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Cover design

Ahmed Elsheikh

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Enlightening Knowledge

An Alexandrian Experience in Egypt’s Education System

Gained by

Abbas Metwalli

Edited by

Olga Mattar

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Dedication

To whoever taught me even one letter…

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Contents

1. Introduction 6 2. The Cooing of Pigeons 10 3. The Courtyard 14 4. Hygiene is part of Faith 19 5. School Excursions 25 6. Corporal Punishment in the School 30 7. Young Students Indulge in Politics 36 8. The Aggression of 1956 41 9. Jumping over School Walls 47 10. The Hobby Classes 54 11. Get to Know Your Homeland 61 12. Religious Education and Harassment 69 13. Attending University 74 14. Arts and Free Education 80 15. Alexandria University… 85 A Music & Drama Pioneer 16. University Stars…and the Merry Nights 91 17. Oh ! Damascus! 95 18. The School of Pleasure 101 19. Professors Who Left An Indelible Mark 106 20. Theatrical Activity in the English Department 116 21. Alexandria’s Great Swimmer 123 22. Music in the School 127 23. Indoctrination in our Educational System 133 24. The Bullying Phenomenon in Schools 138 25. The Brain Drain 142 26. The English Language…Ignore it 147 27. Our Beautiful Language…and its Protectors 153 28. My Experience with the Arabic Language 156 29. Final Word 197

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Synopsis

The writer paints a realistic picture of the education system in Egypt from the early 1950’s to the mid-1960s, through a personal experience. It started with the primary stage, passing through the preparatory and secondary stages and culminated in university attendance. He sees that the education system then was, without doubt, much better than today. Classrooms were not overcrowded, health care was not neglected, attention to education and ethics was not absent. The teacher was not busy giving private lessons or concerned with his turn on the Secondment list. In the 1950s and 1960s, schools did not witness the violence prevailing in schools today. In the relationship between teacher and student, the slogan “I become a slave to whoever teaches me even one letter”, once prevalent, is now lacking. The writer reviews sport activities, the cultural, musical, recreational, and artistic performances which were an integral part of the education system. During that period, Egypt surpassed a major country like China. The author does not focus, though, on nostalgia for the past, as much as he tries to incite this nostalgia to reach a momentum that would lift the education system today to the top of State priorities.

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Introduction

BY

Dr Gamal Hussein Hammad

The Voice of the Arabs

The Alexandrian educational experience in “Enlightening Knowledge” is nearly a global one. It is simply the educational experience that all students go through in this world. We are all still living this experience, as students, graduates, qualified professionals, parents with children who become students and follow their parents’ suit, or repeat their experience, their grand parents’ experience, or similar experiences of relatives and friends. 6

"Abbas Metwalli” went through his education, and lives every snapshot of it as he reviews his memories in a full- fledged integrated film, describing the images, echoing the dialog and moving the camera, with accompanying music, in a scenario written by fate. He submitted all this to us in a special representation within this book, in which he mixed memories of the past with a strange reality, complemented with similar and contradicting images and scenarios, to chart a shapeless future.

“Abbas Metwalli, the student – through memory - has a replica in the past, and a replica in reality- and maybe more than one replica- there are Egyptian, Indian, English, Russian, old Arabic, or old Chinese replicas, or… there are similar models that make 1,000 personalities like Abbas Metwalli, who received his education in Egyptian schools during a historic era in modern Egypt, reminding us of the past lives of a much older education. He even reminded me of "Petah Shebnis”, the first Pharaonic language teacher in Ancient Egypt who had many disciples, among whom was "Petah Amoun”, the greatest celebrity writer then. With Abbas Metwalli, I am reminded of the great stages of educational life in Egypt – through the age of the great veteran writers - until we reach the age of the Ayoubis who set down educational systems to correct and set right the corruption of the Fatimid systems, and then on to the modern stage in the "Mohammad Ali " era. This latter era 7 witnessed the genial contribution, planned for by the engineer “Ali Pasha Mubarak", up to the free education decree that Dr Taha Hussein" long sought, then followed by an expansion in the Egyptian education movement.

The writer, in offering this Alexandrian experience- which is global as I indicated earlier - walks us down the events of memory lane on a bright night, because memories and imagination are latent in nature and only blossom in a glimmer of light that makes them vanish and reappear, spreading here and there. We can then catch them, ponder about them, remember them, speak about them or write about them. The encoder is the author, who dispels the darkness of the memory from which he drew, experienced and digested events. He has lived them in smiles or in pain, and submitted them to us with creative art and professionalism- as the media expert or storyteller he is, not missing any event around him. He was honest- as always- in translating them professionally like a sincere media personality and prudent man of letters, who wisely adopted the narrative of the true course of events.

"Abbas Metwalli" in this experience chronicles the meaning of what we call the literature of autobiography, to which we are accustomed in reading books such as "Homes and Houses” by Prince "Osama Bin Munqidh", "The Days" by

Dr Taha Hussein" and "The Nights" by Dr Taha Wadi, among

8 others. Poets have also their share in chronicling their experiences and memories, which they translate into biographies and stories. We benefit from their experience and enjoy the joyful snapshots of the author with a smile here and there; but the memories as a whole, represent old images and we adore their magnificent history.

The author is armed with language, literature and illustration abilities. His talent in eloquence, acting and playing the drum benefited him as much as he benefited from English and Arabic alike, which made him a brilliant announcer, actor and a historian, recording the events he personally witnessed. He put down the information that I have missed, such as that which followed the 1952 glorious revolution, especially the attitude of the Revolution Command Council towards President "Mohammad Naguib"

- may God have mercy on his soul - and the origins of the weird conflict between Abdel Nasser and the Muslim

Brotherhood, among other events.

The author is faithful to the friends with whom he lived, faithful to what he saw and heard. He enjoyed the company of colleagues at university, and the formation of diverse artistic teams, mentioning many names who later became celebrities in thought, art and literature.

The sincerity of beautiful memories underlines the papers of this wonderful book by "Abbas Metwalli”. 9

The Cooing of Pigeons

My father, may his soul rest in peace, would have tolerated anything but the neglect of education and learning. Coming from the countryside village of Shaboor, in Al-Behera Governorate, he moved to the urban city of Alexandria seeking a job opportunity, which he had no trouble finding, considering that he only had “Al-Kafaa”, a 2- year secondary school certificate which preceded The General Secondary School Certificate. The job was with the Postal Authority in Alexandria, where he co-worked with Abdel Nasser Hussein, the father of the late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Aware that he did not complete the 3-year secondary school certificate, he pushed my older brother Ahmed to obtain it, which he eventually did; but due to certain circumstances, Ahmed had to enter the job market and find work instead of studying for a college degree. Consequently, my father’s only hope was that I become the first of his sons and daughters to attend university (I was number 5 in a family of 7 children).

My father’s endeavor to get me into the educational system began with the Quranic school of Sheikh Osman, which was not far from our house. These Quranic schools gave a form of elementary schooling; families used to enroll their young there in order to have them memorize the Holy Quran, and perfect their knowledge and proper pronunciation of the Arabic language. Quranic schools, especially in the villages had a particularly prestigious status, focusing mostly on religious education; in the urban areas they were more like a nursery, teaching literacy and

10 numeracy as well as religious topics, such as memorization of the Holy Quran, and social topics that exposed young children to moral values and proper social ethics. This kind of school was known in Pharaonic times as "Temple Schools", and they granted their students a certificate of "writer”. Those schools continued into the Christian era, when they taught students parts of the Holy Book and the Psalms. The major breakthrough in Egyptian Quranic schools occurred after the spread of Islam throughout Egypt. They were always like a "factory" producing great men such as clerics, men of letters, poets, senior intellectuals and scholars. Mohammad Ali Pasha, ruler of Egypt depended on the graduates of Quranic schools in the establishment of Al- Azhar institutes, achieving through them a comprehensive educational Renaissance. Among the most prominent graduates of Egyptian Quranic schools were Egyptian thinker and translator Refa’a Al Tahtawi and the writer, scholar and author Taha Hussein.

A Village Quranic School

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I remained in the Quranic school for only one year. My father then moved me to the elementary school, a step seen as a prelude to joining the primary stage, before the 1950 Law on the Standardization of Elementary schools and Primary schools was passed. Afterwards, my father started home schooling me, a procedure not devoid of the "punishment stick", to prepare me for attending primary school. There was no specific age for enrollment in the primary school as is the case these days. There was an entrance test, and if this was successfully passed by the applicants they would be accepted, irrespective of their age. My father’s ambition was far beyond that however. He wanted to have me “by-pass” the first year and go straight to the second year primary, though I was not yet 6 years old. There was, at the time, a weird system that permitted acceptance of the pupil in the first year if he failed the second year entrance test. But if he failed the first year test, he was not accepted at all and had to reapply the following year. Perhaps this was what my father had in mind to speed up enrolling me in the Primary School as quickly as possible. Although he made strenuous efforts tutoring me at home, he missed a few things, such as briefing me on how these exams were conducted and organized as he was totally focused on selecting the appropriate school for me.

There was in our area in Ramleh, Alexandria, the "Tharwat Pasha Primary School". As far as I remember, it was exclusively for upper class families and provided no opportunity for middle class children like me. My father was determined though, that I join this school. To that end, I remember seeing him carrying a stack of applications to the school, which eventually got me accepted. I do not know to this day what was in those applications that eventually got 12 me enrolled in this exclusive school. Perhaps he wrote that we were upper class, but most probably he was a personal friend of a senior staff member who allowed me to apply as a courtesy to this friendship. The most important thing was that I was finally enrolled.

As for how I got accepted, that is another story. My father has deliberately let me take the second year exam, which I was not quite prepared for, so that if I failed, I would automatically get accepted in the first year without an entrance test. This was apparently his plan. It was an unforgettable experience for me. After the test paper was distributed, most of the questions were along the lines of "Fill in the designated dotted space”. I had a blank answer sheet in addition to the question paper. I answered to the best of my knowledge on the question paper in the dotted space. I did not know that I had to write the questions on the blank answer paper and include the answer! This was the first exam in my life and my first experience in an official school other than the Sheikh Osman Quranic School. I do not even remember whether the invigilator explained to me how to answer, or if he thought I already knew how to. When he picked up my answer sheet it was blank as the answers were on the dotted question paper which I brought with me home. My older sister Mahasen, may her soul rest in peace, found out that I gave in the blank answer sheet, which confirmed my failure in the second year test and my automatic acceptance in the first year. But she exploded with laughter on reading one of my innovative answers. There was a question of which I had never heard before, which went as follows: “The sound pigeons make is called...... ”, I had written on the designated dots:” Bak Bak Ku!”

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The Courtyard

The result of a tiresome search for a school for my older son Tamer in the affluent Zamalek district in Cairo, in preparation for our return home from America was one of the reasons, the main one, of our decision as a family, to stay in the US. I was shocked, not because of the lack of teachers in some of the key subjects, but rather by the absence of a school courtyard for "playtime" periods; only a narrow tiled corridor between classrooms, that exposed the pupils to the risk of sliding and stumbling during play, existed! I didn’t have in mind the American school model with its spacious courtyards and playgrounds, but rather what I remembered of how my primary school in Alexandria was like in the early 1950s. The Tharwat Pasha school had several basketball and volleyball courts which could also be turned into a large soccer court. The break was the real period that we used to love, always marked with cries of joy and victory signs when the bell rang, signaling the end of the class.

Again, in physical education, the potential was limitless. In addition to morning exercises, there was the "Special Section," which was made up of a collective demonstrative sports team. Its members were carefully chosen, trained to run marathons and perform athletic and organized moves. Each student would carry a colorful flag to wave during performances. In carnival celebrations held in the city stadium during national events, the “Special Section” members would enter and exit the grounds in choreographed formations to music and drumbeats in 14 harmony with colors and sports movements. There were also the “Rangers” and the "Boy Scouts". Alexandria itself was the birthplace of the first contingent of scouts founded in 1914, before the establishment of the Royal Scouts School in 1918, which was later followed by another scout force at the Khedival school. The scout movement, after that spread to most Egyptian schools. In 1920, the first Association of Egyptian Scouts was formed. One of its goals was promoting the scout movement among young people. In 1922 Egypt was officially recognized as a member of the Organization of World Scouts. Such scout activities provided an opportunity for pupils to learn discipline, obedience and execution of orders, as well as collective actions.

Tharwat Primary School, 1st year, 1949/1950

Discipline was the dominant feature, not only in sports and scout team activities, but also in the classroom. The teacher was respected and almost revered; and once he

15 entered the classroom, all students would stand up in respect until he ordered them to sit down. Individual attention to each pupil was a common feature in every class. The “best” student was always awarded a symbolic honor such, as becoming the "Alpha" who controls the class in the absence of a teacher, writing on the blackboard the name of anyone who misbehaved or did not follow class rules.

Discipline started with the morning assembly and the salute of the flag and ended with all students progressing in straight lines to the classrooms, in an arrangement that amounted to organized military formations. Whoever breached that system would be seen by the watchful hawk eye of Mr. Hilmi Attiya, the school PE officer who would be scanning the courtyard from his high position above the main staircase, holding his infamous Stick, checking for any irregularities in the morning lines. If he happened to see a pupil out of line, or one with a non-ironed shirt, or one with a lost button or un-combed hair, or unpolished shoes, he would bring him out, stand him under the school bell until the morning assembly was over, after which the poor boy’s bare hands had a taste of the stick! Mr. Hilmi was the father of the Alexandria Football Union Club player Raafat Attiya, who later joined the Zamalek Club, and was one of the stars of the Egyptian National Team in the 1960s. Attiya junior retired in a great celebration attended by the famous British soccer player and coach Sir Stanley Mathews in 1965. He died in a car accident on 21 July, 1978, at the young age of 44.

Student health care at Tharwat Pasha school was available at a sustainable medical clinic. In those days there was no need for a sandwich or a lunch box prepared by our mothers. The school provided us with a hot meal 4 days a week. As for the “short days”, Mondays and Thursdays, we 16 used to receive a large cube of “Chester” cheese and another of Halva, and a loaf of French bread. We couldn’t, in most cases eat the whole amount and used to return home with what was left over, and our brothers and sisters would get a share! We were served the hot meal in the school basement, which was furnished with large tables and long benches. The meal was composed of a plate of vegetables with 2 large pieces of meat, in addition to a plate of rice and a helping of seasonal fruits. In spite of this large amount of food, we would still sometimes happily buy from street vendors outside the school gates, the solid palm fruit called “Doum” which has been grown in Egypt since the prehistoric times of the Pharaohs, who gave it the name of "Mama In Khent”. We enjoyed chewing on it, and also enjoyed eating the “sugar funnels” extracted from Upper Egypt sugar cane sold by these vendors.

We all used to go to school on foot and rarely missed a day. I do not remember once seeing a school bus, or a parent waiting in a car at the school gate to pick up his son, an indication that schools in those days were everywhere, in close range of pupils' homes. I used to walk a distance of not less than 2 kilometers, where I had to cross the "Abu Qir" road. Parents weren’t concerned about their children’s safety, then, because very few cars passed on this main road! It is a tragic irony that the case has become reversed today, with less schools and the spread of more cars!

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“ Hygiene is part of Faith”

I only felt the difference in caring for students' hygiene and their schools' cleanliness compared to the 1950s, when I saw with my own eyes how the situation had deteriorated for students and schools nowadays, more than half a century later. In our time, no one would dare enter the classroom with a non-ironed shirt, or un-combed hair or unpolished shoes. There was even a periodical inspection of our fingernails, where we had to show our palms upside down to make sure nails were trimmed and clean. We were exposed from time to time to a campaign by the Ministry of Health to spray our heads with DDT powder, to prevent the transmission of scalp infections and outbreaks of head lice among students, not to mention the permanent readiness of the school clinic to treat any cases of cold or flu, and to send the sick student home if his condition worsened, where he was to be kept until he completely recovered.

Despite the efforts nowadays by the Ministry of Health to nip the spread of viruses such as bird flu or swine flu in the bud, and the rhetorical statements by officials from the Ministry of Education about the measures taken to improve "health facilities" in schools, (including the distribution of hygienic materials to be read by students,) and the emphasis on the question of hygiene in general, the reality in our schools today does not reflect this bright picture. School sanitation facilities lack the basic health-safety conditions, not to mention worsening health conditions as a result of overcrowded classrooms. Hygiene awareness these days cannot be compared to the kind of awareness we used to

19 see and read daily on the back of our copy books with printed instructions:

Instruction Page

1. Cleanliness is the most powerful weapon against diseases.

2. Washing your hands before meals secures you against the evil of many diseases.

3. Chew food well, and brush your teeth with toothpaste before you go to bed.

4. Trim your nails, for they are hideouts of microbes.

5. Eating food and ice cream from street vendors infects you with serious diseases such as Typhoid and Dysentery.

Hygiene in our schools today is part of a more comprehensive system operating in an unhealthy climate, involving mutual violence between teachers and students, and students skipping school by jumping over the walls to

20 avoid studying. Most of those infected with contagious diseases that crowd the hospitals are school students; these include diseases such as Hepatitis and Smallpox. Health experts attribute their outbreak to the lack of/or limited number of clean toilets in schools.

I wish that Egyptian schools would follow the example of the pioneering experiment by the " The Sky of Creativity" primary schools in Saudi Arabia. In order to maintain a healthy environment, the scout teams of those schools participated in the National Project for the Protection of the Environment under the title “Hygiene is Part of Faith ... a Protection for Humans and the Development of the Community”; they prepared a prime time radio program and launched a hygiene campaign inside and outside the school and in the surrounding area. They participated in hygiene work in the Center for Family Medicine facing the school, and in a nearby mosque. They also painted the entrances and exits of the school. To educate the students, the school had a "PowerPoint" presentation on hygiene, and showed DVDs and videos during the first 10 minutes of the start of the school day, every day, to raise awareness of the importance of hygiene to the individual and the community. All this was done within the framework of activating the National Scouting Project to protect the environment. The program aimed at enhancing the value of hygiene and principles associated with it through practice and Scout activities, giving practical examples of how to clean the environment.

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There was a similar campaign carried out by Egypt’s Ministry of Education in 2015, but it soon faded away. The campaign of Hygiene and Aesthetic Treatment of Schools Nationwide continued for a period of only three days with the participation of all groups in society, where the participants provided the necessary tools and raw materials, without charge or any expenses to the Ministry, or the General State Budget. This was in accordance with the principle of community participation and the development of a safe school environment that would be attractive for our children and students. The Ministry also asked all of civil society institutions, parents, and students to participate effectively in the campaign at both school and education management levels. Instructions were given to the Departments of Education in the different governorates, in coordination with the Ministries of Agriculture, Youth and Sports, Health, local Development, and Environment and Urban Development, to provide material and administrative support for the success of the campaign. Such campaigns, in my view, are not effective if our ability to carry them out is 22 not long lived so that they become a routine part of our educational life. Our painful reality states that we have “a short breath” and are a “fast forgetting people”!

There is no doubt that school hygiene, in the view of experts and specialists is an essential prerequisite to creating the appropriate climate for the students’ educational process. Showing the aesthetic beauty of school courtyards, classrooms and clean toilets, forms an essential component of a healthy upbringing of young people keen on the cleanliness of their school and its surroundings, instilling in them the love and taste of beauty, a value of great importance. It is saddening, though, to see that some of our schools are shrouded in negligence and that hygiene is given little due importance. We see courtyards stacked with trash, and toilets and classrooms in worsening conditions. Although students comply with the school administration calls to clean up their classrooms, the garbage keeps piling up again in school courtyards due to the lack of containers, and thus no progress is made and students go back to their old littering habits! In order to overcome the “short breath” in dealing with the problem, experts believe that the following magical six tips are needed:

1. Parents should instill in the hearts of their children the love of school and explain its significance to them; in addition, they should talk to them about the facilities of the school and the importance of maintaining them, in order to save them for use by others who go to school after them.

2. Instruct children not to tamper with or damage school property and the special labs, as well as to show respect and appreciation for the instructor.

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3. Train the child to abstain from throwing papers and other waste outside containers. As the student maintains the cleanliness of his house, he has also to maintain the cleanliness of his/ her classroom and the school as a whole.

4. Caution the children against writing on the classroom walls or on their desks.

5. Educate children on how to preserve school tools and protect them from damage, as well as preserve and respect textbooks and not tear or write over them.

6. Entrench the principles of hygiene in the conscience of children and inform them that the cleanliness of school or home reflects the personality of the individual and the extent of sophistication and morality which he or she enjoys.

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School Excursions

Since the dawn of time, humans have gained knowledge from travel and migratory movements. The ancient Greeks knew this as a way of learning before Plato came up with the Official School. When I sometimes hear and read about the extent of student reluctance to go to school, the eagerness which I felt while going to school comes to my mind. Despite the long walk on foot, something attracted me and my fellow students to the school. Not only did the lessons and our favorite teachers glued us to the school, but also all other activities that we enjoyed being part of, and at ease with, such as sports and hobby classes. The great joy, however, was in those days which were designated to field trips, such as visiting the Zoo, the Antoniades Gardens or Abu Qir Beach. We were taken by bus. And on the night before the trip, our mothers would be engaged in preparing proper clothing and the necessary sandwiches that we used to devour even before we reached the trip’s designated site. We considered those trips, then, as mere fun and recreation excursions, but I realized in my old age, the amount of culture and knowledge we gathered from such trips. As education experts say:

" Recreational activities in schools should not be underestimated or considered non-educational, but should, on the contrary, be dealt with as an integral part of the educational process that has a recreational feature, yet is not less important than other knowledge aspects, that fall within the framework of the unintended and indirect education which has an

25 educational effectiveness and impact on the composition of the student's personality".

We used to set off to the public parks to see flowers blooming, or watch the behavior of the Apes on ‘Monkeys Mountain’, or collect shells on the beach, or visit a chocolate factory to see how this much loved sweet is manufactured. We were particularly happy when we were given some samples! Excursions and scientific visits are considered, in the view of experts:

“….among the most important school activities that enrich the educational and social experiences of the students, and as an educational successful means to breaking the rigidity of the curricula if well used and forwarded. They should not become a mere leisure trip devoid of supported targets of self-learning and the direct observation principle, and the recognition of the relations between the components of the environment, where students acquire good behavior, such as discipline and respect in addition to the development of good habits such as self-reliance, responsibility and patience”.

School excursions, in our time, were not limited to primary schools, but extended to preparatory and secondary schools, and were crowned in the final year with the field trip "Get to Know Your Homeland", in which trains would take us to Luxor in Upper Egypt to view our ancient Egyptian civilization, then to Aswan to see with our own eyes the greatness of the large edifice of the High Dam built by the sweat and hands of Egyptians, after the leader Gamal Abdel Nasser challenged the United States and the World Bank, and insisted that it would be built with Russian assistance. However, the fact remains that the space for leisure provided by school educational and recreational

26 excursions is no longer as largely available in our schools today as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. I admit that my transfer to work in America gave my children greater opportunity to enjoy such excursions, which are an integral part of the American educational system. Such field trips have a long history in the US general education, giving students a chance to visit a variety of cultural institutions, including the Museums of Science, Fine Arts and Natural History, as well as theaters, Zoos and historic sites. Education experts in the United States conclude that the experiences gained by the students during those visits are a central part of the educational task:

“Schools are not there only to provide students with literacy and numeracy skills, but also aim at raising civilized young people who can appreciate the value of arts, culture and knowledge. Affluent families may be able to provide their children with an opportunity to go out to those places, but less fortunate children would not acquire these experiences unless undertaken by the schools despite the costs”.

However, even in the United States, those costs led to fewer school field trips, as statistics indicate a sharp drop in school visits to museums in all parts of the country. For example, the Field museum in Chicago received at one time more than 300,000 students annually. That figure has declined in recent times to less than 200,000. A poll conducted by the American Association of School Administrators showed that only more than half of the schools carried out field trips scheduled in 2010-11.

The reality of the case for our Egyptian schools shows that they follow non-compatible mechanisms with the targeted long term goals. Young pupils often spend most of

27 their time in parks, entertainment sites, and amusement parks in commercial centers; some school excursions focus on particular areas only, and supervisors disregard many important sites, because of the lack of prior knowledge of the distance to a place, or the absence of planning to determine the dates and places that should be included in school field trips, in order to ensure safe and successful excursions that reach the remotest sites in the country.

In conclusion, the primary education stage is considered the most serious stage, the age group in which the child's tendencies and personality are determined and developed. In view of his young age and the nature of his psychological characteristics, the child learns through perceived style, and his ability to learn abstract concepts. Such field trips and visits satisfy such psychological needs, because the child watches, listens and touches, and ends up with settled information inside himself, as well as a correct learning process. Education experts see that the feeling of belonging and social responsibility can be achieved through social visits. Also excursion rules such as discipline on the bus and waiting for one’s turn, teach the child refined conduct and participation with others, and help increase mobility and intellectual skills and dealing with different types of people, generally opening up horizons and increasing the child’s cognitive outcome.

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Corporal Punishment in the School

Ancient Egyptians say in some of the found manuscripts concerning the mechanism of education in those ages:

" The boy’s ears are on his back. He listens when he is beaten".

I often ask myself: Can the student-teacher relationship be improved if corporal punishment is reinstated in schools?! When in primary school and even after it was turned into a preparatory school, I didn't like to be subjected to any kind of punishment. To that end, I have always adhered to what should and should not be done to avoid such penalties as “getting the stick”, or being beaten with a ruler on the back of my hands, or standing facing the wall throughout the class period, or at worst, facing the wall on my knees after a “sadistic” teacher puts 2 pieces of gravel under each knee to increase the torture! Yes, the education was good, and we benefited greatly from teachers, but the category of teachers who resorted to such punishments were hated more than feared.

On the other hand, there was that the type of teacher who, through a humanitarian behavior and a charismatic personality, made us not only love learning, but also consider school itself as our second home. The student would dream of accelerating the night so that morning would come, and he would go back to his familial learning pot. Among this latter type was the teacher of the "handicraft" class, which was later turned into the secondary school into the "hobby" class. He taught us how to deal with 30 clay, make statues, color drawings and create artistic formations and beautiful paintings. This class was the first source of finding out the underlying talents of a student. It was the only class where students wouldn’t cheer when the bell rang, signalling the end of the lesson.

Ramleh Preparatory School- 4th year,

March 12, 1955

Such recreational activities, as well as theatre activities are absent from schools nowadays, or have been merged and shortened, despite the fact that such activities calm the nerves and promote tranquility and tolerance, and not the violence we see today in our schools, both on the part of teachers and students. I recall an old saying about the importance of the theatre:

"Give me a theatre, I give you a great nation".

Unfortunately sports, music, library hours and domestic and cookery classes have been turned into periods to accommodate other under-represented subjects, and the school has become an arena of conflict between teachers 31 and students, or among students themselves. There was the “farming” class which acquainted us with the soil and the art of agriculture and how to sow seeds, irrigate them and eventually cultivate the harvest; not to mention other farming aspects like how to extract multiple products from milk, such as cheese, butter and yoghurt, and how to pasteurize milk so that it would not spoil. At the end of the class, we would happily eat up our products, especially the dairy candy item, named "Junket".

These classes are certainly educational classes that instill in the student the ability of monitoring and observation; seeing the plant grow before his eyes in a small pot or on a piece of cotton; collecting mulberry leaves to feed the silkworms, which he looks after in a perforated shoe box until they eventually turn into cocoons that produce butterflies that lay eggs for a new generation of worms, …. a life cycle that draws his attention to the greatness and creativity of the Creator.

However, I admit that " religion" classes were a problem for me. The determination of the teacher that I memorize the long Suras of the Quran by heart without any explanation or understanding was a permanent obstacle for me, preventing me from mastering them as my peers did. I had, however, memorized the short Suras when studying at the Sheikh Osman Quranic School. But in my first primary school years, the teacher handed me a big zero in my monthly reports. I overcame this problem when the teacher was replaced a year later.

I eventually found out that this was not a shortcoming in my abilities, but rather in the teacher’s way of instruction. There are teachers who make you abhor studying and life itself, while others who make you love their class and excel in

32 it, though all teachers were and are generally monitored and checked on by the Ministry of Education through inspectors who assess their performance. The teacher would do his best to impress the inspector, knowing that his assessment would affect his promotion, as well as his teaching career. At that time, in the 1950s, there were no private lessons, or teacher secondments to other countries, but there were at best enhancement "cluster" classes for very little fees organized by the school for those who wanted to improve their study levels. Today, all students in all stages of education resort to private lessons for different reasons. Overcrowded classes and neglect by the teachers may be the main reason behind the spread of this phenomenon, especially with the imbalanced increase in subject material in the educational system. According to education experts, the reform of the internal structure of the educational system as a whole is through increasing the number of classrooms to avoid overcrowding which leads to a difficulty in teaching by the instructor and understanding by the students; also giving the teacher a decent salary that ensures a proper lifestyle, so he can teach and relay information to students correctly and appropriately.

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Some experts see that the textbooks need a comprehensive revolution, a complete overhaul and an explanation of the difficult terms used, as well as the need for explanatory drawings, tables, figures, data, pictures and maps in order to create a link between the student and the textbook. In this way students will not have to resort to external supporting books. Others think that private lessons are a societal phenomenon that came into being at the beginning of the 1970s, at a time when the culture of the Egyptian society did not allow disclosure of who takes those lessons, as it was considered morally wrong by most people.

With the increased numbers of students in schools and a decline in the performance of instructors in the classroom, as well as a lack of moral discipline which helped the spread of private lessons, the educational process deteriorated over the period of the 1970s. Optimists see that the mechanisms that should be applied to reduce the dependence on private lessons lie in the commitment of the teaching staff towards their students to adequately explain the curricula, so that the school might be restored to its normal role as a force of attraction not expulsion. Unfortunately, it seems that private tutoring is not only a problem of school education, but also of university education. The phenomenon was unknown when I was at university in the 1960’s; it only came up in the mid-1970s, spreading throughout Egyptian society for many reasons, as well as the inadequate expenditure by the government on education at all levels in schools and colleges. University degrees became irrelevant after there were more graduates than available job opportunities; this led to high unemployment rates among college graduates. It is ironic that, once, the primary education certificate in the 1940’s and 1950’s allowed its holder, if he did not want to

34 continue with the educational process, to get a job with the government, and now, a college degree does not.

In 1953, the Ministry of Public Education cancelled the primary education certificate and replaced it with the preparatory certificate that qualifies its holder to attend secondary school. I was lucky to get the primary education certificate in its last year before it was cancelled. As a result, I attended university proudly holding three general certificates: Primary, Preparatory and Secondary!

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Young Students Indulge in Politics

Before I left the preparatory stage, I got unwillingly involved in politics for the first time. When the March 1954 crisis erupted in the July 23rd Revolution Command Council, demonstrations swept universities and secondary schools. Demonstrators took to all the streets of Alexandria, urging all schools, including ours, to join them. Because of the instinctive desire of pupils at this early age to flout the rules of discipline, and skip lessons of the full scholastic day, the school was forced to open its gates and we all went out cheering and chanting without understanding or recognizing the slogans shouted out by older college and secondary school students. I only recall the highly repeated slogan:

" No Gamal without Naguib and no Naguib without Gamal "

Swept by enthusiasm, we all rushed to Tharwat Pasha tram station to take the tram, where passengers joined us in cheering and chanting the same slogans.

A crisis between Mohammad Naguib, who was installed as President by the Revolution Command Council, and the Council itself led by Gamal Abdel Nasser had erupted and was the cause of the demonstrations, as it had resulted in a split in Egyptian civil society between those who favored the continuation of the army movement aligned with the poor, with such resolutions as agricultural reform, and those demanding democracy and the return of political life.

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The events started in February of the same year, when members of the Revolution Council, with the exception of Khaled Mohieddin, ignored Maj. General Mohammad Naguib and did not invite him to attend their meetings. Naguib wanted to exercise the powers granted to him by law. He considered the decision of the Council to dissolve the” Muslim Brotherhood Group", which was taken by a majority of its members on 15 January 1954, an arbitrary use of power by the Council. Objecting to many of the Council’s resolutions Naguib, on the 22nd of February, 1954 decided to put an end to his differences with the Council members, and submitted his resignation in which he wrote that he was no longer able to cooperate with the Council. Due to the sweeping support Naguib had among the people, the Council accepted his return as president of the Republic on 27 February 1954.

On the 5th of March 1954, following a meeting of the Revolution Command Council, members issued a package of historical resolutions, declaring immediate measures to convene a constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage to meet during the month of July, 1954. On 8th March 1954, the Revolution Command Council decided to return to the situation that existed before the events of February, when Major General Muhammad Naguib was re-appointed Chairman of the Revolution Command Council and prime minister (Naguib’s third government). Gamal Abdel Nasser stepped down as prime minister and was re-appointed as deputy chairman of the Revolution Command Council.

On March 25th, 1954, the Revolution Command Council decided to allow the establishment of political parties, and dissolve the Council, effective the 24th of July. On March 27th, army officers from all armed forces battalions met to deliberate the situation, and concluded that the decisions of 37

5th and 25th March threatened to dissolve the revolution, and return the country to anarchy and the renounced political parties. On March 29, the crisis ended when the decisions of the 5th and 25th of March, 1954 were reversed by the end of the transition period. On April 17,1954, the Council decided that Major General Muhammad Naguib, would only keep his position as President of the Republic, and that Abdel Nasser, would become prime minister. During the short period of his return, Naguib tried to allow some political freedoms, but was gradually hampered. Nasser took good advantage of the large number of his supporters and the members of the Labor Organization and Trade Unions, and organized popular demonstrations in his own support.

This crisis opened our eyes, at an early age to the slogan: unworthy to be born, whoever lives for himself only. Some teachers began to explain to us what was behind the crisis of the "blessed revolution" endorsed by the Egyptian people from all walks of life. But they did not attempt to take sides with either President Mohammad Naguib, who was very strongly popular among the people of Egypt, or Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose role as the main starting force of the revolution people started to unravel. The situation lasted until the Al-Mansheya incident took place on 26 October 1954, when the rudder of popularity swept swiftly towards Gamal Abdel Nasser.

A Brotherhood member, Mahmoud Abdul Latif shot at Abdel Nasser while he was delivering his speech in Al- Mansheya Square, Alexandria, but missed. The Brotherhood Group kept alleging that the incident was a plot by Nasser’s Intelligence Service used to enhance his popularity, until a Muslim Brotherhood historian, Ahmed Raef, admitted that the incident was genuine. Farid Abd Al-Khalek, one of the 38 senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and a founder of the group, revealed new secrets about the operation, saying that he was informed of the existence of an individual move on the part of some Brotherhood members. Even the third suspect in the case, Khalifa Atwa later admitted that the Brothers tried to actually kill Gamal Abdel Nasser. One week after the incident, a mason called Khedewi Adam found the gun used by Mahmoud Abdel Latif in his attempted assassination of Gamal Abdel Nasser. He traveled from Alexandria to Cairo to deliver the gun himself to president Gamal Abdel Nasser, after a one week walk on foot!

Many writers criticized what Abdel Nasser said after he was shot at with 8 bullets, claiming that he said to the people:

“ I taught you pride and dignity”

At the forefront of those who repeated this false statement was the famous writer Anis Mansour, who, even though he had a positive opinion of Nasser months after his death, became later very close to President Sadat and started attacking Nasser, and even saw that he had deceived the Egyptian people. Mansour published his famous book Abdel Nasser, the defamed and the oppressor. Was Nasser really an executioner as some would say, or was he a great ruler as others think? Either way, what Abdel Nasser did say, and his voice is recorded on radio, and is even recorded in my memory, as I personally heard and memorized his words at the age of 13, was:

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"Let them kill me. I have instilled glory in you... Let them kill me…I have instilled human dignity in you… Let them kill me…. I have planted in this homeland, freedom, glory and dignity for Egypt and for the liberty of Egypt; for your sake and your grandchildren’s!”.

Nasser

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The Aggression of 1956

The transition from Ramleh Preparatory School, previously Tharwat Pasha School, to Ramleh Secondary School was a qualitative leap in my maturation stage, with all its broad prospects for the future. The joy of attending the first year was overwhelming, particularly that most of my preparatory stage friends joined me. The site of the school, like the Preparatory School, was within 2 kilometers from home, meaning that the number of schools was sufficient and proportionate to the population of each area. Most of the students used to go to school on foot, while the rest used transportation such as the tram, if distances were long. The school was located near the Bacchus tram station. Like in middle school, there were no school buses to transport students, a phenomenon that later prevailed with the deterioration of public education and the proliferation of private schools.

We spent the first half of the first year trying to adapt to all that was new, i.e. course topics, teachers and even the way of instruction which dealt with us, not as young children, but rather as men of the future. Although the first half of the academic year was spent coping with this new educational institution, the second half witnessed events that greatly affected much of the school system, let alone our personal lives.

Egypt was subjected to a tripartite Israeli- French- British aggression, after president Gamal Abdel Nasser declared in Al-Mansheya Square, on 26 July 1956, the nationalization of the Suez Canal, in response to the refusal of the World Bank 41 to finance the construction of the High Dam in Aswan. Each of the three countries had its own reasons to participate in the aggression. Israel was terrorized at seeing Egypt sign an agreement with the Soviet Union for the provision of advanced and sophisticated weapons. France wanted to penalize Egypt for its support of the Algerian revolution against French occupation, and for supplying it with military assistance. Britain, which used to run the Suez Canal could no longer profit from it after its nationalization.

When President Gamal Abdel Nasser delivered his famous speech after the Friday Prayers at Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in November 1956, he revitalized enthusiasm in secondary school and university students who wanted to volunteer to fight, or join the ranks of the National Guard. Abdel Nasser concluded his speech after he almost lost his voice, saying:

“We’ll fight, while I am here in Cairo, against any invasion .. I’ll fight with you.. I am here in Cairo, my children are here with you in Cairo.. I didn’t send them out of the country, and will not do that...I am with you here in Cairo. We’ll fight - as I told you yesterday – to the last drop of blood. We will never surrender … we are building our country … we are building our history… we are building our future.”

A National Guard Battalion was immediately formed in our school, and I was one of its volunteers. But we had to receive military and fire range training in the Khedival Secondary school in Sayeda Zainab, Cairo, where a large number of volunteers from different schools of the Republic, had assembled. I remember that we were awakened in the first hours of dawn for drills that lasted four weeks, in preparation for the return to Alexandria to patrol the coasts, as it was circulated that there might be an Israeli” human

42 frog” invasion. By the time we concluded the training and returned to Alexandria, the tripartite aggression had failed in achieving its objectives due to the opposition of the Soviet Union, who threatened to intervene militarily and bomb London and Paris with nuclear weapons. Arab peoples stood by Egypt, and the United States of America under President Dwight Eisenhower opposed the principle of the use of force, and the United Nations condemned the operation of the three countries in Egypt. British and French forces were forced to withdraw from Port Said on 23 December 1956. This date has since become known and celebrated as the Evacuation Day in the governorate of Port Said, and its historic anniversary involves eternal indelible hopes in everybody’s soul.

The Historic Atlas records the heroism of the people of Port Said on Wednesday 7 November, 1956:

"In spite of the cease-fire resolution, the French and British troops cordoned off the city of Port Said with tanks, circling and bombing the populated areas. The enemy confronted and disarmed the police. This led the popular resistance forces to regroup into 10 teams, under Major Mustafa Kamal al-Sayyad. Captain Mohammad Sami Khodair, former Governor of Port Said led team 8 valiantly in resisting the aggression. British forces also collected radio sets from houses and shops to prevent people from hearing news bulletins. They also operated a device at Villa Tera to jam Egyptian Radio transmissions during newscasts. They also transmitted radio waves, from the island of Cyprus, airing lies and poisonous propaganda against Egypt and the struggle of the people of Port Said under the name of Voice of free Egypt ".

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When the forces of the aggressors sensed no response from the people after they listened to this transmitted poison, they collected more than 5000 radio sets from them and smashed them, to cut off any link of Port Said with the outside world. The resistance leadership printed its first leaflet entitled “we’ll fight… we’ll fight”, while the voice of Fayda Kamel was widely heard, singing:

"Leave our sky alone, it is a burning hell

Leave our Canal alone, it is all drowning

Beware of my land, it is a lightning rod

This is our land

My father sacrificed himself here

And told us to tear our enemies up”.

The people of Port Said responded to the appeal of the resistance by shutting down shops in the face of enemies and refusing to deal with their forces, as workers refused to cooperate with them, despite repeated attempts and offered temptations.

The Fedayeen terrorized the hearts of the aggressor forces, kidnapping their weapons, and their patrols became precious hunting targets. The clashes continued until England and France - under pressure from Washington and Moscow - withdrew from the Canal Zone on 23 December 1956. Israel began its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in early 1957, thus bringing about the eventful end scene of a popular resistance legend that will remain etched in the consciousness of the Egyptian people and the Egyptian State.

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By the time we ended our first year of secondary school, Egypt had recovered from the effects of the Tripartite Aggression. Abdul Nasser had survived the crisis of March 1954, and his popularity skyrocketed after the assassination attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood in Al-Mansheya Square in the same year. There is no doubt that after the political victory he had achieved by confronting the tripartite aggression in 1956, and forcing the 3 countries to withdraw without achieving their objectives, he had become the one and only undisputed national hero in the eyes of all Egyptians!

The National Guard ID Picture

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Ramleh Secondary School, 1957

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Jumping over School Walls

The blackboard, writing slates and chalk were the means of acquiring knowledge for our generation which, did not have the digital opportunities prevailing today, such as the Interactive White Board, which offers touch functions that facilitate the lives of teachers and students, and help them absorb lessons quickly and successfully. Some would say today in the social media that the slate of the past was dumb while the student was smart, and nowadays the board is smart while the student is stupid! This paradox does not, no doubt, reflect the truth. Each era has its own tools. During our secondary school days, the cinema was the only means of entertainment, as TV had not emerged yet. Today, there are multiple means of education, entertainment and communication, such as mobile phones, PCs, laptops, tablets smart TVs… etc.

Escape from school, in our days was a phenomenon not much different from what prevails today. Students would jump over the school wall to spend the rest of the day in a movie theatre, or hanging out in the city streets. However, all of this changed at the hands of one person named "Fahmy Gabr". This brilliant Principal did not punish those who jumped over the school wall. He did the exact opposite. He opened the school gates, and announced over the school speakers that whoever wanted to leave the school didn’t have to jump over the wall because the school gates will be wide open for anyone to leave if he so chooses. But if he is reported absent from the classroom after the roll is taken, he

47 had better not come back, because he will be expelled permanently!

It was a unique scene: The school gates were open throughout the school day and no one dared to go out. This has put an end to the skipping class phenomenon once and for all. It was a clever action-plan by one faithful pincipal who was able to solve the problem by nipping it in the bud with one simple procedure. Did other schools follow suit? I do not know. But I am sure that the skipping class phenomenon subsided considerably, meaning that other schools might have followed the example of our school.

The phenomenon of skipping classes, according to experts can lead to the deterioration of the educational level of students as they miss classes repeatedly, which leads eventually to total failure and deterioration in behavior, and failure generally in their future life, as no one knows where the student spends time and with whom when away from school. The reason for absence from classes is attributed to a genuine desire not to learn, and when a student loses this desire, he’ll do anything to skip school. Again, neglect on the part of the parents and their lack of follow-up on their child’s scholastic progress, as well as the ill-treatment of students in schools by exposing them to humiliation or corporal punishment, and the lack of recreational programs that help alleviate the burden of study, are other main factors.

Towards the end of the 1950s, the Ramleh Secondary School principal had overcome this problem quickly with one procedure. All it needed was some discipline and a determination to continue enforcing the law. I recall that in the late 1960s, law enforcement officials decided to fine pedestrians who jaywalked and crossed the road from non- assigned spots by either the payment of 25 Piasters, or by

48 the withdrawal of their identity cards. As a result, traffic in the center of Cairo became very organized. But enforcing the law was short lived, and everything went back to what it was before, for we Egyptians are very good at starting things but very bad at continuing what we start. Even the police booths where fines were collected were eventually removed from the crossroads!

At our school, discipline reigned until I graduated in 1958. However, I don’t know what happened after the replacement of the principal, or what came later. I think that everything reverted again to what it was before him. It is ironic that nowadays jumping over school walls is no longer limited to students. Residents in the city of Zagazig witnessed a collective escape over the school wall by the teachers of the Ahmed Oraby Preparatory school during the period of exam corrections. The strange thing is that the skipping school phenomenon was formerly limited to students, but this latter incident shows that today, teachers are following suit. The incident was made fun of in the social media, where some said that "in past times, students used to skip classes. Now it’s the teachers’ turn"!

It is almost gone that sacred relationship which bonded the student, not only to the school, but also to the instructor. “The Prince of Poets” Ahmed Shawqi eloquently expressed this relationship in his magnificent poem:

Stand for the teacher and honor his rank... For a teacher is almost as a prophet.

Do you know of someone nobler than... He who nurtures minds and hearts

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You encompass all, the Best Teacher... You taught with the pen the earliest people

You brought this mind forth from darkness... And guided it to an enlightened, radiant path

For if the teacher is not just, then lost... Is the spirit of justice in youth for certain

If the teacher's insight lapses for a moment... Then those under his tutelage will lack vision

If guidance and counsel are based on whims... And on arrogance, then call that misguidance.

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Education experts attributed students’ escape from schools to several factors:

 A lack of genuine desire on the part of students for learning.  Family neglect of the student, and absence of follow up of his school progress and affairs.  The lack of new educational methods and innovative programs, bore students.  The abuse of students in schools and their exposure to humiliation and/ or corporal punishment.  The lack of recreational school programs which alleviate the heavy burden of study and learning.  The existence of an educational and administrative staff in schools, who are indifferent to the problem, and consistently blame the students themselves for it and who lay the responsibility of solving the problem upon the students rather than themselves.  Bad companionship is one of the most important factors to escape from school. A bad

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companion pushes his friend to become a failure like himself.  The absence of strict deterrent laws that force students to adhere to discipline.  On the other hand, the existence of a strict discipline and very strong restrictions in some schools may also drive students to escape from school.  The low level of education and lack of psychological awareness of student problems contribute directly to driving students to think of skipping school.

The proposed solutions consist of:

 Improving the students’ family education and raising their awareness level, especially with regard to the student’s future and the importance of learning, providing continuous incentives for learning, and the constant follow- up on their school progress.  Supplying the school with school administrators and high-level educational staff, capable of managing the educational system, and more importantly, a staff interested in the future of students and keen on following-up all their affairs and problems.  The existence of strict disciplinary laws in schools that stand up to students and prevent them from continuing on the road of escape from classes.  Continuous modernization and development of educational curricula and educational methods to overcome routine and boredom.  The existence of recreational programs for students that ease the pressure of study and are an outlet that stimulates and raises their morale.

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 Promoting mutual respect between students on the one hand, and the administrative and education staff on the other, as well as refraining from insulting students under any circumstances; when punishment is needed, there are other effective methods.  Informing parents if the friends of their children are likely to be unwanted companions, so the parents may ask their children gently, and with guidance, to stop mingling with them.  Paying attention to the psychological state of students. Here comes the role of the educational and psychological counselor, to whom students can turn for help when a problem arises.  If students still escape, handling them should not be violent and firm at the beginning. There should be a dialog, so that parents and/or educational staff find out the real reasons that lead the student to escape. Addressing the root of the problem is the best solution to prevent repetition. Penalizing without knowing the reasons aggravates rather than solves the problem.

In our time, the rules of school discipline prohibited quarrels between students in the courtyard or classrooms. One day, while going to school with some colleagues, a scuffle broke out between me and my colleague "Ramadan Thabet", who was known for swiftly losing his temper, but cooling off fast. We were about to fist fight when he suddenly stopped and asked me to give him a break so he can go to the canteen and buy a fava bean sandwich, so that he might be more physically fit to fight me on the road!

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The Hobby Classes

My mother, may her soul rest in peace, was the first one to discover my talent for rhythm. When I returned home from school every day she used to prepare my lunch, which took a rather long time. I would become very hungry and bored waiting for the food, so I would start banging on the table in random rhythms. My beloved mother got fed up with my importunity one day and surprised me by saying:

"Instead of breaking the table, you’d better go buy yourself a drum!”.

I immediately responded to the idea, and started collecting empty bottles and handing them to “the pottery and drum” street vendor in return for a small drum. These vendors existed many years before the idea of recycling came into being, and traded unwanted glass bottles for other small items. But the drum I purchased was a curse on the ears of the household members, some of whom wanted to sleep, others to study, and still others who wanted to listen to the Radio. So, I was forced to practice my drum beats on the roof of the building, where I had no complaints from the birds in the sky nor the chickens in their coops!

While in the second year of secondary school, I found out that there were optional hobby classes after school hours. I wanted to join the music class where I could exercise my drumming without any pressure, but my classmates Roshdy Balbaa and Mohamed El-Samahy convinced me to

54 join the drama and acting class with them instead. There I discovered a new world, where the actor relinquishes his own self and impersonates other negative or positive personalities. That was the perfect way of ridding myself of my normally timid personality. I loved those classes to the degree that I do not remember missing any of them. Moreover, we had a drama coach who made me cling strongly to this hobby. He even chose me to play a leading role in a comedy called “Omar Effendi” by Mohamed Mustafa Sami, which was presented at the end of the school year. I played the role of a poor poet who wanted to get married, but had nothing to offer as a dowry except his weird poems, and who declared on entering the stage:

“ I was overwhelmed by excessive pleasure to the extent that I had to cry!”.

For the first time I felt the splendor of loud applause by the audience. When I was assigned a serious role as a British soldier, who would slap an old sheikh on his face to show authority and contempt in a play called " The Struggle", the slap was so strong that the Sheikh’s fake beard got unstuck and fell off. Needless to say, both the Sheikh and I went into a fit of suppressed laughter, that was only covered by the curtain fall! These hobbies, music and acting, stayed with me throughout my secondary and university years, until I graduated from the Faculty of Arts, the English Language and Literature Department, in 1964.

The second year of secondary school not only included hobbies as well as study, but it was also the year in which the student was at a crossroads. Before the transition to the final year in secondary school, he had to make a choice between the "science" major that would qualify him to enroll in such colleges as the faculty of Medicine, Engineering, Commerce,

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Science or Pharmacy, and the “literary" major that would qualify him to enroll in the faculties of Arts and Law. In view of my deep love of, and skill in figures and mathematics, I chose the "science” major in Mathematics, in order to prepare for study at the Faculty of Engineering, which, in those days, topped even the Faculty of Medicine, as Egypt was starting the industrialization stage initiated by the 23rd of July Revolution.

That year, 1957, saw the establishment of the “Economic Enterprise” which is considered the first nucleus of the Public Sector in Egypt. It included all foreign institutions confiscated after the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956, and was followed by the nationalization of Misr Bank, the largest commercial bank in the country and all its relevant industrial companies. The Socialist Resolutions were decreed in 1961 and it seemed clear, then, that the regime was heading towards a kind of planned State supervised economy, led by the Public Sector. Egypt managed to achieve a growth rate of about 7% annually during the 1957 – 1967 period. This meant that it managed, during the ten years of the Abdel Nasser era, to achieve a development rate four times as much as what it was able to achieve in the 40 years prior to that era. Therefore, preferring the "science" major to the "literary” one was the logical choice for us, a generation which was extremely enthusiastic to contribute to the establishment of the Industrial State long sought by Abdel Nasser

I was not concerned at this early age about whether I really wanted to become an engineer, an actor or even a drummer, but my goal was to go to university and graduate. I knew well that what would determine my real career was not my inclination towards certain subject areas, or my talent, but rather the " grade total " obtained in the general 56 secondary school certificate. This system was intended to provide equal opportunities for all strata of society, and is still followed today. Recently, however, there has been much talk about the need to get rid of the grade total system and replace it with aptitude tests. Some, however, warn against the consequences of antagonizing public opinion and causing confusion and wide controversy among parents and students, claiming that abolishing it would be a serious educational sin and a step backwards, opening a door for corruption, nepotism and favoritism, due to the lack of transparency in such aptitude tests. The principle of justice in general secondary schools is enshrined in the “Coordination Bureau”. Dr Rasmy Abdul Malik, Professor of Management and Educational Planning at the National Center for Social Research, says:

"The abolition of the Coordination Bureau was included in a 2008 study to develop the general secondary school system; since the idea of cancelling it is an uncharted rhetoric that will not achieve the principle of equal opportunities among students. It would be better to upgrade the Coordination Bureau instead of cancelling it”

He added that cancelling the Coordination Bureau would result in major problems and deprive a lot of students from obtaining their legitimate rights after achieving a high grade total in the general secondary certificate; consequently they would lose the right to join the faculties of their first choice.

Dr Farouq Ismail, chairman of the Education Committee of the Shura Council and former president of Cairo University, says:

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"Talk about the abolition of the Coordination Bureau provokes public opinion and stirs up an impassioned and wide controversy. The Coordination Bureau is more than 57 years old, and considered the Passport of justice and equal opportunities among the students. Any thought of its cancellation would be an educational sin. This is a major problem that opens the door for corruption because the alternative aptitude test would not be transparent, and would be liable to nepotism, corruption and favoritism. However, the Coordination Bureau could be cancelled in one case, if there was a uniform nationwide examination, that calls for equal opportunities for all students to join Egyptian universities, as well as an aptitude test, to ensure its neutrality and impartiality and close any door for nepotism".

It thus appears that the Coordination Bureau will remain with us for a long period of time, although the world has long replaced it with aptitude tests, which place the appropriate student in the appropriate college.

When I moved to the third and final year of secondary school, I did not think much about grade totals, the Coordination Bureau or following those who dreamt of joining the Faculty of Engineering. Also, it never came to my mind to join the Military Academy and become an officer, although this career would have shortened the road and accelerated a permanent source of income at an early age. I had already become a top notch drummer and actor, with no guarantee that I would achieve the same success if I become an engineer or an army officer!

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With Mohammed El-Samahy in the play “Omar Effendi”

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With Mohammed El-Samahy in the play “The Struggle”

Osama Raouf sings Abdelhalim Hafez Songs

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Get to know Your Homeland

I fell in love with the Pharaonic civilization for the first time during the general secondary school trip to Luxor and Aswan, within the framework of the Ministry of Education program to educate secondary school students about their country’s civilization and history before they left school and joined the university. It was a trip we all used to look forward since the first year of secondary school. The train that carried us from Alexandria to Upper Egypt was a new world that combined senior secondary school students, with a selected number of teaching staff and supervisors on the trip. We used to chat loudly and sing national songs as well as funny ones, to pass the long hours on a train that competed with the speed of a turtle. We would seize the chance and buy sugar cane reeds when the train slowed down at stations, and then enter into cane sucking contests to the drum rhythms. At lunch time, the supervisors would hand each one of us a sandwich, on the house. At the time, we did not need to fill our pockets with sums of money, which was always scarce then, but we had some "change", enough for the necessary bottle of Coca Cola!

When we arrived at Luxor and started a tour among its temples while listening to the tour guide’s explanations, I was greatly amazed at this civilization that we used to read about only in books. I was impressed by the Pharaohs’ love and sanctification of the River Nile, which immediately reminded me of Herodotus’ saying "Egypt is the Gift of the Nile". We visited al-Kebash, the famous Road of the Rams, and wandered among the obelisks, the tombs of the kings

61 and queens and ended our tour with a visit to the Aswan Reservoir, whose first foundation stone was laid by Khedive Abbas II, in 1899. It was completed seven years later in 1906, as the first and the largest dam of its kind in the world at the time. It was then the pride of the age and remained so until the initiation of the High Dam. It was ramped twice in 1912 and 1926, to store the flood waters of the Nile and release only quantities needed for irrigation during droughts, and for the use of running water to generate electricity.

It was an enlightening excursion etched deeply in my memory, to the extent that, many years later I decided, after immigrating to the United States, to do it again, this time with my son Tamer, daughter Hoda and wife Fatma. The goal was to have our children maintain their sense of belonging not only to Egypt, but also to this great civilization. We started our love of the Egypt trip by air from Cairo to Luxor, followed by a 3 night Nile Cruise from Luxor to Aswan. We wandered through more temples and archaeological sites, many more than I saw during the secondary school trip. It was a more mature journey made so by a very cultured and knowledgeable tourist guide. My vivid memory did not only store the creative images and wall inscriptions, but also new surprising information.

The Guide wanted to show us the greatness of the Pharaonic architecture in building a 99 step staircase, which we walked up without any strain or shortness of breath. When I asked him why 99 steps, he simply said that these flights represent the 99 names of God (The Divine Names)! When he accompanied us to one of the temples, he pointed to a dry area that was, as he said, the site of a small lake, where visitors to the temple would bathe before entering for prayer (Ablution). Also, visitors were not allowed to enter the temple until they went around it counter clockwise seven 62 times (The Kaaba circumambulation). I was much more surprised when he said that the Pharaohs used to fast one month a year from sunrise to sunset (Fasting in Ramadan)!

The Pharaonic view of creation concludes that “There was nothing in the beginning, but an eternal spirit wandering aimlessly over eternal water, which was embodied in the “Old One” combining “Infinity - Great Depth - Complete Darkness – No Vision”. He is the origin and existence of every existing thing". This Pharaonic creation Myth prevailed in the Ashmonian philosophical interpretation of existence, and it ironically matches, literally, the explanations of the story brought out later by heavenly religions. In referring to “There was nothing in the beginning, but an eternal spirit wandering aimlessly over eternal water”, we find that the Old Testament says “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”. On the other hand, we find that the Holy Quran says “His Throne was over the Waters”. This was confirmed by Prophet Mohammad, (pbuh), as narrated by Bukhari, quoting Omran bin Hussein: He said in answer to a group of Yemenis about this matter: “Allah was there and none else. His throne was on water. He wrote everything in the Book, and created the heavens and the earth”.

The Pharaonic religion is the first to organize a Code of Ethics containing the commandments that almost correspond with the Ten Commandments in Judaism. On Judgement Day, in the hereafter, any deceased person would have to approve of the following code before the gods, so that he may enter paradise. He had to say:

1- I admit that the One God (referring to Amon) is the Lord of all gods. 2- I glorify the God who cannot be visualized in an image or representation on a sculpted stone.

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3- I have not profaned or made mistakes towards the One God and said anything that would anger Him. 4- I have prayed to the God in the holy temple as the priests said. 5- I have not mistreated my family throughout my life. 6- I have not killed a man or a woman throughout my life. 7- I have not committed adultery or slept with another woman. 8- I have not stolen or taken what was not mine or committed violence. 9- I have not lied or spoken ill of another man, and have not interfered with anyone to cause him harm. 10- I have not taken another man’s land, or a plowed land and have only added to my fortune things that belonged to me not to others.

In comparison, we find that the Ten Commandments in the old Testament upon which Judaism and Christianity are based, say:

1- “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”

2- “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing

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mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.”

3- “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

4- “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

5- “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.”

6- “You shall not murder.”

7- “You shall not commit adultery.”

8- “You shall not steal.”

9- “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

10- “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.”

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In the holy Quran, we find that the Ten Commandments are not mentioned directly, but are indicated in some verses, as follows:

1- Know, therefore, that there is no God but Allah (Muhammad - 19). 2- Remember Ibrahim said: O my Lord, make this city one of peace and security, and preserve me and my sons from worshipping idols. (Ibrahim - 35). 3- And make not Allah's name an excuse in your oaths. (Al-Baqarah- 224). 4- O ye who believe, when the call to prayer is heard on Fridays, hasten earnestly to the remembrance of Allah. (Al-Jumu’a - 9). 5- The Lord hath decreed that ye worship none but Him, and that ye be kind to parents, whether one or both of them attain old age in thy life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honor. (Al-Israa-23). 6- On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone slews a person- unless it be for murder or for spreading Mischief in the land- It would be as if He slew the whole people (Al- Maidah-32). 7- Come not nigh to adultery: For it is an indecent (deed) an evil way (Al-Israa-32). 8- As for the thief, Male or Female, cut off his or her hands; A retribution for their deed (Al-Maidah-38). 9- Conceal not evidence, for whoever conceals it- His heart is tainted with sin (Al-Baqarah- 283). 10-Nor strain thine eyes in longing for things We have given for enjoyment to parties of them, the splendor of life of this world, through which we test them (TaHa-131).

An atheist may take this shocking information as evidence that all religions are nothing but accumulated

66 historic heritage and customs, quoted and plagiarized from one another, whereas a believer would deem them consistent with one divine message, carried out by messengers over generations, to the people on Earth, reflecting the oneness of Deity!

Most Egyptologists confirm that the ancient Egyptians worshipped one God, who is believed to be "Ra’a". But there are those who believe that Akhenaton, who abandoned the traditional multiplicity of Egyptian gods, and introduced the monotheistic worship of Aton, was in fact one of God's prophets!

With the teaching staff and secondary school colleagues in Aswan, 1958

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At Luxor Temples

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Religious Education and Harassment

Of the religion classes in the primary stage, in the 1950s I only remember that they focused on memorizing short Suras which I had already memorized while I was at the Sheikh Osman Quranic school (Al-Kuttab). But it became terribly difficult when Mr. Fares, the Arabic language and religion teacher, asked us to move on to longer Suras, which I couldn’t memorize as I was busy with play and fun after returning home from school. I didn’t care much about the “Zero” grade Fares Effendi used to crown my monthly reports with; reason: the grade wouldn’t affect much the final result of the transition exams to the next higher class.

I used to envy my Coptic peers as they were not requested to memorize, or to even attend the religion class, and were allowed to go and play in the courtyard instead. I did not think much at the time about this discrimination between Muslims and Copts. I also remember that the teacher did not explain the verses to us, or their significance and moral value. Perhaps this is what prompted the Ministry of Education, more than 60 years after my graduation from primary school, to consider the abolition of the religious education class in schools and replace it with an “Ethics and Values” class, after realizing a decline in the level of ethics and values on Egyptian streets, which culminated in girls being sexually harassed following the 25th of January 2011 revolution.

But was this aggravated harassment really a result of not teaching values and morality in our schools? In our days it was not much different as far as religion classes were 69 concerned. The female harassment phenomenon was not known, though, until half a century later, although girls then were not veiled or completely covered in “Burkas”. On the contrary, they used to wear the latest European fashion, including what was known as "miniskirts!" Perhaps the only negative aspect, I realize after all these years, is the discrimination nowadays between Muslim students and their Christian colleagues. When we were young, there was nothing which instilled in us that our Christian colleagues were different. Perhaps there were no hostile feelings toward them due to our upbringing at home. Accepting each other was nothing unusual, particularly in a cosmopolitan city like Alexandria. I was brought up among Italians, Greeks, Armenians and other nationalities. I recall that the first time I learnt numbers as a child was in Greek, while playing with my Greek peers. In other words, diversity was a reality on the street, and discrimination was absent in schools among us and our fellow citizens.

In societies characterized by diversity of race, religion and sects, such as in the United States, in which I have lived for more than 40 years, planners of the education system are careful not to impose a single approach, or a single culture upon everybody. They consider teaching one particular religion in State schools as contrary to the Constitution. However, some families who are still keen on religious education, send their children to Catholic schools, which by the way, also accept students from other faiths. These schools keep a certain level of discipline and some allow no mixed classes. I know of many cases where some Muslim families send their children to Catholic schools, which do not impose on them, for example, prayers in church, but teach them only good ethics inherent in Christianity.

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Ironically, the case has changed now after the rise in the Muslim population in the United States during the past half century. Muslims now have their own institutes and schools. The Islamic Academy in Virginia, for example, adheres to Islamic education alongside the American school curriculum. Families who belong to other faiths may also send their children to the Islamic school, for the same reason that prompts followers of other religions to enroll their children in Catholic schools: learning ethics, discipline, benevolence and everything that all heavenly religions have to offer such as love, peace and respect and acceptance of the other. In our Arab societies which also feature a diversity of races, religions and sects, education experts say:

"The philosophy of imposing a single approach and a single culture upon everyone has failed miserably; it even produced all those seas of tears and blood that were shed under a religious, doctrinal and ethnic closed culture, which allowed for the exclusion, cancellation and extermination of the other. This has happened to the Kurds in the 1970s and 1980s, and to the Shiites early in the 1990s, as well as in the case of the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Christians generally. The closed culture and ideological education culminated in the recent campaign carried out by the compendium of fascism and racism called ISIS, which perpetrated genocide against the Azidians, confiscating their money, enslaving their women and children and killing their men, as it exactly did with the Shiites and Christians".

In Egypt, many believe that teaching religion in schools has led to bad results, the most important of which is the discrimination between citizens, because those who are in charge of State affairs are Muslims. As a result, there was some kind of arbitrary material in the school curricula 71 against Coptic citizens. Also, the Egyptian Constitution stipulates that Islam is the religion of the State, which allows the child early on, to discriminate against the different other. Thus, teaching religious education in schools has little positive impact, as it may lead to fanaticism and extremist feelings between fellow citizens. However, the call for the abolition of religious education in schools and its replacement by an "Ethics and Values" class was met with severe opposition from Islamic clerics, who consider that departing from religious ethics and values would generate an extremist generation that would threaten the safety and security of the country.

Dr Abdel Ghaffar Hilal, a member of the Islamic Research Academy, stresses the need to keep the religion class in all educational stages intact, because it teaches our children how to worship God Almighty, pointing out that the transfer of the religion class to an "Ethics and Values" class would lead to ignoring the fundamentals of religion, which are the source of good morals. He explained that abolition of the religion class would alienate students from religion and obedience to Allah, and indicated that the establishment of Allah’s rituals strengthens students’ ethical values, and demanded of followers of other faiths to teach their religion to students to create decent values.

Dr Ahmed Karema, Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at Al Azhar University, said that the proposal to abolish Islamic education from school curricula would lead to a decline in students’ moral values, due to lack of knowledge about the fundamentals of sound religious education in life. He stressed that the development of educational institutions in Egypt has always been based on random ad hoc plans, which led to the decline of the education system. He points out that educational plans 72 survive no longer than two years in educational institutions, which in turn leads to a lack of clarity about the desired goals for curriculum development and how to teach generations to undertake responsibility in the future. Thus, the issue of ethics and morality remains in dispute and controversy, with no one offering a real solution to the harassment phenomenon, which in itself is a far cry from religious and ethical values!

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Attending University

I did not want, like other students who accumulated low grade totals in the final year of secondary school, to repeat the year in order to upgrade my grade total and realize my dream of attending the Faculty of Engineering. I was afraid of losing one year of my life before graduating from college and getting a job that would guarantee me financial independence. My mother, may her soul rest in peace, placed high hopes on her son and fifth child, wanting him to be the first to get a college degree.

The Coordination Bureau provided the opportunity for graduates of the Scientific Section to join ”theoretical faculties” based on their grade totals in languages (Arabic, English and French). It so happened that these were my strongest grades, particularly my English language grades, which were the highest, thanks to Professor Mohamed Ali who made me love the language, and opened before me prospects for access to the culture, civilization and way of life of others. When the time came to fill out application forms, my school colleague Nabil Mikhail encouraged me to choose the Department of English Language and Literature of the Faculty of Arts. His only justification was that teachers of English make a lot of money giving private lessons! Ironically, Nabil emigrated to Canada, where he spent the rest of his life teaching Eskimos English as a second language! I, on the other hand, having lost hope of becoming an engineer, did not think in the same way, because teaching was not among my abilities. I hated

74 repetition and dealing with naughty students, because I was one of them!

I recognized my abilities for languages only after I attended the English Department, Faculty of Arts, University of Alexandria, where the department head, Dr Nur Sherif graded my essay test, and accordingly placed me in Section A, which was comprised mostly of graduates of English language medium schools. There were 3 sections, A, B and C that students were assigned to, according to their test results. I recall that my friend, director Mohammad Fadel, a graduate of the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Alexandria chose the name of Dr Nur Sherif as the artistic name for "Mohamed Gaber", who later became the famous actor Nur Al-Sherif!

Our first year group included (now) writer Iqbal Baraka and Huda Higazi who later married the fourth year student Abdel Wahab Al-Missiri, who was appointed assistant teacher after graduation. I had the honor to be a colleague of this great thinker, who belonged first to the Muslim Brotherhood, and then moved to the Egyptian Left represented by the communist party. In 2004 Al-Missiri joined the Islamic Center Party as one of its founders. He is the author of the “Jews, Judaism and Zionism Encyclopedia”, one of the largest Arab encyclopedic work in the twentieth century. Some see that he was able, through it, to shed new encyclopedic, scientific and objective light on the Jewish phenomenon, in particular, and the Western modernism experience, in general, using what he called the "Interpretative Model Concept" that he had developed during his academic career. However, others viewed his encyclopedia as biased towards the Jews, and sympathetic with their positions toward non-Jews. They even described it as a work defending Jews. 75

Before his death, Al Missiri served as the general coordinator of the Egyptian Movement For Change, Kefaya, which was established at the end of 2004 calling for democratic reform in Egypt, and organized a series of demonstrations in protest against the re-election of President Hosni Mubarak for a fifth term in 2005. He was arrested more than once by Egyptian authorities in January 2007. Kefaya sought to topple Mubarak’s regime peacefully, opposing the succession of his son, Gamal Mubarak, as president.

Abdul Wahab Al-Missiri was one of the brilliant graduates of the English Department. Although our relationship ceased after graduation, I met him many years later during the 1992 – 2008 period while he was an academic adviser for the World Institute of Islamic Thought in Washington, a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Islamic and Social Sciences, Virginia, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic and Social Sciences University in Washington. His most prominent quotes are:

"Faith was born inside me only through a long deep journey. It is a faith based on a long mental journey, therefore it is a mental faith devoid of spiritual elements. It is based on the inability of the physical premises to interpret Man, and the need to resort to more synthetic philosophical sayings ".

And:

“The functional nature of Israel means that it was colonially fabricated for a specific function. It is a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism".

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This was one of the graduates of my same department in my same college.

I found out unknowingly, with the passage of time, that the English Department was really my desired goal. I have learned there to pronounce the language correctly, particularly the sounds where we had to stick the tip of our tongues out, such as in The, and what corresponds to it in This has .الثاء والذال والظاء the Arabic language sounds such as in fact facilitated the way for me when I became a broadcaster and Arabic newsreader. It is interesting that writer Anis Mansour blamed famous ‘senior’ singers such as Um Kalthoum, Mohamed Abdul Wahab and Abdel Halim Hafez for not making Egyptians stick their tongues out in pronouncing such sounds, as our Arab brothers do, because they did not practice that in their classical Arabic songs!

In college, I chose German as a second language, although I had studied French at school, simply because I and my colleagues in class would start from scratch and be all at the same level, whereas in French, I might be surpassed by others, especially that Monsieur Garas, the French teacher, unlike Mr. Mohamed Ali, the English teacher, made us dislike his class. I, surprisingly excelled in German, and accordingly, in Latin, which was one of the basic classes in the English Department. I excelled to the extent that I used to give paid Latin lessons to some of my colleagues! However, my rich friend "Musaad" wasn’t quite satisfied with my lessons, and he persuaded the Latin teacher to give him private lessons, contrary to university regulations. He did not only give him lessons, but also the test questions on the night of the exam. Musaad couldn’t, however, solve them, and came to my house accompanied by a number of our colleagues, to have me decipher the ambiguities of the Latin test, which I easily did. Nevertheless, some of these 77 colleagues flunked, and I was the only one who completed the exam in half an hour!

First year students with Abdel Wahab Al-Missiri

and his future wife Hoda Higazi

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With Iqbal Baraka and first year colleagues, 1959

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Arts and Free Education

My joy of attending college for the first time is only matched by the joy of graduation and indulging in practical life seeking a job. In those days the Government ensured the appointment of graduates in various government institutions through the "Workforce" body, which was more like the Coordination Bureau. It was assigned the distribution of graduates, according to their geographical locations.

Studying in the Faculty of Arts, English Department of the University of Alexandria was categorically different from the secondary school, where we used to stay in one classroom waiting for teachers of the different topics to come to us. In college, however, we would go around looking for the lecture room of every professor. Co- education was also new to us, as we never had a mixed class at the preparatory and secondary school levels. It was also something exciting for us as teenagers! The Faculty of Arts was also known for the high level of beauty among its female students. This attracted students from other colleges to our Faculty Club, to mingle and socialize, and to admire the beauties of the English and French departments where the level of beauty was at its highest! Tuition for language private schools at the time was costly and affordable only to affluent students, some of whom had mixed nationalities, i.e. an Egyptian father married to a foreign mother and vice versa.

As I excelled in the English language in secondary school, I was lucky to have been assigned to section A, which was similar to a classroom in one of the London colleges, not 80 to mention the fact that most of the teachers were recruited from British universities. This added a heavy study burden on my shoulders as I had to be worthy of that section. However, the joy of the first year was spoilt when the tuition payment deadline became due. Although it was only L.E. 15, the burden was too heavy on my father’s purse, a Post Authority employee, responsible for a family of nine! He accumulated heavy debts with the cost of marrying off his 3 daughters, and had no other way as he approached retirement age, but to sell part of his pension in order to provide the tuition fee for my first academic year.

Free education at the time was available only at the primary and secondary school levels. Before the July 23rd Revolution, a primary school student used to pay L.E. 10, while the real cost was L.E. 24, and a secondary school student had to pay L.E. 20, while the real cost was L.E. 43. Since many of the poor were unable to pay these expenses, it meant that the State was supporting the rich. This had provoked the pre-revolution Education Minister, Dr Taha Hussein, who had asked for and got free education in these two phases to achieve social justice and equal opportunities among all people. However, there was a chance for college students who excel academically, artistically and in sports to be exempted from tuition fees. This is why I devoted myself to excel, not in academics or sports, but in the arts, by joining the University music band as a drummer, and both college and university drama groups. The result was that the first year tuition fee was the sole tuition fee I had to pay during my college years, particularly when Gamal Abdel Nasser declared free university education in 1962!

In the English Department, third grade talented student Mohamed Ghoneim, who loved acting and drama production, decided to form an English drama group, (He 81 later became first undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture for External Relations and supervisor of the new Egyptian Museum). The only obstacle he faced was how to get actors to memorize the English text of a full fledged play. So, he undertook what is called “Play Reading”, where participants would hold a text of the play and read from it on stage. Ghoneim initiated his experiment with Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man”, and gave me a part in it. Although play readings are usually presented in casual everyday attire, Ghoneim had us wear historical clothing. If we had memorized the dialogue, it would have become a full- fledged dramatic production. He had already realized that by the end of the year when he produced Oscar Wilde’s play "She Stoops to Conquer”. The following year he produced Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell”, where English Department graduate Samir Sabry, now a well-known famous movie and TV actor, took the leading role.

After his graduation, Ghoneim offered great services to Egyptian culture extending over 50 years. While working as a teacher of English in the Damanhour Boys Secondary School in the Behera governorate from 1960 until 1966, he served as the director of the Behera theatrical group, which was the first of its kind in regional governorates, after the Alexandria drama group was formed in 1961. He served for 7 years in Behera from 1962 onwards. The late Minister of Culture Tharwat Okasha appointed him then, as director of the Damanhour Culture House and director of culture in the Behera governorate. In 1968 he was transferred to the Ministry of Culture. He was later transferred to Alexandria, where he served as director of the Hurreya Culture Palace from 1969 until 1975. In 1975, he was assigned the position of director of culture in Alexandria until 1979. In June 1979 he was chosen by the Ministry of Culture as a cultural

82 attaché to the Egyptian embassy in Washington, D.C., until the end of his term on July 1983. During that period he organized cultural activities on an unprecedented scale in the U.S. capital, which I personally witnessed while working with the Voice of America.

After his return to Egypt from Washington, Ghoneim held a series of positions that culminated in his tenure as the first undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture for foreign relations, and supervisor of the Great Egyptian Museum, thus becoming another celebrity graduate of our department alongside Dr Abdul Wahab Al-Missiri. During his course of study, Mohamed Ghoneim joined the University Drama Group and learned the art of theatrical production at the hands of well-known producer Nour El- Demerdash, who produced many plays for the university. I, in turn learned from Ghoneim how to plan the stage choreography of actors, stage light distribution and soundtrack set up. After his graduation, I replaced him and proceeded with his activities as an actor and producer of the English Department Drama Group!

With Rawya Abaza in Bernard Shaw’s play reading of

“ Arms and the Man” 83

With Nabil Hassaan in Oscar Wilde’s play “ She Stoops to Conquer”,

With Noha Shaath, Samir Sabry, Nevine El-Khadem, Mohamed Ishac and Amira Maghraby, in Bernard Shaw’s play “You Never Can Tell”

Mohamed Ghoneim 84

Alexandria University...

A Music and Drama Pioneer

I do not think that any other Egyptian university would have been able to compete with the University of Alexandria in the field of music and dramatic arts at the beginning of the 1960s. The university used to host top musicians, such as Mr. Fathi Geneid, to train its music band, and senior producers, such as Nour El-Demerdash, Mahmoud Morsi and Fattouh Nashaty to coach the university Drama Group, which included an elite of actors and actresses, such as Sayed Abdul Karim, Medhat Morsi, Samira Abdul Aziz and Mohamed Ghoneim, among others. When Alexandria University participated in the “Universities' Youth Week” in Cairo in 1960, it returned home proudly carrying the three superiority cups in Music, Drama and Folklore. By the end of the week, other universities, jealous of our achievements even called us “Street Entertainment Bands”, in a kind of demeaning or artistic jealousy. However, this crowning did not come from a vacuum, for we used to practice every day with the classical music band, where I played the Timpani, with the Eastern music band, where I played the drum with my colleague Mohammad El-Samahy playing the tambourine, in addition to playing the tambourine in a folklore show composed by musician and coach Fathi Geneid, brother of the famous musician Hussein Geneid.

The university Drama Group used to host senior producers, such as Mahmoud Morsi, who produced for us "Diary of a Scoundrel" starring the late colleague Wahid Saif. The news of the great Mahmoud Morsi pre-reading 85 some scripts before drama lovers in the Faculty of Arts would spread like wildfire in the ranks of acting amateurs in the university, who would gather in our college to listen and enjoy Mahmoud Morsi’s first play readings. He had an extraordinary ability in impersonating all types of characters with fascinating expression and voice, thus allowing all of us to audition and compete for a suitable role. Mahmoud Morsi was no stranger to Alexandria as he was born there in 1923, and graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy. He then traveled to France where he studied film production for five full years, then moved to London to work with the British Broadcasting Corporation until the Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956. He then had to resign and return home.

Although he had few friends as he was shy by nature, Mahmoud Morsi was witty, full of humor, a conscious intellectual and a good reader. He excelled in the various roles he played, especially the role of prison warden Fathi Abd Al-Hady in the movie “Night and Rods” with Samira Ahmed and Mahmoud Yassin, and in the role of Badran in the movie “ The Outsmarting Prince” with Farid Shawqi, and the role of Atris in the film “ A Bit of Fear” with Shadya, as well as in a lot of television roles. He was an extremely talented actor, but starred in only a few movies, because he was always keen on quality not quantity. There was, however, another reason: he started his acting career quite late in life because he spent a long time studying in France and Britain, and before that in teaching Philosophy. Even after returning home, he spent five years in teaching Theatrical Arts, and Radio and Television production. When I asked him in a radio interview for the Voice of the Arabs about his abstention from media appearances, or lack of film roles, he informed me that he preferred not to work a lot, because

86 when he accepted a certain role, he would carry a great psychological burden during the preparation stage that would exhaust his strength and energy.

I’ll never forget what the great actress Zouzou Nabil had to say about Mahmoud Morsi:

"Everything in this man acts, even his fingers!

Mahmoud Morsi

Mr Fattouh Nashaty, who produced the play “ Death takes a Holiday” for the Faculty of Arts, also studied theatre production in France from 1937 to 1939. After he returned to Egypt, he produced 70 plays for the National Troupe, the Modern Stage Troupe and the National Theatre. When he read “Death takes a Holiday” by Alberto Castillo to us, I auditioned for the lead role, but he assigned it to another tall and broad shouldered colleague. It seems that he had in mind the actor who originally played it for the first time, for the National Theatre, Mr Mohamed El-Dafrawi. He assigned to me the role of ‘Eric’, whereas Iqbal Baraka played the role of ‘Grazia’, and Abul Qasim Al-Daly played the role of ‘Baron Cesar’. However, because of my passion to play the role of

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‘Death’, I memorized the role even before the assigned actor did. Mr Nashaty died after a rich life in the fields of acting and stage production at the age of 69.

Fattouh Nashaty

As for Nour El Demerdash, the University Drama Troupe hired him to produce several plays, notably “Jane Eyre”, to which he assigned the lead role to Alexandrian actress Samira Abdul Aziz. He chose for stage managing, the Faculty of Agriculture student Mohamed Fadel, who, after graduating accompanied him to Cairo where he became his TV production assistant. A great actor and artist, Nour El- Demerdash, husband of the famous actress Karima Mokhtar and father of my fellow news reader and announcer Moataz, died on February 7,1994 at the age of 69. However, he left behind Mohamed Fadel, who later became one of the best producers of television drama.

Nour El-Demerdash

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The rehearsals for the theatrical plays used to take a long time and extend until the final presentation at the end of the academic year. Also, I was involved from time to time with some colleagues in presenting short sketches on the university club stage. One of these sketches was ‘Nero Burns Rome’, during which I was introduced to the Faculty of Dentistry student Fouad Khalil. I assigned him a role in the absurd drama in which I played the role of the tyrant Nero, who decided for some unknown reason to burn Rome. In the play, Nero had to shout out saying, “Bring me Rome”. A soldier enters carrying a banner which reads ‘Rome’. He then asks for a bucket. A soldier enters with a bucket. Nero tells the soldier to put the banner in the bucket and he sets fire to Rome, which burns to the ground…..inside the bucket!

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"Nero Burns Rome", with Mohamed El-Samahy

and Fouad Khalil

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University Stars…and the Merry Nights

Due to the energy and enthusiasm of the young people that knew no boundaries, music rehearsals with the University band weren’t satisfying enough. We used to heed calls to give some stage performances on various occasions, but we thought of having our own music band that would offer its services at weddings and other events, as the pocket money we occasionally got from our families used to evaporate with lightning speed. We called our band the “University Stars” band in order to give it some respect amidst the other 3rd class bands we competed with in the field. The band was made up of myself as a drummer, Mohammad El-Samahy as tambourine player, Hassan Mukhtar and Maher Zaki on the violin, Saad Al-Din Al-Doq on the flute, Osama Rauf on the contrabass, Mustafa Daoud on the lute and Osman Elbaradei on the accordion. Our top vocalist was Ramadan Thabet, who excelled in Mohamed Abdul Mottaleb’s songs; he emigrated to Germany in an adventure, that took him by land to Libya, by sea to Italy and then overland by auto-stop towards Germany where he resides to this day.

After Ramadan’s absence, Osama Rauf volunteered to replace him. We were surprised when we found out that the Contrabass player had a beautiful voice no less soft than Abdel Halim Hafez's voice. He used to leave his instrument when he was due to sing Abdel Halim’s old lyrics such ”Safeni Marra” and “Ala Ad El-Shoq”, which were amazingly welcomed by the audience. We used to hold our rehearsals in Osama Rauf’s villa in the affluent district of Rushdy, as he

91 was well off. As Osama gradually gained attention and fame, Alexandria Radio hosted him to sing, and he became in a short period its number one vocalist. He also had a golden opportunity when a colleague, broadcaster Galal Moawad introduced him in his radio famous show " City Limelights".

In the early 1960s, musician Mohamed Al-Mugy authorized him as a singer, through his radio audition panel, and offered him the song "Welcome Our moon" with lyrics by Salah Fayez. He also appeared in some musical films such as "Utmost Joy" in 1963, directed by Mohammad Salem. Famous singer and musician Farid Al Atrash had Osama Raouf sing in his 1972 Spring concert and gave him two songs, with lyrics by Abdul Wahab Mohammed. He also sang for Cairo top musicians, including Abdul Azim Abdul Haq, Raouf Zohny, Khaled Saqr, Mahmoud Mandour, Fouad Hilmi, Abdul Azim Mohammad and Helmy Bakr. In addition to his participation in the City Limelights show, Osama Rauf sang in Alexandria Radio concerts, Christmas celebrations and memorial concerts of Mohamed Abdul Wahab. He also recorded in his voice a variety of Sayed Darwish melodies. He offered the Alexandrian community another lovely voice, that of his son Ahmed Osama!

Osama Rauf may have actually realized his dreams, though his activities were restricted to the city of Alexandria, while our goal, when our modest band used to play in places such as waterfront casinos, weddings and events, was to practice the hobby most favorite to our souls and support ourselves financially. If working in beach casinos exposed us to late night entertainment and enjoyment of the Alexandria sea breeze, it also allowed us entry to the world of weddings in which you forget life’s troubles, and only hear cries of joy and words of congratulations, and get the chance to let family girls dance to our music. Some 92 weddings would occasionally hire professional dancers, among which was the dancer Soheir Abdou, who later changed her name to Soheir Zaki in gratitude to senior broadcaster Salah Zaki, who was the first to introduce her in radio relayed concerts. I can say without pride, that the famous dancer Soheir Zaki danced to the beats of my drum!

Each of us was paid between 50 piasters and 2 pounds per wedding, depending on the social standing of the families of the bride and groom. Sometimes the wedding would be very modest, and dinner with soft drinks would suffice! However, in cases where the promoter deprived us of our pay, we would respond with the only musical weapon we had, ending the festivities with a special song made for such an occasion, and we would speedily run away before the married couple had the time to understand its lyrics, which went:

You may have a dark night, with candles put off

O ugly bride, spit on you

And you, bridegroom, go to hell!

Ramadan Thabet sings Abdel-Mottaleb at the Faculty of Science

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Osama Raouf sings Abdelhalim on the Faculty of Agriculture Stage

With Mohamed El-Samahy, Osama Raouf and

Saad Eldin El-Deq

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Oh! Damascus!

When I attended college in October 1958 the Union between Egypt and Syria, under the name of the United Arab Republic had been declared a few months earlier on 22nd February of the same year. Secession took place during my college years on 28 September 1961. One month before that, we were participating in "The University Youth Week" activities in Syria, which included the University of Damascus after that short-lived union. In order to strengthen that union and brotherhood between Egyptian and Syrian universities, music bands, in which I was a member, drama groups and sports teams from Alexandria, Cairo and Ain Shams universities headed to the Syrian capital. It was my first experience in air travel. When the Comet DC 4 jet took off from Cairo airport, the only thing that eased my tension while in midair was that some colleagues got into a fit of singing and drumming, perhaps to cover up their horror of being suspended between heaven and earth. Our fear did not last long, because the aircraft crossed the distance from Cairo to Damascus in less than the train travel time from Cairo to Alexandria!

We didn’t feel alienated in this dearly loved country, which warmly welcomed us, and officials took us by buses to the camp in which we would spend seven days of student extravaganza. It was a huge dormitory with tents inside which were side by side single beds. We spent the first night happily, only to wake up in the morning to the screams of some of our colleagues who got into the showers. They had not expected such cold Siberian water pouring over their

95 heads in mid-August. We found out later that the water pipe network and public taps on the streets of Damascus were linked to natural mountain springs. I tasted for the first time this delicious cold tap water, which was a good alternative to the soft drinks we were used to consuming in Egypt.

I do not remember many details about our music performance, with the exception of a few rehearsals here and there. Yes, we won the Music Cup at the end of the week as the best band among the universities of the Union. However, I only remember the famous Syrian food quite well. The meals were extraordinarily delicious, and I used to spend the few pounds I carried with me from Alexandria, on the purchase of apples which were rare in Egypt at the time, as well as on the "Boza" or ice cream made with Mastique the Hamidiya market is famous for, in addition to Pomegranate Juice, which is as common and as famous as sugar cane juice in Egypt. Because I have a sweet tooth and love desserts, I often missed the camp meals, and made that up by buying Damascene desserts such as “Basbousa”, “Baklava”, “Bassima” and other delicious varieties. What caught my attention in this clean city was the spread of ornamental trees along the roads and that the streets were devoid of barefoot children.

However, the most exciting experience was a journey that took us to visit Bludan Resort, which is nestled in a mountainous area above sea level. In both Summer and Winter, this resort attracts Arab and foreign tourists and Damascus residents in the region, which is famous for the beauty of nature and panoramic mountain landscape and the green Al-Zabadani valley. It is also famous for its fruit trees, evergreen forests with plenty of water springs and natural resources. Its fame has attracted tourists since the 19th century due to its pleasant summer climate. Bludan is 96 visited by many celebrities, such as the late well known musician Mohamed Abdul Wahab, who loved this resort, and composed the music of some of his finest melodies there. He even discovered the Syrian Singer Mayada Al Hennawi, while residing in what was known as the "Resort of Celebrities" until recently. Abdul Wahab, was a personal friend of a Syrian minister who was married to Mayada then, in 1977. He listened to Mayada’s voice and expressed his great admiration for it, and composed for her the music for some of her songs.

Buses brought us to the foothill, and we had to continue the distance up the mountain on foot. It was an amusing trip amidst the apple meadows, where the owners often invited us to eat whatever we wanted of the fruit when they knew that we were Egyptian, as a gesture of love to President Abdel Nasser. The first thing that drew my attention when we arrived to the top of the mountain was those mountain spring waters flowing over a pile of water bottles and soft drink cans. We carried out the Egyptian saying “whoever drinks the water of the Nile will come back to it again”, but by drinking the Syrian spring waters this time. The quantities of spring water I drank during that University Youth Week may have contributed to my returning back to Syria 13 years later, to participate on behalf of the Voice of the Arabs, in the celebrations of the Corrective Revolution of President Hafez Assad in 1971. It was, ironically, the same year in which Egypt abandoned the name of the “ United Arab Republic” to become: "The Arab Republic of Egypt!".

The new name inspired the great poet Salah Jaheen to write his great epic "In Egypt’s Name ":

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In Egypt’s name, History may say what it wishes

Egypt, for me, is the most beloved and most beautiful thing

I love her when she owns the earth, East and West

And love her when she is dumped and wounded in war

I love her violently, tenderly and with modesty

And hate her and curse her with a lovesick passion

I leave her and we both go our separate ways

But in distress, she turns to find me beside her

With my veins pulsating with a thousand tunes and rhythms

In Egypt’s name.

Jaheen wrote this epic while he was being treated in the Soviet Tskhaltubo sanatorium. Some doctors came to him carrying the good news that Egypt's name had been changed. When he asked about the new name they simply said: "Egypt"! This was the same sanatorium, where President Gamal Abdel Nasser was treated for diabetes in 1966. The name later came up after it was alleged that the Egyptian leader was poisoned during his routine massage there. However, the fingers of accusation, were then pointed at Dr Ali Al-Atfi, the dean of the Physical Therapy Institute, who was at the time, the private masseur of president Abd Al- Nasser. It was alleged that he killed the president through massaging him with poisonous aloe that penetrated his body slowly and eventually killed him. This was confirmed by 98 popular Poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, who declared that Dr Al- Atfi told him that while he was in an adjacent prison cell during the rule of President Sadat. Al-Atfi was later sentenced to death in an espionage case for Israel. Negm added that Al-Atfi confessed to him that the killing was planned by Israel..! He added that Al-Atfi survived a death sentence after a visit by former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to Egypt and his meeting with President Sadat. Immediately after Al-Atfi knew of this visit he said to Negm: "See you later. I am about to be released soon." When Negm asked him about the reason for his release, he said, "Our man is coming tomorrow to meet with Sadat and talk to him about me!”.

Salah Jaheen Ahmed Fouad Negm

Ali Al-Atfi Gamal Abdel-Nasser

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On the Comet DC 4 Aircraft heading to Damascus, 1961

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The School of Pleasure!

We were quite happy during the “University Youth Week" in Damascus, with the tourist tours we had in our second home, where we had never set foot before, and were enjoying it. However, an insider came and whispered in our ears that we had seen nothing yet if we had not visited ‘the school’. We did not have to wonder for long, knowing that we were now university students and had graduated from school a long time before. The expert explained to us that it wasn’t just any school, but rather a “school of pleasure”, sponsored by the government, and open for over 18 year old visitors. Once we got the picture, a group of the Youth Week participants, myself included, rushed to the promised school!

On the outskirts of Damascus there was a big old house with a wide open gate, similar to the Ottoman palaces. The first thing that drew my attention at the entrance, was a police station and a medical clinic. We understood that the purpose of police presence was to settle disputes between clients and prostitutes, while the clinic was there to examine the females and follow-up on their health conditions. Nevertheless, I was not encouraged like others to indulge in this experience, as in part I feared for my health, and was also making sure not to lose what was left of my few Liras!

The building had several floors (three as I recall), and each floor had a long corridor lined with rooms on both sides, and at the end of the corridor stood ‘the Mama’, a huge woman in charge of organizing the process in her

101 assigned corridor. At the door of each room was a special tempting poster describing its occupant, with words such as "The Valley Brunette", " The Morning Rose ", " The Sea Breeze". etc. Each female was sitting in front of her door, fully made up! I was driven to go there out of curiosity, not desire. Our generation did not have access to official prostitution, although it was legal in Egypt before the 1952 revolution. As for Syria, during the infamous succession of military coups over the second half of the last century, Syrian officials were convinced that prostitution existed, with or without the State’s consent. So they decided to put it under State supervision with strict formal health control. In 1957, clerics went to president Shukry Al-Qawatly and Parliament Speaker Nazem Al Qudsy, protesting the existence of brothels. Al-Qawatly’s answer was:

If you want me to create a paradise on earth, what did you leave to God. We control matters, and judgment is left to the Lord Almighty!

Abdel Nasser made up for the failure of Al-Quwatly and issued, during the Union, Law No. 10, that called for the abolition of prostitution and closure of all brothels in Syria. That meant that Egyptian students, may in fact have closed these doors! Egyptian history indicates that Egypt was one of the most important countries to legalize prostitution. The first registration of prostitutes was in the seventh century, while a number of studies confirm that prostitution was present in Pharaonic times as well. In the era of the Ottomans, brothels were called “Karakhana”, a Turkish word meaning literally “The black shop”, or “The black market” in reference to banned sales. After Mohammad Ali Pasha became Egypt’s ruler, prostitution flourished with the advent of foreigners in Egypt and he kept a tax on prostitution for some time and later cancelled it in 1837. 102

Prostitution started then to be subjected to registration and management as the application of a regulation called the "Instructions for Brothels" continued to be in use until cancelled in 1949. As for the formal abolition of prostitution in Egypt, this came at the hands of Egyptian veteran parliamentarian "Sayed Galal" who was a representative of Bab Al-Shaariya constituency which included Klut Bey, the most famous prostitution street in Cairo. He submitted a request to the Wafdi Minister of Social Affairs "Galal Fahim" about the role of prostitution. The request demanded the promulgation of a law banning it. The legislation was approved in parliament despite strong opposition, before the July, 1952 Revolution.

Despite the fact that prostitution was officially banned in Egypt and many other countries, it continued clandestinely, as it is deeply rooted since ancient times when the composition of societies included the existence of male and female slaves. Kings and many Nobles and the Rich had their palaces full of female slaves who were sold in slave markets or traded one for the other. Their only task was the establishment of a small prostitution community in their Master’s premises, for his own pleasure. Poverty was the first and foremost factor that drove vulnerable and helpless females along this dark road. They had nothing and no job, but to sell their bodies in order to generate income to support themselves. Death was the alternative. Many others, however, entered this world heedlessly. Women are now being brought and smuggled from all over the world to other countries, where they reside illegally, separated from their homes and kin and forced into prostitution. Today, prostitution on the Internet is no less important or less profitable than actual prostitution. Regardless of the fact that the Internet is one of the causes of luring many victims of

103 sexual exploitation, and forcing them into this dark and entangling world, without no hope of getting out, many prostitution organizations are keen on providing electronic services to attract customers of every kind. From their point of view, they think that they are offering an important service. This kind of prostitution does not exploit only women and men, but also children, who get the lion’s share of this crime.

When I returned home after participating in "The University Youth Week" in Damascus, I did not, like some colleagues, brag about being one of the pioneer visitors to the school of pleasure. I preferred spending my limited Liras on "sweets" rather than sweeties!

Alexandria University Music Band At the Youth Week in Damascus, with musician Fathi Geneid

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A Brothel License

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Professors

Who left an Indelible Mark

We only appreciated the grandeur of those professors who taught us in the English Department, Faculty of Arts of the University of Alexandria, a long time after graduation. We used to criticize their very strict grading and assessment of our work. The Faculty of Arts, Department of English graduate is not like any other graduate of the same faculty, or a graduate from a science faculty, where the student can estimate and calculate his marks by what he scored on the different tests he sat for, and with pinpoint accuracy. However, in the Department, if you wrote a paper giving your point of view of a literary or critical work, you could not estimate how it would be received by the professor for many reasons; different critical points of view not being taken into consideration, varying perceptions of the work not fully discussed or not enough reading having been done on the subject. It was not an issue of one plus one equals two. We were taught how to consider the different facets of a situation and then choose a stance, and defend that choice. When I once asked Dr Nur Sherif why the professors were strict in grading students’ tests, she replied with her famous sentence:

“We are cruel to be kind”

She meant that only when you are mature and face life and become men of letters, writers and thinkers, you’ll realize that we were merciful to you!

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Dr Nur Sherif herself made an unprecedented achievement when she became the first Egyptian to serve as the Head of the Department of English Language and Literature, a post she held for many years. After the July, 1952 Revolution relieved all foreign faculty members of their duties for political reasons, Dr Nur Sherif shouldered all the teaching burden at a time when the Department itself was at risk of being closed. She also informally undertook the administrative burden of running the Department but, as being only in the position of ‘assistant professor’, she could not officially act as Head until she was an Associate Professor. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1956.

Dr Sherif was born on April 24th, 1921, and graduated with Distinction from Cairo University, then known as King Fouad 1st University, in 1942. She obtained her Master’s Degree in 1945 from the same university and her doctorate from the University of London in 1951. She published dozens of works in English and Arabic. Among her work published in Arabic we find, “Towards Realism in War Poetry”, “ The Impact of Science on English Literature”, “Women in the Naguib Mahfouz Trilogy”, and

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A Critique: Introduction To Modern Arabic Literature”. Her translations from English to Arabic include:

 Allardyce Nicoll World Drama- Part V.  John Steinbeck by Warren G. French  The Golden Bough: a Study in Comparative Religion and Mythology, by Sir James George Frazer Among her most important work published in English we find:

 The Emancipation of Women in Victorian Literature.  The Approach to Contemporary Life in Two Generations  George Gissing: a Biographical Note

Dr Sherif was nominated for many awards, including the State Award for the Arts in 1981, and the Taha Hussein Award in 2005, and received a discretionary University Award. On the occasion of her 50th year as Professor, Professor Emeritus and Head of Department, she was honored by Professors and students of the Department and the whole Faculty of Arts.

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Dr Mahmoud Al-Manzalaoui, whose lectures we eagerly attended rarely missing any, always spoke about ‘originality’ and inspired us to be original. When he used to review a research paper, he did not look at the ability of the student to repeat what was said in his lectures, but he rather looked for refutation of what he had said and if possible, the addition of something new that contradicts it, or confirmation of certain points of view by referring to more readings or articles that agree with it. I, and many of my colleagues made the mistake of repeating what was said in lectures only, and my grades were not up to my expectation. However, when he requested another research paper about the Romantic poets like John Keats, he was very pleased when I compared them with great Arab poets such as Imru Al-Qays, Torfa Ebn El-Abd and Zuhayr Bin Abi Solma. I even wrote some of their poems in Arabic in an English research paper! It was a calculated risk and I was anxious because I knew how Dr Al- Manzalaoui thought and how passionate he was about the principle of being original, creative and different, and he did not disappoint me and gave me a high grade.

Dr Al- Manzalaoui, who was born in London in 1924 and graduated from the English Department, Cairo University in 1944 and got his doctorate degree from the University of 109

Oxford in 1954, under the supervision of another great scholar C.S. Lewis. He was appointed as lecturer in the English Department, Alexandria University about four years before I attended it. He was captivated by comparative literature, especially the Arabic and English literatures, wrote in Arabic very well and published a selection of Arabic short stories. Perhaps many of his students still recall his vital and amazing readings of old English, particularly the poetry of Chaucer, and his interesting lectures on British Life and Thought. This wonderful man and great professor later moved from the University of Alexandria to Canada, where he worked at the University of British Columbia until his death in Vancouver on 21st January, 2015, at the ripe old age of 91. His many students simply cannot forget the impact he had on their lives.

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Who of us can forget Dr Mohamed Mustafa Badawy, who lectured on Literary Criticism? He was born in Alexandria in 1925, and obtained his B.A. in English from the University of Alexandria in 1946. In 1954, he got his doctorate degree in English literature from the University of London. His thesis entitled “Coleridge: Shakespeare Critic”, was published in 1973. He lectured in the English Department until I graduated in 1964, the same year he moved to teach at the University of Oxford, where he specialized in Contemporary Arab Studies. He became a fellow researcher at Oxford’s St. Anthony College from 1967-69, then he was elected to its Governing Council until his retirement in 1992. Dr Badawy enriched the world library with his translations of contemporary Arab novels, including "Sara" by Abbas Mahmoud Al Akkad, "The Thief and the Dogs" by Naguib Mahfouz, “The Confused Sultan" by Tawfiq Al-Hakim and "Um Hashem's Lantern" by Yahya Haqqi. He died in 2012 at the age of 87.

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As for Dr Azza Karara, who became, in 1977, the second head of the English Department after Dr Nur Sherif, we used to dream with her in the world of poetry when she read to us in class, and even in after study hours, Romantic poems in her tender voice and the sweet smile that never left her face. We usually did not comprehend the full meaning and purpose behind the verses, but we understood every word from her tone of voice and facial expressions. We lost Dr Azza Karara on the first of March, 2015, but she left behind generations of her loyal students, as much enriched as she has enriched the Arabic library with many translations, perhaps most importantly the book “ Egyptian women in the era of Mohamed Ali" by Sofia Lin Paul. It is a set of letters sent by the sister of English Orientalist Edward William Lin, who lived for a long time in Egypt during the Mohamed Ali era, complementing what this Orientalist wrote about Egyptian habits and traditions at the time. All the letters focus on the women of this class and details of their lives. 112

Although we had British lecturers among the teaching staff, such as Mr. Ronald Ewart, Dr Leonard Knight, Mr. David Kabraji, and Mr John Noone, to us they were not of the same literary caliber as our Egyptian professors Nur Sherif, Mahmoud Al-Manzalaoui, Mohammad Mustafa Badawy and Azza Karara. They were more like English language teachers in foreign schools, present there as mother tongue speakers to teach us the English language, its correct pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; with the exception of Dr Knight. He was closer to our generation in terms of age, only 26, yet he had a doctorate in the works of Shakespeare. He had a profound understanding and love of drama and had his own original interpretation of many dramatic works. He was also an excellent producer because of his experience in the Shakespearean theatre, and he produced for the English Department Luigi Pirandello's play ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ amongst many others. He asked me to take the leading role, even a year after I graduated from college! It was not an easy traditional play, for Pirandello had caused an earthquake when it was presented for the first time in the Italian theatre, because it showed, above anything else, the potential of using’ the fourth wall’ and how to break through it, where actors would leave the stage and use the whole theatre.

The play takes place on a rainy, stormy summer day. While the acting group is preparing the daily rehearsals of Pirandello's play “The Rules of the Game”, the scene is interrupted suddenly by a group of six characters: The father, the mother, the eldest son and the mother’s children from another relationship, the eldest and youngest daughters and the middle son. They are not people, but characters, as the father tells the producer, who were born in a writer’s mind, but the writer had refused to put them on

113 paper and was unable to concretize them and put life into them in order to bring them to life in an art work. However, these characters dream and yearn to live and impersonate their tragedy.

Dr Knight excelled tremendously in depicting the six characters. He gave me, in his fully understood production, a chance to take the leading role, the center of all events. The reaction of the audience was highly positive. After the curtain fall, Dr Nur Sherif praised my performance and my proper pronunciation of English. Mr. Ronald Ewart informed me that my exceptional ability to manipulate my voice to suit every situation was what drew his attention most; it was as if he was predicting my career in radio!

David Kabraji Ronald Ewart John Noone

Dr Leonard Knight

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Six Characters in Search of an Author

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Theatrical activity

In the English Language Department

In my youth, I was very fascinated with the American theatre in general, and musicals in particular. I read mostly American plays in the American library in Alexandria, in which I used to spend long hours. I even ventured and translated the comedy “You Can't Take it With You” written by George Kaufman and Moss Hart in 1938, and was subsequently made into a movie. I was hoping to produce this play in Arabic, but I have never had the chance to this day. I then became attached to musical films adapted from stage musicals when I watched, for the first time, in 1958, "South Pacific", a film directed by Joshua Logan, music by Richard Rogers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, and starring Mitzi Gaynor and Rossano Brazzi. The film is about a love story during the Second World War between a young nurse and a Frenchman, on a vague and dangerous military mission in one of the South Pacific islands. Since then, I have never missed a musical movie. In 1961, I watched “West Side Story” directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robins and starring Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer, the music by Leonard Bernstein. It was adapted from a play by the same name, presented in 1957, and inspired by Shakespeare's play “Romeo and Juliet”.

When I had the chance to produce the annual play of the English Department in 1962, "Pygmalion" by Irish playwright Bernard Shaw was the first to come to mind. At the time, I read that it was adapted into a musical and

116 presented on Broadway, New York, in 1956 under the name “My Fair Lady”. It was also adapted into Arabic under the same name by Samir Khafagi and Bahgat Qamar in 1969, and produced by Hassan Abdul Salam, starring Fouad Al- Muhandes and Showikar. Because we did not have at the Faculty the technical means and otherwise, to put on a musical, I committed myself to Shaw’s literary text. Since the play’s leading female role, played ably by colleague Noha Shaath, as well as her father Doolittle, played professionally by another colleague Mohammad Ishac, required a British Cockney accent, I sought the help of our British lecturer Ronald Ewart to coach them in this East London street dialect.

There was also no possibility to present the play in a commercial theatre, so I got the approval of the Faculty of Commerce to have the play presented on its large stage, which was used for public lectures. Through the experience I had previously gained from working with colleague Mohamed Ghoneim who preceded me in producing English plays in the Department, I got to know the shops hiring stage scenery and historic attire. I also recruited Mohamed Khalil, a member of the university drama group, who was also a makeup artist. It took me a long time to design the stage décor, lighting and choreography and put all of that together on paper.

The rehearsals were arduous, but colleague Nabil Hassaan, a graduate of Victoria College, an English language medium school and a Faculty of Medicine student was able to memorize the leading role of Professor Higgins, and played it professionally. However, our colleague Nabil Hassan, not to be confused with the first Nabil, entrusted with the role of Higgins’ friend Pickering, could not cope with the part and withdrew at the last moment. I had no time 117 to train another actor for the role, and played it myself, besides the burden of producing the play, since I knew the whole play by heart. Thank God, the play was well received by the audience and highly acclaimed by Dr Nur Sherif (who was usually very difficult to please), and she awarded me the Superiority Drama Cup of that year. It is noteworthy, that the play was attended for the first and last time by my late father, my elder brother Ahmed, and my younger brother Maher.

After the show was over, I felt a great emptiness. Unfortunately, these college plays were presented on stage only once, despite the fact that their preparation took the whole academic year, whereas plays in commercial theatres are presented for months or even years, as is the case with comedian Adel Imam's plays. Although I suffered a lot combining production and acting in the presentation of "Pygmalion", the following year, 1963, I produced two plays: “The Linden Tree” by J.B Priestly jointly with Mr. David Kabraji, and “Dear Brutus” by G.M Barry.

I didn’t cease to follow up musical films, and saw in my graduation year, 1964, “My Fair Lady”, adapted from the play, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, five years before it was presented at the Cairo United Artists theatre under the same title. As for the landmark musical “The Sound of Music”, I watched it with millions of other people around the world at the start of my Radio career in 1965. The film, adapted from a play with the same name, was directed by Robert Wise, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Music and lyrics were by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein. It became the most watched movie in American film history!

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The story is based on Maria von Trapp’s Autobiography “The Story of the Von Trapp family Singers”. It tells the story of an Austrian nun who left the monastery to become a nanny for the seven children of a Naval Officer, a widower. The film contained many popular songs which also gained worldwide fame, especially the "Do- Re- Mi" song. The movie was filmed in Austria, the state of Bavaria in Germany and 20th Century Fox studios in California. It was nominated for 10 Oscar awards and received five of them, including prizes for best film and best production. It also generated the most income, at the time, after "Gone With the Wind". The film album was nominated for the Grammy awards, in the album of the year category. In 2001, “The Sound of Music” was chosen to be safe-kept in the national registry of films in the Library of the US Congress for its splendid, cultural and historical importance.

With Dr Nur Sherif and colleagues

After I was awarded the Drama Excellence Cup

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Pygmalion, 1962

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Hassan Shoukry, Susan Afifi, Olga Mattar, Mohamed Ishac, Nadia Khoury, Nabil Hassaan, Noha Shaath, Abbas Metwalli, Nadia Kamel, Sara El-Seifi and Taryk Rushdy

The Linden Tree, 1963

Amira Maghraby, Habib Boulos, Sara Al-Seifi

and Nadia Khoury

Nadia Khoury, Olga Mattar, Amira Maghraby, Nabil Hassaan

and Nabil Hassan 121

Dear Brutus, 1963

Nabil Hassan, Shahira El-Mallakh and Hassan Shoukry

Habib Boulos, Mohamed Ishac , Samia El-Daghar, Nadia Khoury and Maisa Abaza

Saeed Fahmy, Maisa Abaza and Olga Mattar 122

Alexandria’s Great Swimmer

The interest in sports during the primary, preparatory and secondary school phases was huge and multifaceted. Besides basketball, volleyball and football, there were group sports in the Special Section and Scouts activities. All were available for anyone who had the fitness and desire to join. However, I do not recall that there was a swimming team in these early school stages. Swimming pools were only available at the Municipal Stadium or at major clubs. I practiced all sports offered by the educational system, but I did not find myself in them, perhaps because I was busy with the performing arts, or because I was more attracted to swimming. Since I was born, and raised in Alexandria until I graduated from the university, there was a larger swimming pool available to me at all times, and free of charge: The Mediterranean Sea! My love for swimming was not only due to the fact that I lived in a coastal city, but also due to my fascination with the achievements of great Egyptian swimmers worldwide. I heard in my younger years of Ishak Hilmy, the first Egyptian swimmer to cross the English Channel in 1938. He was honored by King Fouad with the Merit Award, and the British called him “The Pharaoh of Egypt”. He also later received the Merit Award from President Anwar Sadat. I was 7 years old when the newspapers and Radio talked about the victory of Hassan Abdul Rahim in crossing the English Channel for the first time in 1948, followed by the swimmer Marei Hammad in 1949 and 1951.

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The beach was not far from my home, and I used to go there stealthily with my peers, without the knowledge of our families, to enjoy swimming. I remember that my mother, may her soul rest in peace, used to lick my face when I came back to see if it tasted salty, and as it did, I would get my share of censure because I went swimming without my elder brother. I overcame this problem with the ploy of having a shower in the beach shower to remove all salts! I wanted to become like those celebrity swimmers. However, I didn’t long to crossing the choppy English Channel, but at an early age I made an attempt to swim to the island of Sidi Bishr, located in the sea, far out from the shore. After this successful attempt, long distance swimming became my passion, hope and goal, particularly as it did not need a club membership. I was encouraged by a family relative, the great swimmer and my idol, Abdullatif Abu Heif, who realized many achievements in his swimming career.

Abdullatif Khamis Abu Heif was born in the Bahari district of Alexandria, and raised in a family of Table Tennis players. After watching the "Tarzan" movies, and his admiration of swimmer actor Johnny Weissmuller, he was the only one in the family attracted to swimming. He started swimming in the Anfoushi swimming pool at the age of 10, and in the same year won the Alexandria championship for juniors. In 1955 Abu Heif was the first to cross the English Channel International race and win, surpassing the most famous and faster global swimmers. In 1963, during my college years, he also won first place in the longest world swimming race, which lasted for 36 hours in Lake Michigan, United States, where he swam for 135 kilometers. Abu Heif also ranked first in many of the races organized in Argentina, one of which was a distance of 250 kilometers, where Abu Heif swam for 60 hours from Rosario to Buenos Aires, and

124 won the first place as he swam the longest distance in that race. At the time when I started my Radio career in 1965, Abu Heif realized a greater achievement in the international race in Montreal, Canada. It was a relay race in which 2 swimmers alternated swimming every hour. Abu Heif insisted to continue swimming alone, when his Italian companion got sick because of the severe cold and was forced to leave the race early. Abu Heif continued swimming alone for 29 hours and a half and won first place. This race was one of the reasons that prompted the International Swimming Union to declare Abu Heif “the greatest long distance swimmer in history”, and had a role in giving him the title of “Swimmer of the 20th Century”.

Abu Heif was known to be " gluttonous " in order to help the building of his big athletic body, which withstood maximum degrees of cold. I remember that his mother always insisted that he should eat at home first, when he was invited for dinner somewhere else, for fear of envy of the others who watched him eat and also to avoid him looking avidly before his hosts. I was most attached to this great swimmer, and very proud when the governor of Alexandria named Sidi Bishr Beach Abou Heif Beach after him. On this same beach, which witnessed my first endeavors in swimming, I used to follow Abu Heif with fascination during his practice, where he swam like a speed boat splitting the sea waters. Famous film director Hussam Addin Mustafa offered "Abu Heif" a leading role in one of his movies. Because he was a navy officer, Abu Heif had to take permission from The Navy Commander, who in turn asked Abu Heif to postpone the idea, thus losing him an opportunity to play the part of a commando leading his country towards independence and liberalization.

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When I left the Voice of the Arabs for the Voice of America in Rhodes Island in 1975, Abu Heif was diagnosed with kidney failure, and had to have a kidney transplant. When he was 77, he had esophageal bleeding, and was prevented by physicians from moving once and for all. His illness was due to swimming in the Nile, the waters of which infected him with Bilharzia and skin cancer; this, in addition to swimming for long periods of time during his different races. This great swimmer, who was born in Alexandria, on 30th January 1929, passed away on April 21st , 2008 at the age of 79, thus closing the page of one of the greatest athletes in our contemporary history.

Abdellatif Abou-Heif

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Music in the Schools

The late renowned modern poet Salah Jaheen, dreamt of “water, greenery, a healthy sun, a dome of clear blue sky, breezes of peace and liberty and landmarks of arts and civilization” in Egypt. He also dreamt of, “professors, scholars and physicians from the working class, and courteous employees at their desks serving people with enthusiasm. ” I, on the other hand, dreamt of a music instrument in every student’s hand, in every village and hamlet, side by side with the slate board- or nowadays, the iPod. Music education, in my day, was limited to teaching choir singing, and the daily “Peace be on Egypt” every morning, which was the Egyptian national anthem during the period from 1923 to 1936. It was written by poet and writer Mustafa Sadek Al-Rafi'i, and put to music by Safar Ali:

Peace be upon you Egypt

I sacrifice all my life for you

You'll never be knuckled under

Today or tomorrow

My heart and resolve

Are ready for your defense

You are a faith in my heart

Peace upon you Egypt

Be always safe 127

If you were shot with millions of arrows

I would repel them with my heart

And enjoy everlasting peace!

When my musician friend, the late Mohammad Noah visited me in Virginia, USA, he thought that this song should be our national anthem again instead of musician Sayed Darwish’s "My Homeland, my Homeland," despite his admiration for Darwish. However, I do not recall a music teacher having ever put a musical instrument in the hands of a student, to practice with. I do not know whether the case has improved nowadays in the educational system. When I read the objectives of the current Music Education curriculum in our schools, I found out that it consisted of three principal activities:

.

and educational songs.

It did not include students practicing instruments, which was really upsetting for me. When I attended, here in America, my granddaughter Danna’s school concert (first year of prep school), she was playing the flute with her peers in a full fledged band, that lived up to the level of a professional symphony orchestra. At a time when music has become an integral part of the educational process in most countries of the world, some person in Egypt pops up in these gloomy days and asks for the prohibition of music in schools for religious reasons, whereas education experts have concluded a long time ago that:

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“Music education in schools provides pleasure for the students, for a taste for music awakens in them creative energies that unleash their imagination for self expression”.

I was surprised by the declaration of Dr Nadia Emara, Quranic Interpretation professor at the Faculty of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar University, which read:

“There is nothing to prevent the teaching of music education in schools, because there is nothing to prohibit it, especially, that teaching it represents a new look at education instead of the current policy which depends on an overloaded school curriculum which frustrates the students”.

I thought that it went without saying, and that we had long before gone beyond the idea of prohibiting music. Even the Ministry of Education in Egypt has recently adopted a new approach to improve the ability of students to understand and absorb the curricula through Music. A whole administration was created for this purpose, after it became clear that this method may be “the magic wand” of relaying information in a smooth and uncomplicated manner.

I wish that Salah Jaheen’s “Picture” of Egypt had included a school children’s music band like the first year prep school band I watched in my granddaughter’s school. Although music education is inherent in all US school stages, educators never stop reminding parents of the importance of music in forming and shaping the life of the student. During my granddaughter’s concert, the following short leaflet was distributed:

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Why Music?

Music Helps Educate the ‘whole’ Student. Music education shapes the way our students understand themselves and the world around them. It nurtures assets and skills that are critical to future success. Emotional Awareness: Students learn to express themselves in multiple ways and become more sensitive to the preferences and feelings of others. Reflective Learning: Students reflect on the failures and successes through the creative process and derive a sense of their own competencies, interests and challenges. Process Orientation: Students develop the ability to consistently refine their thinking as part of the creative process, developing an ability to re-evaluate goals and objectives and, if needed, adjust their approach to the objective. Decision-making: Through both the creative and reflective learning process, students gain a greater capacity to question, interpret, and influence their own lives. Grit: in a high-level-performance environment, hard work and dedicated practice predict success far more than innate ability. Music performance offers opportunities to fail. Students learn the value of persistence and of working hard for an uncertain outcome. Multiple Ways of Learning: Music study promotes fluency in knowledge systems beyond the linguistic and mathematical, enabling a deeper and broader understanding of our world and of the human experience.

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Preparatory(Middle) School Music Band

Preparatory School Symphonic Band

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My granddaughter Danna with Prep School Music Band

Mohamed Noah sings in our Virginia House in 1981

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Indoctrination in our Educational System

In my childhood, I was not quite fond of going to school. The ghost of the Sheikh Osman school, which was more like a nursery used to haunt me every morning. It was a new unknown world to me. I could not understand why I had to leave my home and leave playing happily in the street with my friends, to trap myself amidst a group of peers and repeat together whatever we were asked to by the teacher. So I always insisted that my father’s relative “Abu Al-Abd”, who walked me to school every day, took me in the classroom and showed me where to sit, because I did not know what was going to become of me in that mysterious atmosphere. His only answer which still rings in my ears was: “God willing, soon”; no matter how many times I asked, and I kept asking and asking as we walked to the school, I got the same answer, until finally, he actually put me in the classroom and I sat mesmerized at my desk.

Most of what was taught in the Sheikh Osman school was verses from the Quran, which were repeated with no attention paid to the meaning but memorized by heart by us. I admit that all what I know of the Quran today is credited to this Kuttab-like school. The matter wasn’t quite different when I moved through the different stages of education to the secondary school. The teaching of all topics, at the time and perhaps even now, focused on indoctrination, based on repetition, memorization and compliance. This did not allow for understanding, thinking, questioning, experimentation and criticism, which I witnessed in the US schools where my son Tamer and

133 daughter Hoda attended. I do not once remember having to tell them to study. They used to do their homework readily without of my intervention. This spared me, when they reached the secondary level, going through the tragedy of private lessons that bedevilled my family members back home in Egypt, especially at the General School Certificate level.

In our days in the 1950’s, the Faculty of Medicine used to accept students with a minimum of 70 per cent exam total, and today, I find no reason that it should require a total of almost 100%. I now realize that the ability of the students to memorize and recite, stuffs their minds with all kinds of information and knowledge that is dictated to them by teachers, in both the classroom and during private lessons. Indoctrination by nature, is to receive information and retain it in the brain, without making any attempt to sift through it, in order to verify its validity, or to develop it according to the different circumstances. It remains a raw stock, never to be refined in order to get many and diverse benefits from it. This means that it becomes a complete impediment to the human mind! Although many would say that the task of the school is not to cram students’ minds with superfluous information, but rather to urge them to think and be creative, others say that students will think properly or achieve creativity only if they possess minimum information and knowledge as constant elements in their minds and memories. However, the founder of “The Psychology of Peoples", Gustave Le Bon, concludes that:

“The first danger of this type of education is founded on an essential psychological mistake, that studying textbooks develops intelligence, or opens it up. Accordingly, it strains the students’ minds by making them memorize a greater amount of information and 134 storing it. Thus, we find the young man from primary education and even at the doctorate level, swallowing books without using his mind or giving his personal point of view. Education for him is just memorization and obedience".

Although I learned the way to libraries to extract information and do research work only at the university level, I found out that this approach is followed in US schools from the preparatory stage of education to the secondary stage. Modern schools in the West continually keep pace with the radical transformations in human knowledge and provide the student with all the means and opportunities for survey, research and independent thinking, unlike the situation in our educational system which is based on repetition and memorization, leaving no room for research or experimentation.

Despite the fact that the role of the instructor in transferring knowledge to the minds of student is positive, the role of the student is negative in most cases, as he is not given the chance to ask direct questions or give his opinion. This is because the teacher is the only source of knowledge for the student and he, in turn, is pressed for time to finish a crammed syllabus in an overcrowded classroom that leaves no chance for individual students to ask questions and develop inquisitive minds. I do not think that our educational system in Egypt will ever develop unless we give up this passive concept of learning and replace it with a modern approach based on interaction rather than submission which disables comprehension and talent. It is an approach that is not commensurate with the available huge modern storage and the absorption technologies evolving day after day. Although intelligence - as psychologists say- may cease as an inherent potential (at the age of 15) like physical growth, 135 this does not necessarily mean that mental learning, production and acquisition of skills and experience will stop accordingly.

Education does not necessarily develop intelligence. There are many instances of personalities who mastered their specializations without enjoying a large measure of education. In Egypt, the great man of letters Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad, who had only a primary education certificate, added to the Arabic library more than 100 books in various areas. Mustafa Al-Rafi'i, who carried the banner of authenticity in Arabic literature also had only a primary education. Ahmed Fouad Negm, who had no formal education at all, became the most prominent colloquial Egyptian poet. Gamal Al-Gheitani, who only had an industrial vocational diploma, was given the State Discretion Award. In the West, Ernest Hemingway, who had only a high school diploma became a world celebrity and was awarded the Nobel Prize. Leo Tolstoy, who disliked the education system, got into writing and became the father of Russian literature. All of us know Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who promoted technological advances in communications throughout the world, even though they dropped out of college!

Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad

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Steve Jobs

Bill Gates

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The Bullying phenomenon in Schools

I do not recall any cases of violence and flagrant attacks between students during the different stages of education in the 1950s and 1960s. Discipline was a prevailing feature, and if a scuffle or a quarrel erupted between two schoolboys, each of them would be severely punished. I still remember Mr. Helmy, the physical education teacher at Tharwat Primary School and especially his stick; he never allowed anyone to even get a little bit out of line in any morning assembly and salute to the flag, let alone tolerate causing or taking part in a quarrel. Education, at the time, preceded the teaching process. There was no "bully", that rough, rowdy student who harasses a vulnerable student and turns his life into a hell. I experienced a similar case when I was working on the Greek island of Rhodes, but nipped it in the bud. My son Tamer, was 6 years old when he complained that a big boy was harassing him. My frail son was unable to confront this fierce student. So, I resorted to the stalwart son of a colleague who was well-built, to serve as a defender of my son, more like a bodyguard. Only then did the harassment stop!

The ‘bully’ phenomenon presents a problem for the US school educators, particularly at the middle-school stage, when the students' early sense of manliness is behind the spread of some anomalous behaviors in schools, such as smoking marijuana and mutual violence. This indicates that students are exposed to the "bullying" behavior of older or stronger colleagues, through threats that sometimes reach beatings, leading, in the long run, to negative consequences,

138 either physical or psychological. I was upset by the recent pervasiveness of the violence phenomenon in Egyptian schools. Specialists attribute it to an administrative shortcoming in dealing with this violence that stems from a lack of deterrent systems and clearly stated regulations and punishment, a lack of qualified personnel to deal with such behavior, weakness and negligence of the school system and the laxity of teachers in taking disciplinary action against aggressive students. They also note that some teachers use non-educational methods that might be the direct cause of student violence, such as unjustified corporal punishment, mocking, disrespect for students which hurts their feelings, and constant reprimand.

Dr Mona Gad, professor of Child-Development and former Dean of the Faculty of Kindergartens at Cairo University, sees that "violence has multiple forms, including physical violence through beatings, and verbal or moral violence through mocking the student". She further explains that "mental violence may be more severely harmful to the student than physical violence". She adds that the most important causes behind the outbreak of violence in schools are due to a "large number of unqualified teachers in education….those who never studied teaching methods or how to deal with students, despite the fact that some of them are highly qualified where their special subject is concerned; this in addition to over-crowded classrooms, which represent a burden on both teachers and students. Besides that, the non- commitment of teachers with specific time deadlines to finish the over crammed curricula, adds a stressful pressure on the instructor, especially with the presence of rowdy students".

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In a recent visit to the secondary school in Virginia, where my son and daughter studied, I was alarmed to see that it was transformed into a quasi- military barracks, following several incidents of bringing weapons and drugs to the classroom. As in the case of inspection at the airports, it became normal to see at the entrance of the school a booth to detect weapons and drugs. The situation is not much different now in Egyptian schools, where news reports carry, from time to time, incidents of violence that are alien to our societies, such as rape, assault with shaving razors, torture with hoses, whether between students themselves or between teachers and students.

In the girls "Ezzbet El-Borg Preparatory School", a female teacher attacked a girl student, and tried to strangle her, but the latter managed to escape. This shows that the "bullying" phenomenon is not confined to boys' schools, but began to appear in girls' schools as well, but in a different way: Girls taking a hostile approach towards a certain girl, calling a girl using demeaning names, or mocking her as she passes them by. Some media investigative reports show that schools started to witness violent behavior by female students toward each other, that go beyond bad words, but extend to beating and physical violence. Perhaps the political instability and acts of violence that followed the January 25th, 2011 revolution had their toll on our schools. However, I imagine that this phenomenon is very much older, ever since we abandoned "Education" and settled for "Instruction" in our schooling institutions.

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141

The Brain Drain

Due to my good connections with The Egyptian Cultural and Educational Bureau in Washington, I found out over a period of 30 years or more how our country generously spent huge amounts of money to sponsor thousands of our students in foreign universities, to have them return home with the necessary knowledge and know how that contributes to the nation's advancement. Egypt does not only send postgraduates to obtain their doctorate degrees abroad, but also continues caring for them from the moment they leave the homeland until they graduate from the foreign university. It provides them with housing, a monthly salary and health insurance. It even incurs the cost of printing their theses. If we calculate the number of PhD holders since the July 1952 Revolution took upon its shoulders the task of enriching the educational system with state of the art education abroad, our country should have been today no less advanced than countries such as Malaysia, South Korea and other Asian Tigers. After spending millions of dollars of the Egyptian taxpayers’ money in order to have our students return home with prestigious degrees, has any of them become a local or a world acclaimed figure? Yes, there are a few exceptions to the general rule. Although professors Ahmed Zewail, Magdi Yacoub and Farouk Al Baz were brought up in a completely Egyptian educational surrounding, they only excelled in foreign environments, where they were provided with the proper atmosphere to develop their potential and talents, and they returned home only after they were acclaimed overseas.

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Egypt’s Renaissance at the hands of Mohammad Ali Pasha only came after he realized the importance of education. He sent the first major mission of 40 students to Europe in 1826, followed by another mission of 70 students in 1844, to study art and sciences. He then dispatched a small mission of Al-Azhar students to France in 1847 to study law, and some students to England and Austria. That was in contrast to what the Ottoman Sultan Selim the First did in the 16th century, when he transferred from Egypt to the Astana all skilled craftsmen, leaving only pottery craftsmen behind, this according to the Egyptian historian Ibn Iyass. Even Gamal Abd Al-Nasser started his rule with establishing an educational policy, and assigning its implementation to a member of the revolution, Kamal Eddin Hussein, the young, insightful officer who was aware of the deteriorating educational system and expressed his vision, saying:

“Egypt is a country that suffers from ignorance and underdevelopment, the two axes with which colonization undermines all manifestations of progress.”

From this standpoint, Kamal Hussein started a new educational Renaissance, based on Taha Hussein’s statement that "Education is like water and air". What happened after the educational boom in the Nasserite era deserves a thorough study of the reasons that led to the deterioration of the educational system during the 40 following years. This period witnessed the migration of strong calibers in science, and academic scientific, technical and artistic professionals such as physicians, scientists, engineers, technologists and researchers, in addition to economists, mathematicians, sociologists, psychologists, educators, men of letters, artists,

143 agricultural engineers, chemists and geologists, and also skilled and talented workers.

An Egyptian scientific study issued in 2005 warned of the continuous exodus of minds and competencies in all areas to the European Union countries, America, Canada and Australia, and revealed the presence of 720,000 Egyptian immigrants in these countries, including 450,000 scholars in various fields. The study assured that the initial estimates of the cost of the Egyptian MA or PhD student in European or American universities run to about 100,000 dollars per student, which means that the migration of 450,000 cost Egypt a loss of 45 billion dollars, thus leading to a real gap in the expertise needed for the advancement of society and the revitalization of development projects. Dr Al Hilaly Al- Sherbeiny, Head of the Cultural Affairs and Educational Missions of the Ministry of Higher Education asserts that in early 2015, the cost of the PhD student overseas was estimated at 150,000 - 200,000 dollars.

There is a department in the Egyptian Culture and Education Bureau in Washington called “Expenditure Claims”, which is in charge of demanding from postgraduate students who fail to return home and choose to remain in America, to reimburse the cost incurred by the State from the time they left the country until graduation. It is ironic that the section managed only to collect fractions of what these students really owed. Some of them even dodged payment totally. Perhaps the temptation to stay in a sound scientific environment and have a highly paid job surpasses any true desire to participate in building the homeland. Yet again, I also heard many complaints from those who did return home, and did not get the recognition they deserved, and their universities had not even appointed them in the positions they deserved; they were frustrated to the extent 144 that some of them transferred their expertise abroad, or returned to America or went to the Gulf States, leaving our educational system suffering from a scientific anemia!

Mohamed Ali Pasha

Dr Ahmed Zuweil

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Dr Farouq Al-Baz

Sir Magdy Yaqub

146

The English Language... Ignore It!

Despite the fact that the English language later formulated my career, at first I was not versed or interested in it. I even failed it in the primary school certificate, and I almost did not pass in the second round of the exam. The situation wasn't much different in secondary school in view of the fact that my main attention was focused on numbers and mathematics, until Mr. Mohamed Ali arrived on the scene. He was a teacher of English newly graduated from the Teacher Training Institute that qualifies teachers for the teaching profession. At this early age, we loved to make fun of these young teachers, pay no attention to them, to their instruction and create havoc in the classroom in their presence, as they were not much older than ourselves. It seemed that Mr. Mohammad Ali was quite aware of our attitude and wanted to eliminate it from the first day. He adopted two teaching approaches:

(1) Securing discipline in the classroom.

(2) Forcing the students to learn English, whether they liked it or not!

To apply his first approach, he would pick on a strong, well-built student and create a problem with him and end up giving him a good beating following the popular proverb: "Hit the tied up animals to scare the freer!" It did yield results. As for teaching English, he had a strong belief that focusing on grammar is a waste of time, and so decided to start from the end, with the premise that the student will only learn any language through memorization, as 147 memorizing will make the student get used to proper pronunciation, correct grammar and fluent composition. So, he used to ask us to memorize half a page from the comprehension book and repeat it the next day like parrots. By nature, I abhorred memorization, and got my share of rebuke in front of the whole class and he even told me that I would be a failure for the rest of my life!

I wished he would have beaten me, instead of reprimanding me publicly, which for me was the toughest, penalty… more than anything else. Under such pressure I had to memorize the comprehension piece, which was, as I recall, about Marie Curie and the discovery of Radium. The following day he wanted to embarrass me again, but I was well prepared to recite. He was really surprised, and had to change his stance immediately, giving me unusual praise on the grounds that I represented a model that should be followed! I did not only redeem my dignity, but I also enjoyed the idea of memorizing English texts after discovering my ability to memorize quickly. As a result, I created a wall magazine in English, containing comments, information, jokes and excerpts I collected from newspapers, books and magazines. I ended up forming a "Pen Pal Society" for correspondence with our peers in other English speaking countries and exchanging pictures and information with them, which led to a great improvement in my English. Purchasing and reading English books also became my passion. I even started helping the Pen Pal Society members to write their letters.

Pen Pal societies were formed as a means of establishing closer ties and strengthening communication between world youth. Accordingly, the correspondence entailed improvement of the pen pals’ foreign language potential, as well as their exposure to the cultures of other countries, 148 where they made friends with young males and females. As is the case with normal life friendships, some Pen Pals’ correspondence continues for a short time, while others continue for life with exchanges of letters and gifts. Moreover, some other Pen Pals arrange real face-to-face meetings, which sometimes lead to serious friendships and even marriage.

This was about half a century ago, before the emergence of Facebook, which has undertaken this task on a wider and more comprehensive scale. Pen Pals have turned to writing on the pages of social media sites. Today Pen Pal clubs are found on the Internet, in newspapers and magazines. Recently, the idea of letting prisoners correspond through the Internet was accepted. Many pen pals meet through organizations that allow them the opportunity of direct meeting, and turning pen friendship into actual friendship. Such organizations are divided into two main categories: Free subscription clubs, and paid subscription clubs. Free subscription clubs are usually financed through commercials, whereas clubs that receive contributions do not resort to any kind of commercials. Pen pals are not limited to a certain age, nationality, culture, language or interests. They seek to make new friends with their peers or with those who share the same profession or hobby, or they may choose people who differ from them considerably in order to acquire knowledge about the world around them.

I came to know the new world of pen pals accidentally when a friend of mine published, without my knowledge, my name and address in a Pen Pal German Magazine called Beacon. All of a sudden letters started flowing into my house in a way that made the mailman complain! I began saving my pocket money to be able to buy the necessary postage for the tens of letters which were mostly from female Pen 149 pals. I had girlfriends from all over the world----Russia, Europe, America, which opened for me a cultural world I never dreamt of. Perhaps this was the reason I preferred to join the Faculty of Arts, English Language department rather than any other college. Because of the abundance of foreign addresses I had collected, I used to distribute the surplus to members of the Pen Pal Society I established in the secondary school. The diversity and large number of countries I was corresponding with also opened for me the door for another hobby, I had never thought of before--- collecting stamps, a hobby, I didn't give up even after the Pen pal activity came to an end when I joined the university.

As a result, my grade total in the general secondary certificate was very high in English. When I wasn't able to join the Faculty of Engineering I was readying myself for, my next option was not the Faculty of Commerce, Science or Agriculture, but the Faculty of Arts, in order to join the English language department. Dr Nur Sherif, the department head at the time, required that we pass an essay test before being accepted. The first batch of successful candidates was assigned to Section A, the second to Section B and the third to Section C. I, my colleagues Sayed Montasser and Iqbal Baraka, now a well known writer, were among the few graduates of Arabic medium schools in section A, which was made up mostly of English medium school graduates.

After all these years in which my English language major changed my whole life and opened before me the prospects for work with local and international radio stations, I can say with all confidence that if the clock was turned back and I had the chance to realize my dream of joining the Faculty of Engineering, I would have again chosen to attend the English Department of the Faculty of Arts, University of Alexandria! 150

Ramleh Secondary School, 1957

Dr Nur Sherif, among staff and 1964 Graduates

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Our Beautiful Language... and its Protectors

Much as my relationship with the English language started with rejection and ended up with acceptance and even strong attachment because a smart English teacher made me love it, it was the opposite with the Arabic language. In the primary stage I adored the reading, writing and expression classes, where our young imagination used to roam with the amusing stories that the teacher read in his distinctive dramatic voice, impersonating different characters. However, everything turned sour when we got to the grammar and morphology stage. My little mind couldn't absorb the Nominative, Accusative or Genitive rules. I couldn't also understand, why the sentence composition changes according to the tense. I barely managed to comprehend simple grammatical rules. However, when it came to the question of morphology in all its complexity, and the teacher began asking us to explain the grammatical status of some underlined words, I stood helpless before this dilemma, and even hated all the underlined words and sentences in the monthly tests, that usually ended in my complete failure.

Since then, I and the Grammar class became utter enemies, and the teacher began, in my mind, to have two different faces, a cheerful one that tells us stories of princes, princesses and animals, and an implacable face, threatening to whoever fails to explain the underlined words and sentences. With my transition to the preparatory and secondary stages I began to absorb some grammar, though I did not completely comprehend it even when I attended 153 college, until I studied Latin. It is ironic that names in Arabic have 3 conjugations: Nominative, Accusative and Genitive cases, whereas in Latin they have 6 conjugations:

Latin Arabic

الرفع Nominativus

الجر باإلضافة Genitivus

الجر بالالم Dativus

النصب على المفعولية األولى Accusativus

النصب على النداء Vocativus

الجر بالحروف Ablativus

Here, I found out that the Arabic language is much easier than its Latin counterpart. All there was to it was the way it was taught then, starting with morphology, the most difficult part, at a time when the students most needed proper reading skills, before learning at this early stage the complexities of sentence structure. This is how English is taught in the primary stage in American schools, where the student gets accustomed to proper reading and pronunciation first. This was recognized by Mr. Mohamed Ali, our teacher of English in the secondary school, who used to request that we memorize full text excerpts by heart without getting into the details of their grammar, in order to 154 familiarize ourselves with the right pronunciation and composition of sentences. Then, in later years, followed the grammar stage.

My passion for the Arabic language became more profound in the Drama Group supervised by another great professor of Arabic, Dr Mohamed Zaki Al-Ashmawi. We had to memorize our roles in classical Arabic and we got used to it and loved it more. When I was invited in February, 2016, by the "Protectors of the Arabic Language Society", founded by the late broadcaster Taher Abu Zaid, to share my experience with them about the Arabic language, my first focus was on the means by which Arabic is taught, particularly in primary schools. I do not believe that anyone else preceded me in learning, absorbing and even loving the Arabic language through his proficiency in Latin!

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My Experience

With the Arabic Language

A seminar at the "Protectors of the Arabic Language Society” On 13 February 2016

Moderated By

Abdel Wahab Qattaya, Senior broadcaster

Participants:

* Professor Fathi Al-Mullah, Secretary General of the Arab Association for Civilization and the Islamic Arts

* Dr Tawfik Borg, Professor of Islamic Studies in the German Language

* Zainhum Al- Badawi, Broadcaster.

* Muhammad Al-Kholi, Senior Broadcaster

* Nadia Hilmi, Broadcaster

* Mahmoud Qattaya, Writer

* Adnan Barazi, Syrian Poet

* Olfat Kamel, Broadcaster

* Dr Thoraya El-Eseili, Literary Critic

* Sayed Hassan,Broadcaster and Poet

* Jehan Al-Raidi, Broadcaster

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Abdel Wahab Qattaya,

Colleague Broadcaster

On behalf of all of you, I welcome our dear (brother) Abbas Metwalli, who has returned after a long absence in the United States of America. This creative broadcaster is an honor to the media in general and to the Voice of the Arabs in particular, because when he says: "I am the son of the Voice of the Arabs" with great efficiency, he adds to the reputation of the Voice of the Arabs and confirms the perception that this Radio Station is a school from which great broadcasters graduated and gave the Arab media, capable and creative professionals, including Abbas Metwalli. When he first came to the Voice of the Arabs, we were veterans. I myself joined the radio station at the beginning of 1961, with fellow broadcasters Muhammad Al- Kholi, Fouad Fahmi and others. In 1965, Abbas' group joined 158 the Voice of the Arabs. Selection of new announcers at the time was still done with the well known scrutiny and arduous training undertaken, until the new announcer had the right to say "This is Radio Cairo" or " This is the Voice of the Arabs from Cairo"!.

Abbas' cruise with us was in fact a lovely one. He enjoys personal qualities of excellence and a sense of refined art. He is a top notch drummer, and had he taken it as a career, half of Egypt's dancers would have danced to his rhythmic tones! He didn't go into the drumming profession, but he showed us his talent in our private gatherings. In addition, he enjoyed a beautiful feel for music and a refined literary style. All this helped him as an anchor and program presenter, when he presented multilateral programs, including the Voice of the Arabs’ trademark political programs, variety shows and cultural programs. At the time of migration, that Egypt started to know only during Sadat's rule, many radio and television professionals have left the country to seek opportunities in the four quarters of the globe, including the sons of the Voice of the Arabs. Abbas, Atef Kamel, Hafez Almirazy and Salah Higazi headed to the Voice of America. Ardent people like myself and Muhammad Al-Kholi, weren't very happy about the idea of working for the Voice of America, serving a Medium other than the Voice of the Arabs. However, Abbas reassured me, by returning home and by his writings, that he did not lose himself there, and his pertinence remained alive and deeply rooted in the Voice of the Arabs, Egypt, and the national values he learned and espoused all of his life in the Voice of the Arabs. This indicates the authenticity of what is in his heart and mind.

On behalf of all of you we welcome brother, friend and colleague Abbas Metwalli, and salute his genuineness and deep sense of belonging. We also commend his delightful 159 new book (50 Years of Radio & TV, a Self-journey from Nasser to Obama), in which he included the essence of his rich experience in radio and television work. In fact, he wrote the book on our behalf, for we all wish to write similar books. We all have something to say, as Abbas had and did. He took the initiative, and this is only the beginning. We should write down our experience for the benefit of our future generations. Again, welcome Abbas among your family and in your home country, which you love with your heart, without seeing it. You are a graduate of the English Language and Literature Department and began your career as an English language anchor. Then we” translated” you into Arabic, as the late radio chief Abdul Hamid Al-Hadidi said. You worked at the Voice of the Arabs, and remained deeply loyal to it, as you remained also loyal to and loved the Arabic language. We want you to tell us about your experience with the Arabic language in an atmosphere which was not favorable to the Arabic language.

Thank you.

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Abbas Metwalli,

Senior Broadcaster

Thanks a lot to my colleague Abdel Wahab Qattaya, who was for me, for those who do not know, an ideal example, when I first joined the Voice of the Arabs. When I first started working I was really scared to speak in Standard Arabic, which I wasn't used to while in the English department of the Faculty of Arts. However, when I worked for the cultural Section of the Voice of the Arabs, where my colleagues Abdel Wahab Qattaya, Muhammad Al-Kholi and Fouad Fahmi were working, I found myself in the midst of a cultured panel…a school, where you can learn much. In fact, I was very impressed with what I saw and heard, on my first day, in that room. Salah Oweiss and Saad Zaghloul Nassar were discussing a new book to be reviewed for the

161 program " I read for you," presented by the late broadcaster Ahmad Hamza. Although Saad Zaghloul was late in reviewing the book, he made a bet that he would do it in half an hour despite the fact that he hadn't read it yet.

It was an amazing scene. Saad Zaghloul started turning the pages of the book quickly, writing a few points here and there, and after half an hour he prepared a summary of the book in the well written style he was known for, and produced an integrated text, and won the bet. This scene made me revise my idea about myself. I had to be no less proficient in Arabic than those people, in order to keep up with this new atmosphere. So, I locked myself up, so to speak, in my hotel room and reviewed all primary school grammar books, to re-learn morphology and syntax. The experience wasn't easy, and perhaps this is one of the important points I would like to talk about: How to teach children the rules of Arabic morphology and syntax. Since childhood, I have suffered from one single phrase which I hated vehemently: “Explain the underlined sentences grammatically”. How can a young child explain the underlined sentences and understand the complicated terminology, when he could not understand the teacher's more complicated explanations to start with? The explanation itself was extremely difficult. When I went to the hotel I started to recall morphology cases in both the German and Latin languages, which I had studied at the university. For the first time I could define the nominative, accusative and genitive cases properly. So I began writing the linguistic explanation in English, which was a unique experience for me, i.e. learning Arabic grammar through Latin written in English! I almost perfected learning the Arabic grammar to the extent that the Chief announcer Ahmed Hamza could not imagine how I was able, in such a

162 short period of time, to improve my Arabic and be able to read flawless newscasts.

When colleague Fouad Fahmi asked me to speak at this forum about the Arabic language, although it is not my specialization, I told him that I would share with you my own personal experience with the Arabic language. I had no plan for the introduction, but it all came to me today on a silver platter when I heard the speaker of the House of Representatives reading his statement before the new assembly. Although it was a written statement and possibly reviewed grammatically, he made quite a lot of linguistic errors. I may excuse officials with military backgrounds, who haven't studied the language in depth in their military academies if they make grammatical mistakes. However, it is not acceptable that a speaker of the House of Representatives makes language mistakes. I wondered about the reason why. Let us go back to the beginning and see how students learn Arabic. Why is a college graduate today unable to speak sound Arabic correctly? In answer I say that after spending a long time in the United States, I found out that the Arabs are maybe the only people who have two versions of Arabic: a spoken colloquial language and a written language: in short, diglossia.

Americans speak and write what they speak. There is no great difference between what they say orally and what they write on paper. Therefore, a child in any school can easily write an essay because he writes it in his spoken language. The second point is, when they teach their children the rules of the English language they don't start with grammar or morphology. They rather teach them how to speak English fluently and correctly. I went through this experience with my teacher of English in my secondary school. When he first came to class, he addressed us saying: "I know that you will 163 never learn English, and you are better off memorizing excerpts by heart". He had us memorize a full half page in English for every lesson. In this way, from his point of view, when you memorize any language properly, you'll get used to it, and you'll learn its grammar at a later stage. This is exactly, in my judgment, what should be followed in teaching Arabic to our school children in the first stages of education. Let them first speak properly and later explain to them all the grammar stuff.

Dr Mohamed Khalafallah Ahmed, professor of Arabic language in the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University, was married to a British woman who studied classical Arabic and could read and write it. However, she complained to her husband that she could not communicate with people on the street. So he said to her: "Let us corrupt what you have learnt of classical Arabic". He told her that colloquial Arabic is a simple distorted version of the classical language. In fact, we are not corrupting the language, but rather streamlining it. Our vernacular has historically absorbed other dialects, and this made the Egyptian dialect we speak today. There are of course some difficulties such as with the sound of the letter G as pronounced by the Egyptians, which I have dealt with in one of my chapters. International radio stations are imposing on Egyptian announcers that they should pronounce the letter G almost like a J.

However, after extensive readings I found out that the letter G as pronounced by Egyptians existed among many Arab tribes. There are tribes south of the Arabian peninsula, and I lived some time in Yemen, that use the Egyptian sound of the letter G. I also learned that during the Arab conquest of Egypt, tribes that came to the Northern Delta were from the Southern part of the Peninsula and pronounced the letter G as Egyptians do. Those who came from the North 164 and went to Upper Egypt used the J letter, and this is evident today in the upper Egyptian dialect. When I and my colleague Hafez Al-Mirazi co-presented the TV show "Face to Face" on the Arab Network of America in Washington, we agreed that he should pronounce the J letter while I pronounce the G letter in the introduction to the show. Egyptian writer Anis Mansour wondered why international radio stations should impose on Egyptian announcers the J sound pronunciation used in many Arab countries. He considered the acceptance of the J sound a concession on the part of 70 million Egyptians, at that time, to the 13 million (the rest of the Arabs). He was not happy with this issue.

What also drew my attention was not the means by which Arabic is taught in schools, but rather the fact that the language has deteriorated in general in the wake of the ‘Open Policy’ era. I travel from America to Egypt annually, a habit I have never given up. I found this terrible difference even where street signs and the names of shops and businesses are concerned. Foreign names, and the use of foreign letters were plentiful and even some TV and radio stations named themselves using English acronyms such as MBC, CBC, Dream… etc. Why not use Arabic names and/or titles? It's a trend that ruined our language, and we as broadcasters, have become the few who preserve it. As for the majority, they speak in whatever way they like, and this became evident in the speeches by officials, deputies of the nation, and if you go anywhere, you only hear a language that has nothing to do with the Arabic language. Is this shortcoming, a question I am raising for discussion, attributed to the fact that we have two Arabic dialects, “colloquial” when we speak and “standard” when we write?

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Is the difficulty with the standard form, or are we already turning our colloquial dialect closer to standard Arabic?.

In 1971, I believe, I was on a visit to Damascus and participated in a television talk show on how to bring different Arabic dialects closer to standard Arabic. After a long discussion, we came to the conclusion that Arab intellectuals communicated already in standard Arabic. This means that the more you are educated the more your language approaches the classical style. The real problem lies with the local dialects of the semi-educated and the uneducated. Last Friday when I performed Prayer in a mosque, the Imam, who is perhaps an Al-Azhar graduate, made a lot of grammatical mistakes. I was really upset when the mistake penetrated my ears like a bullet, just like the great musician Muhammed Abdul Wahab would have jumped out of his seat if he had heard a discordant note. The Imam even misread verses of the holy Qur’an! I therefore believe that it is a big issue, and those who are trying to protect the Arabic language are still in the minority. How can the word of the Protectors of the Arabic Language Society, be spread? When its founder Taher Abu Zaid visited me in Washington in the 1980s, we talked extensively about this issue.

It is very strange how people quickly get used to errors. I was on a visit to the television news sector in Maspero when I worked as a Washington based correspondent for Cairo TV. There was among the people who welcomed me, a lady, I forgot her name though I never forgot her question: "How come you know Arabic so well?" as if it was an aberration. Despite the fact that the news sector had a number of reporters, an employee in the television news sector was surprised that there was a reporter who spoke the Arabic language correctly. You can imagine then, the 166 unfortunate extent of deterioration of the Arabic language in this country!

There is an important point I became aware of while studying the English language. When we attended college, we had to stick out the tip of our tongues in pronouncing the sound combination th. It was unacceptable in the English Language Department not to do so. This helped me very much in the pronouncing of similar sounds in Arabic such I remember the writer Anis Mansour when .الذال والثاء والظاء as he attributed the responsibility for Egyptians’ abstention from sticking out the tips of their tongues with such sounds, to Um Kalthoum and Mohamed Abdul Wahab, because they did not pronounce these sounds in their classical Arabic songs. I believe that this is the task of the school. You cannot read the Quran without sticking out the tip of your tongue while pronouncing such sounds. I visited some Arab countries and found out that their children pronounce these sounds properly. Why don't we teach this to our Egyptian children? Is it difficult to the degree that it became impossible to correctly pronounce such sounds? It is an issue that deserves a debate at this symposium.

Thank you.

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Mr. Fathi Al-Mullah,

Secretary General,

Arab Association for Civilization and Islamic Arts

There are several observations that may be unconnected, but represent, as a whole, a part of the problem. First, after due thanks to the lecturer, I feel that God Almighty assigned to our language, people who are not specialized in it, to protect it. The lecturer specializes in the English language, Mr. Muhammad Al-Kholi is well versed in English, and also Mr. Abdel Wahab Qattaya, though his specialization is not in Arabic or English, yet he offers the Arabic language a great service. What I want to say is that there are now two things that serve the Arabic language in such a way that the turbaned and bearded people cannot do. The Late Sanaa Ghanem, daughter of the Minister Hafez Ghanem established the so-called Arab Academy, or Arabic Online, and published a book that taught Arabic to more than 43 thousand people worldwide. She has a studio in Garden City for teaching Arabic over the Internet. The teacher works and teaches following the different timing of 168 each foreign state. She died several months ago. However, her experiment was by all means successful. This lady had a Law degree, but she served the Arabic language superbly and with distinction.

There are also other professors in the Faculty of Engineering at Ain Shams University, such as Dr Salwa Al- Ramly, the Secretary-General of the Engineering Language Society. All members of the Society are professors of electronics and computer science, and none of them specialize in the Arabic language, but all are preoccupied with serving it. There is Dr Nabil Ali, who won the King Faisal International Award for the linguistic Arabic lab. He has recently talked extensively and impressively about his work. This confirms what I have already said… that God Almighty assigns non-specialists for the protection of this language. As for the specialists, may God forgive them, you all remember Hafez Ibrahim's poem written in 1903, more than a 113 years ago. The issue raised by him still exists today, and could be applied to our situation. The Arabic language in his poem complains of what has become of it:

I turned to myself looking for any causes of deficiencies, and desperately asked my people for help,

I am accused of being rigid, but wasn’t alarmed about what my enemies would say,

I am a reproducing language, but when I did not find able suiters for my daughters, I had to bury them,

I expanded the book of God in words and purpose, absorbed all its verses and sermons,

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How come I could not describe a machine or coin names for inventions?

I am the ocean- with all pearls hidden in me, did they ever ask the diver about my shells?

All these manifestations of the suffering of the Arabic language as mentioned by Hafez Ibrahim still exist today. The meaning is that our universities in all fields and with all their numerous educational institutes are completely negligent in serving the Arabic language, or solving even only one of its problems. I have learned the Arabic language and specialized in it and graduated in 1958, but I failed the first test in Arabic when I applied to join Cairo Radio. I applied to the test with my brother Muhammad Al-Kholi, but Dr Mahdi Allaam asked one question in the oral exam after the written test: What is the linguistic difference between Omar and Amr? I didn't know the answer!

The method used in teaching Arabic in universities cannot give birth to a good speaker using classical Arabic for ten minutes; even professors of Arabic themselves cannot do this. Study at university is based on the literature of the Pagan, Islamic and Abbassi ages, etc. and on a list of disciplines, such as modern criticism, popular literature, and so on. However, educators see, and rightly so, that teaching Arabic should be based on language skills, correct reading, writing, conversing and understanding. The first two years of Arabic language sections should be devoted to consolidating the concepts of the linguistic skills of the student. When he learns and perfects the four language skills: Reading, speaking, writing and understanding, we can then fill his mind with other disciplines. Although you are, Sir,

170 specialized in the English language, you focused also on studying the Arabic language.

The UNESCO has assigned February the 21st as the Mother Tongue celebration day, and I hope that the activity of the Protectors of the Arabic Language Society today, will not be limited to mere seminars, but also to establish a discussion panel to study what can the Society do in the area it is devoted to serve. I mean, we have, as you said, Sir, those terrible mistakes made by officials, who must be warned about this. I recall that Dr Helmi Murad used to demand that officials' speeches must be prepared and grammatically reviewed by Arabic language consultants and sealed with the State Seal, because they represent a manifestation of the State. There is, as is being said, the Supreme Committee for Legislative Reform. The Society should attempt to deliver a memo to it, as the constitution calls for Arabic to be the official language of the State, and there must be a legislation to save and protect it. We must advance such proposals to the competent Committees so that we can offer something that protects the Arabic language.

Assalamu Alaykum.

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Dr Tawfik Borg,

Professor of Islamic Studies in the German Language

I am not a professor of Arabic language, but I am a professor of Islamic studies in the German language. I teach German, though I am a graduate of Al-Azhar Arabic language department. I also know a series of other languages. The English language has no morphology, and is not easier to learn than Arabic or German. Morphology is not the reason for the difficulty of Arabic. The German language has a more complicated morphology than Arabic. It has four cases, whereas Arabic has only three cases. It has Nominative, Accusative, Genitive and Dative. For anyone to learn Arabic or any other language, we must differentiate between a small child and an adult. I came across a serious discovery in relation to the Arabic language, just like Newton when the apple fell on his head, and he discovered gravity. The first book I wrote was about teaching Arabic for adults, and it was in three parts.

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When I started writing a book about teaching Arabic literacy for the young, how to read, write, understand and speak it, I found out in practice that the children had no desire to learn the language. I then conducted an experiment after an Egyptian lady asked me to teach her children Arabic. That was in Germany. So I asked her: What language do you speak with your children at home? German or Arabic? She said Arabic. So I asked her again, whether she spoke with them in Egyptian colloquial, and she said yes. I told her that I wanted to teach her children, their spoken colloquial Egyptian. When I began teaching them literacy in their Egyptian colloquial language, they were willing to learn. Later, this lady had disagreements with her husband. She left him and took the children with her, from the city of Hamburg, where I lived, and went to Stuttgart, 650 km away. So I offered to go to Stuttgart and mediate between them, in order to have her come back with her children so that I may resume my educational experiment with them. But her husband said she refused my request.

To make my experiment clear, two young girls with German mothers and Egyptian fathers came to me; I was already teaching one of them Arabic. When the girls met in a restaurant with one of the fathers, they spoke the Egyptian colloquial dialect. I started teaching them reading and writing in Egyptian colloquial without telling their parents. The girls enjoyed the class and quickly learned how to read and write. Then I started writing a sentence in classical Arabic, and they could read it without understanding its meaning. After they learned reading and writing quite well, I started moving them from colloquial to standard Arabic. I found out that a child is unable to form a sentence because he doesn't know the vocabulary, but he is more receptive to the question and answer format. So I started writing my

173 first book about teaching the Arabic language, to both Arabic speaking and non- Arabic speaking children based on the Q&A format: Who is this? This is a boy. What is this? This a radio. What is this? This is a TV. Then: Is this a boy? Yes, this is a boy. Is this a radio? Yes, this is a radio. Then, color a boy in your notebook, color a TV in your notebook. What did you color here? I colored a boy. Bravo!

In any case, I would like to finally say that I am starting next week an intensive course to train teachers on how to teach Arabic to non-Arabic speakers. Foreigners learn the language in a different manner from Arabs.

Thank you very much for listening.

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Zainhum Al-Badawi,

Broadcaster

I am Zainhum Al-Badawi, an announcer with the Voice of the Arabs and a member of the Society. Greetings are owed to our guest of honor in this forum, senior Radio Broadcaster Abbas Metwalli. I used to pleasantly listen to his voice over the Voice of the Arabs in my young years. The difficulty of mastering the Arabic language with all its grammar and morphology as indicated in this seminar reminds me of a story narrated to us by a broadcaster from a later generation, colleague Maher Mustafa. When he was transferred from the International Radio department to the Voice of the Arabs, he said he was made fun of by other announcers because he wasn't well versed in Arabic grammar. But, he had the motive, and gathered all his strength and used it for mastering the Arabic language, becoming one of the Voice of the Arabs anchors. He later became a well known Radio name. As for the mistakes of Imams, referred to by Mr. Abbas Metwalli, they have reached an indescribable level. One preacher addressed the Glorious Lord, saying: God you're not eligible for Paradise! It has reached to that extent. Now they're talking about the renewal of ‘religious discourse’. What renewal? How can religious discourse be renewed at the hands of those who are ignorant in Arabic grammar?

Thank you very much. 175

Muhammad Al-Kholi,

Senior Broadcaster

There is a famous novel in English literature written by Thomas Hardy in 1863 entitled The Return of the Native, and today we have the pleasure of the return of Abbas Metwalli, not only to Egypt or even to the Voice of the Arabs, but to the Arabic language! The fact is that whoever has lived in America, and I also have lived in America for about 24 years, realizes that Arabic is a new language there. I don't say it is extraneous, but it is not the language that it is used in a day and night context. However, when he returns here, it is significant that he returns to the “Protectors of the Arabic Language Society”. The native has returned to all these meanings. The other thing I am excited about, as my dear friend Abdel Wahab Qattaya mentioned, is that Abbas was able to record his life, which is not a life story, but rather a biography of a career, language and media, especially in the most serious stage extending from the mid-1960s almost up to the mid-1970s.

It is the stage in which the Egyptian media were dramatically glamorous before it faced a detrimental problem when President Anwar Sadat issued his weird republican resolution calling for the displacement and expulsion of a large number of media men, who were at the time the guardians of the Arabic language. They were young and were paid meager salaries that one would be ashamed

176 to talk about with the new generations nowadays. Nevertheless, they were able at that particular stage, to turn their job into a message. Each of them was in his vibrant youth, and though they had little money, they had the feeling that they were undertaking a message compatible with the Renaissance phase of the people. When those people were bedeviled by the 1967 defeat, it was like a dagger stabbing at the heart of every one of them, but they, as did our people also, were able to prevail over their grief and become messengers of steadfastness and resolve.

The truth is that Abbas in his book 50 Years of Radio & TV, a self-journey from Nasser to Obama, has retrieved this stage for us, though devoid of its sad tone. He depicted it as a smart storyteller aware of his responsibility, and also as a media man who was able to record all this at least in the first phase. As Abdul Wahab Qattaya said, the 1970s was somehow a bad decade in our history and our media. It saw the exodus of professionals out of Egypt, and all of them had much to learn and a lot to give. Oddly enough, when those migrants left, they confirmed the leadership of Egypt outside its borders at both the Arab and international levels as is the case with Abbas. It brought, in fact, a great amount of welfare, although it all began, as you know, with the crisis that we, the generation of that decade, have endured. The truth is that the language diglossia or multilingualism issue raised by Abbas, exists in many languages. I myself have learned, and used in my work with the United Nations Arabic, English, French and a bit of Spanish. There are two levels of linguistic performance: The written language level, particularly in the classical Arabic, and the spoken language level. Therefore, there is in the English dictionary the so- called vernacular spoken language, and there is the English language written in books and projected by intellectuals.

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Now we face an education problem in the first place. Yesterday, I was in the Voice of the Arabs for over two or three hours participating in a joint transmission with Morocco radio on the occasion of the International Day of Radio. When I overheard Moroccan intellectuals talking before going on air, I did not understand a word of what they were saying to each other. However, when we started speaking to each other in classical Arabic we built the bridge which colleague Abbas talked about. This means that our destiny, especially Egypt's destiny is to remain the guardian of the Arabic language if we want to remain in the vanguard or play the leading role of the Arab nation. Nevertheless, colloquial Egyptian, to a very large extent, is well understood across the borders, thanks to the media and art.

As for Abbas’ reference to the writer Anis Mansour's criticism of Abdul Wahab and Um Kalthoum, the latter was keen on pronouncing the sound th although implicitly. Therefore, I claim that the classical Arabic poems sung primarily by Um Kalthoum then Abdul Wahab, for over 30 to 40 years, helped in preserving the beautiful classical language loved by their listeners. I remind this generation of The White Flag TV series by great dramatist Osama Anwar Okasha, in which he talked about sophistication and elegance. In that series, there is a waiter in a coffee house, a marginal character played by artist Sayed Zayan, who looked up to stylishness. What are his means to that end? The language. Whenever he stood next to the radio, he would say: I am listening to ‘the lady’ Um Kalthoum. This is the beginning of sophistication. When he is asked what he was listening to? He would say I am listening to the Khayyam Quartets, the classical Arabic masterpiece. What I want to say is that whenever there is a retreat in the cultural

178 standard of any State, not to mention colonization and other factors, this wide disparity occurs between vernacular and standard languages.

The other thing is, we are a people who have had a chasm between two Arabic languages. Thanks to writers, members of the media and journalists from previous generations. Look, for instance, at the role played by the great journalist Mohamed Al Tabei, and all of his disciples in formulating and refining the old Arabic of Sheikh Ali al- Khashab and others since the days of Khedive Ismail, and how Al Tabei excelled in journalistic language. Look, even at Al-Manfaloti, who says "a man who believes in God, His books and holds in his chest a heart that pulsates with mercy and love ...etc." He used this language in 1918. Beyond that read Al Tabei, Mustafa and Ali Amin. Read Anis Mansour, although I don't like his writings, but when I demonstrate how the language becomes very refined, not simple, read Ahmed Bahaa Al-Din. His writings are thoughtful, Kamel Zoheiri's writings are stylish, and Mohamed Ouda's writings are effluent. Here, the language becomes a means of thought in the first place.

The second point: You mentioned that your teacher of English used to ask you to memorize English pieces by heart. After you said that, I changed my previous view. Dr Ne'mat Ahmed Fouad once called for the return of the Qur'anic Schools. In my answer to her in a newspaper article, I exhaustively ridiculed her call. However, I have now, after what you said, changed my mind. Why? When the children learn in the Qur'anic schools, they recite the Qur'an, without understanding it, but under the shadow of the Imam's stick, they don't dare make vocal or grammatical mistakes. After a while, you have children with a tremendous memory ability without understanding one word, but understanding will 179 happen at a later stage. Indeed, it is a good idea to develop the Qur'anic Schools to teach children how to memorize the language before they comprehend it.

One last word. In 1899, there was an English man called William Wilcox. He was a chief irrigation engineer, which was a serious grand position at the time. Wilcox street was named after him, but was later changed to Taha Hussein street. This man delivered a very famous lecture entitled Why Egyptians lack the Talent for Invention? Invention here means creativity. He attributed this to the adherence of the Egyptians to the Arabic language. There was a fierce war on the Arabic language. Our great ancestors who adhered to the Arabic language despite its retreat backwards, are the ones who managed to impose Arabic as the main language in schools. Thanks go to Saad Zaghloul, who exerted a lot of pressure, until Arabic became the main language in schools. It was later served by the media. The Egyptian Radio used to transmit speeches in classical Arabic, which helped establish this fluency in the minds of people. That's why, if you want to restore the Arab language and rescue it from its current fall, where it is being humiliated in the House of Representatives, you have nothing but the Law. Again, in 1958, the leadership of Abdel Nasser passed a law forcing shop owners to have their shop signs written mainly in Arabic, and if there is a need to have a foreign language attached to it, it should be at the bottom in smaller letters. However, we have now, as you mentioned Sir, become foreign oriented; the teacher of Arabic who was a Sheikh has become the ‘Mister’. With this you put yourself in an intellectual contradiction that begins with the child and ends with an illiterate university graduate ignorant of his own language!

Thank you 180

Nadia Helmi,

Broadcaster

I have a personal experience with the Arabic language. I traveled to most of the Arab countries and found no humiliation, abandonment or neglect of the language as is the case in Egypt. Even colloquial dialects there are closer to classical Arabic. I had another experience when conferences were held in Cairo involving Arab officials, whose ages were between 20 and 25. The Arab delegations were not at the same high level of education as the Egyptian delegation. However, when an Egyptian professor spoke, he slaughtered the Arabic language. Whereas when a young Arab official who may not be a professor spoke, he used perfectly flawless Arabic, which is a shame for us as Egyptians.

The late Salama Moussa once said " we met with Arabs from North Africa and we could only communicate when we spoke in classical Arabic". We should not forget that the Arabic language is one of the links that unites the Arab peoples, and must be kept and preserved. We should start from the Qur'anic Schools as well as from Al-Azhar. Alas, though, for Al Azhar Sheikhs! I attend some Friday prayers and listen to the sermon of the preacher, who is probably 181 well informed, but unfortunately commits shameful grammatical mistakes. Also, when I used to interview some non- Arabic speaking Al-Azhar students for the Voice of the Arabs, they would complain that they do not understand their professor because he teaches in a colloquial rather than classical Arabic. This happens in Al-Azhar University, not in a school!

In conclusion, I say that underestimating the Arabic language is part of the young people’s lack of a sense of belonging, as most of them look up to foreign countries, and this is reflected in their use of the Arabic language which is supposed to bind us all. Some young people, our grandchildren, not our own children, even refuse to learn Arabic, claiming that it would not benefit them in their careers. May God have mercy on us and on the Arabic language.

Thank you.

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Mahmoud Qattaya,

Writer

Welcome my old friend Abbas. You belong to the Voice of the Arabs, which represents for me personally the bright torch light in the Arab world. During that period, you were among media leaders, despite your young age. You were carrying the Arab cultural torch, speaking in suggestive, sound Arabic, espousing great revolutionary slogans and opening the door of hope for the Arab peoples. Your individual efforts will be remembered, although they are forgotten these days. I haven’t yet read your book 50 Years of Radio & TV, a self-journey from Nasser to Obama, though I think it records this period and speaks about it. I used to listen to you as a correspondent from the United States. As an old man, I used to tell young people while listening to you from my car radio: This is my friend Abbas Metwalli. They wondered how I could recognize your voice! I still remember the last day we met in your Mansheyet El- Bakry apartment when I was still single. The breakfast meal you served us in Ramadan was a few vegetables you put in a blender and gave us each a plate. Its delicious taste I still feel in my mouth!

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Our friends Muhammad Al-Kholi and Abdel Wahab Qattaya have elaborated on reviewing your rich experience. I, myself, have been recently through two experiences. The first one was in the Short Story Club, where I am a member. A colleague went up to the rostrum and spoke about how to write a story, and offered some rules of how to be a storyteller. I listened to him quite well, and then asked: “Does this mean that if I or anyone on the street, will follow the rules you mentioned, he will be able then to write a story? Does the knowledge of prosody produce a poet? Even among writers themselves how can you compare Yusuf Idris to Yusuf Ghorab or to Youssef Al Sebai? Each of them has his own fingerprint in writing. You forget the most important thing in story writing: talent. I went on explaining my point of view which was clear and simple.

The second experience concerned Naguib Mahfouz. In his latest book "Echoes of Autobiography”, he wrote about a teacher of Arabic, who had retired more than ten years earlier. He used to take a walk every morning on his street as much as possible. When his students would see him, they would salute him with great respect. Over time, they stopped saluting him, though they respected him still, and he in turn stopped responding. At the time of writing this book, Naguib Mahfouz used to write only ten lines a day, because he actually was dictating it in his final days. He says in the book that as time passed, the Arabic language teacher forgot his friends, the street, and even forgot the Arabic grammar!

These two experiences demonstrate that the atmosphere around one creates a speaker or a writer. I will tell you about our experience, my brother Abdul Wahab and I. He was the eldest, and was sent to the Qur’anic School of Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Shishtawy, who was known to be tough 184 and strict. There, my brother suckled classical Arabic like a mother's milk. Being a spoilt child, I was sent to the Qur’anic School of a kind man, who did not beat or lash out at students. Today, I still have problems with morphology when I write, and resort to Abdel Wahab to review my writings. I forgot to mention that when I used to be in your company, you, Fathi Abou-Rafia and Gamal Imam, you used, as translators, to discuss every word and I watched you in silence. Such debates improved your language. Most of those who speak good classical Arabic are translators and interpreters. Abdul Wahab Al- Messeiri also followed those same lines. In our early education stage in primary school, we were given books of ranking senior writers. There was a book called "Selections of Arab Literature, Prose and Poetry Models". This book taught us, and increased our Arabic vocabulary, and even taught us correct sentences and how to pronounce the language properly. In addition, we were given books to read during the Summer vacation. In Mahmoudiya, which is part of Damanhour Governorate, we used to be tested on the Summer vacation book we had already read. The reward was more books, so we had libraries in our houses, this, besides theatrical activities and education. This was in the early 1950s. We used to read pre- revolution books by Taha Hussein and Abbas El-Akkad. At the beginning of the July 23rd revolution, we used to buy newspapers that had articles by writers such as Taha Hussein and Abdelrahman Al-Sharqawi. All this helped us to master classical Arabic.

Thank you.

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Adnan Barazi,

Syrian Poet

I am Syrian from Damascus, and I published in Cairo 57 collections of poems in classical Arabic. I have a long story with the Arabic language. I am of Kurdish origin. Firstly, all Kurds in Syria, speak Arabic proficiently, as they are descendants of Salahuddin Al Ayoubi. Secondly, when Egypt and Syria were unified, I was a journalist and came to Cairo, where I remained throughout the Union period. I obtained my secondary school certificate in 1958. At the time, the late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser issued a resolution that called for upgrading all the lower grades of students, except for the Arabic language grade, which he said should have a minimum success grade of no less than 50 per cent. This rule was firstly applied in Syria, although Syria is famous for its Arabic language proficiency. Also, when France occupied Damascus in 1929 general Horo went to the Tomb of Saladin and put his grubby foot on the shrine and said: Oh, Saladin, we are back. So, when France was expelled from Syria, President Shukri Al-Qawatli insisted that the celebration of raising the Syrian flag should be done in Saladin’s tomb,

186 and there he said: We have expelled them again, Salah al- Din!

As for the Arabic language, Syria may have the largest number of people who speak in classical Arabic. One day I was expelled from Syria to Algeria, where I named myself the Arabist rather than the professor, and there I wrote for first year primary school children:

Mama is happy and so is Papa

July 5th is the biggest festival

Papa brought desserts

Mama gave us new clothes.

It was all in classical Arabic, but in a vernacular format. Then I wrote:

I will not forget my father’s advice

Before going up the mountain

Speak only in Arabic

Our national and family’s language

A language long forgotten

When the foreigner usurped our nation

It will never be forgotten

As long as it is preserved in the heart

Father bequeaths it to the son

And advises him to protect it from adversity

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Your language is your personality, my son

Always keep it throughout time

Always keep it throughout time.

In Algeria, I glorified the Arabic language to a great extent in plays, songs and jingles. During celebrations, I used to call for learning the Arabic language, and get penalized for that by cancellation of my contract each year. During the 20 years I spent in Algeria, my contract was revoked 10 times and all because I promoted the Arabic language. The last thing I wrote for children was:

I loved speaking in Arabic

After hearing my father enunciate it

In his reading of the Qur’an

At the call for the dawn prayer

He says mercy, my Lord

I loved speaking in Arabic

Unfortunately, I see the Arab nation today in a grave ordeal, and the plight of the Arabic language is foremost. Why? Because colonialism is still maliciously conspiring in our countries. When France occupied Syria, the first thing it did was to cancel the teaching of Arabic from primary through secondary schools. They distributed books in French, but patriotic Arab leaders met and asked the people to collect the French books and place them in the largest square and set them on fire. The following year France was forced to return the Arabic books to primary and secondary schools.

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Our problem is not in the pronunciation of Arabic, because it is easy to pronounce. In Algeria, a House of Representatives member went to one of what they call revolution mountains and held a big celebration there. He found out that Algerians coming from the capital did not understand the words of local people who spoke Amazigh, which is an unwritten language. So France started writing the Amazigh language in Latin letters. I was really deeply hurt by the crime committed against the Arabic language. As a result, today we see these dispersions in all Arab countries. The whole purpose of colonial barbarism is to target Arab thought and intellect. We ask God Almighty to inspire our leaders to come down again in the field and teach our generations the Arabic language.

Thank you.

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Olfat Kamel,

Broadcaster

Mr Abbas Metwalli, I am honored by your presence. I came here today to discuss authenticity, the Arabic language and the proper language of the media, that we have learned at the hands of senior broadcasters. Colleague Muhammad Al-Kholi preceded me in offering and brilliantly annotating the idea. However, I would like to ask you, Excellencies: When will the Egyptian media regain its leading role in using the Arabic language and in preserving it? Today we hear this absurd and flowery language used by non-qualified broadcasters on the satellite TV channels. The Arabic language really lives in a terrible alienation, not only in the state media, but also in the media in general. I regret to say, this is because we had a role to play, and to exert every effort to maintain the high level of the Arabic language we’ve been accustomed to and learned from all of you, but did not. It is clear, though, that it has become obsolete. So, when are we going to bring back the main, golden role of the Arabic language, and have it blossom again through the official media?

Thank you.

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Dr Thoraya El-Esseili,

Literary Critic

This is like a beautiful “wedding night” celebration of the Arabic language. I am happy with all who are present. We are all very pleased with Mr. Abbas Metwalli’s speech, which made us feel a caring love in our souls for the Arabic language. This man made a great effort and spent precious time in the West, and is proud of his language and defends it there, and here. This is not strange, because he is a brother of those who cherish the Arabic language, and defend it. This evening I enjoyed and was very pleased with the presence of some personalities very dear to me, personalities to whose presence we were not accustomed to having in the past. I was also very pleased to have been a factor in bringing them together. I also insist to hear one of my dear friend Jehan Al-Raidi’s Arabic language’ flashes’ which she always delights us with on Facebook. She delighted us again today with her new book “ A Linguistic Flash”, displayed at the Cairo International Book Fair. On this “Arabic language”

191 night, in which we are honored to have Mr. Abbas Metwalli, we would like to introduce these fresh Arabic language loving faces here.

Two points drew my attention, which I shall talk about briefly: Mr. Abbas Metwalli gave the chance for Mr. Al-Kholi and others to talk about the Holy Qur’an and its impact on Arabic learning. He referred in his speech to those who memorize the Qur’an without understanding its meaning, and then later on understand all meanings, after they master the Arabic language. I always focus on teaching the Holy Qur’an to our children from their infancy. It is a treasure, not only from a religious point of view, but also in terms of the Arabic language, as Mr. Mahmoud Qattaya has given us in the example about how his brother Abdul Wahab began memorizing the Holy Qur’an at the Qur’anic School and then became proficient in Arabic. The second point raised also by Mr. Abbas Metwalli concerns foreigners’ teaching of English to their children. Humans instinctively love their language and master it, whether they study it or focus on other disciplines. We must look to the West and see how they teach their language to their children, and benefit from their curricula and methods of language education so that we can move in the right direction.

Thank you very much.

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Sayed Hassan, Broadcaster and Poet

The presence of a senior media figure like Abbas Metwalli in this special session is welcome and represents today an embodiment of the main meaning which I would like to underline. The Arabic language does not live in a vacuum, but is rather a mirror of society, as much as it is a lever which lifts this society. These are not mere words, lost in the wind. We have Sheikhs Mustafa Ismail and Abdel Basset Abdel Samad in Qur’anic recitation, Ahmad Shawqi and Hafez Ibrahim and others in the field of poetry, and Abbas Metwalli and his companions in the Media to prove this. We have also broadcaster Fahmy Omar with his five minute commentary on football matches, in his sophisticated language. Also, when Um Kulthoum or Mohamed Abdul Wahab provide us with their beautiful, creative music and songs, they help the Arabic language prevail. When we restore seriousness in all fields, from football to the recitation of the Holy Qur’an, the Arab language will regain

193 its prestige. Therefore, I do not limit the Arabic language only to literature and writers, considering that the language is both the bowl and the content that does not only provide the aesthetic aspect of language, but also provides the functionality aspect of language; when the language presented is sophisticated, it accordingly lifts up the standard language with it.

Thank you.

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Jehan Al-Ridi, Broadcaster

I am honored to be here and welcome Mr. Abbas Metwalli, who is a great broadcaster. We, as broadcasters, are not the only ones who learned from your work Sir, but so did those who listened to you on the Radio. I believe that the love of the Arabic language is the main incentive in mastering it, and also the creation of an atmosphere that gives rebirth to the Arabic language. If I, as a mother, make my children love the Arabic language, how it is pronounced, delivered and spoken, they will naturally come to love it. As you all have already said in detail, writers do have a main role to play, because I believe, the Holy Qur’an is already the guardian of Arabic language. We are not concerned that the Arabic language will become extinct, because it is preserved in the Holy Qur’an, despite the encroachment of the vernacular language.

From this standpoint, I see that the role of the media can not only be forcefully imposed on Arabic as a spoken language, but we can attract people to it in a simple way, for the Arabic language is widespread, whether we like it or not. Today, we have already bypassed the idea of preferring to speak standard Arabic to the colloquial only, for we have reached a kind of “ Franco Arab” mixed talk. We have now become concerned not only about standard Arabic, but also about our colloquial language, due to the use of the widespread foreign words and styles of expression in our speech. To love Arabic is the only way to shield our language against this detrimental phenomenon. I have had a simple radio experience where this is concerned and I claim that it 195 might have achieved at least one step forward; Firstly, thank God that Arabic is originally a beautiful language. Beauty is conjoined to the Arabic language, whether we like it or not. When one hears it, one exhilarates whether in song or Qur’an recitation. Classical Arabic is very rich in vocabulary and many words come close to those in the colloquial language. People nowadays in our fast moving age, look for excitement and suspense. Using some language puzzles can attract an audience to the Arabic language. At the beginning of the General Program open show, I presented a cultural puzzle in the form of a sentence and asked the listeners to interpret it. In that sentence there was a vocabulary word puzzle. For example, I said to them:" I went to the public library and took the Imam home and put it on a shelf in my office". What do you know about this Imam? I was really elated at the huge response and could not imagine that the listeners would go and purchase a language thesaurus to look up the word Imam, which of course meant Book in this context. I felt that the experiment had borne fruit. Ordinary people who do not speak standard Arabic, have become accustomed to go and search in dictionaries to get the meaning of the word. This was one way - and all of us can have other ways that attract other radio listeners. We, as media personalities are interested in the Arabic language, and should, at least at the family level, encourage our sons and daughters to love our beautiful Arabic language.

Thank you.

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Final Word

Every year I visit Egypt, and every year I have high hopes that Maspero, the State Radio & TV Building would influence other television stations. A disastrous situation started with the proliferation of private satellite TV stations. When you watch these TV stations, you realize that there are people behind these stations whose main purpose is to corrupt the Arabic language even if unintentionally. I have not seen one newsreader on any of these channels speak proper Arabic. The Egyptian official television, formerly proficient in this, instead of influencing these stations started to be affected by them. This is the major catastrophe. Maspero must become the beacon that enlightens and teaches these stations or other media outlets the proper use of the Arabic language.

I recall in this regard a saying by my late friend Wagdy El-Hakim, who once said in jest, that he would like to read a newscast, provided that he reads it in colloquial Arabic! Some of these channels have realized his wish, under the pretext of accessing the ordinary simple man on the street. They do not realize that these simple people are accustomed to hearing Galal Muawwad, Sabri Salama and Farouq Shusha... those great voices launched from Cairo Radio, and that they understand each and every word said. We do not need, in this regard, to teach people from scratch how to listen to the news. I think that the official state media should be the leader. When we lead, others will follow suit. However, some people from Maspero found fame in the limelight of private channels and in presenting controversial talk shows, and other means of attracting commercials for the station and, consequently, reaped popularity and wealth 197 all at one go. These people believe that following the road of private channels is an easy road to fame.

When a female employee in the News Sector asked me the strange question: " How do you know Arabic so well?”, it answered many questions about the extent of the deterioration of the Arabic language within Maspero, this historical building. I imagine that the media will advance only through the official media. It should not be a part of the maze of the private media, which reached unbelievable levels of decline. I think that the media must have a role to play, side by side with the entire educational system, in maintaining the standard Arabic we all hope for. We must start from scratch. I recall in this context a feminine organization in America called Daughters of the American Revolution. Its goal is to stress to school children the importance of the American union, though America has been united for more than 240 years. However, they had concerns that another generation may in the future deviate from the idea of a United States of America. These “daughters” go to the schools, to make sure that the children are being educated about how to keep the nation unified. So, even after the realization of all this power and advancement, they work hard to maintain it!

Unfortunately, we do not embrace a follow-up and maintenance culture. Just look at our old buildings, which were unusually beautiful when built, and how they gradually deteriorated and now look very neglected due to lack of maintenance. Maintenance has a full budget in all American institutions. When I was working for the Voice of America on the Greek island of Rhodes, I realized that the building was being renovated and painted many times, though it did not necessarily need it. I was told that if they did not do that, the maintenance budget would be slashed, and they wanted to 198 keep the budget intact. The idea of maintenance, monitoring and follow-up might eventually give us a new generation well aware of the language issue and the issue of religious tolerance, if it is built from childhood. Doctor Borg talked about teaching children their spoken language. This does not differ from what I am saying, i.e. that it is essential for children to learn the language correctly as it is spoken, and then later learn how to explain the “underlined sentence”, or” analyze the complex underlined words” that haunted me in childhood, and which I only comprehended after a long way in my education.

An editor’s note:

As a linguist, I can explain why our colloquial is the way it is, and I can also defend it as a spoken variety for our people, to be highly respected. Classical and Standard Arabic are not spoken media, but different varieties of written Arabic. They are written media used specifically in writing, and the colloquial is a spoken medium used for speaking. The situation, therefore, where Arabic is concerned is diglossic, meaning having two media, each having a specific use, and this happens in other languages as well. Our children learn the spoken colloquial as their mother tongue, at their mother’s knee. They also need to learn Standard written Arabic for writing and educational purposes. What to teach, and how to introduce Standard Arabic in the classroom and at what stage is a matter for the educationists and specialists in methods of teaching, but not a matter for the Qur’anic schools. Standard Arabic to the school child is a new language in pronunciation, grammar meaning and vocabulary. To him, it is like starting to learn a first foreign language, and only teachers who have studied approaches and methods of teaching languages can address the problem. 199