God Creates Forty Lookalikes But Do We Truly Live Our Own Lives or Are We Merely Repeating the Lives of Others in Different Forms

Yemenat

Dina Abdelrahman | Egyptian Writer

The popular saying, (God creates forty lookalikes,) is employed in (The Similar Ones) in a philosophical manner, transforming it into an existential question: Is similarity a social destiny, or is it the result of surrender? From the very beginning, the text confronts us with the dilemma of the individual dissolving into the collective order. The novel opens with a proverbial statement: (God creates forty lookalikes.)

Ahmed Tayel’s (The Similar Ones) belongs to the tradition of reflective social fiction, where the author is less concerned with constructing a dramatic plot or a series of intense events than with raising a fundamental question about contemporary humanity: What remains constant amid the sweeping transformations affecting societies, values, and human relationships? Does the resemblance between people lie in outward features, or in the values, principles, and patterns of thought passed down from one generation to the next?

The protagonist of the novel, Radhwan, is a wealthy man who possesses immense wealth in the village of (Mit Antar). Yet he lives an ascetic life, choosing to maintain a modest government position. He suffers from insomnia and persistent sleeplessness caused by the accumulation of worries, embodying a striking contradiction between wealth and austerity, and between outward calm and inner psychological turmoil.

From the novel’s very first threshold, Ahmed Tayel presents readers with its central interpretive key. He introduces the work with the deeply meaningful saying, (God creates forty lookalikes,) then adds:

(Indeed, each of us has someone who resembles us, in appearance, spirit, and thought. Let each of us search for those who are similar to us, so that we may find comfort