6 - 12 August 1998
Issue No.389
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 6 - 12 August 1998 Issue No.389 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
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My friendship with Tawfiq El-Hakim began with Midaq Alley. We had a mutual friend called Mohamed Metwalli, who was the director of the Opera House. One day he said to El-Hakim: I will lend you a novel by a young man. After reading the novel, El-Hakim asked to meet me. I went to meet him at a café opposite what is now Central Bank, and found him sitting with a friend called Mahmoud Dessouqi, a professor of German.
The first thing El-Hakim said to me was: "If I offer you a coffee, you will say thank you, then when the bill comes I will insist on paying and you will protest, so instead of all that, each of us can order whatever he wants and pay his own bill!" When he was satisfied that the matter had been resolved, he began talking to me about my novel, and about literature in general. At the end of our meeting we had grown closer. Rapport had been established. The bill then arrived and, when he saw me paying my share as we had agreed, he was delighted. As summer was approaching, he invited me to join his weekly meeting with friends at his usual café in Alexandria. It was I who had suggested that he should try the Metro. On the way to the café he had chosen, I glimpsed the Metro and suggested that it was a better place for his meetings. When El-Hakim saw it, he liked it and followed my advice. The café was associated with his name for many years before it was demolished, and an apartment block built in its place.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy. |