V.V. Gibrail? Mountain of Faith

[Saioued Al-Zaioued]

I guess that that the other impersonations are in the works, but I thought I 
might put in my two cents early. Gibrail is the angel that has came down to 
the prophet Mohammed, but the other variant of the characters name, Gebel, 
is not a standard variant of Gibrail.

Gebel means Mountain, and I think it refers to the size of Gibrail (the 
character) as a discerning trait. Arabs often call each other by 
characteristics, for example: I useto be called "Feather" as a child because 
I weighed what friends and relatives exaggerated to be the weight of a 
feather. Using this same notion helps to shed light on the ethnicity or 
social sphere of Gibrail. (I do not have a copy of V. handy, so I am working 
of memories, infinite apologies before hand.)

I beleive the section starts out with him distinguishing himself as not 
being a "Fellah". In Egypt, the great split after the muslim/coptic split, 
and oftentimes greater, is the split if some one is a Fellah or a Sa'idi. 
The distinction is partly ethnic and partly involves farming methods. The 
Fellah is the traditional farmer that attempts crop rotation and methods 
that attempt to establish the farm in the long-run, whilst the Sa'idi 
attempts to gain the most output from a single season. I believe most 
coptics are Sa'idis, but I beleive there is much overlap. Sa'idi's pride 
themselves that they where around during the Pharo's time and have similar 
dissent. The Fellah's are usually associated with the Arabs and the more 
northern regions of Egypt and somewhat erroneously regarded as latecomers 
during the Islamic conquest.

Anyone who has studied Islamic history or Civilization knows that this is a 
huge issue of who where the people of egypt, their political situation, etc. 
because they are the ones who assasinated Uthman and caused the first major 
schism in Islam, and hence we now have Sunni's and Shiates because of these 
people. I have digressed too far, back to Pynchon,

Anyway, the desert is creeping in on this fellow for a reason, he is a 
Sa'idi and his farming methods where short-term and he did not irrigate the 
surrounding region to maintain his farmland, he probably pushed the soil to 
limits it could no longer endure. In classic Sa'idi fashion, he should have 
moved to other more ripe land and start a new farm when the season starts, 
but because of the new property right rules, the density of farmers, etc. he 
can no longer do that, and has to go to the city and he blames the Ingilezi 
(Arabic destruction of the word English, sounds like having Italian origin, 
which makes sense since Mussolini was around in that region, and in Pynchon 
I beleive it is an Anachronism because I *beleive* they would have called 
them Anjnabi at that time, which means northern forienger). If anyone has a 
baedakker, I am sure someone will find some reference to the difference 
between Fellah and Sa'idi (plurals Fallahin and Sa'aida) and this is what 
pynchon is making a play on, his impersonation is based on this distinction, 
and I think is a weaker one because of his lack of understanding of issues 
and trying to attribute Anarchistic traits to simple people who would have 
went towards God and the mosque before going towards Anarachism. If he 
wanted to see anarchists in Egypt at that time, I would've suggested him 
picking the many scholars the colonizers hung or shot at that time, called 
the "Itihad Al- Ulama". I guess this section was meant to be tacky, robotic 
arm and all....


Happy Turkey Day Americans


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