Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt

Prominent writer Farouk Gweida suffered a heart attack after facing accusations of "slandering the justice system". He talks to Magda El-Ghitany about equal opportunities, and why he may never write again

Farouk Gweida, one of Egypt's most popular writers and poets, was recovering from a heart attack in a Cairo hospital this week. The health crisis struck just after Gweida -- whose weekly column, "Free margins", has been running in Al-Ahram 's high- circulation Friday supplement since 2001 -- was subjected to five hours of interrogation at the Office of Prosecution for Appeals.

Gweida was answering accusations of having "slandered the justice system" in a 25 March column entitled "Angry letters...thorny issues". The column in question featured three letters written by Gweida's readers. One was by a university professor who claimed that his son -- a top law student -- had been denied a deputy prosecutor position because his aunt was illiterate. Making matters worse, the father wrote, another less-qualified student -- who had often failed -- got the job instead, just "because his father was a Jurist". The father said he had resorted to Gweida after failing to get a response from either the prosecutor-general or the minister of justice.

"I definitely don't regret a single word I wrote. It's my duty to speak for the people and defend their basic rights," Gweida said, his voice still weak after the serious cardiac arrest. By publishing the letters, Gweida told Al-Ahram Weekly, "I wanted to highlight the fact that ordinary people, who are qualified but not well connected, deserve the same chances that those with high level access get."

Gweida denied slandering the judiciary; he even began the column by stating his "deep respect for the judicial system, which he considers the nation's conscious." Nonetheless, a few days after the column was published, the Supreme Council of Justice filed a complaint against him with the prosecutor-general, who accordingly decided to summon Gweida for investigations.

It was Amr Adib, the well-known host of the Orbit satellite TV show "Cairo Today", who first revealed the political dimension to the story of Gweida's sudden heart attack. Gweida's last column, in Friday's paper, had only informed readers of "sudden" heart problems that had prompted Gweida's physicians to urge him to "rest", and quit writing for "a long time".

Press Syndicate Chairman Galal Aref told the Weekly that what happened to Gweida "was not right". Legally, the Press Syndicate should have been informed of the investigation so that its representative could have been in attendance. "We were not informed," Aref said, and accordingly, the syndicate has filed a complaint to the prosecutor- general, calling on him to call off the investigation.

The head of Al-Ahram's legal department, Abdel- Meguid Mohamed, said Gweida was 100 per cent in the clear. All he did, said Mohamed, who was present at the investigations with Gweida, was objectively publish his readers' viewpoints and call upon concerned parties to investigate matters.

Gweida's physician said the writer's heart attack was most probably a direct result of the negative psychological conditions Gweida was suffering after the investigation.

Gweida's colleague at Al-Ahram, prominent columnist Salama Ahmed Salama, said that most judges would not have approved of the action taken against Gweida, and that the Supreme Council of Justice's stance "broke the norms of the Egyptian judiciary's hallowed system". There was no slandering of the judiciary involved, Salama said. "Instead of filing a complaint against Gweida, the concerned parties in "such a sacred system should wake up and listen to these people's voices more closely before it's too late."

Although the alarm over Gweida's treatment also stems from it happening when calls for increased democracy and freedom of speech have never been louder, Gweida sees his publishing of the angry, desperate letters in a more social context. "The bitter feeling of injustice felt by so many of our youth -- because of this shortage of equal opportunities -- is the easiest way to create young [terrorists] like 7 April Khan Al-Khalili bomber Hassan Bashandi," he said. "Their depression makes them believe that a bombing may be the best way to end their problems, or at least make their voices heard."

In an earlier column, entitled "The assassination of dreams", Gweida tackled a similar subject, the true story of a young man who committed suicide after being rejected for the diplomatic corps because his social status was "inappropriate".

Raised in a "typical, average" family, Gweida said key public figures like Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, late writer Taha Hussein, and popular singer Abdel-Halim Hafez, were all from modest families who became what they are "because they were offered a fair chance, via which they managed to attain that kind of social and cultural mobility". He said his generation, as well, did not need to be "connected or backed. We were just qualified enough for what we got."

Gweida was back at home yesterday after a 15-day hospital stay, during which President Hosni Mubarak phoned him at one point to check up on his health. And while he hasn't decided whether or not to write again, Gweida does know he would do the same thing if he had the chance. "I've written dozens of direct criticisms on many sensitive issues, and yet I've never been insulted like this. I was never called in for an official investigation for something I wrote. For me, words are as sacred as justice. The only thing that makes me sad is that it ended up causing serious health problems that may last forever."

Sacred words