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SONALLAH IBRAHIM Iask him about the surge of creative energy in post-January 25 Egypt and how and whether it will evolve. He is hopeful, about the political situation and the creative process. “When I saw the women’s demonstration [at the end of December], I thought it was a beautiful thing.They were clearly against military government and in defence of the women who were beaten and tortured but this is an issue that will not be easily resolved.” The big question is: will a constitutional balance emerge from this messy transitional period? The indisputable gain of the past year, Ibrahim says, is that the Egyptian people are no longer afraid. People publicly call Field Marshall Tantawi a coward in their chants; they demand an end to the violation of women. “There is no more fear.” A second major development, according to Ibrahim, is that the Copts have entered the political process after years of anonymity and the third is the rise of the youth as “the most important political power in the country”.The success of the entire process of transition, however, “depends upon Midan Tahrir”. Ibrahim is a writer accustomed to patient resistance and speaking truth to those in power. In 2003, he famously declined the Arab Novel Award, delivering a speech at the ceremony in Cairo in which he explained that he could not receive an award from a government that lacked the credibility to bestow it. Over four decades, Ibrahim has cultivated a spartan lifestyle, whilst dedicating himself to crafting novels which, laced with images of stark beauty and subtle humour, lay bare the humiliation of daily life under dictatorship. In an article on the Egyptian novel in Harper’s (February, 2011) Robyn Creswell attributes the resonance of Ibrahim’s style with contemporary readers to his eschewal of the “high eloquence native to Arabic literature”, in favour of “prose so unadorned, so aggressively unliterary, that it is a kind of anti-style”. Born in 1937 in Cairo, Ibrahim studied Law at Cairo University. He was drawn to writing and to politics and, in 1959, having joined the Communist Party, Ibrahim was imprisoned, a five-and-a-half year experience of long-lasting influence, which led to his first literary output. After his release from prison, Ibrahim worked as a news editor for several years, before travelling to Berlin in 1968 and later Moscow. In 1974 he returned to Egypt permanently and within a year gave up his job at a publishing house to write full-time. Ibrahim has lived in the same modest apartment in Heliopolis for 40 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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INTERVIEW BY C AMILO GOMEZ-RIVAS thirty-five years, battling state censorship and producing a steady output of novels which have received broad critical acclaim. These include Tilka al-R ’iha (That Smell), banned and not republished for twenty years, Al-Lajna (The Committee), Zaat (Self), Beirut, Beirut, Sharaf (Honour), Al-Talassus (Stealth) and Amrekenl (Amricanly), among others. Having climbed the stairs to the sixth-floor of a liftless apartment block, I reach his door, which has no number. He opens the door in a blue-flannel robe and makes coffee before we sit down to talk writing, politics, and life in post-January 25 Egypt. The coffee table is strewn with copies of Al-Masry al-Youm and books.The walls too are almost entirely lined with books, along with vinyl records and magazines. Two plant cuttings grow in glass jars under the window. Camilo Gomez-Rivas: How do you understand the surge of action from conservative and religious groups in Egyptian society?What is the role of religion? Perhaps it is unsuitable to compare this to a similar trend occurring in the United States? Sonallah Ibrahim: On the contrary, this is a global issue in the first place. History teaches us that when a wave of progress occurs, in thought, in social conditions, in sexual relations, it incites a response. For example, at the beginning of last century, with Isadora [Duncan], the dancer and artist . . . this wave was followed by the First World War. Then there was a second wave of progress after the Second World War, in the forties and early fifties and a third in the sixties. Every time, a counter-response appears, a while later there is movement in thought and freedom, or the like, and then, there is this kind of fear in society as it starts to worry: “Where are we going?” Remember the sixties – the hippies and marijuana and homosexuality, the whole thing – then what happened? There was a reaction; a conservative reaction. That lasts a while and then there’s another wave of progress, always. Karl Marx has a great saying about this: “History moves . . .” – or perhaps it was Lenin – “two steps forward and one step back” and so on. We are going through such a period now. We have realised a number of social and cultural achievements in the past, especially during the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, on the issue of ownership in particular, which was transformed during Nasser’s time, with nationalization and land redistribution and all that. Society is by nature BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 41

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SONALLAH IBRAHIM

Iask him about the surge of creative energy in post-January 25 Egypt and how and whether it will evolve. He is hopeful, about the political situation and the creative process. “When I saw the women’s demonstration [at the end of December], I thought it was a beautiful thing.They were clearly against military government and in defence of the women who were beaten and tortured but this is an issue that will not be easily resolved.”

The big question is: will a constitutional balance emerge from this messy transitional period? The indisputable gain of the past year, Ibrahim says, is that the Egyptian people are no longer afraid. People publicly call Field Marshall Tantawi a coward in their chants; they demand an end to the violation of women. “There is no more fear.” A second major development, according to Ibrahim, is that the Copts have entered the political process after years of anonymity and the third is the rise of the youth as “the most important political power in the country”.The success of the entire process of transition, however, “depends upon Midan Tahrir”.

Ibrahim is a writer accustomed to patient resistance and speaking truth to those in power. In 2003, he famously declined the Arab Novel Award, delivering a speech at the ceremony in Cairo in which he explained that he could not receive an award from a government that lacked the credibility to bestow it. Over four decades, Ibrahim has cultivated a spartan lifestyle, whilst dedicating himself to crafting novels which, laced with images of stark beauty and subtle humour, lay bare the humiliation of daily life under dictatorship. In an article on the Egyptian novel in Harper’s (February, 2011) Robyn Creswell attributes the resonance of Ibrahim’s style with contemporary readers to his eschewal of the “high eloquence native to Arabic literature”, in favour of “prose so unadorned, so aggressively unliterary, that it is a kind of anti-style”.

Born in 1937 in Cairo, Ibrahim studied Law at Cairo University. He was drawn to writing and to politics and, in 1959, having joined the Communist Party, Ibrahim was imprisoned, a five-and-a-half year experience of long-lasting influence, which led to his first literary output. After his release from prison, Ibrahim worked as a news editor for several years, before travelling to Berlin in 1968 and later Moscow. In 1974 he returned to Egypt permanently and within a year gave up his job at a publishing house to write full-time. Ibrahim has lived in the same modest apartment in Heliopolis for

40 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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