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Al-Ahram Weekly 30 March - 5 April 2000 Issue No. 475 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 30 March - 5 April 2000 Issue No. 475
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Frenzied resignation
The recent wave of resignations in the Egyptian Writers' Union has left this important but often ineffectual establishment as powerless as ever, its members and censors alike continuing to wage their disclamatory wars. After the resignation of novelist Bahaa Taher earlier this month, in a decisive act of protest against the Union's ineffectiveness in addressing long-standing questions about the marginalisation of the role of culture in society and the inability of the union to defend authors' rights, novelist Ibrahim Abdel Meguid threw into doubt the union council's unquestioning acceptance of Taher's resignation.
Where Taher's resignation was low-key, however, Abdel Meguid's was loud and contentious: "There's a case for saying that Taher's resignation is the result of a tacit agreement between [the new head of the union, poet] Farouq Shousha and him," Abdel Meguid has claimed, "whose main thrust is the idea that Taher should keep away from the question of dismissing some council members [due to their failure to attend meetings], so that Taher becomes the man who has been consistently supportive of everybody."
When novelist Gamal El-Ghitani announced that he had posted a letter of resignation to the Union headquarters last July, soon after Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni visited the union, the issue took on an added dimension, inviting further squabbles concerning whether El-Ghitani had actually resigned, since the union denied any knowledge of such a letter. El-Ghitani, who has been mounting a campaign against the minister of culture for more than a year now, explained that he resigned in protest not only against the visit but against Shousha's alleged bid for closer ties with government bodies and his policy of reconciliation with the Ministry of Culture -- in action since Shousha, previously the head of Egyptian Radio, was elected head of the Writers' Union last year.
Critics have said that the persistence of the union's tendency to include among its members civil employees of the Ministries of Culture and Information who are not writers (some 60 per cent of the union's approximately 2,000 members) is due to Shousha's reluctance to antagonise the regime and his consequent failure to bring any tangible change.
Novelist Ibrahim Asslan's stance sums up the spirit of the debate, various facets of which have been violently argued by respected writers in the last few weeks: "If you think the union is just one vapid institution among many others, then it might as well stay the way it is. But if you think it should be an independent establishment of some stature, capable of living up to what is expected of the body that represents the entire community of Egyptian writers, thinkers and intellectuals, and in some sense embodying that community's achievement, then it must be made clear that the union as it now exists can in no way perform a meaningful role." Yet Aslan's insight aside, the problem is far more deeply rooted than this recent statement would imply.
Bahaa Taher
The idea of a union to represent Egyptian writers and look after their interests dates all the way back to the 1968 Conference of Young Writers, held in Zaqaziq following the 1967 defeat. Many writers viewed that conference as an attempt by the regime to contain and absorb the insurgence that was seething among the period's young, politically active and intellectually progressive literati, later known as "the generation of the 1960s", following the shift of political orientation that the war had brought about among them, which to varying degrees implied turning against the 1952 regime, to which many of these writers had been devoted. One of the conference's recommendations was the foundation of just such a union, with the implication that it would be an independent body, in which case it could have acquired a great deal of influence and become a truly powerful institution. As it was, however, the idea never saw the light of day.
Some seven years later, instead, it crystallised into an altogether different and far more tame institution, the present-day Writers' Union, run by the pro-establishment novelist Tharwat Abaza from the year it was founded, 1975, to 1997. It is believed that this was due to the Sadat regime, in which popular novelist Youssef El-Siba'i was Minister of Culture until his assassination in 1978. The law that was drafted then, apparently without consultation with the writers who had proposed founding a union in the first place, rendered the union both legally and financially dependent, ensuring that writers would neither have a say in politics nor be free to pursue their own affairs. Many members of the generation of the 1960s, notably Salah Issa and Gamil Attia Ibrahim, were refused membership; others, taking the quieter route, kept away.
Those who were granted membership, however, and who would continue to elect Abaza for 22 years, were chosen on the basis of personal connections and loyalty to the powers that be. Often, indeed, they had nothing to do with literature. Until Abaza's resignation, following a powerful and effective electoral campaign that revealed the union's corruption and resulted in dramatist Saadeddin Wahba heading the union council, it is believed the union did little more than procure funds and perks for its members. Even the promotion of literary icon Tawfiq El-Hakim to the position of honorary head of the union was seen as perpetuating the thought that the union would be an addendum to government institutions, of which El-Hakim was invariably supportive and in which he was involved. Wahba, on whose chairmanship of the union many had pinned hopes of positive change, died within months of procuring his post in 1997, and writer Farouq Khourshid took over during the intervening period.
In the few months since Shousha became secretary general many members of the union felt that the possibility of positive change which came about during Wahba's spell no longer existed. Taher's resignation earlier this month dramatised a sentiment that has been particularly rife among 1960s writers. Shousha's announcement during the last meeting of the union's council on 11 March that the Minister of Culture had paid the union LE500,000 as the first instalment (half) of a Ministry of Culture grant and would soon provide the rest, was seen by Shousha's critics as further confirmation of dependency.
Shousha abstained from commenting on the charges of his critics, but his deputy, Mohamed Gebril, defended the achievements of the council elected in 1999: "We have managed to resume relations with other Arab Writers' unions, founded a cine club, organised meetings with prominent figures like Ossama El-Baz and Samih El-Qassim .... We have also managed to raise the union's budget from zero to LE1 million, procuring LE500,000 from the Ministry of Culture for our health insurance project. When we met with the minister of culture it was to present him with our demands. Taher was present and he demanded that the union have a say in the awarding of state merit prizes. We are not in discord with the Ministry of Culture, as the ministry could be beneficial to us."
In the last, apprehensively anticipated general assembly meeting last Friday, the protagonists insisted on their respective positions. Bahaa Taher explained that his resignation had no connection with the question of voting writers out of the union, as Abdel Meguid claimed, but rather with his refusal to engage with the petty squabbles rampant in Egyptian cultural life. "It was my duty after three years in the council to announce my inability to effect change which results not only from my own limitations, but also from the general conditions," he said.
Shousha insisted that El-Ghitani never submitted a resignation and Abdel Meguid launched a less than courteous tirade, reiterating his accusations. Whereupon the proceedings degenerated into a series of antagonistic sparrings indicating, if anything, that the crisis will persist. Whether or not the union will ever have another chance, however -- that remains to be seen.
Reported by Youssef Rakha and Mahmoud El-Wardani
