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Sad but true

Sir-- Re 'Eyeing the goal posts' (3-9 September, Al-Ahram Weekly ) by Nevine El-Aref, I would like to correct remarks the writer quotes from some Egyptian figures in response to my article in Foreign Policy Magazine on Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni's now-failed bid to head UNESCO.

Mohamed Salmawi, current head of the Egyptian and Arab Writers' Unions, denied to El-Aref that an incident involving Naguib Mahfouz and the Egyptian union mentioned in my article had occurred. Yet in May 2001 the union's then head, the late Farouk Khorshid, reportedly announced an investigation into the publication of many of Mahfouz's works in Hebrew (the first language into which his famous Trilogy was completely translated) in Israel. The union forbids, now as it did then, any dealings with Israelis -- the sanctions include possible expulsion, as happened to satirist Ali Salem shortly before this case. Fortunately, the affair soon died of embarrassment, and was noted in The Middle East Times, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

I was seeing Mahfouz regularly during the controversy, as I had been for many years before and after it, as part of my ongoing work on his biography, as well as for my doctoral dissertation on him at the University of Pennsylvania (completed last year), and my numerous translations of his works into English.

With regard to comments by Zahi Hawass, Hosni's late gestures, such the visit of Daniel Barenboim and (most of) the restoration of Jewish monuments, were part of his UNESCO campaign. When he lost in Paris, he blamed an alleged Jewish "plot" that was "cooked up in New York"-- phrasings that further confirm the charges of bias made against him.

Salah Eissa called my article "trivial". The many Egyptian writers and artists I have spoken to who have been victims of the paranoia against cultural normalisation here do not agree.

As for my own motives -- which were questioned by unnamed persons -- I was not part of any campaign to stop Hosni. But I do regret that what I wrote is true.

Raymond Stock
Cairo
Egypt