28 June - 4 July 2001
Issue No.540
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 June - 4 July 2001 Issue No.540 |
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National unity
The Wafd was perhaps the party that most embodied the values of national unity. In many respects it represented the spirit of the nation and embodied the people's values and feelings, which explains its extraordinary success. Part of this, an essential part, concerned national unity: the way the unity of the Egyptian people has been deeply rooted in the collective psyche through the ages.
The Wafd came to be so synonymous with national unity that every time they returned to power humorous magazines like Al-Kashkoul would appear with headlines like "Back to Coptic government." For my generation of Egyptians, who grew up absorbing national unity without even being told what it was, the notion of the government being Muslim or Christian was funny. It would not have occurred to anybody to taunt an entire group because one or more of its men of religion was corrupt. If an Egyptian cleric was corrupt, this was an affront to all Egyptians, regardless of whether he was Muslim or Coptic.
In fact, my own life affords the most obvious example of national unity. Mine was a difficult birth; the midwife could not manage, so my father brought a young Coptic doctor to the house, and when the operation was completed safely my father was so grateful he named me after the doctor in question, who was destined to flower into a celebrated physician, Naguib Mahfouz Pasha. Later, when he was famous and I was a young man, the writer Tharwat Abaza took me to visit him. He introduced me by saying: "Here is one of your births."
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
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