13 - 19 December 2001
Issue No.564
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 December 2001 Issue No.564 |
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Birthday, feast
I am more than grateful to the people who honoured me by celebrating my 90th birthday: I am indebted. I am always indebted to people. They are the very breath of my work. That they should honour me thus is, then, a source of pride, joy -- and even of a twinge of melancholy: a consequence of that debt.
There are 64 bunches of flowers on my doorstep. I know the precise number because I tipped each of the delivery men LE1, and I have spent exactly LE64. A simple "happy birthday" would have saved us all a lot of money, you see. It is just another birthday, after all; nothing unusual about it, except for this abundance of flowers. I agree that it is a cheering excess.
As for my 90 years, they have been filled with as much joy as tragedy. World War I, the 1919 Revolution, the inter-war period, World War II: this was the first string of events that I lived through; after World War II, all our lives changed radically, what with the 1952 Revolution, the 1967 and 1973 Wars, the Sadat era and, finally, the variegated and dynamic present. My novels are but a reflection of these and other things.
I am grateful for all I've seen and done. I am especially grateful for people's love. That is what keeps me going at my age. Without these people, my life today would have been empty and meaningless.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
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