The British Council and I
Mursi Saad El-Din* remembers the British Council under Egyptian rule
I am probably the only non-Briton to have headed the British Council. To give the job its proper and official name, I was the sequestrator of the British Council in Egypt.
Let me explain how this came about. I had just returned from London after spending 12 years as cultural attaché to the Egyptian Institute -- the brain child of Dr Taha Hussein. That was in 1956, just a few weeks before what came to be known as the Suez Crisis, or the Tripartite Aggression, involving France, Britain and Israel.
This is not the place to retell what happened. Suffice it to say that one of the results was the confiscation by the Egyptian Government of French and British institutions, including the British Council. All French and British schools were Egyptianised. And while they were mostly run by Egyptians, they were basically managed the same way they had been under the French and the British.
And while by definition the British Council could not be Egyptianised, it could not be left without staff either. To the Egyptian government's credit, the Council was not shut down. Instead it was put under sequestration, and I was the one chosen to carry out the rather difficult, Arab discriminating, job.
So there I was, with a co-sequestrator, the late Abdel-Rehim Rashwan, to head and direct such an educational and cultural institution. We immediately decided to allow the council's activities to continue as usual. The fact that the government allowed us to do this was a reflection of an important fact: culture should not be mixed with politics.
The English language classes went on. In fact, we were overwhelmed by the increasing number of applicants to learn, what was then called, the "enemy's language". Our lectures in English literature and thought continued, and the council's library had more visitors than ever before. We even activated the drama group and presented a couple of Shakespeare plays. In other words everything went on as usual with, of course, an important difference: the staff was now mostly Egyptian. I say mostly because we had a couple of Irish citizens who decided to stay on.
I shall always remember the first time I occupied the chair of the council's head. It was an awesome experience since my previous connection with the British Council was as a student, supplementing my university studies with English language and literature lectures. It was an experience similar to my return from London, when I started teaching in the same English section of Fouad I University, now Cairo University, where I had been a student. Instead of occupying a seat among the students, I was now sitting where my old lecturers and professors had sat.
When I think of those times I feel proud that as a people Egyptians were tolerant and cultured enough to distinguish between learning and politics. I remember when the British Council was producing a film on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the council's work in Egypt. The film was directed by Attiyat El-Abnoudy, one of our leading documentary filmmakers. There is an interview in the film with writer Youssef Idris, in which he aptly summed up the situation: "During the day," he said, "we used to go out in demonstrations shouting 'down with the British', but in the evening we went to the British Council to learn English language and literature."
In his novel, Academic Year, DJ Unright describes how when he went to give a lecture at Alexandria University, he found only one student who approached him timidly and said: "Excuse me, Sir, but today is 'down with England day'. The students are demonstrating. But they will be back tomorrow." And they were!
It seems that I was fated to have a continued connection with the British Council. When I was undersecretary of state for foreign cultural relations, I had a close relationship with the institution and we cooperated in bringing some of the best theatre groups to Egypt. I will always remember performances by the New Vic Players and the Prospect Theatre at the Pyramids. During the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, stray dogs in the desert started a barking symphony. They did not quite spoil the performance, but they raised some suppressed laughs.
When the British Council decided to establish a Booker Committee in Egypt to judge a short list of novels for the competition, they asked me to be its chairman, which I did with pleasure. Our choice was the same as the London Committee.
This continued cooperation and relation with the British Council led to Queen Elizabeth honouring me with a CBE, Commander to the British Empire.
* The writer is an Al-Ahram and Al-Ahram Weekly columnist, author of the only written history of the British Council in Egypt entitled The British Council: 50 years in Egypt, and was the council's sequestrator between 1956 and 1958.
C a p t i o n : Mursi Saad Eddin with top British Council officials in Cairo
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 9 - 15 October 2003 (Issue No. 659)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/659/fe4.htm