SOURCE: Cohen, Dalya. “‘The Journey’ by Yusuf Idris.” Journal of Arabic Literature 15 (1984): 135-38.

In the following essay, Cohen offers a psychoanalytical interpretation of “The Journey.”

I. Introduction

“The Journey” is a short story which is included in Yūsuf Idrīs's tenth collection called House of Flesh (Cairo, 1971). The story is written in the form of a monologue and in the technique of the stream of consciousness.

It starts with a confession of love to a man. In the beginning it is not clear who the speaker is and the reader is tempted to think that it is a woman addressing her lover. Only later, as the monologue unfolds, the reader discovers that it is rather a son talking to his father. The son tells his father about a secret journey that they are going to undertake. He carefully dresses his father, then sneaks him into the elevator...