such as Wannas and Wael. In the
middle class are Dina and Shehab. The levels of political engagement are almost
dependent on class as well, where those who belong to the higher class are the
ones in power, the middle class represents the protestors, and the lower class
includes the apolitical and marginalized. The signs that are used throughout
the graphic novel pinpoint those classes and their relationship to politics and
power, where the most powerful are the wealthiest, and the most marginalized
are the poorest.
The political
engagement and awareness of the middle-class characters of the narrative are
shown through different aspects. For instance, in Shehab’s case, his awareness
of the political corruption that ruled over the economics of the late-Mubarak
period is seen through his understanding of the underlying reasons behind the
bank’s rejection of his loan request; however, at the same time, he is part of
the passive silent majority, unmotivated by his awareness. On page 65, the
contrast between Dina’s engagement in the political scene and her entanglement
in politics and protest culture in comparison to Shehab’s silence is clear when
he points out that she should “let that stuff go.”
Fig. 5. Shehab and Dina on protesting. Page 65.
Fear of the
government in Egypt has drawn many people away from politics. That fear was
mainly fear of persecution, deeply rooted in police brutality against civilians
and unjust treatment (Doss and Kingsley, 2013; Ismail, 2014). A common phrase
among the silent majority when it comes to politics (any politics, from
workplace politics to governmental and institutional ones) was to “let it go.”
Among the most infamous phrases leading up to the 25th of January
Revolution was one by then-president Mubarak, “Let it go, man,”7
when publicly asked a question8 by one of the party members during a
National Democratic Party conference (Al-Hajjar, 2017). The critique then becomes one of society as a
whole rather than only a critique against the political status quo. Knowledge
of the socio-political situation at the time is crucial to understanding the
characters and their behaviors from the visual and/or textual signs embedded in
the graphic novel. Many of those signs linked to class -- as discussed in the
previous section relating to identifying them through ringtones and visual
signs -- are difficult, if not impossible, to interpret correctly for those who
do not speak Arabic and do not possess the necessary cultural knowledge. The
political critique is, to a great extent, easier to interpret and identify for
those who do not possess the cultural and societal knowledge in comparison to
the societal critique.
The societal
critique in Metro comes in doubles through contrast between two
characters. Much like the comparison between Wannas and Wael, Wannas is also a
contrast to Shehab in the fact that they are both originally from Upper Egypt.
As explained by the translator, the Upper Egyptian is often the subject of mockery;
however, Shehab also recalls his time with his father in Upper Egypt, where he
learned Tahtib.9 Shehab is likely a descendant of an Upper
Egyptian father/family. Upper Egyptian men are either subject to mockery or
referred to as heroic (and in some popular cultural outputs, both)10.
Upper Egyptian heroism is one that is understood from the cultural context and
the old traditions of showing the Upper Egyptian man as a valiant type who is
kind and generous but strong and unyielding. While this is not expressed in the
comic in any way except for the showcasing of both Wannas’ last actions and
Shehab’s heroism throughout the narrative, it is encoded through cinematic and
television series traditions. The juxtaposition of heroism and mockery
presented in the graphic novel plays with the idea that the hero (Shehab) could
have easily been similar to the shoe-shiner-turned-beggar (Wannas) under
different circumstances, particularly educational and economic ones. The
cultural background and awareness of the stereotypes and archetypes of
characters used in a broader sense provide a more nuanced understanding of this
double meaning. The novel plays with doubles in many ways, such as the doubles
of the same social class in Wael and Mustafa; the doubles with the same
background, such as Wannas and Shehab; and doubles within the same economic
class, such as Wael and Wannas. This form of duality that is used throughout
the graphic novel is not always explained, and it is much harder to decode
through reading the translation without having the relevant cultural background
and the understanding of the intended double meaning in the original Arabic
version. In that, an Arabic-speaker with the cultural knowledge of Egypt would
also make sense of the translation to a great extent. However, as mentioned
earlier in this paper, without a grasp of the cultural background, meaning is
often lost to the very base level of the narrative, which stands quite well
independently.
Train Stations and the Political Status Quo
As previously
mentioned, train stations serve as a marker for both place and time in the
narrative, as borrowed from older Hollywood traditions. They also serve as a
divider in “chapters” in the graphic novel. Where the first station/chapter is
Mohamed Naguib Station (Fig. 6), as it is shown after the prologue, the
final station/chapter is Mubarak Station11 (Fig. 7). Through
the graphic novel, the chapters/stations are mostly named after former Egyptian
presidents -- Naguib, Sadat, Nasser, and Mubarak -- with a few exceptions that
signal a more socio-economic context, particularly relating to the
wealth/poverty of a particular area, to showcase the wealth/poverty of a
character. On page 18, the mention of Ezbet al-Batt in reference to Wannas and
the “nice” side of Maadi serve as complete opposites, presenting extreme
poverty and extreme power and wealth, respectively.
Fig. 6. Mohamed Naguib station. Page 3
Aside from the
social and class aspect of the locations, the significance of the stations’
names and their strategic placement carries weight to the text. The first
station that is mentioned is Mohamed Naguib Station, coinciding with the first
president of the Republic of Egypt. The underlying and coded narrative tells a
different story; it tells the story of post-monarchy Egypt, beginning with
Naguib and ending with Mubarak. The locationality and locality of the narrative
play with the social, political, and economic states of Egypt and Egyptians.
The different stations and locations represent different classes and
corresponding levels of political engagement. Mubarak Station then becomes the
merger of all social classes, as seen in Fig. 7, and the station becomes
the place for the final act.
Fig. 7. Mubarak Station. Page 83.
The final
station represents Mubarak and the late-Mubarak regime in several ways: first
up is the namesake; secondly, it quotes Mubarak in reference to the
ever-increasing population of Egypt; and lastly, it presents the finality of
the period, where Mubarak was the present and the foreseeable future of Egypt.
The final page of the comic is a standstill between Shehab and Dina, where the
first says, “Let’s get out of this tunnel…” as the final line of the graphic
novel (El Shafee, 2012: 91). The reference to the tunnel has many meanings: it
refers to the literal tunnel, but it also refers to the idea of being stuck,
which persists throughout the narrative, for instance, as Shehab says, “I have
to get out of this whole lousy cage,” early on (El Shafee, 2012: 21). The
reference to the tunnel is also persistent with the period, when many young
people attempted to flee Egypt through legal and illegal means, but many found
it difficult to escape, which further explains the reference to the tunnel and
the cage.12 Finally, the tunnel also refers to the tunnel of Mubarak
and the corrupt late-Mubarak regime. The idea of immigration is not one that is
easy to decipher from an outside perspective. “Getting out” and “escaping,” as
communicated through several ways, is a message coded with the cultural and
contextual understanding of the work and can be addressed only with prior
knowledge. Decoding the embedded messages is less straining in Arabic, as many
of the signs are easier to comprehend in their original and intended language.
The encoded messages in the English translation, therefore, become less
accessible, even to a bilingual reader, due to the different possible
interpretations, as is the case with the final speech bubble of the graphic
novel.
Conclusion
The oscillation
between poor and rich, educated and illiterate, political and apolitical is
visible through the diversity of the cast and the action within the story
(Hanafy, 2016: 422), but through the landmarks and minute markers. That
temporal shift also occurs in the dividing stations of the comic, representing
the past, the present, and a speculative image of a future that was later
realized during the Arab Spring. The split between different socio-economic
classes is merged and silhouetted in the protest sequence on pages 65 to 69,
where the silhouettes become black and white, signaling only the difference
between oppressor and oppressed. The focus on the late-Mubarak regime situates Metro
as a work of speculative fiction and protest culture.
Metro and its
translated version, Metro: A Story of Cairo, and the reproductions of
the graphic novel, carry a plethora of meanings hidden behind culturally,
contextually, and temporally coded references and signs. While the graphic
novel remains an independent work that functions freely without the constraints
of close reading and deep analysis of its socio-political context, knowledge of
the cultural context and socio-political realities that Metro is rooted
in is crucial to decode these additional layers of meaning and dimensions of a
people’s reality.
Endnotes
1 Government
employee is an Egyptian stereotype, referring to men with nine-to-three jobs
who lead conventional and arguably boring lifestyles.
2 The female
government employee is often one of the most despicable stereotypes in Egyptian
culture, thriving on bureaucracy. Many satirical works depict the stereotype
“Madam Affaf” as a way to make fun of Egyptian bureaucracy.
3 “Enta Omry” is
one of the most popular Egyptian songs that has continued its prominence until
today. The song is often heard in television and film to depict an aspect of
traditional Egyptian life. It is also often used in cafes, restaurants, and
airports, particularly the ones that aim to be touristic attractions.
4 The 2004 song,
“Telephony Bey-ren” (transl. My Phone Is Ringing) samples and remixes a
standard mobile ringtone of the time and interweaves it into the song.
5 National
Democratic Party (commonly referred to as the National Party) thugs were the
brutal and illegal hand of the National Democratic Party government, which
Sadat and Mubarak headed before it was dissolved in April 2011. There are many
instances of National Party-paid thugs that attacked protestors, perhaps none
more infamous than Mawqiat al-Gamal (The Camel Incident or Battle of the Camel)
that occurred Feb. 2, 2011 (Wikimedia Foundation, 2024).
6 Many of the
online newspaper records for the infamous incident have been redacted and
deleted, including archival references. Some of the articles appear to have
been locked behind special access at the time of writing this paper.
7 “Let it go” is
the contextual translation of the phrase “Kabbar Mokhak,” which literally
translates to “Enlarge your brain.” The phrase is colloquially used in daily
life in Egypt.
8 The (very
inaudible) question asked to Mubarak was regarding the state, where Mubarak’s
response was, “Do you think that I will go through everything that occurs in
the country? Let it go, man” (loosely translated for context).
9 Tahtib is the
term for the traditional Egyptian stick-fighting, mainly practiced in Upper
Egypt.
10 Films such as “Saidi
fil Gama’a al Amerikeya” (1998; transl. Upper Egyptian Is the American
University in Cairo) and “Hammam fi Amesterdam” (1999; transl. Hammam in
Amsterdam), among a plethora of others, use the upper Egyptian as both a
subject of mockery and a hero simultaneously that it has created a sub-genre of
its own.
11 Mubarak
Station has been renamed to Al-Shohadaa (translation: The Martyrs) Station
after the Egyptian Revolution to honor the martyrs of the revolution.
12 The cage,
tunnel, or maze are all terms that were used to refer to Egypt during the late
2000s period. Many street jokes and sayings remain undocumented.
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Amr Abbas is an
independent Swedish-Egyptian researcher collaborating with Malmö University Comics Hub, the editor of Cálice Magazine, a writer and comics artist. He holds an
MA in cultural studies from Malmö University and a BA in English literature from
Alexandria University. His research interests include comics, creative writing, identity, metafiction, metamodernism, and transmedia studies.
.
Editor's note - this essay was accepted for IJOCA 27-2, and edited by John A. Lent (JAL) and Mu Lin.
