I have finally finished reading Utopia by Ahmed Khaled Towfik for a english class at CSUCI. The setting of the story is in the year 2023 and Utopia is the land of the wealthy and picture perfect life. It is protected by thick walls and a security force made up of retired U.S. marines. On the other side of those walls live as they call them, The Others. The people who live in poverty and have no government whatsoever to help them out. This book goes into detail about the lives of two characters. Alaa on the Utopian side and Gaber on the poverty side. The most shocking part of this book to me was the detailed rape scene.
This is the first novel I have read with a detailed rape scene, so it caught me by surprise as I was reading it. To digest the whole scene I had to read it more than a few times, it was a weird experience. Alaa raped Safiya, she is Gabers younger sister. Alaa has Germinal (a fuck buddy of his) leave them alone; she was definitely his accomplice. Germinal did express her opinion of Alaa not needing to do that and called him a pig, and lastly reminded him of all the help Safiya and Gaber had done for them, but she STILL left him alone to do his dirty deed. “I was used to violence, in any case, so I tied her up with strips I ripped off the old shirt I’d taken off I gagged her and she fell quiet. In any case, this also protected me from the flood of tuberculosis bacteria she exhaled.”(131) While he was raping her, he was JUSTIFYING it, even though she was crying and clearly resisting. One of his ridiculous justifications was, “Your poverty isn’t our fault — unhh — don’t you understand yet that you’re paying die price for your foolishness, youx stupidity, and your submissiveness?”(132) Alaa is a straight piece of shit and pig and every other derogatory word in the english language. This innocent Safiya who visibly has tuberculosis is raped by the man who her brother is helping keep alive, how and why the universe does her wrong like that is what makes this story so interesting! If you have read the book, you might think she had it coming to her because she gave Germinal a mixed medicine that knocked her out and left her brother Gaber there and she told him, “Take your time. Her skin is smooth like children’s skin. You deserve to enjoy yourself, poor thing.You need clean hair and smooth skin. Enjoy yourself. Let her beauty wash away the filth of your soul.”(115). Safiya wanted Gaber to rape Germinal, but Gaber could not, he saw Safiya’s face in Germinal.
In conclusion, the rape scene was a horrifying, miserable scene, that I believe was necessary, to show us how ignorant the people of Utopia are, and how they don’t see they’re doing wrong in any way, including rape.
Work Cited
“Utopia by Khaled Towfik, Ahmed Published by Bloomsbury USA (2011).” Amazon, Amazon, 1 Jan. 1994, http://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Khaled-Towfik-published-Bloomsbury/dp/B00E28VA32/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2/135-6983417-9391819?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Y2AV8PQD6TH6RKX7CHQT.
Literary Genres in Translation 