1
If I weren’t Egyptian, I would want to be Egyptian.
—Mustafa Kamil*
I HAVE CHOSEN THIS SAYING as the first words of these papers of mine because they are, in my opinion, the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. They represent (assuming that the one who said them really meant them) the sort of stupid tribal loyalty that makes my blood boil every time I think of it. What if the good Mustafa Kamil had been born Chinese, for example, or Indian? Would he not have repeated the same phrase out of pride in his Chinese or Indian nationality? And can such pride have any value if it’s the outcome of coincidence? And if Mustafa Kamil could choose—of his own conscious volition, as he would have us believe—to be Egyptian, there would have to be important reasons to make him so choose. He would have to find in the Egyptian people some virtues not to be found in any other. What, then, might such virtues be? Are the Egyptians distinguished by, for example, their seriousness and love of work, like the Germans or the Japanese? Do they love risk-taking and change, like the Americans? Do they honor history and the arts, like the French and the Italians? They have no such distinguishing characteristics. What then does distinguish the Egyptians? What are their virtues? I challenge anyone to cite me a single Egyptian virtue. Cowardice and hypocrisy, underhandedness and cunning, laziness and spite—these are our characteristics as Egyptians. And because we know the truth about ourselves, we cover it over with a lot of shouting and lies—empty, ringing slogans that we repeat day in day out about our ‘great’ Egyptian people. And the sad thing is that we’ve repeated these lies so often we’ve ended up believing them. Indeed—and this is truly amazing—we’ve arranged these lies about ourselves as songs and anthems. Have you heard of any other people in the world doing such a thing? Do the English, for example, sing, Ah England, O Land of Ours! Your earth is of marble made, your dust with musk and amber laid? Such banalities are an integral part of our makeup. Imagine, in the reader set for Second Year Elementary, I read the following words: “God loves Egypt very much and talked about her in His Noble Book. This is why He has blessed her with our lovely clement climate, summer and winter, and why He protects her from the wiles of her enemies.”
See the tissue of lies that they stuff into children’s heads? That “lovely clement climate” of ours is in fact hell. Seven months from March to October the searing heat roasts our skins until the beasts expire and the asphalt on the streets melts under the blazing sole of the sun—and still we thank God for our beautiful climate! And again, if God protects Egypt from the wiles of her enemies, as they claim, how come we’ve been occupied by every people on Earth? The history of Egypt is in reality nothing but a continuous series of defeats inflicted upon us by all the nations of the world, starting with the Romans and going all the way to the Jews.
All these stupidities get on my nerves, and what annoys me even more is that we—we pitiful Egyptians—like to bathe in the reflected glory of the pharaohs. Under the pharaohs, the Egyptians formed a truly great nation, but what have we to do with them? We are the corrupt, indeterminate outcome of the miscegenation of the conquerors’ troops with their captives from the defeated population. The Egyptian peasant whose land was violated and manhood dishonored at the hands of the conquerors for centuries on end lost everything that linked him to his great ancestors, and from his long acquaintance with humiliation he came to feel at ease with it, surrendered to it, and over time acquired the mentality of a servant. Try to recall the few truly courageous Egyptians you have met in your life. The Egyptian, no matter how high he has risen or how well educated he has become, will cringe before you if you are the stronger, smiling to your face and buttering you up while he hates you and tries to bring about your downfall by some foolproof covert means that will cost him neither confrontation nor danger. A mere servant, that’s your Egyptian. I hate the Egyptians and I hate Egypt. I hate it with all my heart and hope it gets even worse and more wretched. Even though I take care to hide this hatred (to avoid stupid problems), sometimes I can’t keep it in. Once, at the house of one of my colleagues, I was watching a soccer match between Egypt and an African country called Zaire, and when the African player scored the winning goal, I yelled out loud with joy while the others expressed their disapproval at my happiness at our defeat. I paid them no attention, though, and continued watching, with schadenfreude, the faces of the defeated Egyptians. Their expressions were flat and broken and their features exuded sorrow and impotence. This is the way the Egyptians have really looked for thousands of years.
2
My mind was freed of delusions at one go, a fact of which I am proud, for I have known many men, some of them intelligent and well educated, who wasted their lives on phantasms—beliefs and theories the dupes spent years chasing like a mirage. Nationalism, religion, Marxism—all those dazzling words revealed their spuriousness to me at an early age. Getting rid of religion was easy. Marxism lasted longer. I acknowledge that Marxism has a rational side that deserves respect, and at the same time it leaves a mark on the soul that outlasts the idea itself. I remained a committed Marxist for two years, but I always felt I’d change. I couldn’t understand why I should make sacrifices for vulgar creatures like workers and peasants. I used to observe the common people exchanging their banal jokes. I’d watch them on their feast days when they surged onto the streets like over-excited beasts, treading everything beautiful under their blind heavy feet, and Marx’s grand words about them would shrivel before my contempt and hatred. Was I going to struggle and die for the likes of those? They were animals who deserved nothing but derision and to be ruled by terror; that was the only language they understood. Try just once for yourself being weak in front of one of them and see what he does to you.
With the passing of Marxism, I achieved full control over my mind and its liberation, and then I felt lonely. Delusions, much as they deceive you, also keep you company. The cold severe truth on the other hand casts you into a cruel wilderness. My success in taming my mind was directly paralleled by my failure to gain mastery over my feelings. The most complex mental problems pose no challenge to my thinking but any spontaneous simple interaction with people throws me into confusion and renders me powerless. There is a confirmed inverse relationship between awareness and action by which the people most apt to act are the most lethargic mentally and the dumbest, and vice versa. As awareness grows, so the ability to act is disturbed. My head—which never stops thinking and reviewing every single possibility and probability—this same head impedes my correct conduct in situations that most people consider quite ordinary and which they negotiate with complete ease. Before I go to visit a friend at his house for the first time, I am kept awake by the thought that the doorkeeper, whom I don’t know, will stop me and ask me which apartment I’m going to. Worrying over the doorkeeper’s question becomes such an obsession for me that I often insist to my friends that we meet in a public place rather than in their homes (without, of course, disclosing the reason to them), and when I’m forced in the end to face the moment when I have to cross the lobby of an apartment block in which my friend lives, I’m as ill at ease as a child, and I whistle, or look at the watch on my wrist, or fiddle with my shirt sleeve, to show that I am not concerned. On such occasions, the doorkeeper’s call quickly reaches me, for I will have passed him by, ignoring his enquiry and hurrying on without paying him any attention; but he will rush after me, catch up with me, and finally stop and question me; and, despite that fact that I am expecting the question, I feel each time an immense sense of affront at everything that has happened. When I respond, I sometimes do so roughly and harshly and at other times I am totally demolished before him, stammering and producing my words falteringly and agitatedly; and then the doorkeeper draws himself to his full height, his voice rises, and he stares in my face with wide-open, powerful eyes, for he has sensed my weakness. What I am never capable of in such circumstances is to give the impression of being