Plain talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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I have just been given a copy of a book bearing the title Return to Oasis, with the subtitle "War Poems and Recollections from the Middle East 1940-1946". This collection is the follow-up to a previous anthology with the title of Oasis.

The story of Oasis is interesting. The idea was launched in Cairo during the WWII (1942-43) by three volunteer editors; the highest rank among them was corporal. The completed anthology has a forward by General Wilson, who was then commander- in-chief of the Middle East Force.

The anthology contains poems by soldiers, some of whom were writing poetry for the first time, while others were established poets recruited in the army. Those soldiers, of the 8th army, created a military legend, but as the preface to the book says, "They left behind a 'flower' that had blossomed in the desert and in the Cairo base -- a collection of the finest poetry written during the Second World War."

Many writers and poets were, somehow, posted to Cairo. As a result this bustling city of many languages and people became the cultural centre of the war outside Britain.

Prior to the publication of Oasis and Return to Oasis, critics had always wondered about poetry from WWII. For while the names of Owen, Brooke, Sassoon, Edwards, Graves and Grenfell from the Fist World War remained bright, a silence shrouded their Second World War successors. In answer to this, GS Fraser, himself a poet who lived in Egypt during this period, wrote, "The Middle East in World War Two produced far more -- and at times even finer -- poetry than all the years of attrition on the Western Front in World War One. The poetry came from a more literate and aware generation. They had read more, and employed a wider range of styles and techniques."

Return to Oasis is a purely military anthology. As such it excludes poems from such established civilian poets as Bernard Spencer and Terence Tiller, who were in Cairo during the war and who taught me -- among others, of course -- at the English Faculty of Cairo, then Fouad Al-Awwal University.

Comparing the two anthologies, Oasis and Return to Oasis, the editors write, "At the time of compiling Oasis we felt less need to describe a war. We were in it. Poems could be more reflective; an oasis in fact! However, a generation later, when choosing poems to supplement Oasis, we realised that we were presenting a picture of yesterday to today. So we have chosen more poems that tell of the war, more poems of action."

The introduction to Return to Oasis is written by Lawrence Durrell, the author of the famous Alexandria Quartet. Besides being a leading novelist, Durrell was also a poet and wrote a number of poems about Egypt.

In his introduction Durrell remembers the sense of alienation and distance which was intensified by the apparent normality of everyday life in Egypt. The country basked in its fictitious neutrality, the shops were crammed, the cinemas packed. Cairo was one blaze of light all night long.

But ending his introduction, Durrell says, "All these diverse incidents should, I hope, go towards making up an impressionistic picture of the role that words played during these difficult and tragic years; by the same token these poems by many hands will make up a composite sketch of deeper concerns which stirred the hearts and minds of these poets in their Egyptian exile."