Obituary:

A view from many houses

Samir Sarhan (b. 8 December, 1941-d. 1 July, 2006)

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Drama may be said to have been Samir Sarhan's home, though being the man he was he had many abodes. Was not the Cairo International Book Fair the house he built, expanded and embellished over decades? Where does the professor of drama stand in relation to the playwright? And how about the Reading for All and Family Library projects?

These may be the main contributions by which Samir Sarhan will be remembered. They were his habitats and I visited him in all of them. Yet, above all, he will be remembered as a man with a lively disposition, an unbound love of life and a tactful manner in handling its problems. This is the Samir Sarhan I know.

Last winter I was invited, along with my professor, Samir Sarhan, to a panel discussion on Europe and cultural diversity as part of the cultural programme of the 2006 Cairo International Book Fair. Oblivious of regulations, he surprised me by asking me to talk first, reversing the usual order of moving from senior to junior. In many ways that was typical.

When it was time for him to have the floor, he perplexed participants, moderator and audience: "You know about Europe and about diversity: Europe is the continent which lies to the north; diversity is the topic you read about in the papers everyday. Now let me talk about the Book Fair."

Those who did not know Sarhan well thought he was eluding the topic, but not his friends, co-workers and students. We knew we were about to embark a rollercoaster during which we would see things from different angles. As ever, he did not fail us. His talk, on one of our serious and immediate problems, was characteristically rendered funny. The strenuous and the ludicrous were meshed together. As such the talk bore Sarhan's signature. Then, hospitably, he invited his audience to visit one of his houses, the Book Fair, as residents rather than guests.

He was also at home in the context of the Reading for All national project, where I last met him. As the members of the supreme committee sat in the waiting room prior to the meeting, we heard the familiar mixture of coughs and laughter announcing Sarhan's arrival before he was ushered in. Once he walked into the room, he spread the joyous atmosphere associated with him, disturbing the formal setup and changing it to a more friendly mood. He had a word, a joke, a remark for everyone. When the committee members talked of book titles and choices, he spoke of printing and technical details: once we moved with him to his chosen topic, he would take us back to content. He puzzled many with his strategy of challenging fixations, and confused those who were unfamiliar with his technique of mixing opposites to widen the scope of discussion until it encompassed comprehensiveness.

More homely and familial was my first encounter with Sarhan which I vividly recalled as I walked down the corridor of the English Department at Cairo University this morning. There, many years ago, as an undergraduate student, I met Dr. Sarhan for the first time. I was perplexed and totally at a loss on account of the novelty of my situation but Dr. Sarhan, at that point, rendered the unusual familiar. This morning, I recalled old scenes with stunning vibrancy: the late 'Am Mohamed, the office person, clapping for the students to make way for the professor while the professor refuses to play his allotted role and, rather than hurry past the gathered students, lingers, sharing with them the latest joke and reciting lines from Sophocles or Shakespeare interspersed and spiced by comments and remarks. Is he Ophelia, Oedipus, Falstaff, or Samir Sarhan?

Inside the lecture halls we encountered different playwrights to those in the corridor. He introduced a fresh set of modern writers. Ibsen and Chekhov, to name only two, were characteristically flavoured to our taste by a pinch of Sarhan himself. Was he then Nora or Ibsen? Such questions perplexed me for a long while and I could not tell for I had not yet known Sarhan. I did not know that he was many people in one. Nor had I yet associated him with Ismail of Yehia Haqqi's Qandil Umm Hashim ( The Lamp of Umm Hashim ), the mishmash Egyptian cultural hybrid who comprises opposites and challenges life by ridiculing it.

In his last days he became "asthmatic, with a flushed face and a forehead that was damp with sweat, while his breathing became wheezy. Whoever looked at him was at a loss to know whether he was tired or relaxed. When his laughter was imprisoned in his throat it gathered in his eyes, for there are no eyes more expressive than the eyes of those who suffer from chest problems: a merry devil seems to leap out of them at you, full of affection and understanding, of wicked playfulness and goodness, of tolerance and kindness, as though, more than anything, it were saying to you, 'There is more to existence than just you and me. There is beauty and secrets, enjoyment and magnificence.'"

This is how Ismail rounded up his life but I find in these words the most adequate description of Sarhan's final phase. Both share qualities that are peculiarly Egyptian: humour, challenge, tolerance, an unbounded love for life and an ability to travel between cultures, concepts and perceptions, making themselves at home everywhere and accommodating everyone. Once again I feel tempted to quote Haqqi's final prayer for Ismail: "May God have mercy on him." Yet, to this remark I add, and may you, Samir Sarhan, also live as the late Ismail still does, for people who live on the border rarely die and Samir Sarhan dwelled at many intersections, among which are the person and the persona, the factual and the fictional, the humorous and the stern, the public figure and the humane man.

* The writer is an associate professor of English literature at Cairo University.

By Sahar Sobhi Abdel-Hakim