Fraternity-Testvériség, 1958 (36. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1958-02-01 / 2. szám
FRATERNITY 3 THE FLEA OF ABU MAJUB By JENŐ HELTAI The author of this intriguing parable, a famous Hungarian playwright, poet, novelist and editor, died a few months ago at the age of eighty-five. A leading representative of Western culture in Hungary, he was awarded the Chevalier’s Cross of the French Legion of Honor. He wrote “The Flea of Abu Majub” during Hungary’s World War II Nazi occupation. In view of its moral, with its applicability to all totalitarian systems and to public complacency toward them as they begin to rise, publication was impossible at the time. The text, however, in typewritten and mimeographed copies, came to be disseminated throughout Hungary, and the author, together with his wife, was arrested. According to Paul Ignotus, noted Hungarian writer who escaped to the West after the recent Hungarian revolt, “The Flea” points up “the conflicts of our time and the powers behind them”, but Heltai’s language is such that “not even the most inventive translator could bring home in full the charm of his style, the rhythm and character of his sentences.” Below is the first English translation of the story — by Andor Klay. This excellent work is reprinted here from the Foreign Service Journal, November (1957) issue. ★ ★ ★ Hundreds of years ago, in the days of the righteous caliphs, when Harun al Rashid’s ancestors and descendants roamed the streets of Baghdad in disguise to see the misery of the people with their own eyes and hear its complaints with their own ears, there lived in a nameless little village of distant Arabia a wise old man named Abu Majub. The village was too small for his wisdom, but so was the whole wide world, because nothing was a secret to him in heaven or on earth. He not only studied the Koran zealously in the service of Allah and the Prophet, but could also decipher the ancient tomes sealed sevenfold; he knew the hidden powers of herbs and the mysteries of the stars, understood the language of the birds and was familiar with the one thousand seven hundred and fifty devious ways of untrustworthy women. As would beseem a pious man of charitable soul, he freely gave good advice to those in trouble, shared his last morsel with beggars and stray dogs, fasted and chastised himself, and sought protection in prayer and meditation against worldly vanities and temptations, though to do so was somewhat unnecessary since these dangers could no longer threaten him. He was far too old to find pleasure in dissipating with the lords of society or in mischievous sport with pretty girls.
