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The poetry and prose of Arab authors continually intrigues me; however, it was my introduction to the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, the 1988 Egyptian Nobel Prize winner, that eventually hooked me. Ron Shafer, a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, challenged me to read this amazing author. Children of the Alley, the first Mahfouz novel I read, became one I do not recommend to newcomers of Mahfouz. Granted, it is the masterpiece that prompted an attempt on Mahfouz’s life in 1994, when a member of the Muslim Brotherhood stabbed him in the neck. The novel represents Mahfouz’s more symbolic period and does not tender the reader the real gift Mahfouz offers in his more realistic novels, such as Midaq Alley or the famous Cairo Trilogy. The first takes the reader into the confines of a narrow alley and the dysfunctional lives of its inhabitants. We see both male and female characters in a realistic setting, as well as the depravity and immorality that poverty and low self-esteem provoke. The latter depicts a family saga—an Egyptian middle-class family caught up in the ambiguities of the Islam of early twentieth-century Egypt amid the turmoil of British occupation. When I immersed myself in the pages of these realistic novels, a light bulb suddenly went on for me. Although most of Mahfouz’s characters suffer from some deficiency, his portrayal of the female made me realize the influence of the urban Egyptian culture of the early to mid-twentieth century. I realized also that I had some advantage in understanding this over many Western readers, who themselves are somewhat limited when one considers that most Westerners simply do not read about Middle Eastern culture. Thus, Westerners are sometimes entrapped themselves—within the limitations of media representation.