No one can argue that there was no unfairness in our cultural life before the 1952 revolution. Actually, no one can argue so in any country and any era. Yet the truth is that unfairness before 1952 was less than after it.
An example of the unfairness at the time of the monarchy is when King Farouk, or rather the Royal Palace, refused to grant the King Fouad I Prize for Literature, which was later called the State Appreciation Award, to Taha Hussein in 1947, although he was undoubtedly the most renowned name in the Egyptian cultural life at that time.
We heard at the time that the king did not like a book that Taha Hussein wrote titled “The Wretched of the Earth” in which he denounced the conditions of the poor in Egypt. This, however, did not prevent Taha Hussein from becoming minister of education three years later when fair parliamentary elections made Mostafa al-Nahas prime minister and formed a government from the Wafd Party in 1950.
It would not be untrue if we say that the democratic climate in Egypt between the two world wars produced a cultural life that was by and large fair to intellectuals, and that corruption in our cultural life began with the emergence of tyranny and authoritarianism. For developments since that time support this conclusion.
The government of the revolution soon formed the so-called Supreme Council for Literature, Arts and Social Sciences. It’s president or secretary general was Youssef al-Sebaey, a literary man who happened to be an army officer as well.
Although our great literates, such as Taha Hussein, Tawfik al-Hakim and al-Akkad, approved of the military coup that toppled the king in 1952, they must have been worried when they found themselves under the leadership of a young man, who was undoubtedly a talented writer, but was not really the most eligible for that position.
Al-Sebaey detested Marxists and leftists in general. This was evident in many decisions he took when he was in office. Yet the greater injustice was what Nasser did to a large number of prominent Egyptian patriotic intellectuals between 1959 and 1964.
In 1959, Nasser arrested a large number of leftists and sent them to prison for five years. Many of them were tortured, as depicted in Saad Zahran’s book “Memoirs of a Prisoner.” Yet in 1964, Nasser released them and appointed some of them in the highest cultural positions.
Nasser did not arrest them because he disagreed with their views. For while they were in prison, he took the most leftist decisions and actions in the history of Egypt. Nor did he release them because they retracted their views. Actually, the arrest and the release were related to changes in Nasser's international relations.
In the early sixties, Nasser decided to nationalize the major publishing houses, such as Dar al-Hilal, Dar Al-Maaref, Rose Al-Yousef and Akhbar Al-Youm. It was a very bad decision in my opinion because it was due to political and not cultural considerations. And we still suffer from that decision today.
As a result, many great writers and intellectuals were turned into mere government officials who write for a monthly salary and publish only what the government approves of. Fortunately for many of them, the government at that time took nationalistic decisions in the interest of the majority of the people.
But what if an intellectual believed that national interest required different or slightly different actions to be taken by the government? Here I recall how Youssef Idris was severely reprimanded and prevented from writing for some time in the late sixties when Nasser said in a speech that freedom means the freedom to earn a living and Idris commented with something to the effect that freedom has a broader meaning than that.
In prison, the leftists wrote plays and poems, and taught others what they know. They continued to do so after they were released and appointed in cultural positions, supervising the publication of books, the theater and the cinema industry. They were even allowed to issue magazines that reflected their leftist ideas. But the truth is, they were very unfair to other intellectuals who did not share their ideas.
This phenomenon began in the mid-sixties, and we still suffer from it today despite the changes that occurred since then. It is the phenomenon of the leftist intellectuals controlling the literary critique. Like all leftists everywhere, they have a totalitarian tendency that considers anyone who is not with them to be against them, and that questions the patriotism and integrity of all those who are against leftism. They believe that every topic should be evaluated according to the standards of the leftist ideology.
Great writers like Tawfik al-Hakim and Naguib Mahfouz suffered to an extend form this phenomenon and had to resort to symbolism in their stories. Others like Saeed al-Naggar, Ali al-Gereitly, Sherif Lotfy and Ibrahim Shehata also suffered because they believed the state should not interfere that much in the economy as it did at the end of the sixties. And many of them had to leave Egypt.
The whole matter was turned upside down when Sadat launched his open door economic policy that contradicted Nasser’s policies. For the state began to pull out from one sector after the other and replaced the leftists with right-wing officials to manage cultural institutions. Yet even this did not put an end to unfairness. It only changed its victims.
This needs to be tackled in another article.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
