Egypt: Crackdown on culture

The 2011 revolution led to a renaissance of writing as well as street art, installations, film, theater and performance, unscripted happenings in the street. Poets, novelists, political commentators, journalists, satirists — everyone was taking stock of what happened during the 18 days of the revolution and thinking about what would come next.

Egyptian writers and artists are still responding to rapidly changing political events. Hazek’s work embodies many of the central themes confronting them — a fraught relationship between politics and art, an indeterminate literary legacy left by the 2011 revolution and the criminalization of free speech.

After one of the darkest periods for human rights and free expression in the country’s modern history, the relationship between politics and Egyptian literature is still unclear.

In downtown Cairo, poet Wael Fathy sits outside a cafe. In his view, Egyptian poetry has become more introspective, about “determining our mistakes, our faults” rather than the more overt political writing of recent years. In some ways, he says, it has returned to the way it was before the 2011 revolution.

“Before the revolution, my poetry was reviewing what society was thinking about and trying to criticize it from a new, revolutionary point of view,” he says. His 2009 collection was titled “Dreams on Credit,” referring to the thoughts, ideas and theories that many felt were suddenly possible when the Egyptian people took to the streets against then-President Hosni Mubarak. Some argue these ambitions were unrealistic. “We started to think in a different way about society,” he explains. “It was no longer just discussions in your room, not just about knowledge — it was reality.”

The changing political situation — and ensuing censorship — has influenced the evolving Egyptian literature.

“The government is facing up to the politicians at the moment,” Fathy says, “not the poets — yet. That’s why the cultured class is taking steps to create a defense against the government.” Earlier this month, about 700 writers, academics and intellectuals, including prominent writers Ahdaf Soueif, Sonallah Ibrahim and Belal Fadl, signed an open letter calling for the protest law to be repealed.

Fathy is also among the signatories. “Once they finish with the politicians and the media, the poets and writers will be next,” he says. The language used in the letter is reminiscent of the language used during the 2013 occupation of the Culture Ministry, a precursor to the June 30 protests that ultimately helped oust then-President Mohamed Morsi. Writers and intellectuals had occupied the ministry building in protest against the perceived ikhwanization of culture by the Muslim Brotherhood. “Ikhwanization” is a term used by secular, liberal intellectuals who claim that in culture — as in politics — the Brotherhood was attempting to hijack state institutions and realign Egypt along more Islamic, theocratic and backward lines.

“The next battle will be in culture,” Fathy predicts. “Between us and the government.”

Ann Harrison, writers in prison director at PEN International in London, explains that artists are another group in Egyptian society that has encountered repression in recent years — and not just because of the protest law. “Some writers in Egypt, like poet Omar Hazek, have been caught up in the protests against the repressive policies of the government. He should never have been arrested in the first place, as he was merely peacefully protesting.”

Writers often experienced censorship or more direct forms of repression even before the revolution. Karam Saber, author of more than 20 books, was sentenced in June 2013 to five years’ imprisonment in absentia for “insulting religion” after publishing his 2010 short story collection, “Where Is God?” which depicts the lives of Egyptian farmers and their relationship with the creator. His sentence, condemned by PEN as “totally contrary to freedom of expression,” was upheld in June this year.

There is no denying that censorship has expanded drastically since the June 30 coup — both in terms of what people can say and how they say it.

Still, Youssef claims the free-speech narrative — often constructed from outside Egypt — does not apply to realities on the ground. She says she has rarely encountered problems with publishing books, even when they are critical of the government.

“I have had problems with censorship of books imported from abroad,” Youssef admits, “problems at the printing house … [but] never with the authorities.” She recounts one such incident — when Kotob Khan was publishing Tariq Ali’s “Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree,” which tells the story of a family during the fall of Islamic Granada in medieval Spain. One of the employees at the printer complained about the novel’s representation of Islamic history. The book was later printed elsewhere.

“That’s one of the reasons I decided to go down to [Tahrir Square] on Jan. 28,” Youssef says, remembering the 2011 revolution’s Day of Rage, when the Mubarak regime began to lose control of Egypt. “For free speech. And not having books banned.”

For Youssef, publishers are publishing just as before. But, she says, the relationship between politics and literature has changed for other reasons. “In terms of the manuscripts I’m receiving, for around a year they’ve all been quite far away from the revolution,” she says. “I don’t think people want to read about it anymore.”

Mohamed Hesham, head of Merit Publishing, is sitting in the office that served as both a shelter and the site of an informal symposium for writers, poets and revolutionaries at the height of the 18 days of the 2011 revolution. On the desk there is a bust with a gas mask wrapped over a Guy Fawkes mask. A surrealist painting of poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, who spent 18 years in prison for criticizing successive Egyptian presidents, stands out on a wall teeming with political posters, paintings and framed photographs.

“The book of the revolution has not yet been written,” Hesham says, sipping from a warm bottle of Stella beer. He has a knack for sage one-liners like this. As he listens to the conversation in silence, he is perusing Facebook.

He claims literature and politics now interact at a remove; politics is the “shadow” behind writing. “Novel and poetry writing always has a distance from the daily political goings-on. There’s always a distance.” He compares this with the immediacy of a Facebook post or a tweet, adding that ultimately the novel will adapt to Egypt’s changing politics.

“It’s a matter of time,” Hesham argues. “Any wave of writing takes a decade to emerge.”

Youssef agrees. “The best works of the revolution haven’t come yet.”

She thinks that a new wave is slowly emerging. “Some kids, all 15, came to me last week and told me they had written a book — one wrote the poetry, another had done the drawing — and they wanted me to evaluate it,” she says. “You see such examples all the time.”

This could be the longer-term literary legacy of 2011, one that is only beginning to emerge, nearly four years later. “The revolution encouraged almost everyone to express themselves,” she says.