Issue No. 594
Chronicles
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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Chronicles |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life(450)
Al-Ahram's Postbox
In 1929, Al-Ahram came up with a new idea -- "The Al-Ahram Postbox, from Saturday to Saturday". The section, which devoted most of its space to problems and concerns that preoccupied Egyptian society, was destined to become one of the newspaper's most popular features and, in fact, appears to this day. Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* writes about the kind of mail the newspaper received
The Al-Ahram Postbox possessed the chief characteristics of its modern namesake. Certainly, one reason for the column's longevity was the attention it received from the moment of its inception from the Al-Ahram management. The editing was handled by veteran journalist Abdel-Wahab Mutawie and then Editor-in-Chief Dawoud Barakat personally supervised the page, he himself replying, as was evident from the responses to readers' letters.
Dawoud Barakat
One of the features in common between the Al-Ahram Postbox then and now was the exchanges that would take place between two or more "friends of the Postbox". That such exchanges adhered to the ethics of rational debate cannot help but to gain our admiration for the Al-Ahram's letters to the editor page even to this day. Also, then as now, the Al-Ahram Postbox was never a page for political commentary. Rather, it has always been a forum for criticisms and grievances -- of government performance, of certain social customs or of common manifestations of underdevelopment.
If there are differences between the Al-Ahram Postbox in its infancy and in its adulthood, such differences emanate from the fact that it takes some time for any child to learn how to walk without stumbling. In the Postbox's first year, we find for example that although it was supposed to appear every Saturday, it was not long before it emerged on a Monday or a Tuesday. Similarly, although readers were assured that it would appear weekly, frequently it would be absent for a week or two, and occasionally it would appear twice or three times in a single week.
Undoubtedly two considerations accounted for this inconsistency: the volume of incoming post worthy of publication and the space available in a newspaper that never exceeded 12 pages.
A second difference between then and now is that whereas today's Postbox publishes the names of the writers, at that time letters more often than not appeared without a signature. It is not clear why Al-Ahram's editors adopted this policy. Perhaps they thought anonymity would encourage readers to write on subjects they would not have otherwise broached.
Finally, it was only natural that the Postbox page would be a child of its times, informed by the problems and concerns that preoccupied Egyptian society of the late 1920s; many such problems are at most a distant memory today. Take for example the letter cautioning against the excessive quantities of cotton being housed in the banks in Mina Al-Basal. The writer complained that some of the cotton had been in storage for four or five years, which inevitably affected its quality. "If it is sturdy, long staple cotton it will last, otherwise its condition is at risk. The colour, too, will have an impact on the price." Certainly, readers today would find this letter mystifying, not only because of their unfamiliarity with the specifications of cotton fibres but also because of the surprising conjunction between cotton and banks.
Today, it is the custom of the Jabarti -- so named after the famous Arab chronicler -- of the Al-Ahram Postbox to present readers with an end of year review of the most important subjects that appeared in that page. In keeping with this tradition, we will attempt to do the same for 1929, although admittedly our task is easier in view of the much smaller quantity of mail in the Al-Ahram Postbox in its first year.
Then, as today, considerable space in the newspaper's new letters to the editor column was taken up with family concerns, which shed considerable light on the nature of the social problems Egyptians faced in that age. It so happened that that year was also marked by the promulgation of a new Personal Status Law. The subject of considerable coverage and debate on Al- Ahram's ordinary pages, concerns surrounding the new law naturally found their way into the Al-Ahram Postbox.
Is it correct that a newlywed couple can be separated before the marriage is consummated on the grounds that her husband is of deviant character or afflicted with a contagious disease, asks one letter writer. To answer this question, Al-Ahram solicited the advice of a lawyer for the religious courts who wrote that such a separation was indeed legitimate on the aforementioned grounds.
Another writer asked whether the provision stating that the declaration of divorce by word or signal -- signifying that the divorce is complete -- applies to such cases that existed before the new law was passed. To this question a religious court judge responds: "Non-retroactivity does not apply here, as the purpose of this principle is to safeguard rights acquired under former laws. No such acquired rights are involved in such cases, in which both the spouses and their family can only have suffered." The judge went on to assert that the purpose of the provision in question, like all the other provisions of the new law, was to lighten the burden of Muslim families. In all events, he adds, the entire law was based on Shari'a, and the notion of non-retroactivity could only apply in a single case, which was that the divorcee had remarried before the passage of the new law.
As long as family legislation was the issue of the day, one letter writer suggested that to solve the "marriage crisis" the government should pass a law exacting a fine on youths who fail to marry by a certain age. The suggestion provoked the ire of an Al-Ahram reader who responded that this was not the way to solve the problem. Rather, the solution resided in eliminating those pernicious customs that "make marriage a never ending chain of expenses".
In its first year, the Al-Ahram Postbox became filled with letters criticising the performance of various government agencies, with the police coming in for the lion's share of grievances. Many complained that the police were remiss in their duties, a problem that had not escaped the attention of the Cairo police commissioner who had recently issued instructions to his officers to be more vigilant in the control of drug abuse. Commenting on these instructions, one writer expressed his hope that the orders would reach the ears of the police conscripts. These were the ones on the beat, "who see people taking narcotic substances but leave them untouched". He continues, "If they wanted they could smoke out the merchants of poison from their lairs. However, those demons know how to keep other people's hands tied and tongues silent."
Another area of police negligence was vividly described in the following letter: "When you walk through Opera Square or along Kamel Street you are struck by a sight that pains the soul and wounds one's sense of dignity. There you will find a motley congregation of itinerant salesmen and beggars, this one selling sugarcane, that displaying pictures, another parading a jumble of Pharaonic statues and Tutankhamen paraphernalia. There you see the lame, the crippled, the scabby and the maimed, this one gesticulating to his broken leg, that to his severed arm, the third bewailing his lost eye, and so on and so on. This tremendous army, which is the epitome of insolence, turpitude and squalor, besieges our hapless foreign tourists, assails them with requests and repels them with their vileness."
The writer continues that instead of trying to put an end to this scourge, Cairo's policemen act as though their sole duties are "to smooth their mustaches, dust off their uniforms, polish their shoes and strut back and forth in front of the Sheaphard's or Continental Hotel, pompously displaying the fine cut of their elegant attire".
Of the other government departments that came under the scrutiny of the Al-Ahram Postbox, those that dealt most directly with the public were in for the harshest criticism. Under the headline, "The Living Dead", a writer complained that he had wired his brother from Zaqaziq to inform him, "Your father died today." Unfortunately, the telegraph operator managed to garble the message, so that when it reached the distant brother it read, "Your father worked today." It was only much later that the brother discovered that his ailing father had not arisen from his death bead but had risen to the hereafter.
Under the headline, "Take it from an expert", a writer criticised the Postal Authority for hiring secondary school degree holders to perform tasks that could just as readily be accomplished by less qualified individuals. Apart from the poor use of available skills, it was demeaning. "It is most unjust that a Baccalaureate holder should be put to work in such menial positions, condemned to work every day of his life, while a schoolmate of his now sits behind a desk in administration, entitled to paid holidays." Could it be that the writer was one of those ill- fated drones?
From Mansoura came a complaint against the city's first aid workers. The writer relates that shortly before dawn one day he rushed to the first aid centre to get help for someone who was showing symptoms of food poisoning. He managed to wake up one of the workers who answered the door. However, "as I peered into the darkness to see who I was talking to, I noticed a harsh glare from a man lying down on a bed. The man made no stir to move anything but his lips, from which I heard the following: 'Go get someone else. We only do surgeries. Better yet, take your friend to the police department.' Then the man pulled the covers back over himself as though he had only been dreaming."
"Pernicious social customs" was another major preoccupation of Al-Ahram Postbox correspondents and the subject received commensurate attention of the page editor. Perhaps the Al- Ahram management felt that the irate letters from readers, particularly those recounting first-hand experience, had a more powerful influence on public opinion than the sophisticated social theorising that typified some of the contributions on the subject on other pages.
"Things that need weeding out" was the title of a letter criticising "the repugnant outmoded habits still in practice among the common people". The writer relates that he observed a group of tourists who visited a mulid, the celebration of a holy man's anniversary, in which "the rabble" cried out chants, beat drums and strutted around, "out of the belief that this foolishness will bring them blessings". All the more embarrassing for him in front of those foreigners was that "a group of women began to sing in the most shameful and repulsive way." He appealed to the rector of Al-Azhar to "rescue the good name of our country by putting an end to these inanities that take place in mulids from time to time".
Youths harassing women in the street was considered another spreading social ill that needed to be eradicated. A letter writer recounts that he saw three young men trying to flirt with two young women who were waiting at the tram stop in Bab Al- Khalq Square. The men turned out to be unusually aggressive, to the extent that they attacked the women's servant, spurring shocked bystanders to intervene. Fighting broke out and quickly escalated into a brawl, or "a comical tragic battle" as the writer described it. Eventually, the three men managed to escape".
"Have we entered the 20th century?" introduced a group of letters that addressed manifestations of "backwardness". One writer complained about his village sheikh who, in a Friday sermon, warned worshippers against the heresies put about by Westerners that the world was round and that the Zeppelin had flown around it. "Is it possible that such an Al-Azhar scholar should exist in the 20th century? Should such a man instill in the minds of naive peasants such nonsense?" he asked.
The letter elicited considerable response. The most important was from a preacher who doubted the veracity of the story. He wrote, "I declare boldly and unequivocally that the fundamental spirit of Islam is open to all universal sciences and established scientific theories. There is nothing in the teachings of Islam that contradicts the roundness of the earth or its revolutions, if, in fact, they do not support it. Nor does it prejudice Al-Azhar or its scholars, if the story is not fabricated, that an individual should deviate from this principle for what was probably argumentative purposes."
The first letter writer was not to capitulate, even after the sheikh whom he had accused called on the offices of Al-Ahram and denied the statements attributed to him. There was no connection between the sheikh and himself that would motivate him to make false allegations, he wrote in a subsequent letter. Moreover, the sheikh had made many similar statements "that bear not the slightest semblance to truth" and was notorious for using village sentinels "to round up people from the village and from their fields at odd times so that he can harangue them with his sermons".
Naturally, then as now educational concerns were a prominent theme in the Al-Ahram Postbox, with the frequency of grievances increasing in the autumn, the time of school admissions. Addressing his letter to Al-Ahram, a desperate parent complains, "Secondary school doors are closed in the face of our children who graduated from primary school this year. In our distress and despair we turn to you, in our faith that your voice will ring out loud and save us."
In his response, Chief Editor Barakat told the letter writer and concerned parents like him to take heart. The Ministry of Education was taking pains to solve this complex problem by creating as many new classrooms as possible. Nevertheless, Barakat admitted that this was only a temporary solution to a problem of potentially grave consequences, "as it pertains to the future of our children and, therefore, we must remedy it at the nearest opportunity".
A similar complaint was voiced by applicants to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Although the dean of the faculty promised to do his best to arrange for extra classrooms to accommodate as many incoming first year students as possible, Barakat too cautioned that such a solution was only a stopgap. The long range solution in his opinion was to build more higher-level schools, capable of admitting all qualified applicants, "thereby granting students who have had the honour to obtain a secondary school certificate a genuine hope that they can receive an advanced university level education".
Public school teachers, too, had serious grounds for complaint. In a joint letter to the editor, a group of teachers voiced their despair at their economic prospects "after having read the Ministry of Education staffing report stating that the salaries of teachers and department heads should remain at LE4 and LE5 respectively for the rest of their lives". The teachers continue, "This is the height of injustice and inhumanity. Those engaged in the most sacred and noblest profession should have their dignity and honour safeguarded against the spectre of degradation and penury." The Postbox editor agreed and urged the government to consider the plight of the teachers and to take all possible measures "to give them heart and eliminate the cause of their grievance".
Although the following incident was an individual case, the Al- Ahram Postbox took a special interest in the person's plight. Under the headline, "A pitiful tale", a 17- year-old student relates that after having obtained her secondary school degree, she applied to the Saniya Teachers College and was accepted. "However, she suddenly discovered that her application had been forwarded to the Helwan Teachers College, which does not have boarding facilities. Thus, this poor girl, or shall we say martyr to the cause of knowledge, must leave her home in Fagalla at 5.00 in the morning, take two trams followed by the train to Helwan and then, after reaching the city, walk another 12 minutes to her school. Then, after classes, she must undertake the same strenuous journey home, which she does not reach until 7:30pm at the earliest, thoroughly drained and exhausted." The Postbox editor appealed to educational authorities to do something to help this woman who had been condemned to such hardship in her pursuit of knowledge.
The Postbox was a useful vent for airing grievances, soliciting commiseration and easing the pain of some readers. Under the headline "Strange remedy", a "friend of the Postbox" recounted the unusual experiment he undertook to cure himself of chronic rheumatism. "None of the pharmaceutical medications I tried had any effect, and mineral waters proved even less useful. Then, one day a wasp stung my right hand, causing immense pain to shoot up my arm. Then my arm swelled, but afterwards the pain ceased and I discovered that I could move my arm again without the slightest pain. Now, whenever I sense rheumatic pain returning, I expose the ailing limb to wasp bites and the pain vanishes instantly."
In response to this letter, Barakat urged pharmacologists to extract the poison from wasps so as to create an ointment that would relieve rheumatic pains. The letter also attracted a response from a physician from Alexandria. Dr Hafez Zaki wrote that the discovery of that "strange remedy" was not new and that he, in fact, had published a book, Modern Medical Treatment, in which he mentioned that remedy. The doctor urged the Al-Ahram to publish his response "as a service to science and its practitioners".
The subject of wasp bites encouraged another reader to relay to the Postbox an article that he had come across in a Syrian paper. The article, "Human poisons stronger than snake venom", relates, "On his way to a café one morning a man came across an enormous snake. He struck the snake with his cane, but the snake was uninjured and slithered away into a crevice." Thinking he had rid himself of the danger, the man proceeded on his way. However, "the snake attacked him and sunk its fangs into his shoulder. The man cried out for help and passers- by rushed over to rescue him. They beat the snake to try to make it let go, but to no avail. Then, after a few minutes the snake dropped down to the ground, a lifeless corpse. The man was unharmed as the snake had only sunk its fangs into his clothes. What killed the snake was the profuse sweat pouring from its terror struck victim."
A number of writers voiced pet peeves that they sought to promote to a national cause. Among these was the man who railed against the notion of daylight savings time. Such changing of the clocks, he claimed, would "confuse calculations, complicate agrarian works and confound the balance between them and meteorological observations".
A second letter, one of the few that was signed, sought to promote a national theatre. Such an institution, wrote a lawyer, Ali Abdel-Meguid, "will be among the most powerful instruments of national education, as it will serve as a school for acting and for writing and directing theatrical works".
Abdel-Meguid disagreed with those who claimed that the Opera House already performed those functions. The Opera House "has no impact on the composition and direction of plays", he wrote, adding that a national theatre "will serve as the model for the oration and elocution of classical Arabic". True, he continued, following the construction of the national theatre there will remain the problem of finding playwrights, "however, the very existence of that institution will create the playwright". Indeed, Abdel-Meguid's prediction came true, if only many years after he wrote to the Al-Ahram Postbox.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
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