Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir : Tracking Emerging Expressions of Egyptian Identity [1 ed.] 9781443859165, 9781443856461

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Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir

Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir: Tracking Emerging Expressions of Egyptian Identity

Edited by

Emily Golson, Loubna Youssef and Amanda Fields

Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir: Tracking Emerging Expressions of Egyptian Identity, Edited by Emily Golson, Loubna Youssef, Amanda Fields This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Emily Golson, Loubna Youssef, Amanda Fields and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5646-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5646-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part I Overview: When Bi-lingual becomes Bi-Rhetorical Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution ....... 9 Loubna Youssef Part II Transforming Spoken, Written, and Visual Expression: Rhetoric, Literature, Language and Technology Arabizi: From Techno-lution to Revolution .............................................. 31 Lelania Sperrazza The Literate and the Literary: Interview with Denys Johnson-Davies ..... 41 Lammert Holdijk I Was Here: A History of Graffiti in Egypt, from Ancient to Modern ...... 51 Timothy Warren Shooting in the Square: Video Reflections of a Time of Change .............. 65 Belle Gironda Part III Rhetorics of Social and Moral Identity: The Search for Principles and Models of Leadership The Egyptian Revolution and Malak Hifni Nasif: Lessons Learned ........ 75 Maha A. Hassan Notes on the Friday Noon Prayer: The Promise of Sheikh Mohammad Al- GhazƗli’s “To the Masjid”................................................................... 87 Loubna A. Youssef

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Table of Contents

Unique Situations Demand a Rare Leader: Father Daniel Issacs’ “Nothing is Too Difficult for You” ......................................................... 115 Michael Gibson Part IV Who Am I: Rhetoric, Memory and Personal Identity Growth and Maturation: Developing Identity in the Tahrir Square Classroom ................................................................................................ 131 Ghada El Shimi Who Am I ˮΎϧ΁ Ϧϣ : Narratives of Identity Struggles in Young Egyptian Adults ....................................................................................... 137 Noelle Houssney Ehab Omar Has a Question: Writing the Past into the Future .......................... 145 James P. Austin Part V Epilogue Of Place and Possibility........................................................................... 153 Melanie Carter About the Contributors ............................................................................ 157

INTRODUCTION

If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it cannot flee. —Umar ibn al-Khattab The Second Khalifa of the Muslims 584-644 CE

Egypt embraces and embodies paradox. It is a place where ancient artifacts and everyday occurrences promote new instances of inexplicable logic. This in itself is not unusual for a country located between east and west. What is unusual, however, are the resident responses to questions about Egypt. Prior to January 25, 2011, when asked about unusual images, sights, or sounds, Cairene responses ranged from a litany of complaints to well-rehearsed, guidebook descriptions of picturesque neighborhoods and magnificent ruins. Occasionally, however, a thoughtful resident would remain silent, leaving visitors and guests to accept the smiles, shrugs, honking horns, blaring loudspeakers, and strings of expletives as background ambience, as sound without meaning and action without purpose. During and after the January 25 Revolution, as a result of the push for freedom of expression, the meaning of the frantic sounds and unusual silences became more coherent. But while the call for democracy resulted in an explosive articulation of Egypt’s problems, the demand for change further complicated questions about Egyptian identity. The goal of this volume is to open and advance conversations about Egyptian identity in order to further understand some of the changes that appear to have altered and strengthened Egyptians’ perceptions of themselves. The primary focus is on written expression as viewed through the lenses of rhetoric, language, and communication. The opening essay posits what appears to be an unprecedented shift in the use of rhetoric, balãgha, and the Arab language, a shift that allows for the clarity of purpose articulated in the Tahrir revolution. The following essays support and expand upon claims of shifting identities that may or may not have emerged from a growing awareness of the events in Tahrir. Some of the essays, such as those on Malak Hifni Nasif, Imam Mohammad Al-GhazƗli, and Father Daniel Issac, link pre-revolutionary to revolutionary Egypt by suggesting that the 2011 revolution had been written into the culture

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Introduction

before it erupted in Tahrir and elsewhere. Other essays, such as those on the appearance of Arabizi and the debate over translation, note problems associated with periods of social or cultural transition as well as periods of revolution. Although each contribution was written without knowledge of the others, the collection creates a trajectory toward larger questions that include but are not limited to the role of language and rhetoric in the formation of personal identity and the role of language and rhetoric in the preservation and transformation of culture and society. Our study is limited to Cairo and its surroundings. Our contributors are native and non-native, current and ex-residents of the city. As professional scholars and/or teachers of rhetoric and composition, a discipline which cuts across several fields of knowledge and values all modes of expression, they have chosen a variety of approaches to examine their selected subjects, including inquiry through qualitative research, case studies, interaction with expert opinion, and lyrical exploration. The intended audience for the collection includes scholars and/or visitors to Egypt who seek additional insight into a few of the forces that are contributing to the shaping of Egyptian identities and identifications. For scholars, the collection offers examples of rhetorical approaches to objects, events, and concepts that emerge from disciplines other than their own. For students or visitors, the collection offers unique glimpses into potential possibilities of meaning for the sights and sounds that intrigue them. For all, it suggests and supports a complex view of what rhetorician Lester Faigley termed “fragments of rationality,” fragments that suggest rather than assert several possibilities for an ever evolving whole. In keeping with the above, the volume imagines a conversation among contributors. In order to facilitate comprehension, its editors have divided the essays into six sections that support connections and correlations within and among the pieces. Section one provides a rationale for the organization of the contents of the volume and a justification for the contributors’ use of different genres and styles of writing. Section two offers a framework for the discussions that appear in the remainder of the volume. After examining a brief history of balãgha and comparing it to definitions of western rhetoric, Loubna Youssef uses the rhetoric of the Tahrir revolution and the language of a contemporary novel to argue for a paradigm shift in the Egyptian rhetorical tradition. Section three expands upon the ideas expressed in the overview, with essays by Lelania Sperrazza, Lammert Holdijk, Tim Warren, and Belle Gironda extending Youssef’s claim of a paradigm shift through observations on language, literacy, and identity as they appear in selected mediums, purposes, and situations. Elaborating on the ways in which Arabizi, when combined with

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technology, has encouraged the growth of hybrid languages and lifestyles, Lelania Sperrazza argues that the globalization of English-based technology has not only caused today’s generation of western-educated Egyptians to rely on English as the dominant form of electronic communication, but also infiltrated the everyday speech of educated young Egyptian adults, causing them to speak Arabizi, a mixture of Arabic and English that reflects conflicting messages about “who they are and what they want to be.” Lammert Holdijk extends the globalization dilemma and the search for more effective language by highlighting translator Denys Johnson-Davies’s provocative claims about the state of the Arabic language in general and contemporary fiction in particular. Positing that formal Arabic is dead, Johnson-Davies argues for the validity of colloquial Egyptian and the need for more attention to the spoken word as it plays out in fiction. Tim Warren takes up the issue of modes of expression by tracing a trajectory of graffiti from facts, stylized flattery, and declarations of intimate feelings to unprecedented disapprovals of government figures while Belle Gironda analyzes how her video depictions of the unexpected eruptions and changes in Cairo and its environs became, for her, a device through which she could reflect upon her position as an outsider to the language and culture of the city. In section four, Maha Hassan, Loubna Youssef, and Michael Gibson address the need for social and moral models by reexamining the words of three important Egyptian figures: Malak Hifni Nasif, a late twentieth century Egyptian feminist, Sheikh Mohammad Al-GhazƗli, a midtwentieth century imam, and Father Daniel, a contemporary Coptic priest. Recognizing that Nasif’s attempts to advance women’s rights may seem surprisingly western, Maha Hassan carefully links Nasif’’s restrained call for better education for women to those of several other late nineteenth century reformers, such as Jaml El-Din Al Afghani, who drew upon the Islamic principle of shuraa, of putting an end to despotic rule, to call for radical social change. Emphasizing Malak Nasif’s rhetorical skills, Hassan then proceeds to compare Nasif’s restrained approach to reform to that of the protestors in Tahrir. In a similar fashion, Loubna Youssef compares the rhetoric, and oratory in Sheikh Mohammad Al-GhazƗli’s “To the Masjid” with the language and intent of the protestors in Tahrir to suggest that GhazƗli’s values, eloquence, and well-structured khotƗb provide a good model of oratory and leadership for future leaders of Egypt. Adding to Hassan and Youssef’s claims, Michael Gibson’s examination of Father Daniel Isaac’s improvisation on traditional Coptic sermons and rituals offers tentative, yet persuasive insights into why Daniel’s leadership and innovative sermons appeal to many Egyptians.

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Introduction

Section five explores the identity dilemmas of young Egyptian adults, some of whom were in Tahrir on the first day of the revolution. Arguing that Tahrir provided the perfect moment for an accelerated transition to adulthood, Ghada el Shimi introduces a psychosocial theory that isolates specific stages of identity development in order to link those stages to moments when, as Chickering and Reisser describe it, “behavior becomes congruent with belief,” when competing forces that obscured identity merge into one, and when, according to witnesses and participants, a diverse population united to support one cause. Expanding on identity issues, Noelle Houssney Ehab follows with a personal narrative that demonstrates how language expectations have shaped her perception of self. Quoting Amin Maalouf, who writes that, “Identity cannot be compartmentalized,” Houssney Ehab isolates some of the identity problems that arise in Egyptians with “mixed” backgrounds who must identify with both a globalized and a nationalized world. Moving away from Tahrir and offering a different perspective on shaping identity, James P. Austin constructs a concept of memory as identity by synthesizing contemporary western discussions of how creative nonfiction writers shape life-changing events. Recalling an exchange between an experienced American writer and a novice Egyptian writer about a detail that appeared in the young writer’s narrative of a personal memory, Austin shifts the focus of the conversation from the young Egyptian’s question about the accuracy of memory, to the role of memory and representation in writing, to the different ways in which genres, cultures (and cultures of writing) privilege the recitation of factual truth over articulation of feeling, imagination, emotional truth, and critical truth. The conversation not only recalls what was once a crucial difference between Egyptian and western learning (memorization versus critical thinking), but continues to be a subject of interest to those who pursue cross cultural comparisons of written expression. Finally, in section six, poet Melanie Carter’s lyrical epilogue echoes some of Austin’s interest in impressions, thoughts, and emotional and critical truth while adding one last perspective to the conversation. Emphasizing the limitations and possibilities of words, the frailty of memory, and the inherent transformational properties of time and space, Carter locates thought and imagination in a seemingly isolated physical landscape that could pass for any of the massive construction sites outside or inside of the city. While a barrage of images evokes the thoughtless energy that accompanies the rapid transformation of the physical environment, the speaker’s fragmented thoughts expose diverse realizations that appear to be byproducts produced by constant exposure to

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a collective, changing identity. The poem provides a fitting conclusion to the volume because it not only captures the energy of transformation, but also locates identity in the interplay of isolated moments and countless images, an approach that supports the diverse, interconnected insights articulated by the contributors to the book. Our collection was drafted before the January 25 revolution, revised during the period prior to Mohammed Morsi’s election, and revised once more when several entities and forces in Egyptian society, including thirty-three million civilians, the judiciary, Al-Azhar, the Egyptian Church, the army, the police, and various political parties initiated a call for President Morsi’s removal. As a new constitution takes shape, it is now clear that the democracy initially called for in Tahrir will draw upon forces peculiar to Egypt, and that it will take time to understand the meanings and identities that are to become a part of Egypt’s democratic transformation. This volume attempts to gain insight into these emerging meanings and identities through a process that allows informed knowledge and thoughtful observations to enter, transform, and occasionally emerge at unexpected moments to form a network of insights that provide partial responses to expressions of identity located throughout the work. It is our hope that our readers will find value in this approach as Egypt’s revolution continues. Emily Golson Loubna Youssef Amanda Fields

PART I OVERVIEW: WHEN BI-LINGUAL BECOMES BI-RHETORICAL

BALÃGHA OR RHETORIC? THE LANGUAGE OF THE TAHRIR SQUARE REVOLUTION LOUBNA A. YOUSSEF ϡΎψϨϟ΍ ρΎϘγ· Ϊϳήϳ ΐόθϟ΍ (The People Want to Bring Down the Regime) Street Chant Heard Throughout Cairo During January 25, 2011 Revolution

The spectacular live scenes of the revolution of 25th January 2011 in Medan El-Tahrir (Liberation Square) caught the attention of the world. Faces and voices of men, women, and children, the colors of the Egyptian flag, the slogans, chants, songs, artwork and humorous placards and sketches persuaded poets, politicians, reporters, and tourists to visit the Square. Portraits of the young martyrs that were seen in Egypt in every shape and size (on post cards and tee shirts, and on larger than life posters) honored courageous young Egyptian role models who lost their lives during the revolution. The resulting collage has inspired not only Egyptians, but millions elsewhere. A question that has been raised time and again is: how will all this contribute to the good of Egypt? The range of answers is vast and unpredictable, but there is a positive spirit of change. Though it is impossible to fathom the impact and repercussions of the revolution on the future of Egypt, it is possible to sift through the variety of Arabics employed on the Medan during the eighteen days that led to the fall of the Mubarak regime to fathom how language contributed to the relatively peaceful unfolding of the event. This paper argues that the language of Tahrir was made possible by a paradigm shift that featured a mergence of Arabic balãgha and western rhetoric to create a form of communication that appealed to Egyptians and to audiences throughout the world. The challenging question that this paper attempts to answer is: what made the mergence of two different fields of knowledge, balãgha and rhetoric, possible?

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution

A Brief Comparison In order to answer this question, it is first necessary to distinguish between balãgha and rhetoric, which have occasionally been viewed as synonymous. These are two different disciplines that actually have different origins, uses, and goals. Whereas in pre-Islamic times, balãgha was linked to poetry, poetics and oration, post-Islam established a bond between balãgha and religion, politics, philosophy, literature, and criticism. During Plato’s time, rhetoric started as the art of persuasion in the realm of public speaking (politics and law), but is now viewed as the scholarly evaluation and production of “all forms of communication: scientific, philosophical, historical, political, legal, and even poetic” (Berlin 769). Contemporary western rhetoric attempts to understand the psychological as well as philosophical and political implications of specific language use, while contemporary balãgha studies the eloquence of the Qur’an and all forms of Arabic writing. Both support effective communication, but unlike western rhetoric, which tends to isolate both strong and weak uses of language, balãgha foregoes the study of “all forms of communication,” and the discussions of the strong, weak, and unusual that accompany these analyses in order to present the best form of communication, with the Qur’an as the model. When writers like Philip Halldén use the term rhetoric to refer to balãgha and/or khatãba (oration), this implies that the western and Arabic terms are synonymous, which is far from being true. Each term has its own sources and history and each refers to a discipline that developed in different contexts. Scholars who write in English about Arabic balãgha need to ask themselves: what is meant by the term rhetoric when it is used with reference to the writings of Arabs? Does it refer to the field of knowledge that was founded by Plato and Aristotle, or is it used to refer to the discipline known as balãgha? In this case, the term rhetoric is used for convenience, but it is not accurate. My contention is that rhetoric in western literature is only loosely and conveniently equated with Arabic balãgha. In fact, the Arabic term has implications that are sometimes quite different from the western concept. Logically, of course, because the message of a speech or text will be differently perceived when heard or read by a different audience in a different time period, what constitutes eloquence is different in pre-Islamic Arabia, post-Islam, classical western rhetoric, and in the world we live in today. Nowadays, it is important to acknowledge two broad sets of facts with respect to Arabic as a language and balãgha as a field of knowledge. First, for Muslim Arabs today, the classical Arabic language represented in the

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balãgha of the Qur’an is inimitable, and learning, interpreting, and reciting the Qur’an became the life-long mission of many Muslim scholars in AlAzhar and other similar institutions around the world. Second, there are two other models/forms that are altogether different for writers and speakers of Arabic in modern times: one is both written and oral and is understood by all Arabs, namely Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), while the other is basically oral and constitutes distinct vernaculars being used in different countries in the Arab world. Both forms have undergone change and are evolving through the interaction between users of Arabic who are involved in contexts that are new and different, such as interactions with users of other languages and interaction with concepts that emerged with the development of modern technology. MSA is distinct in being more formal and codified, and is therefore used in writing, but also in the media (radio, TV, newspapers, films) and literary texts. Professor of Arabic philology, El-Said Badawi, convincingly argues that Egyptian Arabic is a version of both classical and MSA. The Arabic Language Academy, established in Egypt in 1934 (others were founded elsewhere in the Arab world) to preserve the sacred language of the Qur’an, limits borrowing from foreign tongues while maintaining the compatibility of Arabic with progress in different branches of knowledge by adding new terms that do not exist in Arabic, such as radio TV, and computer. In 1996, in Comparative Moments, Enani explains that Egyptian Arabic …is not as yet recognized as the language of the ‘canon’. ‘Serious’ writers shun it like the ‘plague’ (to quote Naguib Mahfouz) either because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that it is less capable of capturing the minute and subtle thoughts and feelings dealt with in the ‘canon’ than classical Arabic or even MSA, or because they associate it (after Auerbach) with ‘low’ style (43).

This is changing, and during the revolution, this change has become a reality. The roots of this change started in the middle of the twentieth century when, for example, famous Egyptian poets like Ibrahim Nagi (1898-1953) wrote poetry in which he merges classical and MSA with skill. Lines from his well-known poem Al-Atlãl (The Ruins), with a title that echoes the theme of pre-Islamic poetry, were sung by Egypt’s best known singer in the twentieth century, Om Kolthoum, ΄ϴη ΖϴϘΒΘγ΍ Ύϣ Ζϴτϋ΃ ϲϨϧ΍ ΎϴϠϋ ϲϘΑ΃ Ύϣϭ ϪϴϘΑ΃ Ϣϟ Give me my freedom! Set my hands free! I have given all, keeping nothing back! Your manacles have caused my wrists to bleed;

ΎϳΪϳ ϖϠρ΃ ϲΘϳήΣ ϲϨτϋ΃ ϲϤμόϣ ϲϣΩ΃ ϙΪϴϗ Ϧϣ ϩ΍

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution Why should I keep them when they have caused me to wilt away! (Enani. On Translating Arabic 40)

The reference to freedom is a modern theme, and although this is a love poem, such a reference alludes to the political conditions at a time when Egypt was under colonial rule. Quotations from Arabic poetry are relevant in discussing the development of Arabic as a language leading to the rhetoric of protest during the revolution. Since pre-Islamic times, the Arabs have had a long interest in the recitation of poetry that served as diwãn al-Arab, as a social, economic, religious, and cultural record of their lives. It is in this context that Arab people, believing that “the pen is mightier than the sword”, organize regular poetry festivals as one of the major sources of entertainment. Many scholars have established that the Arab poet has been regarded as a historian and a literary figure who plays a cultural role. With reference to the changes that have occurred in the use of the Arabic language in poetry, citing the late poet and well-known caricaturist Salah Jaheen (1930-1986) will help in showing that in the twentieth century colloquial Egyptian Arabic became an appropriate medium in writing verse that is recognized as poetry with literary merit. Enani translates the following extract by Salah Jaheen in Comparative Moments (45), Ϧϴτϟ΍ ϥ΍ΪϳΩ Ϧϣ ΩϭΩ ϕϭήόϟ΍ϭ Ϧϴρ ϢΤϠϟ΍ ϦϴρΎΣ ϡΪόϟ΍ νέ΃ ϲϠϋ ΍ϮΣϭ ϡΩ΍ ΔϨΠϟ΍ Ϧϣ ϢϬΟήΧ΃ .Ώήϟ΍ ϢϬΒϗΎϋ ϲϨϏϭ ϪΘϨΟ ΍ϮΣ ϦπΣ ϞϤϋ ϡΩ΍ .ϦϴτΤϨϣ ΍ϮϧϮϜϳ ΎϤϬϣ...ϲϨϬΘΘΑ αΎϨϟ΍ϭ With flesh of clay, with veins no better than Clay-bred worms, Adam and Eve are sinking To mortal earth, descending, Punished, expelled by the Lord from heaven, In Eve’s embrace Adam found a new heaven, And to her kept singing! People find happiness, through sinking low Though hopelessly descending!

Jaheen’s ability to create a scene that juxtaposes the story of creation with Adam and Eve’s disobedience, life after the fall, and life in modern times not only attests to the dexterity of the poet, but also to the flexibility of Egyptian colloquial Arabic in conveying complex themes and imagery. The fact that the Arabic stanza here is composed of five lines while the English has eight, shows that in order to translate the imagery into English, Enani needed more space. He includes a note that the translation

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will “lay no claim to utter faithfulness; it does, however, approximate the ‘sense’ “ (45). The popularity of Ibrahim Nagi and Salah Jaheen as poets who used radically different forms of Arabic proves that the audience/reader is receptive in both cases, and that the tools of balãgha are flexible so long as the writer/speaker communicates a message effectively and eloquently. The well-known Arabic proverb ϝΎϘϣ ϡΎϘϣ ϞϜϟ , which means words ought to fit the context, suggests that the rules of propriety in Arab culture must be observed. Although some claim that as disciplines, balãgha and rhetoric have a similar focus, given the different histories of the two terms, substituting one term for the other can be tricky and confusing: to find one term in the target language that is equivalent in meaning to a term in the source language is sometimes impossible. Another case in point is shari‘a and Islamic law. Because of their awareness that Aristotle was writing about a concept different than their own, Arab translators coined the term rituriqa when they translated Aristotle. What misleads Halldén is that he consults scholars like Merlin Swatz (whose biography on the website of Boston University, College of Arts and Science, Department of Religion, states that his “research and teaching focus primarily on the religious and intellectual history of medieval Islam” http://www.bu.edu/religion/ faculty/bios/swartz/) and Herbjorn Jenssen, who also associates the adjective “medieval,” which immediately brings to mind the Middle Ages in Europe, with Islam. What is “medieval Islam”? Bringing the terms Islam and medieval together shows a misunderstanding of the history of Islamic thought. Halldén’s use of the term “medieval Muslim philosophy” (20) when he discusses philosophers like Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rush is inappropriate because it infers a western concept of the Dark Ages, backwardness, and the domination of the Church. In other words, the term “medieval” has negative connotations that are in sharp contrast with the golden age of enlightenment that these philosophers contributed to. When comparing balãgha and rhetoric, it becomes clear that they are similar in being problematic terms, and in laying an emphasis on how a speaker/writer effectively uses language to address an audience/reader in a specific context. Balãgha in the Arab culture since pre-Islamic time and rhetoric in the western world since Plato and Aristotle are two disciplines that study the “art” of communicating effectively orally and in writing. Both balãgha and rhetoric developed in time and the process involved the efforts of scholars in different fields of knowledge. Each has become a discipline in its own right, affecting other disciplines, but each is studied and applied differently. It is true that there are grounds where they overlap,

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution

but the two terms cannot be used as synonyms. The stages through which they developed are categorically different. While in English the concept of rhetoric is directly related to its classical provenance, in Arabic there have been many sources for the definition of balãgha, not necessarily consonant with one another or related to one another. In pre-Islamic times, the Arabs were interested in embellishment, which they never believed to be the special domain of poetry, but a common vehicle for articulation and eloquence. So much so, in fact, that Arabic, contrary to modern European languages, has come to be largely figurative. It is true that both balãgha and rhetoric started as oral activities with the ultimate goal of persuading an audience, but each developed differently: balãgha, which initially was associated with the decorative use of language in poetry and oration, developed into the study of the inimitable language of the Qur’an, and eventually matured to become the field of knowledge that embraces three main branches, namely ϊϳΪΒϟ΍ ϢϠϋϭ ϥΎϴΒϟ΍ ϢϠϋϭ ϲϧΎόϤϟ΍ ϢϠϋ ‘ilm ma‘ani (the science of meanings),‘ilm bayãn (the science of articulation, good style, and clarity of ideas and speech), and ‘ilm badee‘ (the science of beauty/ ornamentation/invention). Rhetoric, which was initially associated with the theoretical foundation that supported Greek conceptions of the art of discovery and/or persuasion, became associated with poetics, on the one hand, and religion, on the other, during the late Classical through Renaissance periods, was stripped of its poetic and philosophical underpinnings during the post Renaissance, and now, has emerged as the discipline that cuts across both humanities and social sciences to examine oral and written texts in order to encourage effective communication. In the early stages of their development, both balãgha and rhetoric stressed the role of a good orator, but in the Arab tradition, the orator had to be well versed in the use of language, while in classical rhetoric, the orator provided convincing evidence to his listeners along with a claim to discovering the truth for all time, or, in the case of the Sophists, the “truth” of the moment. Balãgha, at this early stage, stood for the linguistic virtuosity and mental alertness of the speaker in narration and/or persuasion rather than in content. Rhetoric, however, valued imparting knowledge by integrating logos, ethos, and pathos. It is ultimately the use of words to persuade an audience. Both balãgha and rhetoric highlight the context within which the speaker/writer is communicating with the audience/reader. The context in which each is used is different, and since contexts are different, the message and ways of conveying it are different as well. Both balãgha and rhetoric developed through their interaction with other fields of knowledge: balãgha was studied in relation to literature, linguistics, Qur’anic studies, philosophy and logic; and rhetoric

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developed in relation to philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science and linguistics. Both balãgha and rhetoric stressed language as an important tool of communication, but their emphasis on content is different.

The Paradigm Shift But what is the purpose of this comparison? The first answer is an attempt at mutual understanding. The second is that, although these two disciplines have similarities and differences that ought to be discussed at more length and in depth, during the 25th January revolution, the boundaries of balãgha and rhetoric dissolved. The protestors in Tahrir Square were not only addressing Egyptians to send one message to the ruling power and another that is altogether different to their fellow Egyptians, but they were also communicating with the world. The choice of the word ΔϴϤϠγ, that is peaceful, for example, is effective in making two announcements, one to one another and the other to the world. The fact that the protestors had a hold on Tahrir Square gave rise to the possibility of armed conflict with the police, as represented by the pro-Mubarak powers on the one hand and members of the Armed Forces on the other. To the world, the protestors were revealing the true nonviolent nature of the Egyptian. They put their Blackberries and iPhones to good use, and when the Ministry of Interior turned off the Internet and mobile connections, those resourceful young Egyptians were ingenious in establishing a podium on the Square. Though Arabic, naturally, was the dominant language they used, it was a form of Egyptian Arabic that seemed universal. Despite the possibility for miscommunication between individuals and between governments, and because of the radical development of instant means of communication, this was not the case in what became known as “The Republic of Tahrir”. Even though misunderstandings could have occurred, during the 18 days that led to the stepping down of former President Mubarak, the balãgha/rhetoric of protest exhibited clarity of vision that was unbeatable. Somehow, the protestors had mastered the “art” of communicating effectively with spoken chants and written slogans. With a sense of humor, their main demand that Mubarak leave (ϞΣέ· i.e. leave) became a witty combination of a slogan in both Arabic and English when they said, “Go ϲϨόϳ ϞΣέ·” (Leave means Go). This demand, which starts with the Arabic imperative “Leave”, soon became a chant when they added to ϲϨόϳ ϞΣέ· Go” ˮ”No ϻ΍ϭ ϢϫΎϓ

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution

This clearly orders Mubarak to leave and humorously asks him whether he understands or not. One placard read: “Mubarak: shift – delete” and another, “Mubarak: Game Over”. It is important to note that the protestors were not simply gifted with the right language at the right time. They managed to convey their message clearly and succinctly. The well-known proverb “brevity is the soul of wit” is a basic rhetorical concept in English that did not exist in the Arabic of the past. The “soul of wit” in Arabic is expatiation, a use of speech that demonstrates a powerful command of language and idea via an emphasis in form over content and linguistic virtuosity over meaning. The protestors in “The Republic of Tahrir” knew better than to revert to this tradition. Young and well educated, they demonstrated that their use of language had gone through a paradigm shift. Skillfully employing the most up-to-date technology, they acknowledged that expatiation was inappropriate by shrewdly substituting foreign terms and concepts. I believe they made it clear that, in Arabic, the old rhetoric, which resides in language, is dead and buried. These protestors were selective, and made sure that the words they used conveyed a clear, straightforward message. If this transformation is real, what is the process that led to this? Many claimed that a “revolution of the hungry” was bound to happen in Egypt because of the dire conditions in which a large segment of the Egyptian population lived. What happened, however, was a revolution by a group that was criticized as living in a bubble: educated young men and women who had the basic comforts of life and more. Because of their extensive exposure to western culture, they had absorbed some of the premises that underlie western rhetoric and the western use of technology without realizing its implications. Much has already been said about how Facebook brought these young men and women together, about the martyrs, the withdrawal of the police from Egyptian streets, the invasion of the Medan by camels and horses, the freeing of prisoners, the burning of police stations and other sites, the bullets and tear gas, the lack of street security, the mass looting, the National Democratic Party thugs, the curfew, the imprisonment of x-ministers and business men, the different agendas of the protestors, the counter-revolution, the role of the Armed Forces, the problem of the media, the tension between Muslims and Christians, the Muslim Brotherhood, the amending of specific Constitutional articles, the Egyptian sense of humor, the corruption and injustice that prevailed for thirty years, and the list can go on. The fact remains that a variety of social and economic factors have been at play in Egypt throughout the past three or four decades leading to cultural changes that were reflected in the way the rhetoric of protest in Arabic became effective.

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A few months after Mubarak stepped down, more has become evident about the profile of the protesters in Tahrir and the identity of the martyrs. They are mostly the sons and daughters of middle class Egyptian parents who invested in giving their children an education. Using the most up-todate technology, these young adults agreed to meet in Tahrir to speak to the myriads of Cairenes that take nightly strolls along an adjacent section of the Nile. When it became evident that the protest was more than young adults criticizing the problems of Egypt, many parents rushed to support their children. As parents, extended family, friends and neighbors lined up to enter “The Republic of Tahrir” from Kasr Al-Nile Bridge, young men and women who helped the flow of the screening process warmly greeted them. Egyptians are known to be warm and hospitable, but since when have they started standing in line? Since when have the Egyptians become so organized? No one huffed and puffed or shook their fists and shouted. When it was my turn to go through the screening process, one polite, welldressed young lady in jeans and a headscarf checked my ID, and apologetically searched my bag. When asked why she was so rigorous, she said they have to do the job efficiently, but still make sure there are no weapons on the Medan. Once in the Medan, even before 11th February, the spirit of jubilation that swept the place was energizing. Touring the Medan, one encountered friends, Egyptian and foreign colleagues students, and unfamiliar faces, many of which soon became familiar. Joining the members of the various economic and social classes were representatives of the three migrations that had occurred in the last four decades: migrants from rural areas to cities, migrants from Egypt to Arab or western countries, and migrants from the crowded Cairo and Giza to the new gated communities.

The Protest Community and Popular Culture It would be interesting to study how each of these waves of migrants play a different role in the way many Arabics merge when Egyptians talk and write today, but this is beyond the scope of this essay. What is important is that in the Medan, the protestors spoke in the same voice, and the different forms of Arabic, namely classical Arabic, Qur’anic quotations, Modern Standard Arabic, and the Egyptian dialect, seemed to merge. Statements in classical Arabic like ϡΎψϨϟ΍ ρΎϘγ· Ϊϳήϳ ΐόθϟ΍ (The Egyptian people want to bring down the regime), and βϴ΋ήϟ΍ ρΎϘγ· Ϊϳήϳ ΐόθϟ΍ (The Egyptian people want to bring down the President), and later Ϊϳήϳ ΐόθϟ΍ ϥ΍ΪϴϤϟ΍ ϕϼΧ΃ (The Egyptian people want the code of ethics of the Medan), reverberated in Tahrir Square and in the world on every TV channel, in

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution

every newspaper, and on Internet sites like youtube.com and Twitter. National songs from the 1960s by Om Kolthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez were heard and sung, and the following classical lines of poetry by Tunisian poet Aboul Qassem Al Shabi (1909-1934) were recited everywhere, έΪϘϟ΍ ΐϴΠΘδϳ ϥ΁ ΪΑ ϼϓ ΓΎ˰˰ϴΤϟ΍ Ω΍έ΃ ΎϣϮϳ ΐόθϟ΍΍ ΍Ϋ· βϜϨϳ ϥ΃ Ϊ˰˰˰ϴϘϠϟ Ϊ˷ ˰˰˰˰Α ϻϭ ϲϠ˰˰˰ΠϨϳ ϥ΃ Ϟ˰˰˰ϴϠϟ Ϊ˰Α ϻϭ Should the people, one day, desire to live, fate will have to answer their call; The darkness of night will have to fade, and the chains will have to break.

These lines, which most if not all Egyptian children memorize in school, became the title of a Facebook group during the January revolution. The emphasis on the “people” as the agent of change, and the transformation that is inevitable when their will is mobilized, are themes that the protestors needed to convey. The images of light replacing the previous pervading darkness and of a sense of freedom after breaking the chains of bondage and fear were transmitted to spread and dominate the Medan. The youth who chanted the lines quoted above started the uprising that became a revolution of the people. These protestors were the residents of Greater Cairo, joined by members of the first group of migrants who originally lived in the capital, but moved recently to gated communities in satellite cities like New Cairo and New Giza. Some maintain that this class of Egyptians, who have gardens and swimming pools, try to seclude and detach themselves from what is going on in the country. The January revolution has revealed that this is not true. It is acknowledged that many of the youth who spent days and even nights in Tahrir Square belong to this class. These youngsters, as it has now become clear, are a force to be reckoned with. They are well educated, skilled in using technology, and have experience in the job market. TV talk shows have hosted their parents, who told stories about how they were summoned by their children to Tahrir to bring medical supplies, food, and blankets. Professor of surgery at the Kasr Al-Einy University Hospital, Tarek Helmy appeared on the well-known Mona Al Shazly talk show to narrate the details of how his daughter, who was among the young protestors, helped in establishing a hospital on the Square. He confessed that his attempts to detach himself from what was going on failed when his daughter cried for help when the protestors were attacked with live bullets; and, then, once he got to the Medan, he was impressed by how the youngsters managed the Medan, and stayed on until Mubarak stepped down.

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The second group constitutes migrants who have either gone to earn a living in one of the Arab countries or in the west. They have close inextricable ties with their hometowns and visit Egypt often. Talk shows have invited many who came to Cairo to especially take part in the revolution. The most well-known is Wael Ghonim, the thirty year old Egyptian computer engineer who was the head of marketing, Middle East and North Africa at Google in the United Arab Emirates. Because of his activism on Facebook and in Tahrir Square, he became a celebrity overnight, occupying the top position of Time magazine’s list of the world’s hundred most influential people. Other more prominent Egyptians who belong to this group and have become inspiring icons that are familiar to Egyptians everywhere, especially since they all received their basic education in Egypt, are the Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail, Mohammad Al Baradei who was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Imperial College London, Magdy Yaqoub. Because they appear on Egyptian talk shows often, and their pictures are published in newspapers, their faces, voices, and achievements are public knowledge. They have a credibility that gives the young hope. Although they have spent most of their lives abroad, they are often visible in Egypt, and each in his own way took part in demonstrating that reform and development are possible. When they are interviewed on TV, they express their willingness to support Egypt’s renaissance” by stressing the value of teamwork and research while highlighting the names of prominent Egyptians in all walks of life who live in Egypt and support reform. They publicly convey admiration for institutions like the Library of Alexandria, and for the efforts of figures like renowned professor of urology Mohammad Ghoniem and the pioneer in critical care medicine Sherif Mokhtar for establishing and running The Mansoura Urology and Nephrology Center and The Critical Care Center of Kasr Al-Einy University Hospital respectively. Such heroic accomplishments in hard times prove that excellence is achievable. The novels of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz and of less famous but equally revolutionary writers like Alaa Al-Aswany and Essam Youssef convey the message that change and progress are both vital and feasible. Films like ϩήδϴϣ ϦϴΣ (When it is Convenient) and κϗήϣϭ ϦδΣ (Hassan and Marcos), and miniseries like ϥΎΠϬϟ΍ Ζϓ΃έ (Raafat Al Haggan) and ϥϮϜϳ ϥ΃ ΐΠϳ ΎϤϛ ΦϳέΎΘϟ΍ (History as it Ought to be Written), to give but a few examples, sparked a deep concern in national problems and shaped the consciousness of Egyptian youngsters. The third group is the largest in terms of numbers, and has consequently affected the population density and everyday life in Greater Cairo and

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution

other cities, like Alexandria, that have received tides of rural migrants who left their land in rural areas to find blue-collar jobs. These individuals and families wanted nothing more than a job for a breadwinner and a roof over their heads. In the process of obtaining their goals, they were able to retain the same close ties with their extended families and start new patterns of social relations. The parents of these families are often illiterate, but their children go to public schools that allow them to be semi-literate. They enjoy movies, lyrics, and music specifically created for them, written in a Egyptian colloquial dialect (generally known to be the easiest form of Modern Standard Arabic) used in their villages. This is why it became possible for Sha’aban Abdel Reheem, a man who ironed clothes for a living, to emerge as the voice of the people and become a superstar almost overnight. His songs can be heard in buses, taxis, weddings, and on cell phones. Movie sequels like the “Al-Limby” series, with the name of the protagonist echoing the name of Edmund Allenby, a commander who led the British army in Egypt, starring the comedian Muhammad Saad, address this audience. They have made him a box office hit. Unlike Saad, who is regarded by the middle class as rather vulgar, Adel Emam, another comedian who attracts a similarly large audience, plays the leading role in movies that appeal to a wider public. For 18 days in the “Republic of Tahrir” representatives of these three groups coexisted and cooperated in harmony; and the discrepancy between rich and poor, Muslim and Christian did not exist. In time, investigations will determine who was responsible for the thugs, the use of live ammunition, the freeing of prisoners, the burning of churches and police stations, the withdrawal of the police force, and more. What is remarkable from my point of view is the form of Arabic used in the Medan. The question is: why was it effective in mobilizing the Egyptian masses, toppling the regime, and appealing to the world at large? These young adults understand the value of both form and content to get a message across. The short answer to this question lies in the fact that the intensely rich and complex cultural life of Egypt has equipped the young Egyptians with the various necessary skills to persistently and successfully challenge a most stubborn regime. Another dimension of the answer comes in the form of an analogy between Egyptian life in general and the chaotic life of Cairene traffic. Although the streets of Cairo are often congested, and there are no lanes and stop signs, somehow Egyptian drivers miraculously manage; to the surprise of many, the city boasts a surprisingly low accident rate. Like the driver of a car in the heart of Cairo, the individual in Egypt has to cope with an array of variables. Whereas the variables in the case of the driver are vehicles of different sizes, pedestrians, donkey

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carts, and the risks of being on the road during traffic jams, the challenges the individual faces are socio-economic and demographic. This is all summed up in the simple lyrics of a popular song by the Egyptian pop singer Ahmed Adaweya, in which he describes life in Cairo saying, Crowded, oh, it’s all very crowded, Crowed, and I lost sight of those I love, Crowded and there’s no mercy, Crowded like a Moulid, a birthday, without a host.

ϪϤΣί ΎϴϧΩ Ύϳ ϪϤΣί ΐϳΎΒΤϟ΍ ΍ϮϫΎΗϭ ϪϤΣί ϪϤΣέ εΩΎϋΎϣϭ ϪϤΣί ΐϳΎϏ ϪΒΣΎλϭ ΪϟϮϣ

The incremental repetition and the symmetrical structures in this colloquial Egyptian Arabic extract are adorned with rhyme, exhibiting all the balance required both in meaning and in tension, as well as the typical rhetorical antithesis. The message here is obvious: life in Egypt is unbearable and there must be a way out. The image of the crowds that overwhelms these lines can be seen everywhere in Cairo, often referred to in Arabic as Misr, a term that alludes to the entire country. There appears to be a series of complaints here: the crowds, the sense of estrangement and isolation, the lack of mercy, the assumption that there should be a Moulid, a birthday celebration, but there is no birthday. There is only a sharp and disturbing sense of vacancy brought on by the absence of the host, the central figure, or leader, whose anniversary is being commemorated. The suggestion here is that a savior is needed.

Shifts in Literature Just as the streets reflect a shift in the use of rhetoric and language, contemporary novels, written in local Cairene dialect, are also focusing on content that is quite revolutionary for Egyptians. In his novel Rob3 Gram (A ¼ Gram), which gives the drug addict a voice for the first time in Arabic literature, Essam Youssef tells the story of a charismatic central character, Salah, who slips into addiction. Salah speaks in the first person, and the shift in the novel from the narrative mode in Modern Standard Arabic to dialogue using colloquial language is cleverly employed. Youssef’s text is culture specific and the culture thus transmitted is class and age specific. It addresses a stratum of the upper middle class young men and women in Egypt who are mostly teenagers. Unlike his predecessors, he does not use formal adult language to express dialogue among teenagers, even in Egypt, even among characters from the same social class. Although it is well known that the common Egyptian is not a reader, and that the Arab culture is oral rather than literary, the book sales of Rob3 Gram confirm that the number of readers is growing. Youssef

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targets the middle class young adults, uses their language, and seems to have hit a chord with them. At the beginning of the novel that covers a span of about ten years, when Youssef draws a portrait of the members of Salah’s “gang”, he said the following about one of them, We all liked Hussein, but the one closest to him was Mido despite their arguments about the Ahly and Zamalek teams. He was generous within his means; because of his father’s death, he had very little pocket money. He was kind and witty. He loved beer and hashish, of course. After having a couple of puffs, he would say, - Man! I’m stoned! I think I just smoked hashish! - Good morning sunshine. Cut the stuff and share it. His love of history surfaced after he smoked a joint. He would go on and on, - What are the causes of the “Delican” war? - Who is the leader of the “Delcanian” movement? Is it Tamer Bey Delcan, Haytham pasha, or Mido, the Ahly fan? - Give reasons for what has led to the inner conflict among the members of the Delcan group. - Explain clearly: why did Mido, the Ahly fan, betray Tamer Bey Delcan? (9)

When young Egyptians read this, they easily identify with Hussein, hear his voice, and are attracted to his humor. The rivalry between the Ahly and Zamalek soccer teams, the financial difficulties that result from the loss of a father, the value of kindness, and the thrill of smoking secretly are all too familiar. What is also funny is the list of questions that are typical exam questions with a twist. The incongruity of using typical history exam questions in classical Arabic like “What are the causes of”, “Who is the leader of”, “Give reasons for”, and “Explain clearly”, with reference to an imaginary war and a fictitious movement, is comical. When he replaces the names of historical figures with those of members of the “gang” and precedes these names with colloquial titles like pasha and bey, this incongruity is highlighted. Hussein is naughty, but bright and can make use of his learning in cracking jokes. His interest in history and knowledge of both Arabic and English enable him to integrate a term he fabricated, Delican. In this list of questions, he describes someone delicate, weak or fragile, that is a “Pansy”. This kind of humor was obvious in Tahrir and the inclusion of studies of history was also mentioned in a banner carried by a small girl. It said: “Mubarak: Go quickly: I will have to study all these details in the history course next year.” The previous comparison may seem farfetched since the protestors are

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serious, well educated, and patriotic, and the characters in A ¼ Gram are spoilt, carefree, and irresponsible. Such a reading of the novel, however would be ignoring many characters like Salah’s father and mother, brother, and twin sister, his female friends Mariam and Hala, and male friends Mostafa and Fat-hy, who are all models of propriety, efficiency, and integrity. Salah’s friends, who steal and lie, do so to provide themselves with money for their addiction not because they are evil. They have a sense of humor and are always polite and respectful when they address adults. Like the protestors, Salah is articulate when he expresses his demands in serious situations and like the protestors, he is successful: he manages to get the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department to free his friend ’Atef who was arrested for drug use (86-9) and he also manages to convince the Major to write a 24 hour permit to go home from the camp when he was drafted (166-170). On both occasions, he achieves his purpose through a straightforward expression of his purpose, without fear, but also without arrogance. Despite the fact that Salah becomes an addict who hits rock bottom, and the readers live through detailed accounts of these experiences, he also demonstrate that he can be serious, faithful friend with a good heart, and a hard-working, conscientious employee. When Salah is outraged because his honest, diligent classmate and sincere friend, Fat-hy has to join the Egyptian Armed Forces in the war between Iraq and Kuwait, he writes a letter to Mubarak, concluding his argument by saying, “Mr. President, the responsibility of Fat-hy’s life rests in your hands.” (188) Just as Salah eventually managed to take control of his life so the young adults in Tahrir were fighting to take control of their lives. The other group of characters that are well bred and worthy of respect are the recovering addicts Salah encounters when he attends the Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Amgad, Shady, Seleem, Tawfeeq, Khaled, and Hatem are addicts who are sober, presentable, reliable, and could have very well been among the protestors of Tahrir Square. In one of the meetings, Hatem, who volunteers to be Salah’s sponsor, shares by saying, What’s going on? Are we the ones who are addicts and sick, or are people mad? Frankly, I don’t understand. The behavior of the people on the streets is out of control. On the way I saw two car drivers fighting. One of them cut off the other; how dare he?! They were both wrong: one of them was in the left lane and wanted to go right and the other was in the right lane and wanted to go left. I was driving behind them watching a circus. Each stepped out of his car and I said: “Here’s a fight.” I too stepped out of my car to find two men, one was at least 60 and the other was 65. I stood between them trying to calm them down. For a quarter of an hour I kept repeating: “It’s alright, Sir; nothing happened, Sir;” all in vain. What’s going on? What’s wrong with these people? They are both weak

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution and helpless. One of them could have had a heart attack had he shouted a little. The people on the street have to follow the Program. That would teach them how to respect each other and they should follow Steps and attend 500 meetings in 500 days. These people will drive me crazy. (484)

With no illusions about himself, Hatem reflects on his condition as an addict and makes a general statement about Egyptians that is funny and wise. In addition to being witty, this extract is critical of the streets of Cairo, the tension people are suffering from, and the need for a solution, namely to subject the Egyptians to a rehabilitation Program. The imagery of madness, of a circus and a war are apt in alluding to the many layers of problems that prevail. The protestors in Tahrir exhibit a similar kind of humor and wisdom. During all the phases of the revolution, what was most evident in Tahrir was humor and wisdom. The imagery of madness, a circus and war are ones that can easily be applied to challenges the Egyptians have been living through, the eighteen days in Tahrir and elsewhere in Egypt, and the struggle ahead. On many occasions these images overlap. For the past two decades, rebels from all walks of life have complained openly about corruption and the need for reform, and have consequently been imprisoned. The real nature of the harm that has been incurred is unfathomable, bordering on the ridiculous. The eighteen days in Tahrir have already been depicted as a utopia, moulid, carnival, and/or circus, but as involving a battle as well. Like a moulid, the revolution was born on 25th January in Tahrir, a site that has symbolic associations, being embraced by the governmental administrative complex of the Mogamma, the Omar Makram Mosque, the Arab League headquarters, the Nile Hilton/Ritz Carlton Hotel, the National Democratic Party headquarters (Arab Socialist Union headquarters at the time of Nasser), the Egyptian Museum, a few blocks of residential buildings, and the American University in Cairo, which overlooks the National Geographic Society and the Shura Council. This focal space was claimed by the protestors, lost in a battle with the police and state security forces, and reclaimed after the people forced the police to retreat in the battle of Kasr Al-Nile Bridge. These events ushered in a new culture of freedom and bravery that was shared by millions of men, women and children who later engaged in entertaining spectacles that included eating, singing, acting, folk music, and mimicry of figures who were in power. The slogans and placards in this Tahrir reveal ingenuity. One placard said: “Job Opening: A President for a Country Overlooking Two Seas, with a River, Five Lakes, Three Pyramids, and a Square that Accommodates 5 Million”; and others said: “Go, my arm hurts”, “Go. I got married 20

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days ago and I miss my wife”, “Game Over”, “The Egyptians say: Goodbye Mubarak, and Mubarak replies: Where are they going?” Many humorous messages circulated on cell phones after Mubarak stepped down, one said, “A junkie asked another: what is Facebook? The other answered: it is something they use to remove presidents”, and another said “Egyptians now offer their services to all nations: “Your dictator down in 3 weeks or your money back.” A final, important parallel between the experiences of the young adults in Tahrir Square and those in A ¼ Gram, as conveyed through language, is the process of discovery. In both contexts, the main characters discovered that “Truth can be learned but not taught” (Berlin 772), an important concept in western rhetoric. When the protestors created groups on Facebook to encourage one another to meet in Tahrir Square on 25th January, their plan was to call for reform not to force Mubarak to step down. In time and after the loss of lives in Tahrir and elsewhere, although the demonstrations were peaceful, the demonstrators discovered that they have a voice that can mobilize Egyptians from all walks of life to join them. When about twenty million Egyptians took to the streets of Egypt, Mubarak had no choice but to step down. Like the bond in Tahrir between men and women, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, there is a bond in the rehabilitation center in A ¼ Gram between Muslim Salah and Christian Ameer. The dialogue provides evidence that Salah and Ameer are not simply roommates or friends but brothers. When Salah discovers and stresses the message of the novel that “Brown sugar is poison” (33) and that “Brown sugar is deceptive” (159), he asserts that although he was warned, the narrative shows that he had to learn this himself. Like Berlin, who explains that, “Dialogue can remove error, but it is up to the individual to discover ultimate knowledge” (772), Salah, as a narrator with a message, has a clear purpose: the correction of error. During the party the drug user might be ecstatic, but the party ends tragically with an accident, an overdose, or with the user in prison. Salah lives through a long stage of denial, survives and eventually becomes sober after a difficult journey in the rehabilitation center. Although he made every effort to convince Ameer that hash is addictive, Salah comes to understand that “Truth can be learned but not taught” and “Dialogue can remove error, but it is up to the individual to discover ultimate knowledge” (Berlin 772). Ultimately, the narrative not only confirms that error can be corrected, but that the possibility of hope resides in every error.

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A Summary of Language, Thought, and Action in Tahrir One last notable feature borrowed from western rhetoric was the process of discovery. In order to unite, break the barrier of fear, and gain strength, the protestors had to go through three stages that enabled them to discover how to mobilize the Egyptian population and force Mubarak to step down. The first stage involved creating Facebook groups using both Arabic and English to encourage one another to demonstrate en masse. The members of the three most popular Facebook groups used English titles for these groups, but participants communicated in both languages. They were straightforward and effective. “We are all Khalid Said” is the name of a most popular group to commemorate the brutal murder of the 28 year old Khalid Said, who died while in police custody in Alexandria on 7 June 2010. In no time, 300,000 Facebook members joined the group, took part in public funerals, and voiced the view that they identify with Khalid Said who could have been any of them. The two other popular groups, one featuring Mohammad Baradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the other the 6th of April movement, an association started by young activists in 2008 to support a laborers strike in Mahala Al-Kobra, an industrial town in Egypt, were created to simply call for “change”. Their demands were clear: reform, lifting the emergency law, fighting corruption, and freedom. These Facebook groups were ridiculed in a press conference by Mubarak’s younger son who was being groomed to succeed his father. One reporter asked Gamal Mubarak: “what do you think about the anti-government groups on Facebook?” In dismissal, in a jocular tone, Gamal Mubarak made fun of the question, by asking the audience to get someone to explain to the reporter how meaningless the question is. The second stage started on 25th January, the Day of Revolt when the protestors met in Tahrir (and elsewhere in Egypt). In very simple terms they repeatedly shouted, “The Egyptian people want to bring down the regime.” They called for “dignity, democracy and social justice,” and identified problems like unemployment, poverty, oppression, corruption, police brutality. During the eighteen days the Egyptians spent in Tahrir Square, they discovered that they can establish “The Republic of Tahrir”, a utopia which had its own engineers, doctors, artists, reporters, security system, etc. In “The Republic of Tahrir” there was no conflict between Muslims and Christians, no harassment, no thefts, but peaceful protests. In the third stage, the demonstrations gathered strength and the protestors increased gradually and dramatically after a series of events that led to the fall of Mubarak: when on 26-27th January, the government cut off the

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Internet and mobile services to hinder demonstrators from coordinating a movement to the streets where they could meet and support one another; when on 28th January demonstrations erupted after the noon prayer; and when the police tried to create a siege on Tahrir and other parts of the city by setting prisoners loose to terrorize the citizens, and segments of the public responded by burning police stations and National Democratic Party offices, and the police eventually withdrew. Such horrors did not keep people at home; on the contrary, civil society started playing an active role in protecting both public and private property. When the police used live ammunition leading to deaths and injuries, the Egyptian Armed Forces interfered to end the battle between the police (representing the regime) and the people. At this point, nothing Mubarak said or did was good enough, and he had to pay for what has become of Egypt, and for the blood of the martyrs. Tahrir Square was on line until 11th February when Mubarak stepped down. Again, using a very simple term, the protestors repeatedly cheered “Selmeya/Peaceful” and were determined to remain non-violent despite the death of their fellow citizens on the Square and elsewhere. In time, they acquired a growing awareness that they had one voice. This voice attracted the world and mobilized their fellow Egyptians to bring down the regime, and bring down the regime, it did. Such an accomplishment led to yet another discovery, namely that Egyptians had a recovered their sense of dignity, unity, and belonging. All the singing, sketches, prayers, graffiti, placards, jokes, and tweets were pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that portrayed the intensity of the fury leading to “The Friday of Departure”. Clearly, for the demonstrators the uprising was only the beginning of the journey made possible by a mergence between balãgha and rhetoric. Although there are grounds where they overlap, and in this paper it becomes clear that there are instances in which balãgha has borrowed concepts from rhetoric, these two terms cannot be used as synonyms because each developed in different stages and in a different culture. The use of language in Tahrir and in contemporary poetry and prose demonstrates a paradigm shift in the use of the language, the foundation of human thought and expression, whether east or west, but this shift did not affect the Egyptian identity; rather, it transformed it into an identity that could embrace and even borrow from difference cultures while still retaining all that is admirable in the Egyptian culture and character.

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Balãgha or Rhetoric? The Language of the Tahrir Square Revolution

Note The system of transliteration of Arabic terms and proper names adopted in this essay/book is a modified version of that of the Encyclopedia of Islam, The Library of Congress, and the system of The International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ijmes/pages/transliteration.html. Being a native speaker of Arabic, I could not stick to one system or the other in order to be more accurate in conveying the Arabic sound. The modifications were made so that the common known reference to the city of Mecca is Makka, for example, because the latter is a more accurate way of transliterating this common noun in accordance with the proper Arabic pronunciation.

Works Cited Badawi, El-Said. ήμϣ ϲϓ ΓήλΎόϤϟ΍ ΔϴΑήόϟ΍ ΔϐϠϟ΍ ΕΎϳϮΘδϣ (Different Levels of the Contemporary Arabic Language in Egypt). Cairo: Dar El-Ma‘aref, 1973). Berlin, James A. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories.” College English. Vol. I. 44. No. 8. (Dec., 1982), pp. 765777. http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/crs/E398t/Jim%20Berlin-Contemporary%20Composition.pdf Enani, Mohamed, Comparative Moments. Cairo: State Publishing House (General Egyptian Book Organization), 1996. —. The Comparative Tone: Essays in Comparative Literature. Cairo: State Publishing House (General Egyptian Book Organization), 1995. —. On Translating Arabic. Cairo: State Publishing House (General Egyptian Book Organization), 2000. Halldén, Philip. “What is Arab Islamic Rhetoric? Rethinking the History of Muslim Oratory Art and Homiletics.” International Journal of Middle East Studies. 37 (2005), 19-38. Youssef, Essam. Rob3 Gram (A ¼ Gram). Translated by Loubna Youssef. Cairo: Montana Studios, 2009.

PART II TRANSFORMING SPOKEN, WRITTEN, AND VISUAL EXPRESSION: RHETORIC, LITERATURE, LANGUAGE AND TECHNOLOGY

ARABIZI: FROM TECHNO-LUTION TO REVOLUTION LELANIA SPERRAZZA

Oh what a tongue we have: It would melt even steel. —Ahmed Fouad Negm (Egyptian political poet c1970)

Cream-colored villas surround the American University in Cairo, which is now located in a wealthy desert suburb of Egypt. The sounds and fumes of car-infested Cairo remain at a distance, as Arabesque fountains, giant palm trees, and heavily guarded gates help shelter the campus. Here, young people can shake off the chaos of downtown and settle into being an “American” student for the day. As they gather around the campus cafes and outdoor seating areas, many of the girls are adorned in stylish, attractive western clothes. The boys too wear designer T-shirts with trendy English labels. Even the students in hijabs (headscarves) and more conservative fashions seem less eastern than western as they effortlessly code switch from Arabic to English. But, no matter their style of dress, they all possess various forms of western technology: cell phones, Blackberries, iPods, and laptops. The rings, beeps, and clicks of digital communication are just as noticeable as the dialect they speak: “Arabizi,” a modern mix of Arabic and English, mostly used by the western-educated elite of the Arab world. With its varying shifts in foreign rule, Egypt is no stranger to other cultures. Turkish, French, and English have co-existed with Arabic for centuries, and while Egyptians have acquired bilingual or multilingual fluency throughout the years, until now, they have never combined Arabic and English so consistently that it warranted its own slang term: Arabizi. In fact, after Egypt gained its independence from France and Britain during the middle of the last century, nationalism was at an all-time high among the youthful population, while anything suggestive of colonial power was shunned (Yaghan 40). What, then, has caused today’s generation of Egyptian youth to embrace a western language. And, what are the consequences of using Arabizi, the linguistic hybrid of two very different cultures?

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Latinized Text in a Technologically Determined World Before the mid-1990s, English was the predominant language available over the Internet and on cell phones (Warschauer 12002). Since Arabic was not accessible through this technology, the only way to communicate in the digital world was by Latinizing the Arabic alphabet (Yaghan 42). Any Arabic letter that resembled the shape of an English letter or numeral was substituted. For example, the word “Arabizi” written in Arabic looks like this: ϱΰϴΑήόϟ΍. If one wanted to Latinize the text while maintaining the same pronunciation as Arabic, the first letter of the Arabic word, which is ω would be represented by the similar-looking number “3.” Therefore, the word “Arabizi” written in a Latinized, Arabizi script would be spelled like this: “3arabizi.” Also, any Arabic phoneme that sounded like an English phoneme would be substituted. For example, the glottal Arabic letterϕ (which sounds like “kong,” as in King Kong1), would be replaced by the English letter “q” or “k.” To spell “coffee” in Arabic with a Latinized text, it would look like this: “qawa” or “kawa,” depending on the writer’s preference (Aboelezz 9). And, a typical text message between two Arabizi youths could very well look something like this: Speaker 1: Hi. Anta fane? (Hi. Where are you?) Speaker 2: Hi. Toolyoom fi university. (Hi. I’ve been at university all day.) Speaker 1: See you bookra. (See you tomorrow.) Speaker 2: OK, yala. Bye. (OK, until then. Bye.)

Since there is no standard structure to Arabizi, users are able to mix and match letters to sounds according to their own phonetic design. (For example, “coffee” can either be spelled “qawa” or “kawa” in Latinized Arabic.) The option to textually create meaning with a very flexible and versatile alphabet has most likely contributed to Arabizi’s widespread use. Even more important, with the ever-increasing need to access information at all times during this age of technology, English still reigns as the preferred online language in Egypt (Warschauer et al. 2). Although more and more non-Latin scripts are readily available online these days (Crystal 275), the use of Arabizi still remains popular in Egypt either due to previous habitual use or its symbol as a new “teen identity” for young technology users (Warschauer et al. 5). According to a study on technology and youth at the University of Melbourne, information and communication technologies (ICTs) help young people develop a sense of identity, power, and community (Carroll et al. 8). If this identity is produced electronically, without the physical presence of the speaker (Markham 271), then the actual

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words that texting and e-mailing require for communication are what linguistically shape the user’s identity. In regard to Arabizi, when Egyptian youth construct their Arabic words with English letters, they are choosing a linguistic identity similar to the way one would choose an “avatar” in the virtual world: by physically assembling bits and pieces from the English language to electronically represent their thoughts, Egyptian youth are creating a desired reflection of who they want to present to the world (Markham 264). This digital representation of the self, based on the use of Arabizi, has impacted the way young Egyptians verbally communicate with each other, as well. When questioned about their reasons for using Arabizi, the majority of Egyptian interviewees said that they did not feel comfortable communicating in Arabic when they spoke about everyday topics. Or, they felt that Arabizi gave them the cultural freedom to discuss ideas not normally shared in Arabic, such as sex or concepts related to western values (Yaghan 49). In essence, their electronic personas have merged worlds with their real-life personas, resulting in a vocabulary that has moved them further and further away from their mother tongue. Interestingly, though, the stigma of a Latinized, colonial alphabet taking power away from the Middle East, specifically in Egypt, has now shifted to providing power—the power of information. But, this newfound power also comes with restrictions if accessing online information influences the user to rely on a language from a different country and culture. Like immigrants in the United States, whose children are often forced to assimilate by only speaking English in the classroom, technology users from developing countries have often been forced to assimilate by using the dominant language of technology. In 2003, Loch, Straub, and Kamel researched the influence of the Internet in the Middle East and found that many Arabs, especially educators, were fearful that social norms were being negatively affected by western technology. Not only was the Arabic language changing and adapting to a more globalized world, interviewees thought, but so were the views and beliefs of Arab computer users. However, according to Postman (222), all countries, whether eastern or western, kowtow to technology like disciples to a god. This state of “Technopoly,” as Postman calls it, is a digital bureaucracy, which, in accordance with Veblin’s (Brette 2003) view on technological determinism, shapes the behaviors, actions, and beliefs of society. This process is gradual, but eventually, human habits become more and more conditioned by the machines that they use.

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Evolutionary Identities The result of young Egyptians relying on a predominantly Englishbased technology has influenced other areas of society. For example, the types of university-level courses, which were taught in English before the onset of the Internet (such as the sciences and medicine), have now expanded to include computer science and information technology (Warschauer 22). This, in turn, has forced more and more Egyptian parents to enroll their children in English-speaking schools so that, once they graduate from university, those children can acquire or maintain, membership into the elite sectors of Egypt’s economy. However, this desire for social mobility has led to a “cultural-linguistic dualism” (Findlow 20) in which Egyptian youth live, speak, and interact with both Arabic and English—not as separate languages—but within the same conversation. This form of “language crossing” (Kramsch 65) is how many upper class Egyptians communicate on a daily basis since they are mostly products of Arabic-speaking parents and expensive, English-based educations. However, the decision to cross over from one language to the other can become quite complicated when one of those languages is considered superior (English) and the other inferior (Arabic). As Said (299) points out in Culture and Imperialism, the lingering, colonial relationship between the east and the west has left an existing disparity between the two cultures. Since language is the basis for one’s culture (Kramsch 64), the struggle to construct social meaning can be very unsettling to the speakers of the “inferior” language. Said, who was raised in a bicultural family, addresses the issue of having an “unsettled identity” when he recounts his experiences as an Arab and an American and as a child who cannot remember which language he spoke first—Arabic or English: I have retained this unsettled sense of many identities—mostly in conflict with each other—all my life, together with an acute memory of the despairing feeling that I wish we could have been all-Arab, or allEuropean and American, or all-Orthodox Christian, or all-Muslim, or allEgyptian, and so on. I found I had two alternatives with which to counter what in effect was the process of challenge, recognition, and exposure, questions and remarks like, ‘What are you?’ (5)

Said’s description of his conflicted childhood mirrors the upbringing of many of today’s young Egyptians, highlighting the feeling of exclusion that culture can create in people’s lives (Kramsch 67). The question, “What are you?” signifies that persons of bicultural or multicultural backgrounds defy the “norms” of an easily determined identity, which in turn, can make them feel unwelcome or invalid in the eyes of those around

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them. For example, one young Egyptian recalls a painful conversation he had with his family about the prevalence of Arabizi: I once asked my parents if this Arabizi phenomenon was present in the society when they were my age, and they told me that it was rare to see someone who is speaking Arabizi, while now it is very common, especially between teenagers. Every time I watch the Arabic version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” with my parents, and the show host asks a question about Arabic poetry, they always know the answer. When I ask them how they knew the answer, they say, “When we were your age, we used to read Arabic poems and books, unlike you.”

The accusation that this young man is somehow different or “unlike” his parents represents a fairly common belief among older generations and Egyptians from lower-socioeconomic classes who blame Arabizi speakers for not identifying with their Egyptian language or culture. However, with the continuing increase of English as the mainstream language in Middle Eastern schools (Dhabi 27), Arabic is often taught to young Egyptians the way a foreign language is typically taught in American public schools: only one hour a day with an emphasis on rote memorization. While Arabizi speakers are often blamed for trying to project an image of “modernity” or “Western sophistication” (Kamhawi 56) by combining English with their Arabic, the truth is, mixing both languages is usually the only way they know how to speak. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Arabizi speakers who feel shunned in the “real” world for their language use will seek validity in a world that does offer acceptance: a “virtual” one full of young, westerneducated Egyptians like themselves, who communicate as much by English-based technology, such as Facebook or Twitter, as they do in faceto-face interactions. In fact, when analyzing identity construction over the Internet, researchers have found that the “digital selves” people create in social-networking environments actually enhance one’s sense of self in the offline world (Zhao, Grasmuck, and Martin, 2008). Some findings suggest that Facebook, specifically, allows users to “create the hoped-for possible selves that they are unable to establish in the off-line world” (Zhao et al.1831). Once this “hoped-for self” is constructed, the obstacles of real life seem so much easier to overcome. For example, instead of feeling exiled from their parents’ generation for not being “Egyptian enough,” Arabizi speakers can seek virtual refuge among each other in a bicultural community that accepts their technological and linguistic needs.

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Revolutionary Identities This bicultural construct of an Arabizi identity, which collectively gathers and assembles online, reflects Benedict Anderson’s concept of an “imagined community” in which the members don’t necessarily meet in person, but “in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (49). Without any physical constraints that class, gender, or culture often create, in this imagined space young Egyptians are able to reinvent their identities as they liberate themselves from real-life restrictions. Opinions can be voiced, unbecoming attributes ignored, and even oppressive governments can fade into the background as the vibrant virtual world of endless potential takes over. As a generation raised on the Internet, young Egyptians are more likely to expect that the “impossible is always possible” when it takes only a keyboard and a few clicks from one’s mouse to alter their reality in front of them. In essence, they have the ability to author their lives through discursive actions in their online domains. As Agger describes, … the virtual self composes himself in daily email, Web surfing, chatting, cell phoning, faxing. It is a postmodern self less stable and centered than previous modernities…. Yet, at the same time, the internet opens up a new world of self-creation, storytelling, global communities, instantaneity, and possibly even political organizing quite unknown in a slower paced stage of modernity. (146)

This virtual environment of reinvention cannot remain contained in cyberspace forever. Eventually, the disembodied world of the online user will merge with the physical world (Zhao et al. 1834), allowing users to feel better equipped in real-life to design their own reality. The Egyptian Revolution, for example, symbolizes how a virtual community of protestors was able to transform itself into a real-life community of revolutionaries. The urge to bring democracy to Egypt must have felt completely obtainable to Egyptian youth after years of exposure to Western concepts of democracy in the digital world. As Arabizi speakers, they were accustomed to exchanging ideas in a language that represented both the East and the West. And, as an Arabizi community, they had the strength and unity to feel like they could achieve the impossible: overthrow a corrupt political regime. Even more important, Egyptian youth were able to reach out beyond the refuge of their carefully constructed community and unite the rest of Egypt to their cause. Never before had an Egyptian generation organized so swiftly, so peacefully, and so effectively as they did on January 25, 2011, the onset of the Egyptian

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revolution. And they were able to do so because they had been raised on technology. Therefore, I believe that the bicultural, digitally inspired “identities” of Arabizi youth were influential in uniting a fractured nation and redefining what it means to be an Egyptian in today’s globalized world. Having literally written their identities into existence through cyberspace, they have now rewritten the real-life definition of the modern Arab: one who has cast aside years of oppression by both local and global authorities for the pursuit of autonomous transformation in the Middle East.

Digital Coupe in Cairo One of the new, modern voices of Egyptian youth, Google executive Wael Ghonim, was able to mobilize thousands upon thousands of Egyptians through his political Facebook group “Kolina Khaled Said” (We Are All Khalid Said) at the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution. Named after Khaled Said, a businessman who died in police custody in Alexandria in 2010, the Facebook page played a crucial role in organizing protests against police brutality. And, what started out as a virtual cry for freedom on January 25 ended up as a massive demonstration that lasted for weeks on the very real streets of Tahrir Square. While this must have dumbfounded political leaders born before the onset of cyberspace, for technologically savvy Egyptians trained in “computer activism,” such as Ghonim, fighting injustice through Facebook would have been considered a natural and plausible form of protest. So plausible, in fact, that it took only 18 days of nonstop protests, fueled by technology and word-ofmouth, for Egyptians from all sectors of society to oust President Mubarak. For Egyptian “cyberactivists”—those who use blogs, Facebook, and Tweets to decry political corruption—this digital coupe was the result of years spent online constructing identities shaped by a common cause: dissatisfaction with President Mubarak. Since 2003, Egypt’s blogosphere, the largest in all the Arab world (Harb 2), had been growing in response to Egyptian youth revolting through digital discussions against a corrupt government. As Arabizi speakers, many of their online protests were published in both Arabic and English (Radsch 12), and their blogs, Facebook updates, and Tweets were not only geared toward an Arab audience; they were also written for the western world (Radsch 13) so that international peers, politicians, and media outlets could not only understand the plight of Arabizi youth, but also the average Egyptian. Ghonim himself described the events in January as “the revolution of the youth of the Internet, which became the revolution of the youth of Egypt, then the revolution of Egypt itself” (para 13). In essence, Arabizi speakers initiated

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for the rest of Egypt what they had been applying to their own lives all along: the creation of a new social and political narrative for the Middle East. Even now, in the aftermath of the Revolution, as the world wonders which voice will rise above the other—democratic, Islamist, or military— Egypt’s narrative continues to be told more like an interactive digital story rather than a linear series of events. While Arabizi youth began this story, it is now being passed along and retold by all members of Egyptian society (Youssef and Kumar 10). And, despite the continuous clash of these voices, their sound has to be more tolerable to Egyptians than another thirty years of silence.

Arabizi 2.0: Reclaimed Identities As Egypt continues to redefine itself three years after the Revolution, Arabizi youth are now reclaiming an identity that was once out of their reach. Their Western behavior, which separated them from other members of society, and their digitally constructed identities, which further removed them from the real world, are considered mere components within the larger framework of what it means to be Egyptian now. A new national consciousness, as evident in political slogans that say, “I will be a real Egyptian. I will participate” (Youssef and Kumar 9), shows how political involvement characterizes the ideal Egyptian more than one’s language or socioeconomic background. And since blue jeans and laptops no longer solely define Arabizi youth, they are better able to unify with others in a collective chant for civil liberties. There is a nationalistic fervor, resurfacing after years of oppression, in which Arabizi youth can embrace their Egyptian-ness, in whatever form possible, as they publically strive for a sense of freedom along with their fellow citizens. Now, at the American University in Cairo, students can experience Egypt inside their gated campus instead of remaining sheltered from it. Courses in Revolution Studies, for example, are currently being offered so that students can politically participate on an academic level, as well as in the streets (Beach para 2). As one young revolutionary explains, “’They thought we were just some kids playing around … but I think we proved that we are more’” (Barber, para 45): more than just a linguistic hybrid from two distinct cultures, and more than just a virtual reinvention of the self, but rather, part of one voice fighting for the creation of a new Egypt.

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Note 1

This pronunciation suggestion was introduced to me by Heshaam Kanona, graduate student in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language, at the American University in Cairo.

Works Cited Aboelezz, Mariam. “Latinised Arabic and connections to bilingual ability.” Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching. 3(2009): 1-23. Agger, Ben. The virtual self: a contemporary sociology. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of Nationalism. London, UK: Verso, 1983. Barber, Brian. “What the Young People of Egypt Learned,” Zócalo Public Square. 16 Aug. 2013. Web. 27 Sept. 2013. Beach, Alistair. “AUC Embarks on Post-Revolution Endeavors.” Egypt Independent. 3 April 2011. Web. 29 Sept. 2013. Brette, Olivier. “Thorstein Veblen’s theory of institutional change: beyond technological determinism.” The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 10.3 (2003): 455-477. Carroll, Jennie et al. “Identity, Power And Fragmentation in Cyberspace: Technology Appropriation by Young People.” ACIS 2001 Proceedings. 2001. 1-10. Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Findlow, Sally. “Higher Education and Linguistic Dualism in the Arab Gulf.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 27.1 (2006): 19-36. Web. 1 May 2011. Young People.” ACIS 2001 Proceedings. 2001. 110. Harb, Zahera. “Arab revolutions and the social media effect.” Media/Culture Journal 14.2 (2011): 1-6. Kamhawi, Dania. Code-switching: A Social Phenomenon in Jordanian Society, MLitt Thesis, University of Edinburgh. 2011. Kramsch, Claire. Language and Culture (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. Markham, Annette. “The methods, politics, and ethics of representation in online ethnography.” Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. 3rd ed. Ed. Norman K Denzin and Yvonna S Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008. 247-283. Print. Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.

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New York: NY: Random House, 1992. “Profile: Egypt’s Wael Ghonim.” BBC News. 9 Feb. 2011. Radsch, Courtney. “Core to commonplace: The evolution of Egypt’s blogosphere.” Arab Media and Society (2008): 1-14. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1993. —. Out of Place: A Memoir. New York, NY: Knopf, 1999. —. Freud and the non-European. London, UK: Verso, 2003. Warschauer, Mark. Languages.com: The Internet and linguistic pluralism. In I. Snyder (ed.), Silicon literacies: Communication, innovation and education in the electronic age London: Routledge, 2002. Yaghan, Mohammad Ali. “‘Arabizi’: A Contemporary Style of Arabic Slang.” Design Issues 24.2 (2008): 39-52. Web. 1 May 2011. Youssef, Mervat and Anup Kumar. “Egyptian Uprising: Redefining Egyptian Political Community and Reclaiming the Public Space.” CyberOrient 6.1, (2012): 1-12. Web. 28 Sept. 2013. Personality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (pp. 162-170) Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York, NY: Vintage Books. (Ch. 1) —. (1999). Out of Place: A Memoir. New York, NY: Knopf. (Ch. 1) —. (2003, January 18). “An Unacceptable Helplessness.” Al-Ahram. Cairo, Egypt. Retrieved from http://www.counterpunch.org/said01182003.html. —. (2003). Freud and the Non-European. London, UK: Verso. (Ch. 1-3) Warschauer, M. (2002). Languages.com: The Internet and Linguistic Pluralism. In I. Snyder (Ed.), Silicon literacies: Communication, Innovation and Education in the Electronic Age London: Routledge. (pp. 62-74) Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of B. L. Whorf. Boston, MA: MIT Press. (pp. 212-221) Yaghan, A. M. (2008). “Arabizi”: A Contemporary Style of Arabic Slang. Design Issues 24(2), 39-52. Retrieved from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/desi Zhao, S. Grasmuck, S and Martin, J. (2008). Identity Construction on Facebook: Digital Empowerment in Anchored Relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24 1816–1836.

THE LITERATE AND THE LITERARY: AN INTERVIEW WITH DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES LAMMERT HOLDIJK

“…the trouble with Arabic is the language.” —Denys Johnson-Davies Denys Johnson-Davies interview

Denys Johnson-Davies, “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” according to Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. Recently, he has written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, and a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, was published in 1999. Born in Canada, he grew up in Sudan and East Africa and now divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo. http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/arabictranslation/ denys johnson-davies/

Denys Johnson-Davies Denys Johnson-Davies has been the trail blazer in the promotion of contemporary Arabic literature in English. He estimates his tally of translated books to be 28. He has translated works by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese Tayeb Salih, and Syrian Zakaria Tamer. He is now in his 80s and divides his time between Morocco and Egypt. He has been a businessman and lawyer, a broadcaster and a diplomat and also worked for the British Council in Cairo in the 1940s. But it is his career as writer and translator that has been truly phenomenal. He spent some of his childhood in Sudan and chose to study Arabic as a teenager. He went to Cambridge to study, under R.A. Nicholson, before the Second World War at the age of 16, and was recruited early to the BBC Arabic Service in London. He moved to Cairo during the war, and there started his career as translator and friend of Arab writers. He was a friend of Naguib Mahfouz

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The Literate and the Literary: Interview with Denys Johnson-Davies

for over 60 years, promoting Mahfouz’s merits to other legendary Egyptian writers such as Taha Husain. Denys's first translation was of a volume of stories by the Egyptian Mahmud Taymur; since the 1960s, however, in the face of much initial discouragement, he has been promoting contemporary Arabic literature. After Heinemann produced a successful African Authors series in the 1970s, its editors invited Denys to be the Consultant for a similar Arab Authors series. In fact, Denys produced most of the translations. But the series did not match the commercial success of the African series. Many African authors write in English, so the problems and costs of translation were minimal and the African Authors series had huge English-reading markets in West and East Africa. Who, by contrast, was going to read Arabic literature? Arabs read their own literature in the original Arabic. In spite of this setback, in the subsequent decades, Denys had works published by Quartet in London and by AUC Press in Cairo. He helped to introduce the Egyptians Tawfiq al-Hakim and Naguib Mahfouz, the Syrian Zakaria Tamir, the Sudanese Tayeb Salih and the Palestinian Mahmud Darwish to English readers. He edited collections of short stories and of drama. He also published his own stories (which one critic said seemed like translations from the Arabic!) and has translated works of hadith. For over 60 years he has been the loyal friend of Arab writers and he has constantly sought out younger generations of talented authors. He is currently working on a collection of translated stories from the United Arab Emirates and another from Morocco. His role in the history of cultural relations between Arab countries and the rest of the world is unique and unlikely ever to be repeated.

Interview I: In what ways is translation a creative act for you? D: It is a creative act [for me] in that I always preferred to write. I always wanted to write and wrote at a very young age, and published two novels at a very young age. Then when I went abroad, I didn’t find publishers, but did find that people wanted work translated, so I became a translator. I think it is creative; it must be creative if it is going to be any good. I: In what ways do you think it is creative? D: I think it is creative, particularly, in that I am using my stock, my knowledge of English and that way I would find a meaning in a sentence [for example], and I would put it in a particular way: in a particular way that is [mine].

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I: So it would differ from one person to another? D: Yes, definitely. I: You once said that the translator needs to be a master of the language he is translating into, not which he is translating from. What would the necessary qualities of master-ship be for a translator, especially in translations of literature? D: Well, I think he should be very well-read, for a start. I think that to come to translation and feel that all you need is the two languages, and that one word replaces another, that is not a creative act at all. That is an automatic act. So, yes, a really good background of your own literature. You know, I have read practically everything in European literature, and I suppose that is a good thing. This cannot be something that one learns in a lesson. It is something that one acquires over a lifetime of reading, really. I: Being familiar with the language and rhetoric of both Arabic and English, what do you think are the main qualities exhibited in Arabic literature both modern and classical, that are significantly different from those in English? D: That is a very difficult question. Say, for example, the most difficult thing I have done is to try and translate the Qur’an. And I think that this is an extremely difficult task. One is faced with the translation, for example, of the word “inna” which is there in the Arabic all the time and which one is tempted to translate as “verily”, which then sounds extremely biblical. It [may] seem wrong, but I decided simply to ignore the word. It is very important in the Arabic, but I don’t see how you can substitute it in English. I: Are there any general observations about general ways in which language is employed, or rhetorical styles which differ in English and Arabic significantly? D: Yes, I think that Arabic is much more wordy. And when I come to translate it, I try to strip it of this wordiness. Because in the end one is translating for your reader and one wants to make the experience a pleasant one. I: Which is a rhetorical device. There have been some theories about Arabic rhetoric that say that Arabs tend to circle around the subject before they get to the point; in English you tend to be more direct and that is appreciated as a form. That may be more in public discourse but is it very much different in Arabic literature than it is in English literature? D: I think it is. And I think there is a sort of school that says that one must somehow, when one translates, give the sort of flavor of the Arabic. But I don’t know if I belong to that school. I believe that one wants to

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produce something that sounds good to your reader. I: When you say, ‘sounds good to your reader’, obviously you are addressing a cultured reader in English. D: Yes? I: So, you said the translator has to be well-versed in his own literature, the language that he is translating into, so to some extent your translation sets a particular standard in terms of the language that is going to be used in English, for a particular audience. But let us say you are translating a modern Egyptian novelist who is using colloquial Arabic, how do you translate that type of a language? You are not going to translate that into Shakespearean English, which is obviously an exaggeration. D: Yes, it would be strange if there is an Egyptian colloquial Arabic. Do you translate that into, say, Cockney English. It would be very odd if one did this. So, one is in all kinds of difficulties here. One wants to be able to give to the reader something that he is in something foreign but not make it too bizarre. I: And I think that is part of the creative act. Trying to feel your way into the language that would be appropriate for the audience, for the reader. D: If one is doing a very local thing, it is no good to do something that is sort of East End of London. They are not equivalent at all. You have to somehow persuade the reader that he is in a backstreet in Cairo. I: Could you give me an example of the challenges of translating a modern Arabic literary text into English? D: I was going to give you an example: I think that one must not belong to the school, and there are many people who believe this, that says that if you have a noun and adjective in Arabic that you must have exactly the same thing in English. And the example that occurred to me was, that at a time when I was lecturing at the university when someone criticized me for translating “al sultan al haa’ir”. ‘Sultan’ is a noun, and ‘haa’ir’ is an adjective, so [they said] you must translate it as ‘the perplexed sultan’. Well, you know, it just doesn’t sound very good in English and I think the ‘the sultan’s dilemma’ sounds a lot better. Now, I have departed somewhat from the text, but the meaning is very much there, and I think it is sounding much better in the translation. I will give you another example. I had to translate… well, I didn’t have to translate but I chose to translate a novel by Naguib Mahfouz called ‘Layali Alf Layla’ which we translate as ‘Nights of the Arabian Nights’ which as a title of a book doesn’t attract me very much. So I translated it as ‘Arabian Nights and Days’ which is very far away because the word

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‘days’ is not there at all, but at least I bring in the idea of the Arabian Nights because ‘Alf Layla’ means ‘a thousand nights’ in Arabic but that doesn’t mean much to an English audience who know it as the Arabian Nights. So by calling it ‘Arabian Nights and Days’ I give the idea that, yes it is about the Arabian nights and I add ‘Days’. I: You once said that you did not feel that modern Arabic literature was as developed as say European or American literature because it did not have as long a written history (as opposed to a very long oral history). Why then translate such works into English? What is it that is communicated by such a translation? D: Not as developed? I don’t quite understand what you are saying. I: Not quite as developed in let’s say its sophistication of using a framework novel, something like the Decameron, or using particular formats like the novel. The novel is not an old format in Arabic literature. D: In fact, the Arabs have taken very little from their masterpiece the Arabian Nights. They don’t think very much of it at all. So what does one translate for, from a language like Arabic? First of all, it is interesting to see what Arabs are writing about themselves and for themselves, because it doesn’t occur to them that someone is going to come along and translate their work. So I think that anything that is written in Arabic and then translated is more likely to be genuine than an English person writing, however much knowledge he has of the Arabs. But maybe... Quite frankly, I don’t read Arabic for enjoyment. Sometimes a friend of mine like al Basati… I have just finished reading in manuscript his latest novel. I had translated the one before that. But normally I wouldn’t read Arabic for enjoyment because I think that, as you say, European writing is technically more advanced. I: Although you are best known for your translations, you have also written some of your own fiction, and an autobiography. In what ways are these two creative acts similar or different? D: I think they are very similar. I think that in translation, if in fact one is creative oneself, one is often in a kind of dilemma. One is feeling that the short story could be better than it is. One is often tempted to do something about that, and, of course, one shouldn’t. But, I think as a personal thing, my trouble has always been that I have never found publishers. But now, I have publishers. For instance, it happened with me that I was suddenly asked by the British Council to write a couple of children’s books. This was for Andy Smart, when he started. And it had never occurred to me to write children’s books. (…) So here was someone who was asking me to do something and this was going

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to be published, so I did it. And I have now published something like 50 children’s books. So one does what one can. The idea of writing away and putting stuff in a drawer doesn’t appeal to me at all. Many contemporary Arab writers are your friends. And you straddle the literary worlds of both Europe and the Middle East. Although it is difficult to generalize, what would you say is the direction that modern Arab literature needs to move in? I think one of the troubles with Arabic is the language. I was very recently with some well-known people and we were all talking and I was the only non-Arab there and one of them turned to me and said, “Isn’t Arabic a beautiful language?” And I am known for telling the truth, and I said, “Yes, it is a very beautiful language, but it is a dead language.” And they were shocked by what I had said, because it had never occurred to them that in fact this is very much so. Arabic is a completely dead language. Could you elaborate? Well, you cannot ask someone, “Tell me a joke in classical Arabic.” No such thing exists because the words have no connotations any longer, they are words out of the dictionary. Would you say the same of colloquial Arabic? No, I am a great supporter of the use of colloquial language and cannot understand how it is… I used to have these arguments with Naguib Mahfouz. I would say, “How can you have all your characters talking the same language?” So, he said, … his argument was that by using classical Arabic throughout, that his work would get universally read throughout the Arab world, whereas if he used colloquial, it wouldn’t. In fact, he is wrong there now because most Arabs wherever they are, and now because of ‘musalsalat’ (soap operas) and media and so on, know colloquial Egyptian. Then, his argument was that the Egyptian who is there would read, for example, ‘A lam akul thalik’ (‘I didn’t say that’ – classical Arabic), and he would translate for himself ‘Ma ultish kidda’ (‘I didn’t say that’ – Egyptian colloquial). We find in Naguib Mahfouz someone [a character] who is completely illiterate, who is solemnly talking in classical Arabic, which is wrong. So maybe that is the direction modern Arabic literature needs to be moving, towards the colloquial? Yes, towards the colloquial. In fact, I think not only modern Arabic literature but the whole of the modern Arab world. If I see that there is ‘takhalluf’ (backwardness) in the Arab world, it is through language. Poor little child. He grows up and he is talking to his mummy and says ‘Where is my gazma? (shoe)’ and he gets into school and the man raps him over .

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the knuckles, and is told ‘No, no, that isn’t a gazma, that is a khiza’ (shoe – classical Arabic). I think it is a terrible situation where really Arabs do not know their own language. You have met Ezzedin, who is a great friend of mine, and he was here recently at a conference on poetry or something. And he said all the great professors were there and he said really not one of them was perfect in Arabic. And who can really, ‘yirtagil’, talk extemporaneously in classical Arabic and not make a mistake? Very, very few. And I think there is something unnatural…. I mean look at what has happened to Latin, [and I am surprised] that this has not happened to Arabic. Very interesting. There was something that came up in our department (of Rhetoric and Composition) and that was, do you think there could be a fruitful personal exchange between European and American writers and those of the Arab world and how would you envision that to take shape? What can they learn from each other? My own feeling is that the Arabs could learn a great deal from the Americans and the Europeans but not vice-versa, in terms of writing. I think there are all sorts of barriers for the Arab writer in forms of social taboos, and so on, which make it very difficult for him to be utterly honest about things. And when he is, he is rapped over the knuckles. Do you get the feeling that modern Arab literature is read? We know from the Arab Development Reports that nobody reads. Nobody at all. So maybe modern Arab literature is read more in the western world than in the Arab world? Well, I think there is a general prejudice against the idea of fiction. I mean if you talk to religious people, I think they object to the idea of people making up things. It is for God to make up things and create things. I have now written up to 50 children’s books. These children’s books, are mainly taken from traditional Arabic sources. Europeans may think that these sources were used by mothers to tell bedtime stories to children. This is absolutely not so. There is no Arabic literature for children. The child grows up and is immediately asked to learn the Qur’an by heart. I think there is a prejudice against the idea of having fiction and this has to be overcome. We see, for example, that Alaa Aswani’s The Yacoubian Building has suddenly become a best seller. Even in Arabic it is rather strange. He writes in a very easy style and I think people are reading him not because it is a great novel but because it is dealing with subjects which they are interested in and which generally people don’t write about. We say that Arabs are not great readers, but they are great readers of newspapers. So

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for Arabs reading Aswani is like reading a newspaper. If you are reading about the corruption that goes on, etc. So it is basically related to real life and therefore not really fiction? Not really fiction, that is right. And it is not really delving into the whys and wherefores. It is just telling you, this is the way things are as you well know. Did you read the book? No, I just saw the movie. Which they did very well, I thought. I remember one time I wrote a novel, and it was about Egypt. It was about an experience I had about a German prisoner who escaped from the camps. So here I was after the war, and the British weren’t really concerned about any Germans who had escaped. He was living in Cairo. I said to myself that this is an interesting idea. A German escaping, no knowledge of the language and somehow he is able to make a life for himself in Cairo, with a girlfriend, and so on. And this was a very long time ago, and I remember that Hodder and Staughton accepted it but they said they found some of the love scenes a bit over the top. So then I worked on it, and wrapped it all up and sent it and they sent it back again, and so I said to myself, it isn’t worth it and I didn’t go on with it. I need someone to come along and say, “Here is the contract. Write the novel.” I have another story about that. A good friend came along and said “Would you write a book for children about the life of the Prophet (Muhammad). And so I said yes. And he sat down and wrote this check for a handsome amount. And I went away, and there was no way I could start this. And I was within days of writing him back a check, and not going ahead but I did eventually write the book. The business of an end result for me is very important. We have in our department 6 or 7 creative writers and I think it is the ambition of every writer to be published. But what you are saying is that you want to know ahead of time whether or not it is going to be published. Particularly with a novel, it is a long process, and then to be told that it is not really the sort of thing that people want today, and then you put it away in a drawer. As a young man I published a lot of short stories in magazines like Modern Writing, International Reading. I published a lot there. A think a good agent is an excellent thing. And I had at an early age a very small agent, his name was Leslie Bereson. We got on very well. I was about 19 or 20 at the time. He got all kinds of things of mine published in strange magazines, in Australia, and here and there. And I did get some payment

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here and there but that was not what concerned me. It was just to get published. To some extent your experience as a writer must have come in handy as a translator. As a craftsman of the language in which you had already practiced how to articulate, how to express, that must have been useful for you as a translator. Yes, obviously. But to some extent one is bound by the text that is there and sometimes one doesn’t feel all too happy with it. I don’t think that one can be a translator without being a writer or failed writer. The[re were a] number of people who translated like D.H. Lawrence, and Baudelaire. Top names in literature did not find it beneath them to translate. I think one of the troubles for the translator today is that he is rather a despised creature. “Oh, you’re just a translator.” So I wouldn’t really encourage anyone to become a translator because I think one is badly paid and one’s name hardly appears on the book at all, when after all the reader is reading your words in the end. And as I said, it is very badly paid. I was very lucky in that I came along at a time when Arabic literature was just starting and therefore all the choices were mine. I remember one evening I was at Edward Al-Kharrat’s place and an Egyptian there said, “Who are you to choose who to translate?” You should go to the Ministry of Culture and ask them. I was about to reply to this and wasn’t quite sure what to reply, when I was grateful that Edward Al-Kharrat replied for me and said “ For God’s sake, Denys knows far more about modern Arabic literature than the people at the Ministry of Culture, and he also knows far more about what the English reader will accept, so leave it to him to choose.” And also, why should one translate something that one doesn’t really care for. It is a sweat of a job, translating, and therefore to be given something that you really don’t like…. It has got to be a real choice, and the money is then more of secondary importance. Yes, I suppose I was right at the beginning of something, and I sort of owed it to modern Arabic literature to do something about it. Well, you did.

I WAS HERE: A HISTORY OF GRAFFITI IN EGYPT, FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN TIMOTHY WARREN

“Raise Your Head Up High; You Are Egyptian” —Graffito on a wall near Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring of 2011

The word graffiti means “little scratchings” in Italian and can refer to either writings or drawings appearing on a public surface, usually without official sanction. In Pyramids and Nightclubs: a Travel Ethnography of Arab and Western Imaginations of Egypt, L.L. Wynn notes that “Egyptologists encounter layers upon layers of graffiti on the monuments” in myriad languages. She then defines graffiti as “an act which on one level swallows the dominant reading and labeling of a site, accepting elite markers of civilizational distinction, while at the same time it defies the demand for reverence that such dominant narratives make” (214). This definition seems fitting for the graffitists who left their mark in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the early days of the Arab Spring in 2011 as well as the writings of early graffitists. Visitors to the ancient monuments of Egypt have long noticed that hieroglyphics are not the only writing on the huge statues of pharaohs and the walls of temples and tombs. There is also textual graffiti left by later travelers to the sites: Greeks and Romans inscribed some of these formal and informal writings when they ruled Egypt, while others were created centuries earlier during the Ancient Egyptian era and centuries later by the Christians and Muslims. The 19th century was a prolific era for graffiti, mostly authored by European and American travelers. The practice of writing graffiti has now been extended to contemporary Egypt, where it can be seen on many buildings and other public sites in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. Often, whether on ancient monuments or modern buildings, the messages left by graffitists in Egypt aspired to direct the viewers’ attention away from the host structure to the “presence” of the writer. Occasionally,

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I Was Here: A History of Graffiti in Egypt, from Ancient to Modern

however, graffitists linked their creative forces with those of the monument or other public surfaces in such a way as to create an unusual rhetorical situation in which the writers were attempting to do more than just make simple, existential declarations such as “I was here” or “I also exist.” Just as the content and style of the graffiti began to vary over time, so too did the response of those who viewed the work. Interpretations of textual graffiti found in academic and journalistic sources as well as travel writing, both historical and recent, not only preserved the message, but analyzed the motivations of the graffitists by considering the settings chosen by the writers and the language they employed. In the case of Tahrir and its surroundings, graffitists communicated with such intelligence and wit that the messages became more than simple attempts to persuade the reader of the importance of the writer’s physical presence, or in some cases, the importance of his or her message. Interpretations of these messages pointed to acts of self-assertion that, at their deepest, were in the pursuit of a more immediate goal. Written with the knowledge that it might be whitewashed before the next sunrise, the graffiti represented a population of writers who were taking possession of the largest and best-known public space in the country to articulate a collective desire to rid the nation of a corrupt, oppressive and brutal autocracy that had long limited their freedom to speak and write as they pleased. These political statements were not the product of an aggressive, barely literate populace acting indiscriminately out of total frustration. Often written in English, the graffiti were mostly the work of an educated segment of the population who recognized the importance of seizing a rhetorical moment to express their concerns in a non-violent fashion. Some of it was created by graphic artists who seized the opportunity to display not only their political sentiments but their creative efforts in a very public fashion. In a sense, the Tahrir Square graffiti was a natural extension of the messages that had come down from the centuries, but in order to understand why this graffiti was so distinct, we must first review its history. The graffiti of the Ancient Egyptian era commemorated military, mining, and trade expeditions as well as personal visits to the tombs, temples and other monuments left by predecessors. Alexander J. Peden has written a highly comprehensive survey of that graffiti, which in his preface he refers to as “non-official epigraphs.” Some of it is incised on rocks and walls and some of it is written in ink, usually black or red. Most inscriptions record the writers’ “names, family relationships and the names and titles of the pharaohs they served under” (38), but some also chronicle their deeds. Dates are rarely included but the pharaohs’ names and

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cartouches have allowed scholars to determine when they were written. The writers were most often scribes and other government functionaries, who would have had the literacy required to leave textual graffiti. An interesting example from the Middle Kingdom suggests that the writer may have been prompted not by inspiration but by boredom, which has probably always been among the motives for graffitists. An official overseeing a quarry in a remote setting that few others would ever visit and who left a list of past and present royal dynasties, may, according to Peden, have “decided to display his learning…simply to relieve the drudgery of a daily routine” (37). The author also suggests here that, at a time when literacy was mostly confined to small elite, those who had this skill would have proudly advertised it. Almost thirty centuries of the Ancient Egyptian civilization left such a long legacy of monuments that tourism to the various sites began even before the end of the Old Kingdom era. Many visitors left graffiti requesting divine intercession from the gods or the bygone builders of the tombs and temples. Some inscriptions invited their readers to recite them aloud, promising that this would help shower favors on them and their children (Peden 73) while others responded to the work of earlier graffitists. An example of one graffitist criticizing another can be found among what some consider the world's oldest tourist graffiti, located at the funerary complex of Saqqara, site of the step pyramid of the Old Kingdom pharaoh Djoser. It was recorded on tomb walls during the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties (1550-1196 BCE) of the New Kingdom. In The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt: A Guide to the Sacred Places of Ancient Egypt, John Anthony West reports that some of the visitors who left these inscriptions express awe at Sakkara although one “sees only desecration in these acts of expressed piety” (157). That visitor apparently saw no contradiction in using graffiti to denounce the other scribblers when writing this message on the wall: “My heart is sick when I see the work of their hands...It is like the work of (one) who has no mind; would that we had one who would have denounced them before they ever entered in to see the temple. I have a seen a scandal; they are no scribes such as Thoth has enlightened.” This may be the first example of disapproval of graffiti at the ancient sites, an attitude that will surface again among modern visitors to Egypt. The self-righteous graffitist and his immediate predecessors of whom he disapproved were both providing subtexts to the official inscriptions on the tomb walls that had been erected nearly two millennia before their time. They thereby created a kind of palimpsest that is even more obvious in other examples of graffiti in Egypt where some writers have partially erased and scrawled over a site’s original

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inscriptions and those left by previous visitors. In his graffito, the writer at Saqqara who condemned the work of the earlier scribblers invoked Thoth, the ibis-headed god of scribes whom the Egyptians credited with the invention of writing. West also notes that the New Kingdom graffitists inscribed their comments in the hieratic style of hieroglyphics that was employed in secular, as opposed to religious, writings. An explanation for the choice of the less formal script might lie in Peden’s description of graffiti as “a form of written communication that is invariably free of social restraints” (xxi). He also suggests that this fact alone justifies the study of graffiti, particularly in Egypt because “Here mankind has left his most casual and intimate inscriptions in more places and over a longer stretch of time than perhaps anywhere else on earth” (xix). Tourist graffiti at the ancient sites would become even more common after Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt ushered in the Greco-Roman era. These invaders were deeply impressed by monuments centuries older than their own and after they extended their empires to Egypt, it became fashionable for them to visit the great sites of the civilization they had colonized. One of the most popular Ancient Egyptian ruins for the ancient Greek and Roman travelers who memorialized their visits with graffiti was what they called the Colossi of Memnon in Thebes, present-day Luxor. These two gigantic seated figures are 65 feet high and are actually representations of Amenhotep III that were erected in 1350 BC at the entrance of his mortuary temple, now destroyed. The statues are heavily damaged, with many features unrecognizable, but their monumental and lonely presence in a rural setting not far from the Nile River they face still inspires modern visitors as much as it did earlier ones. According to the website of the Theban Mapping Project led by Kent Weeks of The American University in Cairo, during the Greek and Roman presence in Egypt “the northern (colossus) emitted a whistling sound at dawn, caused presumably by heated air escaping from cracks which appeared after an earthquake damaged the statue.” Memnon was a mythical hero of the Trojan War who was slain by Achilles and whose name means “Ruler of the Dawn,” the probable inspiration for the title conferred on the twin statues in the GrecoRoman era (Theban Mapping…). Visitors of that time regarded the sound as an oracle and some paid tribute with graffiti on the bases of the figures. One such tourist was the aristocratic Roman poet Julia Balbilla, who accompanied the Emperor Hadrian and the Empress Sabina on their grand tour of Egypt in 130 AD. The royal entourage visited the Colossi of Memnon soon after the death of the emperor’s male favorite Antinous, who had drowned in the Nile and in whose memory Hadrian would erect statues and build monuments throughout the Roman Empire, including the

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city of Antinopolis in Egypt. T. C. Brennan has written about “The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of Memnon” for the journal The Classical World. The author informs us that although Balbilla’s verse cannot be considered distinguished as literature, it is important for what it reveals about “the competitive ethos—both political and literary—of the Roman elite in the age of Hadrian” (215). Balbilla was one of four Roman women whose poetry is carved on one of the statues, along with “the inscriptions of about a hundred other visitors … in Greek and Latin, prose and verse” (215), many of whom were Roman administrators of the empire in Egypt. Balbilla engraved her panegyrics to Hadrian and his wife in Aeolic Greek, the dialect used by Sappho 800 years earlier and a choice that would have impressed the emperor, an ardent Hellenophile. In one of four poems Balbilla invites the singing statue to address Hadrian, and Brennan notes that the poet herself admits in later lines that this miracle failed to occur. Another note of interest supplied by Brennan is that Egyptian priests would have supervised visits by Roman notables to the Colossi of Memnon and “charged handsomely for the privilege of writing on the stone” (217). Balbilla refers to the act of graffiti, sanctioned by the visiting emperor, in these lines from one of her epigrams: The Emperor Hadrian then himself bid welcome to Memnon and left on stone for generations to come This inscription recounting all that he saw and all that he heard. It was clear to all that the gods love him.

Though the vehicle of Balbilla’s verse, Hadrian put his stamp and that of the Roman Empire on a monumental representation of an Egyptian pharaoh who had ruled the same country 1,500 years before; this rhetorical appropriation of another’s greatness by a foreign conqueror of Egypt would be repeated almost two millennia later with the arrival of the French and the British. It was a practice that was first established by the ancient Egyptians, whose pharaohs would sometimes deface the names their predecessors had left on their works and write their own in their place. The Colossi of Memnon was not the only popular Egyptian site for the ancient Greek and Roman visitors; the nearby Valley of the Kings had been nearly deserted for centuries but now attracted a multitude of the mostly elite tourists of the time. Over two thousand graffiti in Greek and Latin can be found in ten royal tombs, according to the Theban Mapping Project. The tomb of Rameses VI was the most popular, tempting approximately one thousand writers, “probably because (his) cartouche strongly resembles the one of Amenhotep

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III and might have been a reminder of their hero Memnon.” According to the experts of the mapping project, the graffiti usually consisted of “a name and sometimes a date, the visitor’s profession, or comment about the tomb” and the era of these visits occurred between the third century B.C. and sixth century A.D. Graffiti of a different type appeared in the Valley of the Kings beginning around the fifth century A.D., when Christian hermits sought sanctuary in some of the tombs and left “Numerous graffiti (that) record hymns and prayers, representations of saints and crosses, and Christian names” (Theban Mapping…). Another site visited by graffitileaving Greek and Roman travelers was the island of Philae near Aswan, which contains monuments from the eras of the Pharaohs, the Greek Ptolemies and the Roman Caesars. But the most numerous and prominent inscriptions at this site are those made in the 19th century by European and American visitors, starting with Napoleon’s military campaign (1799 to 1801) in Egypt. The French invaders carved an inscription at Philae to commemorate their clashes with the ruling Mamelukes and march up the Nile from Alexandria to Aswan, which they declared as the boundary of their conquest of Egypt. Their words, some misspelled in the original French, are carved above the doorway of the great pylon of the Temple of Isis and employ the new calendar of revolutionary France: The French Republic, Year 6, 13 Messidor. A French army commanded by Napoleon landed in Alexandria. Twenty days later, the army put the Mamelukes to flight at the Pyramids. Dessaix, commanding the First Division, has pursued them up to the Cataracts, where he arrived on 13 Ventosa, March 3. The Generals of the Brigade.

This inscription and those of many other visitors to other ancient monuments along the Nile during the next century or so have been scrupulously documented by Roger O. De Keersmaecker in a selfpublished book and a website, both entitled “Travelers’ Graffiti from Egypt and the Sudan.” The author also records the responses of later foreign visitors to the site of the French commemoration who came after Napoleon’s army and wrote accounts of their travels. They were mostly French themselves and some expressed pride, according to De Keersmaecker. The author’s website also contains many examples of personal inscriptions left at various Egyptian sites by 19th century travelers and he includes biographies of the graffitists based on his research. Among the most prominent of these is the famous Swiss explorer of the Middle East, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. One American visitor to Philae whose graffito and travel memoir are

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not mentioned in “Travelers’ Graffiti from Egypt and the Sudan” is John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852), an explorer, writer and diplomat (John Lloyd…). Stephens is best known for his rediscovery of the Mayan ruins of Mexico and Central America but he earlier traveled to Egypt and in 1837 wrote a lively account of that expedition entitled Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land by an American. In describing his visit to Philae, the author noted that “among the mysterious and unknown writings of the Egyptians, were inscriptions in Greek and Latin, telling that they whose names were there written had come to worship the great goddess Isis” (104). He also described a cross carved in the wall and attempts to deface the images of the ancient Egyptian deities by early Christians, which can still be seen today. Then, in quite dramatic albeit somewhat florid language, he acknowledges the Napoleonic commemorative inscription “that in the ruins of the temple carried with it a wild and fearful interest; telling that the thunder of modern war had been heard above the roar of the cataract, and that the arm of the soldier, which had struck terror in the frozen regions of the north, had swept the burning sands of Africa” (104). But the graffiti that most interested Stephens was that left by a friend, another American who had earlier visited Philae and died in Palestine. He responded with language and a gesture that he felt was appropriate for the occasion: “A thousand recollections crowded upon me, of joys departed, never to return, and made me sad. I wrote my name under his and left the temple” (105). Not all Western visitors, however, approved of the writing of graffiti by modern travelers on the ancient sites. Two critics of the graffiti on Egyptian ruins were Gaston Maspero (1846-1916), a French Egyptologist, and George Alexander Hoskins (1802-1863), a British traveler and antiquarian. Their censure, some of it self-directed in Hoskin’s case, is cited by De Keersmaecker. In New Light on Ancient Egypt, Maspero asserted that, “Persons of taste are irritated when they come across (graffiti), and the directors of the antiquities exhaust themselves in searching for hard words in which to censure such practices in their reports” (qtd. in De Keersmaecker). Interestingly, Maspero seemed less scornful of the many graffiti left on the monuments by his fellow Frenchmen, the soldiers of Napoleon’s campaign, which he claimed were often expressions of longing for their homeland or tributes to fallen comrades. Hoskins complained in his book A Winter in Upper and Lower Egypt 1860-61 that in the Valley of the Kings “the mania of writing names on the walls destroys the beautiful uncolored outlines in one of the chambers” (qtd. in De Keersmaecker). He then admitted that on an earlier visit to Egypt thirty years before, he had written his name on one of the massive statues of Ramses II at Abu Simbel “and was greatly annoyed at

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what I had done when...I saw the destructive effect of an accumulation of such offenses, and was greatly relieved to find on my last visit to the temple that time and decay had completely effaced my only offence of that description.” He then encouraged future graffitists with a love for art to leave written traces of their visit to Egypt on a rock in the second cataract of the Nile, a suggestion that would earn the contempt of eco-sensitive visitors of today. In fact, in recent years Arabic names and initials have been sprayed in paint on the rocks that emerge from the Nile at Aswan, spoiling the view of what is probably Egypt’s most scenic stretch of the river. The country’s authorities may not have responded yet to these examples of graffiti as vandalism, but they are cleaning up the graffiti on the inside Egypt’s most famous monuments, the great pyramids at Giza. Recent restorations of the pyramids of Khefre and Menkaure, the second and third largest after Khufu, were undertaken during their semiannual closings designed to help preserve them. These efforts are described by Nevine El-Aref in Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, the newspaper’s website in English. She reported in 1999 that “graffiti left by (Kefre’s) visitors will be removed from the walls of the burial chamber and the corridor” but an exception will be made for the famous inscription left on the wall of the burial chamber by Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1824), a vivid character who was one of the first and most memorable of the Europeans to explore (and export) Egyptian antiquities. According to Zahi Hawaas, then director general of the Giza Plateau, “(Belzoni’s graffito) is now considered one of the main inner features of the pyramid” (qtd. in ElAref). In order to prevent any future graffiti or other misbehavior by visitors, a closed circuit TV system was installed. The efforts of restorers of the smaller Menkaure pyramid in 2001 included the cleaning of “the graffiti left by thoughtless visitors” and the decision that in future “anyone desecrating the monument in any way will face a LE 300 fine (El-Aref). Most contemporary visitors to the architectural and artistic remnants of the pharaohs would instinctively resist the temptation to record their visits on the walls and other surfaces, not only because of the security measures in place but because such now illegal acts would almost universally be viewed as a crude and ignorant defacement of some of the world’s oldest and most famous monuments. As has been noted, travelers to Egypt in the 19th century, many of them illustrious figures, did not always agree. Intolerance of graffiti in contemporary Egypt is not confined to that inscribed on the ancient ruins; it extends as well to inscriptions, mostly those of a political nature, appearing on the walls of buildings in Cairo. It is not illegal to paint graffiti in Cairo, where various examples of it can be found almost everywhere, unless the authorities decide that in their

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view, the writings have disturbed the public order. Many of the contemporary inscriptions, usually in Arabic but sometimes in English, are names, declarations of love, advertisements of business services and wellknown verses from the Quran that are an expression of the religious piety intrinsic to Egypt. Some of the graffiti, however, has had an overtly political content even before what Egyptians call The January 25th Revolution of 2011. Its writers generally chose busy, prominent locations that would guarantee them a large audience, including pedestrians and commuters. Amira Howeidy, a journalist for Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, reported in 2000 about the arrest of “two university students, who are also members of the Islamist-oriented Labour party…for spraying anti-Israeli sentiments on a wall next to the Ramses railway station.” One of the defendants claimed he and his fellow student did not expect to be taken to court for writing “No to Zionism” and “No to normalization with Israel,” along with “No to the arrest of journalists.” The prosecutor of the case is quoted by Howeidy as declaring that “Anyone who propagates literature or sentiments hostile to a country with which we have peace is violating the law” and committing a misdemeanor. In her article, Howeidy mentions the seeming contradiction that “Official statements, the national press and even the state-run television have all fired salvoes of anti-Israeli rhetoric.” Perhaps the politically inspired graffiti in the street are more of a threat than words printed in newspapers or uttered on television because they have a potential for greater permanence and a large, daily readership. In a case occurring three years later and also reported in the online newspaper, a 51-year-old Egyptian man was arrested for writing, “No to power inheritance,” on the walls of houses (Howeidy). The readers of this graffiti, including the authorities, would have understood this to be an objection to rumors that “President Hosni Mubarak was preparing to pass the reigns (sic) of power to his politically active son, Gamal.” The outcome of the first case could not be found in Al-Ahram Weekly’s archives but in the second case, the defendant spent 15 days in jail before being released after a judge decided that his graffiti was not politicallyinspired. Some political graffiti has been directed against the United States. When Cairo University hosted president Barack Obama’s historic speech to the Muslim world in June of 2009, the 100-year-old institution underwent a frenzy of refurbishment that included “cleaning the walls and removing graffiti and love letters written down the years by star-stricken students” (Al-Aref). The journalist does not mention any political slogans, but one can’t help wondering if they might have been among the scribbling that had to be erased before the arrival of the newly elected

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American president. An example of a political graffito in English can be found on the wall of a building near the old campus of the American University in Cairo. The statement, in bold red letters, says, “Boycott American Products” and was probably written during the second U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The writer chose English based on a presumed audience at the American university and the location of the wall because of its proximity to several American-owned fast-food outlets. This particular graffito, unlike those condemning Israel and the ruling regime in Egypt, has been ignored by the authorities and has remained undisturbed on the wall for almost a decade. This might be because it is in less prominent a location than Ramses Station and is written in English rather than Arabic. The use of English by graffitists in Egypt has become more common in recent decades and it is not just confined to political messages. A spraypainted name will sometimes appear in both Arabic and English. Just as ancient Egyptian scribes who wrote graffiti were boasting of their literacy, contemporary Egyptians who write on walls in English are employing a prestige language that is a signifier of being well educated and worldly. In the more affluent Cairo neighborhoods, such as Zamalek, Heliopolis and Maadi, one can see elaborate, mostly English language graffiti that seems to be modeled on the urban styles that originated in the West. Many of these, like their counterparts abroad, are often legible only to the writers and their cliques but some are clearly declaring allegiance to favorite football teams or musical groups. Since many expatriates live in these areas, it is likely that some of this graffiti is the work of their children who attend the foreign-language schools in these districts. The youth subculture known as Emo, which also originated in the West and is based on a devotion to angst-ridden rock music, has a small group of adherents among the privileged class of Cairenes. Gamal Nkrumah reports in his Al Ahram Weekly article “There Will Be Black” that “Emo is especially abhorred in predominantly paternalistic and macho cultures such as those of…the Arab world, and Egypt is no exception”; he adds that, “the security apparatus in conjunction with the Cairo governorate has removed their graffiti from the streets of downtown Cairo,” but not yet on the walls of an abandoned building in the heart of Zamalek, a district that is the likely home of many Emo fans, Egyptian and foreign. On the same wall, there is a more political, spray-painted statement in English: “F--- Israel.” An interesting variation on the use of English in graffiti has appeared all over Cairo since the summer of 2013 when the military under General Abdel Fattah El Sisi removed the Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammad Morsi from office and violently dispersed his supporters. Slogans condemning El Sisi as a ‘traitor’ and a ‘murderer’ use the Arabic

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words for these terms but write his surname with the English letters ‘C.C’, which match its pronunciation in Arabic. The contemporary reaction to urban graffiti has been mixed. The stylized urban graffiti that first appeared in New York City forty years ago was usually the work of young African-Americans and HispanicAmericans who, in contrast with the Emo graffitists of Cairo, were not from a background of privilege. Their work, which usually featured the writer’s identity in the form of a stylized logo or ‘tag,’ was championed by some commentators on artistic grounds and condemned by others on moral grounds. In his review of J. Ferrell’s Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality, Richard Lachmann writes that, “The former sought to entice graffiti writers to paint on canvases to be sold in galleries; the latter used graffiti as a sign of urban disorder and argued for its suppression as a first step in reasserting law and order against unrestrained youth and assertive members of minority groups.” This wide spectrum of responses may not have yet appeared in Cairo, but the Egyptian authorities who have erased political and Emo graffiti and in some cases arrested their writers would certainly agree in spirit with the authoritarian response. Contemporary Egyptian graffitists are probably reveling in what they regard as an act of defiance against both the oppressive censorship of the state and the stifling atmosphere of a mostly traditional, obedient society. The differing perceptions of the more stylized forms of urban graffiti—Is it art or is it vandalism?—are still debated in the West and although, as Ferrell claims, many graffitists in American cities feel they are making cultural and not political statements, both their defenders and detractors recognize the “subversive nature” of their work and the graffitists themselves are happy to be viewed as “anarchist heroes.” Earlier reference was made to Egyptian graffitists in Aswan who have spray-painted their initials on the huge rocks that just above the surface of the Nile River. The writing is in Arabic and is presumably the self-advertising work of adolescent males who are seeking a limited form of fame in front of their peers and the many foreign and Egyptian tourists who visit Aswan. One can assume that the same visitors who are fascinated by the Old Kingdom graffiti on Aswan’s ancient ruins, not to mention the far more recent inscriptions left on nearby Philae Temple by 19th century travelers, respond rather differently to the even newer ‘tags’ painted on the rocks in the Nile; it is also possible to speculate that, if these writings are left untouched by the authorities, with the passage of time they may acquire the same patina as the older markings. What distinguished the Tahrir graffiti of the 2011 uprising from earlier graffiti was its patriotic exigency. Those in power in Egypt did not hesitate

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to erase, at least initially, the defiant scribbling of the demonstrators during the beginning of the uprising. Later, when the government attempted to restrain the protests, the graffitists kept writing, knowing that their writing, and perhaps even one of the graffitists, could soon disappear. The fall of Mubarak a few weeks later prompted an extravaganza of graffiti and other wall art, not just in the epicenter of Tahrir Square, but all over Cairo and throughout Egypt. Now the writings, no longer whitewashed each day by government cleaning crews, featured patriotic statements such as the individual assertion of “Proud to be Egyptian” and the collective claim that “All Egyptians are one.” Another distinguishing feature of the Tahrir graffitists was that they were astutely aware of their rapt global audience and approached that audience via the use of western rhetorical strategies and concepts. Although many of the graffitists wrote in Arabic, those who wrote in English constrained their comments to simple commands, such as “Mubarak Go!” as opposed to more offensive comments, such as “F…you.” By taking the position of “good men and women speaking well,” one of the concepts that forms the foundation for western rhetoric, the writers and their verbal counterparts in the square managed to wage an intelligent, rhetorical battle against brutal physical forces, and win. In the view of Al Ahram Weekly Online reporter Hala Salah Eldin Hussein, the “graffiti were much like the statements made by the leaders of non-violent protest movements. They were politically mature, vigilant and passionate, street art that shed light upon political spontaneity and patriotism…” Although compelled by patriotism, the success of at least some of the “street art” appeared to have been guided by the use of western rhetorical concepts and strategies, with its appeals to logos (reason), ethos (integrity/ethics), and pathos (sympathy/compassion), and its eventual goals of action and transformation. The graffiti of the January 25th Revolution, as most Egyptians refer to the upheaval, now has its own Facebook page and is being further archived by bloggers, journalists, photographers, artists and academics. An outstanding example of this is photographer and journalist Mia Gröndahl’s Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt, which documents in more than 430 photographs a wide range of graffiti, stencils and murals, and celebrates individual writers and artists under the themes of Revolution and Freedom, Egyptian and Proud, Cross and Crescent, and Martyrs and Heroes. Such contemporary records continue to examine the story of the informal writings which first appeared on rock surfaces and the walls of temples and tombs in the time of the Pharaohs. The graffiti examined here have ranged from the dedications left by ancient scribes in the service of the powerful, to homage from visitors that enfold a monument in a new

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cultural milieu, to the unofficial and even illegal writings of contemporary graffitists who seek to transform structure, authority and tradition. The latter do not differ from their predecessors in that their settings have usually been carefully chosen for their prominence, an aspect likely to guarantee many viewers, and their attempts to appropriate that site, whether it be a distinguished monument from antiquity, a public wall in a crowded street, or a natural feature that many will view. It has also generally been agreed that the graffitists choice of language reveals much about them and their motives for leaving an inscription. In the case of the Tahrir Square graffitists, they sought to be a part of the transformation of a nation. Further research into the history of graffiti may include the use of new mediums, such as digital communication, by viewing it as the equivalent of a censorship-defying web blog or a social networking site. For the moment, however, the graffiti in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt stands as part of a long history of attempts to articulate existence, define or redefine social or class structures, or transform national destinies.

Works Cited Brennan, T. C. “The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of Memnon.” The Classical World 91.4 (1998): 215-34. De Keersmaecker, Roger O. Travellers' Graffiti from Egypt and the Sudan. Web. 4 Feb. 2010. . El Aref, Nevine. “Face-lift for Khefre.” Al Ahram Weekly Online. Al Ahram Newspaper, 15-21 July 1999. Web. 4 Feb. 2010. —. “Obama on Campus.” Al Ahram Weekly Online. Al Ahram Newspaper, May and June 2009. Web. 3 Feb. 2009. Gröndahl, Mia. Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012. Print. Howeidy, Amira. “The Writing on the Wall.” Al Ahram Weekly Online. Al Ahram Newspaper, 9-15 Mar. 2000. Web. 4 Feb. 2010. Hussein, Hala Salah Eldin. “Graffiti of the Uprising.” Al Ahram Weekly Online. Al Ahram Newspaper, 3 - 9 March 2011. Web. 25 June 2011. John Lloyd Stephens. Wikipedia. Web. 3 Feb. 2010. Lachmann, Richard. Rev. of Crimes of style: Urban graffiti and the politics of criminality, by J. Ferrell. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3(4) (1995) 98-101. Web. 3 Feb. 2010. Nkrumah, Gamal. “There Will Be Black.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online. 30 April – 6 May 2009. Web. 4. Feb. 2010. Peden, Alexander J. The Graffiti of Pharaonic Egypt: Scope and Roles of

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Informal Writings (c 3100 – 332 B.C.). Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill, 2001. Stephens, John Lloyd. Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land by an American. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1838. Theban Mapping Project. Web. 04 Feb. 2010. West, John Anthony. The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt: A Guide to the Sacred Places of Ancient Egypt. New York: Knopf, 1985. Wynn, L. L. Pyramids and Nightclubs: A Travel Ethnography of Arab and Western Imaginations of Egypt. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 2008.

SHOOTING IN THE SQUARE: VIDEO REFLECTIONS OF A TIME OF CHANGE BELLE GIRONDA

film diagrams of windows cruel and oval hear! the the silent herd —From “The Disappearance of Time” in The Structure of Escape, by Murat Nemet-Nejat

Though I think of myself primarily as a writer, in the three and a half years I lived in Cairo, video became the medium I regularly used to negotiate my relationship with the city, its culture and it’s language. At first, a tiny point-and-shoot camera offered the possibility of clandestine voyeurism. My regular bus ride from my downtown, Nile-side neighborhood, through the city and out to its desert outskirts, where the new American University in Cairo campus is located in the Fifth Settlement, (βϣΎΨϟ΍ ϊϤΠΘϟ΍ /El Tagamoa El-Khamis), offered endlessly intriguing views of Cairo street life. The bus allowed a freedom of looking that the streets themselves discouraged--and also a freedom of recording that was usually strongly discouraged (arms waving, tongue clucking, loud shouting—”No photo! No photo!”) or explicitly forbidden (cameras confiscated by armed security forces, memory card, tape or film removed and taken or destroyed). There was sometimes a strange illusion of intimacy with other commuters, when, in the thick of traffic, the University bus would slide up next to one of the public buses and eyes would meet unwillingly across a gulf of circumstance. There were opportunities to peer regularly, and at the same hour each day, into the garage-bay type store fronts of tiny shops on Kasr El-Aini and along the stretch of the Corniche that features all manner of auto parts, to see when

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tea is taken, (always somewhere), to gather too much information about the lives of small dogs in the cages stacked outside the “pet shop,” to watch uniformed children coming to and from school. In the past, words filled my writer's urge to process a city’s strangeness and my own—but in Cairo, video became my preferred mode, as I confronted my own status, profoundly outside of language. Moving images, light and the language of looking rushed in to help me grapple with the complexities of communication, understanding and misunderstanding. The footage that I captured throughout that first year became the raw material of my first Cairo-based video piece, “Between Uncertainties” which draws its title from a quote by experimental writer Djuna Barnes, “An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.” What I wanted most to explore was the distinctive experience (my experience) of being a novice in an unfamiliar place, culture and language. It consists of selected and edited excerpts from the video shot from the bus window, and a series of poems, mostly mine, in English and Arabic. The Arabic translations were by my friend John Ehab, a Cairene poet and journalist. The text dealt explicitly with my temporary alienation from language as a mode of discovery (of self, or other) and with the ways that personal identity must be re-formed when one’s every day context is so radically altered. Because language and culture and a lack of everyday knowledge create obstacles to one’s normal modes of inhabiting the world, a new and contingent relation arises. For a time, the assumed “self”, accustomed to naming the world, judging it, analyzing it, describing it and interacting with it, recedes so much as to nearly disappear. In this art work, the video camera stands in—watching and recording. The images in the piece are not illustrations of the text, or a subtext, but rather the ground for exploration--the place where the mind stops, between the uncertainties the poems express. There is one poem in the piece that I didn’t write. It is the first poem in Arabic that we hear in the video. It was written by the Egyptian poet, Ahmed Abdel Moaty Hegazy, and begins with the confident assertion, “This is me; this is my city…” While, interestingly, the journey of the speaker in the poem, through the streets of “his city” includes expressions of alienation and the experience of harassment by the police; his relation to the scene and the terrain is unshakably one of belonging. All of my poems that follow are in stark contrast to Hegazy’s poem, absent as they are of confident claims, wondering, instead, “Who am I?” and “What is this city?” When I next worked with video, about a year and a half later, I was invited to participate in a workshop that would culminate in a collaborative

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multi-channel video installation installed on an open-air rooftop in downtown Cairo. The workshop was led by Aras Ozgun, a new media artist from New York, and coordinated by curator and contemporary art historian Angela Harutyngen, in collaboration with Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery and The American University in Cairo (AUC). The participants were predominantly Egyptian local artists but also included a young man from Germany and an artist from Chicago, both of whom had one or more Egyptian parents and long-standing ties to Cairo. The proposed theme for the installation was “Windows”, which seemed at first too simple, but proved a rich and allusive launching point. From the outset, the face of Cairo was, for me, an enticing tableau of windows. When viewed from street level or illuminated at night, they beckoned with glimpses of a building’s inner life. What goes on inside? What color are the walls? Who are the inhabitants? What are they doing, eating, writing, hiding, thinking, making, praying, fixing, breaking, planning in there? While many postmodern cities are now dominated by skylines of flat reflective exteriors, where windows and walls are undifferentiated mirrors, the core of downtown Cairo still echoes with the taunts of the old-fashioned glass paned windows, hinting at the mysteries within. For me, windows were like cracks in the city’s facade through which I occasionally glimpsed the mysteries of its inner workings. So much is surface; so much is designed to deflect. The people inside can sometimes control these portals, when they control so little else. In the massive makeshift slum ring that grows continuously around Cairo, there are sloppily built brick buildings, many of which have no windows--either they are literally windowless boxes or they have openings that are simply rectangular or square holes in the walls, with no glass panes, shutters, or anything to keep the world out, or their secrets in. Some dwellers have installed rather fancy, though not particularly functional decorative panes in these openings. These look out of character with the rest of the shabby structure, but are also somehow in keeping with the prevalent inclination to ornamentation seen in many of the slum residences that border the highways. Individual balconies are painted in bright colors and patterns, fences randomly decorated with plaster of Paris columns and other odd sculptural elements salvaged or pilfered from who knows where. For my contribution to the Windows video project, I revisited a poem I had written some years before called, “you make a better door than a window.” This poem was inspired by the challenge that semiotic theory makes to the “transparency of language” as we are reminded that systems of signs (such as language) mediate or represent our experience of the

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world, rather than simply presenting it, like a view from a clear window. My poem plays with the words “hermetic” and “opaque” as they are often applied to language or writing that is difficult to understand. In a poetic turn, I literalize these concepts, invoking an actual hermit (imagined and feared) and the opacity of something as mundane as stockings (as my first experience of the word “opaque” was when it appeared on a package of pantyhose). While pursuing elusive meanings through literal images, the poem winds up pondering whether it is, perhaps, the world, rather than language, that is truly opaque—with language stalking after it, in a kind of endless chase—like the unseen hermit I had imagined silently pursuing me through the forests of my youth. For the video project based on this poem, I decided not to change the words of the poem at all, even though the images did not, in any obvious way, adhere to the Cairo context. Instead I focused on the literalism of the window in the poems’ title and not the hermetic recluse or the opaque stockings. I also wanted to add another layer of complexity with regards to the workings of language, by incorporating both an English version of the poem and an Arabic translation. The movement between, and the struggle across languages became much more the subject of the poem when the voiceover was added. I read the poem in English and the translator read it in Arabic. I recorded the two readings separately and edited them together so that phrases from the poem alternate from English to Arabic to English to Arabic with some slight overlapping. Because of how the two readings are intertwined, and given the marked contrast between my voice and John’s, it is easy to hear both, even when they run together. It was also surprisingly easy for an English speaker, who knows no Arabic, to detect that the Arabic was a translation of the English and even to match some words or phrases. Like the video shot from a moving bus, this one was also filmed through a window, but this time, from the inside of a room looking out. What was of interest though was not so much the world outside, though we glimpsed it, and even heard it faintly in the distant call to prayer that was picked up in the background at the beginning of the video. The camera looked instead at the window itself, which, like so many of the windows in Cairo, was coated with thick dust. Like language, the window in the video was not merely a conduit to the world, but occupied its own liminal space between the world and us. It functioned both to reveal and to obscure. In the film a hand appeared outside the window and wrote some lines from the poem in Arabic in the dust on the glass. The hand was partially obscured by the grime on the window, but slightly visible because of the bright sunlight shining through and the hard shadows cast. Then

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another hand appeared and wrote over the Arabic characters, in English. Because Arabic is written from right to left and English from left to right, the progress across the window occurs in opposite directions. Quickly the two languages merged and lost legibility, but, the writing removed some of the dust from the window and so the world outside was slightly revealed. When I was shooting the two video forays described above, I could not have predicted the circumstances under which I would make my third round of videos. The fact that I could not have imagined what was coming is, I think, an extension of all the not knowing I tried to document in my first two pieces. If, in my first piece I stood well outside the world I used the camera to explore and, in the second, was still stuck on the murkier side of a window—I could never have imagined how close I would be to my subject matter in my third foray—how I would look right into the eyes of Cairo’s unfolding history, how it would return my gaze. I left Cairo briefly to take care of some business in the U.S. just before the start of the spring semester in January of 2011. I flew out of Egypt a few days before January 25, the day that, up until then, had been known as National Police Day, a national holiday intended to honor heroic actions by the Egyptian police force, and the death of nearly fifty officers in Ismailiya in January 25, 1952. That conflict had preceded the Revolution of 1952, a military coup that led finally to the end of British occupation and the abolition of the constitutional monarchy in Egypt. The irony of a National Police Day in 2011, when it was widely known that the current police force was a rampantly brutal arm of the ruling Mubarak regime, was not lost on many restless Egyptian activists who were planning to turn that day into a massive demonstration against the regime. I didn’t see it, but it was rumored, and later noted in the independent Egyptian press, that in the days just prior to the uprising of January 25, 2011, a video appeared online that spliced together black and white footage celebrating the heroism of the Egyptian police resisting British forces in 1952, with recent actual footage of police beating demonstrators and other extreme acts of violence by what was then Mubarak’s Central Security Forces—El-Amn El-Markazi (ϱΰϛήϤϟ΍ ϦϣϷ΍). That video would have been consistent with the other now well-known organizing strategies for the January 25, 2011 uprising, which drew support from the huge following of the Facebook Page, Ϊϴόγ ΪϟΎΧ ΎϨϠϛ, (We are all Khaled Said). That page, created in memorial for the Egyptian youth, Khaled Said, who was beaten to death by the Egyptian Police in June of 2010, also served as a rallying point for anti-police-brutality and anti-Mubarak outrage. The page was established on June 10, 2010, a few

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days after Said’s death, and has been maintained by Egyptian, Wael Ghonim, and other anonymous administrators. The original page and all of its postings are in Arabic and there is a parallel page, in English, that is maintained by an anonymous Admin who says he works closely with the admins of the Ϊϴόγ ΪϟΎΧ ΎϨϠϛ page to draw international attention to the Khaled Said case and to issues of police brutality and human rights in Egypt. Another video called ϲΣϼγ ΍ήϴϣΎϜϟ΍ (My camera is my weapon) appeared online around January 19, 2011, just days before the revolution started, and is still available on YouTube (just Google the title). It was a harbinger of the role that video would play in exposing police brutality, shaping the revolution’s message and bringing people to the streets. It opens with the question, (white text on black screen, in Arabic), “Have you got your camera ready?” While dramatic and progressively swelling music plays, the text and voiceover advise viewers that on January 25, demonstrators should wield cameras as weapons against the state apparatus to record and reveal to the world the violent actions that police would use against nonviolent protesters. The text gives way to images of extremely photogenic, apparently Egyptian, photographers scrambling about on rugged desert terrain and, in one case, what looks like an ancient tomb or a temple, common in the desert, throughout Egypt. “January 25” appears on the screen, rattling up and down, knocked loose from its moorings, like the world it would engender, as the message ends. The video is a bit comic, in (I think) unintended ways. There is, during this less than one minute piece a legible zoom-in on one of the cameras, where the brand name, Nikon, is perfectly visible, making it seem like a hardly subtle product placement, or a full-on advertisement—in keeping with the overall slick, highly produced rhetorical style of the video. Further—I have to add this—one of the background extras looks strikingly like Wael Ghonim. Most of all, the handsome photographers featured are wielding huge and phallic telephoto lenses on cameras that would cost thousands of dollars. That equipment resembles in no way the kind of camera that one would carry on one’s way to a true grassroots, street driven revolution like the one that, remarkably, unfolded a few days after this video was posted. This caveat is amplified by the existing culture in Egypt where street photography of any kind, even in non-revolutionary moments, was actively prevented by armed security. Not to mention, of course, that those who were on the streets on January 25 had a lot more to worry about than taking pictures. My return flight to Cairo departed from NYC on January 28, “The Day of Rage.” I was the only obvious non-Egyptian on the airplane. The

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University sent a driver to pick me up when I landed the next morning in Cairo. The driver and I listened to the news in Arabic as we drove from the airport towards downtown —a plume of smoke billowed on the horizon. In his limited English, he bemoaned the situation, shuddering with each new report from the radio, his voice cracking, as he translated, “More than 70 dead…We are telling him we don’t want him anymore---why doesn’t he just go?” he asked frantically. Getting into my neighborhood, which borders Tahrir Square, was tricky because of many blockaded streets, but the driver was knowledgeable and undaunted. At home there was no Internet. I tried my mobile phone and was surprised to be able to reach some friends who were in Tahrir Square. The connection was choppy and I couldn’t learn much, but I also couldn’t sit at home, not knowing. January 29 was the last day during the 18 days of the first Egyptian Arab Spring uprisings when live ammunition and tear gas were still being used by the regimes forces to try to stop the Tahrir occupation. This was also the day that the Army rolled their tanks in and, for a brief and significant moment, there was the illusion, held by some, that they were rescuing the demonstrators from the brutal Amn Markazi. The chant was, “The army and the people are one hand” (ΓΪΣ΍ϭ Ϊϳ· ΐόθϟ΍ϭ ζϴΠϟ΍). For a change, I was not alone in my lack of knowledge about how untrue this would soon prove to be. The first video I shot in Tahrir Square was on that day, as demonstrators climbed onto the tanks surrounding the square and goaded the army to roll in and stop the shooting and the rain of tear gas from the Central Security Forces (CSF). The tanks had approached Tahrir from Kasr El-Aini street, the same way I walked from my apartment, in a jet lagged fog, shocked, frightened and helplessly compelled by the litter of burnt cars and other rubble from the previous days clashes. I came up behind them, weaving quietly past barricades, surprisingly invisible to the swarm of soldiers in the street. Unlike the giant professional bazooka-like cameras depicted in the “My camera is my weapon,” video mine was a tiny pocket size digital still camera that also would shoot short grainy segments. It took me a while to take it out of my pocket because I was quickly caught up in a crowd that was ebbing and flowing in sudden frightening bursts, surging forward and then rushing back when there was perception of danger from the CSF who were still firing guns and tear gas from a side street near the square. When I finally did take some footage, I was so nervous and so crowd jostled (and, frankly, so short) that it is more of an impressionistic record of an emotional state (and the backs of a lot of taller people in front of me) than a useful document of anything—though history was surely happening,

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right before our eyes. What I notice most when I review the video I shot that day in Tahrir and in the following weeks leading up to Mubarak’s resignation, is not the quality of the films, or even the content –but the intensity of proximity between me and what I was recording. I am shooting a crowd, of which I am a part. This is evident, not only because the frame fills up with the bodies of those all around me, but also because, when the camera looks into faces, they look back. Most all of the short pieces I filmed in the square also include someone with a camera pointed at me. I still can't confidently answer the questions raised by Hegazy's poem, but I am no longer just a voyeuristic watcher, riding the periphery, recording from behind a window. More than that, none of us can claim an uncomplicated subject or object position because everyone has a camera. As my videos testify, it is impossible to be there and to not be a part of the ever-growing image-map, pictured in and picturing the massive collaborative construction of another layer, emergent subjects, in the visual field. In a police state, both looking and filming can be regarded as crushing acts of surveillance and control, but in the temporary autonomous zone that was Tahrir Square during those few weeks, these felt more like acts of connection and affirmation.

Works Cited Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood. New York: New Directions, 1937. Ehab, John. Translator. “Me …and the City.” Poem by Ahmed Abdel Moaty Hegazy. Unpublished translation. 28 May 2009. Frenchman. “The History of the Revolution on Facebook.” Daily Kos. 17 February 2011. Retrieved December 29 2011.

Hegazy, Ahmed Abdel Moaty. “ΔϨϳΪϤϟ΍ϭ ..Ύϧ΃” adab.com. Retrieved 5 May 2009. Nemet-Nejat, Murat. Excerpt from “The Structure of Escape.” Unpublished poem. 2011. PmcEgyptMasryeen “My camera is my weapon... ϲΣϼγ ΓήϴϣΎϜϟ΍ 21 January 2011. Online Video Clip. YouTube. Accessed on April 14 2012.

“We are all Khaled Said” (2012). In Facebook. Retrieved March 30 2012.

PART III RHETORICS OF SOCIAL AND MORAL IDENTITY: THE SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES AND MODELS OF LEADERSHIP

THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION AND MALAK HIFNI NASIF: LESSONS LEARNED MAHA A. HASSAN

“Examine what is said, not those who speak” —Arab Proverb

On the 25th of January, a few Egyptian young adults went out to demonstrate, demanding freedom, democracy, and social justice. The demonstration soon flared up until it became a full-fledged revolution in which people of all classes, genders, and affiliations participated. The newly born revolution succeeded in only eighteen days in ousting a despotic regime that had caused Egypt innumerable grievances and immeasurable suffering over three long decades. Yet, the disappearance of this regime was merely a beginning, a signal for a revision of all aspects of the Egyptian society. This historical moment Egypt is living today brings to mind another moment in contemporary history, the turn of the twentieth century, at which point Egypt was also undergoing political, economic, and social circumstances that made its people aware of the need for all Egyptians to come together in a community-wide discussion for the purpose of generating visions of reform. At that time Egypt was suffering from a British colonialism that had drained its wealth and left its citizens suffering in poverty and its women without a voice. They did not attend schools, nor did they hold public jobs. They lived in a state of social seclusion within the sphere of their households. Affluent families hired private tutors to give their daughters some basic education in the home, but this education was restricted to the basics of reading and writing, some Quran, and some arithmetic. Less advantaged classes left their daughters without an education. As women had no access to public employment and domestic labor was cheap at the time, most women spent most of their time in idleness, with nothing to do except a few social visits here and there. Women of the lower classes shared the same lot of women in the upper and middle classes in being deprived of education, but were more

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fortunate in that they enjoyed freedom of movement. Because they were compelled to earn their living, they worked at menial jobs, such as street sellers or fieldworkers. Calls for women’s rights and for equality were just beginning. Leaders of these beginnings were Aisha Taymouria, Warda AlYazigi, Zeinab Fawaz, and Malak Hifni Nasif. Male reformers, most important of whom is Qasim Amin, played a seminal role in changing women’s social conditions. Amin’s two books The Liberation of Women and The New Woman can be described without any exaggeration as having caused a revolution in Egyptian society. The attempt to change the conditions of women occurred within a larger context of change in which there were attempts to improve the general condition of the country. This process was called modernization. The term was used to describe attempts to bring Egypt into modern times by helping it adopt the methods of science and civilization. This awareness of the need to modernize first occurred with the French expedition, which came to Egypt in 1798 and stayed till 1801. Before 1798, Egypt lived in a state of seclusion from the outside world under Ottoman rule. Despite general conditions being similar to those of a country living in the Middle Ages, there was no outrage against these conditions as the people were unaware of what conditions were like outside their country. Therefore, when Napoleon came to Egypt, the commoners thought that the Mameluke leaders were going to defeat him and force him to return. It was a big shock when the Mamelukes were defeated by Napoleon’s modern weapons: the Marmelukes used swords while Napoleon use canons. During the three years that Napoleon stayed in Egypt, Egyptians came to see and know numerous things they had never known because Napoleon had come to Egypt with one hundred scientists and scholars from different fields of knowledge. He also brought with him a press. These innovations led Egyptians to the awareness that their society was behind the times and made them sense keenly the need to help their community to move out of its backwardness and into modern times. These are the transformations that were taking place during the nineteenth century. They resulted in several schemes for modernization, which started in 1805 when Muhammad Ali came to rule Egypt. Ali transformed the country in different fields including agriculture, trade, and industry, but his main focus was on creating a strong army and a strong navy. His efforts on all fronts met with tremendous success. His heirs followed in his footsteps. Khedive Ismail, his son, had the dream of making Egypt a replica of Europe. Egypt’s thinkers, scholars, and reformers played a role in this dream by trying to accomplish similar goals of progress. Today, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, some suspect

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that there may be similarities between the turn of the twentieth century and the period of the current uprising. The same questions which arose in the early decades of the twentieth century are still being asked. What must we as Egyptians do in order to take charge of our own affairs? What needs to be done to improve the conditions of women given that the rates of poverty and illiteracy among women are much higher than among men? How can we get out of our economic crisis? What are the optimal ways for us to deal with each other? The purpose of this paper is to examine the writings of Malak Hifni Nasif, one of the important reformers at the beginning of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to both the content of her writing and the particular way in which she gained access to public opinion with the goal of determining why Nasif was such a great leader and noting similarities between Nasif’s situation and that of the Tahrir reformers. Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918) was an upper middle class woman who took it upon herself to make girls’ rights to literacy her cause and vocation. She published dozens of essays which covered a variety of topics, such as her views about marriage, education, and other defects found in women, and she often compared Egyptian women with Western women. Her articles were collected and published in book form for the first time a year later in 1910 by Al-Jarida, with an introduction by the editor-in chief Ahmed Lotfi el Sayed (Elsadda 7). Both the articles and the book were read by an extended audience and commented on by numerous figures in society. Her speeches, delivered to mostly women audiences, had a strong and direct influence on her listeners. Despite an early death at age 32, she was and is still revered as an active contributor to the cultural arena and as someone whose efforts to raise public awareness about women’s issues had a powerful impact on public opinion. An analysis of her rise to this position reveals that she was a very intelligent person who was unusually adept at what could be viewed as the western art of rhetorical persuasion. Nasif seemed to know at an early age that she wanted to improve the lot of Egyptian women. She also seemed to understand that in order to accomplish this goal, she would have to break the expected silence of women to take on the role of someone who is willing to dispute ideas in the public arena. She gained access to her public through speeches and newspaper columns in which she discovered her unique ability to enter into dialogue with the leading thinkers of the time. She gave lectures at the newly established Egyptian university and various speeches at a number of women’s societies she had established. One of these societies was the Women’s Edification Union, the second was a nursing society, the third

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was a school she established in her own home and sponsored out of her personal funds. In addition she gave speeches at a home for impoverished women (Nasif 52). In all of her endeavors, she demonstrated that she was an excellent orator and writer, by western standards because she was not only aware of the elements that contribute to persuasive rhetoric, such as appeals to logic, ethics, and compassion, but also aware that sound rhetoric involves dialogue, a relatively new concept for the Egyptian community. In a speech attended by hundreds of women in the club of one of the political parties, the Nation Party Club, Nasif addressed several women’s rights issues, including the right to work, freedom, the right to personal freedom, and the right to an education. The latter required rejection of a limited education for girls and access to all areas of study. This is how the speech opens: I offer you the greetings of a sister who feels as you do; who is pained by what pains you all and is made happy by what causes you happiness. I appreciate your kindness in accepting the invitation to listen to my speech. My only aim in giving this speech is to effect as much reform as possible. If I succeed, then, I have achieved my aim; if not, I am merely one of you. Human beings are sometimes wrong, sometimes right; so if any one of you has a different opinion than mine, or wishes to discuss a particular point, let her do so after I am done with the speech. (131)

Nasif begins by asserting a link that binds her with the audience. This is the bond of sisterhood. Being one of the women, she deeply senses how they feel, she is pained by what causes them pain and made happy by what causes them happiness. She astutely opts to begin with an emotional appeal that would make her closer to her audience. After establishing this rapport with her audience, she proceeds to establish her equality and similarity with the audience. She emphasizes that despite the fact that she is the orator and speaker, she is not superior to any of them. She then clarifies to the audience that she is not prescribing, or telling them how to act. Her words are rather an attempt at reform. When she mentions the word “reform”, she qualifies it with the words, “as much as possible”, to indicate that her ideas for reform are not infallible, or fool proof. She implies that since human beings are imperfect, her suggestions will inevitably leave something to be desired; not surprisingly they may turn out to be partial, or have weaknesses. From the beginning, her unusual rhetorical intelligence becomes evident when she puts herself and the audience on an equal par and then creates a gap or space to be filled with that audience, as they are invited to complete or correct her suggestions as needed. In this manner, Nasif competently casts the audience in an active rather than passive role, which sets the standards for their involvement

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right from the beginning. Thus, she makes it clear that the task of reform, as she sees it, is not to be undertaken single-handedly by one individual, but is a task which should be undertaken by a group, or a team. This team is comprised of Nasif and her listeners. Nasif’s words also make it clear that the roles of speaker and listener are not static. When she says “if any of you has a different opinion than mine or wishes to discuss a particular point, let her do so after I am done with the speech”, she indicates that roles will be exchanged between her and her audience, the speaker becoming a listener, and the listeners becoming speakers. This opening makes it clear that she is placing a great deal of importance on invitation to dialogue, a notion that is very important to western rhetoric. In an age in which women had no public role, this gesture is quite significant as she is helping women to break the silence and communicating to them that their opinions are valued. She wants the members of her audience to go through a transformation. On this occasion, as well as others, she is interested in initiating a community discussion about important social and national issues, at the forefront of which is the issue of reform. After the opening paragraph, she proceeds to say “The purpose of our gathering today is not just to get to know each other … it is a serious gathering in which I plan for us to reach a decision which we would follow, and in which we would search for our defects so we would fix them.” (132). By this statement, Nasif indicates to her interlocutors that the gathering will not be restricted to the actual time of the meeting because it will be used to come up with a plan of action which they then will follow after the meeting is concluded. The results of the dialogue will, thus, extend beyond the meeting into a future time that may eventually require additional dialogue. Nasif’s rhetoric, thus, is not mere eloquence; it has a practical purpose to act as a catalyst and a force for social change. The second point, the searching for defects and fixing them, is also very important. Here Nasif makes it clear that reform will not stop at external changes, changes that will take place in the world, society, or its systems; it will also turn inward to include moral reform that will make individuals better citizens. Nasif then turns to gender issues as she notes, “there is a general complaint about us; our complaint about men is general, too. So, which of the two parties is more right?”(131). A few sentences later, she answers, “the claims of both men and us are equally right and wrong. We all have our grievances and we are all right in what we say … and this difference about whose error it is has caused more differences between us in our lives. It has widened the gap between men and women in Egypt, which is a

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matter we are not glad of; indeed we regret it and fear its consequences.” (131). In bringing up complaints about women, Nasif indicates a willingness to accept criticism. She uses the pronoun “us”, which makes her one with her audience. At the same time, she has the rhetorical prowess to repeat criticism that men launch against them without fear of alienating or losing the audience. The two main complaints are: their immodest form of dress, and their lavish way of spending. In posing the question about which of the two parties is right, she offers her audience a rhetorical question that invites them to pause and weigh the matter. In answering it, she places herself in the position of a judge who adjudicates a sensitive issue. The fact that she finds it necessary to consider the two sides of the issue evidences her argumentative skill and her lack of bias, both of which she must possess if she is to play the role of judge. When Nasif asserts that there is right and wrong on both sides, she is not being diplomatic, or skirting the need to rule in favor of one of the parties. Indeed, it is a sign of her rhetorical astuteness that prohibits her from establishing any binary distinctions between the two genders. In fact, expressing her concern about the widening gap between the two genders shows her resolve that her discourse would promote solidarity rather than division amongst community members. In the course of the speech, Nasif defends women’s right to education, a right which at the time was not agreed to by all. She also insisted on the same quality of education that boys receive. She rejects completely and utterly the idea of a limited education for girls, as well as the idea of a specific type of education which focuses on domestic duties. In another section of the speech, she opposes the idea of women’s natural inferiority, pointing out that their defects are a result of depriving them of an opportunity for proper education and prohibiting them from forging into the world. She cites examples of women who succeeded brilliantly in the areas they were allowed to practice, including politics, science, and fine arts. Although the content and rhetorical structure of this speech seems surprisingly western, it is important to see the endeavors of Nasif within the context of its time. The last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth were decades during which Egyptians keenly felt the need to help their country catch up on modern progress. There were, however, different visions about how to reach this goal. For a reformer like Jaml El-Din Al-Afghani, the main objective was to get rid of despotic rulers and to apply the seminal Islamic principle of shuraa (similar to the western concept of democracy). Al-Afghani focused on the need for political change, resisting dictators, and getting rid of the

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occupation. He wanted to reduce the effects of absolute power through the adoption of constitutional governments, and called for the unification of the peoples of the region so that they would be able to resist foreign occupation. Afghani called for a radical, fast, and complete change. There were other thinkers and reformers, however, who had misgivings about radical change, fearing it might lead to negative consequences. Foremost among those is the celebrated Muhammad Abdou, a loyal student of Afghani, who disagreed on this point with his teacher. Abdou believed in gradual change, which would be accomplished by educating the nation. He reformed Al-Azhar, the oldest university in Egypt by changing its syllabi. He also changed and improved the judicial system. That thinking led to considering social change as well. In this instance, Abdou was not criticizing other opinions, but in dialogue with Nasif and many others. For Qasim Amin, for example, the most important issue of the day was removing the face veil of women and thereby ending their seclusion. Amin saw women as victims of decaying social custom and drew a connection between women’s problems and the dictatorships in the east. He maintained that in eastern countries, men beat women unjustly, while in turn being treated unjustly. “Woman,” he states, “is like a slave to man, and man is like a slave to the ruler.” Thus, he connects the woman question to the larger issue of political freedom. Writing on another woman’s issue, Zaynab Fawaz responds to a newspaper article in which she counters the argument of a woman called Hawa Kawrani, a Syrian Christian living in Egypt who wrote against women demanding suffrage in England. Kawrani maintained that women should not compete with men in the public realm because their role is a domestic one. For Nasif, neither the veil nor political rights were the main issues. She wanted an environment that allow for the improvement of women’s minds, morals, and behavior. She argued that when these were accomplished, issues next in importance, such as political freedom, could be tackled, or would naturally improve. In this respect, Nasif resembled late nineteenthcentury reformists like Sheik Muhammad Abdou and Rifaa Rafi El-Tahtawi, who deemed education as the best way for gaining effective social change. While Qasim Amin called for radical change in the condition of women, Nasif sought gradual and slow change. Perhaps this was due to her awareness that Qasim Amin’s call for women’s liberation had been attacked by more than one hundred books and innumerable articles (Nasif 49). Nasif wanted her audience to accept reform, not reject it. Nasif’s devotion to women’s education and her rhetorical astuteness could also be seen in her writing. In 1911, when the first Egyptian conference to discuss reform in all walks of Egyptian life was held under

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the sponsorship of Riyad Pasha, the Egyptian Prime Minster, representatives were invited from all governorates. When Nasif discovered that women were not represented, she wrote a paper that listed demands of women in ten bullets. The clarity and succinctness of this piece not only demonstrates Nasif’s acute sensitivity to exigency and style, but also her mastery of the considerations made by good rhetoricians, such as when and how to enter a conversation and how to adapt your ideas to the moment. To propose her own views, she effectively attacks the logic of the opposition’s arguments. For instance, in an address to women, she notes, “Men argue and affirm that you were created for the home, and we were created to earn a living. My goodness, what injunctions came from God stating this, and how did they find this out? How can they be so certain of this when it has never been mentioned in a holy book?” (134). In another instance, in response to an argument that women are not suitable for employment because they would leave jobs due to pregnancy and child birth, she criticizes this generalization by responding, “But some women have never married, some cannot bear children, some have been widowed or divorced with no one to support them, and some have husbands who need them to help financially…these women might not want to hold petty jobs, but may want to be teachers, or doctors with degrees similar to those men hold” (13334). It is true that at times her reasoning may have been faulty, as in the instance, when she offers a false analogy that equates the common person with kings who would never object to knowledge for the sake of knowledge, thereby denying any need for practical educational goals, but for the most part, she employs sound logic when arguing that women deserve the same educational opportunities as men. It is clear that Nasif was a very fine orator and writer who was attuned to the issues of her era, but it also must be said that she came from a privileged background that allowed her access to the finest thinkers in the world. As the daughter of a well-educated man who participated in establishing many scholarly societies, including the Arabic Academy and the newly launched Egyptian University, Nasif received an excellent education. She was enrolled in the only girls’ school at the time, El-Saniya School, where she proved her excellent abilities by becoming the first Egyptian to receive the primary school certificate when she was fourteen years of age. Later, she pursued a five year training period to qualify for a teaching position. In 1903, after completing her training, she embarked on a career in teaching. To further the cause of the girls’ education, she used to visit friends in their homes to persuade them to send their girls to school (Qalamawi 14). Her own education and her public accomplishments provided perfect support for the arguments she made for the gains that

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could be made from allowing women greater exposure to knowledge, and it is to her credit that her words not only inspired others to think about women’s unfortunate lot but to voice those opinions publically. Her major accomplishment was that she spoke and wrote to express the viewpoints of women and women’s rights, especially their rights to literacy. She participated in ongoing debates and triggered some debates herself. There are some that label Nasif a feminist. If this is true, it was a type of feminism that included both genders. “Nissaiyat”, the title of her column, was derived from the Arabic word for women “Nissa”. Although the word feminist did not exist in Arabic at the time, a decade later the work “nesai” came to mean feminist. In fact, in 1923 the Egyptian Feminist Union, founded by Huda Shaarawi, was dubbed “Al-Itihad AlNisai Al-Misri” (Badran 10.) Even though Nasif had never referred to herself by this epithet, her call for gender equity and equal educational opportunities for women and her demands for important women’s rights clearly place her within the category of Egyptian feminists. Yet, in all that she wrote or said, Nasif presents literacy as the only real means for the empowerment of women and the development of society. Thus she did not treat women’s literacy as an issue that concerned only the female half of the population, but as a general reform that society desires and needs. Nasif shared the national aspiration for a new woman who would be better equipped to function and contribute to the modern age. This notion of a new woman is astutely commented on by Monda Russel, The construct of new womanhood that emerged in Egypt at the turn of the century represented the infiltration of new ideas, fashions, and goods, tempered by a cultural authenticity and burgeoning nationalism, both of which encouraged indigenous concepts of morality and virtue. The new woman would glean the best from Eastern and Western cultural worlds, avoiding the “Frankensteinian” combination of the worst of both (3).

The dimensions of cultural authenticity and nationalism are clear in Nasif’s analysis of all social ills as well as in the remedies and cures she proposes. For instance, at more than one juncture she repeats the importance of Egyptian men not marrying foreign but Egyptian women and of men and women collaborating to further the progress of Egypt. The new hybrid woman, who amalgamates the best of what is eastern and western, may perhaps be clearest in the speech entitled, “A Comparison between the Egyptian Woman and the Western Woman”, in which she compares the two cultures at different stages of life, beginning from infancy to childhood, then adolescence into marriage and motherhood. She points out pros and cons of both, stressing the importance of the Egyptian woman

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adopting everything that is praiseworthy in the Western woman. The wisdom of Nasif’s emphasis on the importance of women’s literacy becomes evident when we find out that gender is still an important determinant in the acquisition of literacy in Egypt today. The similarities between Nasif’s situation and those who initiated the demonstration in Tahrir are obvious. Nasif was attempting to overturn oppression. The demonstrators were attempting to overturn oppression. Nasif was educated. The initial demonstrators were educated. Nasif gained initial support for her ideas through correspondence with the writer Mai Ziyada, and the writers Mrs. Cameron, and Elizabeth Cooper. The demonstrators gained initial support from Facebook conversations with those of similar opinions. Nasif was well versed in logical and rhetorical appeals. The demonstrators were well versed in logical and rhetorical appeals. Nasif knew how to take advantage of the media (newspapers). The demonstrators knew how to take advantage of media. (Facebook, television) Nasif was articulate. The demonstrators were articulate. Nasif used a new type of rhetoric that sometimes resembled that of the west. The demonstrators used a rhetoric that sometimes resembled the rhetoric of the West. Nasif was successful in raising awareness for her cause. The demonstrators were successful in raising awareness for their cause. The difference between the two was that Nasif was operating in a political climate in which it was possible to use peaceful means to broadcast objections to civil wrongs. The demonstrators were operating in a political climate where there was no dialogue regarding civil wrongs. Thus, they eventually lost control of their peaceful demonstration when they were forced into a civil disturbance and eventually the demonstration erupted into violence. At this point, the question remains whether today we have a figure similar to Malak Hifni Nasif, a person who can change society through rhetorical means, a figure who tries to and is able to reach large numbers of people in order to promote a vision for the future, to call for social change, and to offer practical and useful suggestions. There are many groups and NGOs working to achieve important and worthy goals. This, however, does not substitute the need for a human figure, a leader who is charismatic and capable of inspiring crowds of people, a social leader who can influence them through the means of persuasion and set an example through activism, whether it be regarding women’s issues, or reform. After the revolution, when the military council tried to speak to those who made the revolution, they met with fifty groups, which later made up the confederacy of the revolution. Each refused to claim leadership, or to say that they owned the revolution. This noble behavior, which refused to

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usurp power or to take more credit than deserved, served to show that the revolution is indeed a popular one; a genuine revolution that belongs to all Egyptians, not a limited political movement or coup d’etat. This was very appropriate at the time. Now is a different time. These myriads of political groups, activists, and NGOs are still needed, and indeed they are still working and contributing to the country. Still, I think we need a rhetorical figure, a person who can use a combination of public speaking, writing, and activism to unite the Egyptian people in pursuit of reform and social change, a good person speaking well. We need a new Malak Hifni Nasif.

Works Cited Amin, Qasim. The New Woman: A Document in the Early Debate on Egyptian Feminism. Trans. Samiha Sidhom. Cairo: AUC University Press, 1995. Badran, Margot. Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. —. Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Badran, Margot and Miriam Cooke, eds. Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Elgabry, Abdel Metal Mohamed. Malak Hifni Nasif, The Desert Researcher’s Modern Moslem Woman. Cairo: Dar al Bayan, 1976. Elsadda, Hoda. Introduction. About Women. By Malak Hifni Nasif. Cairo: Women and Memory Forum, 1998. 6-33. Nasif, Magd Eldin, ed. The Traces of the Desert Researcher: Malak Hifni Nasif 1886- 1918. Cairo: Ministry of Culture and National Guidance, 1962. Nasif, Malak Hifni. About Women. Cairo: Women and Memory Forum, 1998. Russel, Mona L. Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity 1863-1922. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

NOTES ON THE FRIDAY NOON PRAYER: SHEIKH MOHAMMED AL-GHAZƖLI’S “TO THE MASJID”1 LOUBNA A. YOUSSEF

O you who believe, when the call to prayer is proclaimed on Friday, hasten earnestly to the remembrance of Allah —Qur’an 62:92

The months following the 25th January revolution in Egypt have demonstrated that for Egyptians, Friday is not simply a day involving resting, meeting with family and friends, and congregating for the noon prayer ritual that includes a khotba (sermon/homily/oration). Friday is a “holy-day” for accomplishing what has not been achieved during the week. The root of the Arabic word ΔόϤΟ (Friday) is ϊϤΟ, which means to bring together and/or to get together. This is why ϊϣΎΟ (mosque/masjid) is the place where people congregate and meet the prince of the faithful. During the time of the Prophet, Muhammad led the Muslims to prayer and delivered the Friday khotba. His representatives throughout the Muslim world follow his footsteps. The topics of the homilies were traditionally reserved for public matters/questions. However, as the Muslim population spread far and wide, it became impossible to maintain that early practice and most homilies today deal with religious or quasi-religious topics. When Egyptians gather today on Friday in Tahrir Square or elsewhere, they revive an ancient custom whereby the people meet their leader/prince and show allegiance or otherwise. For three years since the 25th January 2011, the people of Egypt have taken to the streets on most Fridays to call for accomplishing what has not been achieved during the past three or four decades. For the protestors in Medan El-Tahrir, Fridays have acquired political importance. While preparing for these Fridays, protestors gave them different names to express the condition and demands of the demonstrators, like “The Friday of Anger/Rage/Wrath, The Friday of Departure, of Victory and Continuity, of the Martyrs, Retribution, Retaliation,

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Cleansing, Warning, Determination, the Friday of Saving the Revolution, and the Friday of Unity”. The fact that the demonstrations have been taking place on Friday is a statement of acceptance or rejection of the leader. When they established themselves in Tahrir, the Youth Coalition of the revolution set up a podium that helped them to communicate with one another, with the media, the government, the Egyptian Supreme Council for Armed Forces (SCAF), and the world. After managing to get Mubarak to step down in eighteen days, members of this Youth Coalition, in a second wave of the revolution, used the podium to call for an open-ended sit-in in Tahrir and other squares because months had passed, and the demands of the revolution had not been met. Such ongoing mass demonstrations have pressured the SCAF to make the arrangements to bring Mubarak from Sharm Al-Sheikh to be publicly tried behind bars in court on 3rd August 2011. With time, this podium also served as a minbar, pulpit, for the khatiib who delivered the Friday khotba in Tahrir, transforming the Medan to a mosque-like site. Most TV channels covered these sermons and the prayers that followed live. On youtube3 there are many recordings of different parts of various sermons, scenes of the masses that prayed, the invocations that were made during and after the prayers, and events that followed. These provide rich material for historians and scholars to explore who chose the khatiib for each khotba, what was the focus of each khotba, and how effective was the khotba. Although observing the Friday khotba delivered by a khatiib via the microphone of a masjid anywhere in Cairo and wherever Muslims congregate to pray at noon is often referred to by Muslims as a weekly feast, and men generally start the activities of their day after this event, the khotba has not received serious attention from academia. Much has been written in Arabic and in English about the importance of praying in Islam in general and of attending the khotba that precedes the Friday noon prayer, but there has been limited research in Arabic on what the khatiib says, on the language and tone he employs, and on how the changing context of the khotba determines changes in content, language and tone. What has raised debate in Egypt at the end of the twentieth century is who appoints the khatiib and who is eligible to be one: what are the credentials of the khatiib? What are the similarities and differences between an orator, preacher, scholar, khatiib, imam, ‘alim or faqih? What role should each play and who should be best qualified to give the Friday khotba? More questions come to mind: what is the significance of the setting of the khotba? How does the khatiib prepare for this weekly event and discuss current conditions? What is appropriate or inappropriate for the khotba?

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What are the criteria to measure whether a khotba is effective or not? At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first, what has also raised debate in Egypt is the role and impact of charismatic preachers who have different credentials. With respect to the research done in English on the Friday khotba, in The Prophet’s Pulpit, Patrick Gaffney argues that the khotba “has not been a subject of extensive interest among modern students of Middle East history” (119). In “Islamic Ritual: Perspective and Theories,” Fredrick Denny has generally indicated that The study of Islamic ritual is not a mysterious business, although the paucity of published materials on the subject in relation to its obvious central importance may seem paradoxical…That a now generally acknowledged oversight has been allowed to persist is a testimony to the failures of scholarship and not to the opaqueness or intractability of the subject matter. One has to examine both texts and contexts, and the divergences between the two. (67-8)

Such statements and the series of questions listed above show that gaps in the research need to be filled and misconceptions need to be addressed. No one would disagree with C. H. Becker, who asserts in his chapter “On the History of Muslim Worship”, that this ritual is “the celebration that culminates in a communal act of worship” (55). What G. E. von Grunebaum claims, however, is incorrect. He said, The khotba is not, however, as Christian or Jewish analogies might lead one to expect, a discussion of a religious question or the application of religious principle to a problem of the day. Its content is fixed—in addition to the praise of God and a blessing of the Prophet, it must offer a prayer for the Muslim community, a recitation from the Koran and an admonition of piety. (11)

There is ample evidence in the legacies that Sheikh Metwalli Al-Sha‘arawy and many others have left behind and in the recordings of many of the khotƗb (plural of khotba) delivered in Egypt and everywhere in the world that the focus of a khotba can be “a religious question” and/or “the application of religious principle to a problem of the day”. Jonathan Berkey, who cites von Grunebaum in a note (99), wrote that the khotba “followed fairly rigorous conventions regarding form and content— formulaic praise of God, prayers for Mohammad and his community, recitation of Qur’anic passages and short admonitions to pious believers.” It would be interesting to explore whether a khotba on the one hand and a sermon in Christianity and/or in Judaism on the other are altogether different, as von Grunebaum claims, but this is not within the scope of

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this short paper. What ought to be stressed here is that any khotba does include the components listed by von Grunebaum and Berkey, but the inference that the content is therefore “fixed” is altogether inaccurate and does not even call for a refutation. The different khotƗb delivered in Tahrir after 25th January and the GhazƗli anthology quoted in this paper provide evidence that the content of the khotba changes with context. The Friday noon prayer ritual which includes a khotba is the subject of “Snjrat Al-Jumu‘a” (Congregation/Assembly) in the Qur’an and is the focus of the ayƗt (plural of Ɨya, the Arabic word for Qur’anic verse) that said: O you who believe, when the call to prayer is proclaimed on Friday, hasten earnestly to the remembrance of Allah, and leave trade: That is best for you if you but know it. And when the prayer is accomplished, you may disperse in the land, and seek of the bounty of Allah and remember Allah often that you may prosper. (Qur’an 62: 9-10)

Clearly, the opening invocation here is to all believers without specifying gender. Although this is the case, observing the Friday noon prayer is an obligation for men but not for women (who are required to pray at home), and therefore the khotba generally addresses men. The second statement stresses that worldly affairs have to be temporarily halted at prayer time on Friday at noon and resumed when the prayer ends. The three steps of this ritual are the first athan, call to prayer,4 followed by the khotba delivered by the khatiib (orator), who concludes with a du’a, which then leads to the iqama, namely the second athan5 indicating that it is time for the imam6 to lead the communal two-rak'ah (unit) prayer. In order to deliver the khotba, the khatiib stands on the minbar, the pulpit of the mosque, where Prophet Mohammad once stood. This paper will focus on the written version of the khotba “To the Masjid/Mosque”, by one of the most popular Egyptian Sheikhs, Imam Mohammad Al-GhazƗli. Published among others in Khutab Al-Sheikh Mohammad Al-GhazƗli fi Shoon Al-Deen wal Haya (Sermons of Sheikh Mohammad Al GhazƗli on Matters of Religion and Life), this specific khotba was delivered on 23rd February 1972 at the ‘Amr Ibn Al-‘Ɩs Mosque in Old Cairo. This one has been chosen for many reasons, one of which is because it appropriately establishes an inextricable link between the setting and the content of the Friday khotba. The Arabic term khotba is translated as oration in literature and as sermon in religious discourse; however, certain features of both are often combined in the Arabic word, hence its use. The interrelated questions that this paper will address are: What is the message that GhazƗli sent to his audience and how did he use

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the tools of Arabic balƗgha (a term generally translated as rhetoric) in order to convey this message? Is the kind of discourse used appropriate or inappropriate for this day and age? In preparing for his khotba, did GhazƗli have in mind the checklist (discussed below) he includes in his book? What about the khotba of Sheikh GhazƗli can be emulated to improve the discourse of the Friday khotba in Egypt today? In order to explore the message that GhazƗli delivers, this paper will deal with the context and structure of the written text, and will throughout attempt to draw a portrait of the character/ethos of GhazƗli, the khatiib, through this Friday khotba. Before devoting my attention to the specific khotba at hand, it will be necessary to discuss basic definitions of balãgha and khatãba in order to determine whether these two share any common tools with rhetoric. Although khatãba and oratory on the one hand, and balãgha and rhetoric on the other, can be regarded as similar, it is erroneous to equate one with the other because each has a different history and a different relationship with other fields of knowledge. Whereas balãgha and khatãba developed in the Arabian Peninsula and were affected by pre and post Islamic culture, rhetoric and oratory developed in an altogether different context in the western world. By analyzing the khotba by GhazƗli, it will be interesting to explore whether these different disciplines share common tools that can allow audiences belonging to different cultures to grasp the message of the khatiib. This position is adopted because in the global village we live in today, if Muslims are right in assuming that Islam addresses humanity, it is more fitting to explore how this khotba addresses its immediate audience, but can also have a message for non-Egyptian listeners.

BalƗgha and Khatãba BalƗgha and khatƗba have a long history dating back to the preIslamic Arabian Peninsula in the era known as jƗhiliya, the age of ignorance. Though known as the age of ignorance, even then balƗgha and khatƗba were highly appreciated and the recitation of poetry, that was orally transmitted, served as diwƗn Al-‘Arab, which is the social, economic, religious, and cultural record of their lives. In this context, the Arab people believed that, “the pen is mightier than the sword”. Ideas, Abou Hilal Al-‘Askari argues, are readily available, well known to Arabs and foreigners, but the test is the way the speaker/writer builds up a text with an argument, to address an audience, using language in matchless constructions, consisting of pure and charming words. Modern Arab scholars like Shawqy Daif, Abdel Hakim Rady, Ali ‘Ashry Zayed, and

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Abdul Raof Hussein agree that there were two distinct stages in the development of balƗgha, one before and another after Islam, when the dialect of Qurãysh became the established form of the Arabic language. They also agree that these two stages were followed by two more stages, a mature stage, in which balƗgha became a discipline, which was then followed by a stage of stagnation. In the first, the pre-Islamic era, balƗgha was used with reference to prose, khatƗba (oration and epistle), and poetry (stylistic embellishment). At that time, there were no independent studies in balƗgha and/or khatƗba, but general, scattered observations about them. During the second stage, after the Qur’an was ‘revealed’, the observations that were available crystallized into studies which constituted chapters in books about one of three fields of knowledge, namely literature, linguistics, and Qur’anic studies. The third stage witnessed the development of balƗgha as an independent discipline with three branches: ‘ilm al-ma‘ani (literally means the art of meaning),‘ilm al-bayƗn (literally means the art of articulation, good style, and clarity of ideas and speech; and ‘ilm al-badƯ‘ (literally means the art of beauty/ornamentation/ invention). When dealing with the two terms balƗgha and khatƗba, balƗgha is more inclusive in referring to both verse and prose, whereas khatƗba strictly refers to the art of public speaking. The entry on balƗgha6 in the most popular dictionary distributed by the Egyptian Ministry of Education to all the schools in the country Al-Mo‘jam Al-Wajiiz (The Shorter Dictionary), published by The Arabic Language Academy in Cairo, lists the following explanations7, .ϪΘϳΎϏ ϲϟ΍ Ϟλϭ :ήϣϷ΍ ώ˴ ˴Ϡ˴Αϭ .ϢϠΤϟ΍ ώϠΑ :ϡϼϐϟ΍ ώ˴ ˴Ϡ˴Αϭ .ϩήϤΛ ϙ΍έΩ΍ ϥΎΣ :˱ ΎϏϮϠΑ ώ˴ ˴Ϡ˴Α ήΠθϟ΍ (˴ώ˴Ϡ˴Α) .Ϫϴϟ΍ Ϟλϭ :Ίθϟ΍ ώϠΑϭ (balƗgha) to attain: the tree is ripe (literally: the tree has attained a high degree of ripeness): it is time to harvest the crop, or the fruits on the tree are ripe; to come of age: a boy attains puberty; for something to reach its climax; to reach or attain something. .˯Ύ˴ϐ˴Ϡ˵Α (Ν) .ώ˸ ϴϠ˴Α ϮϬϓ ˬΔϧΎϴΑ ϦδΣϭ ΢μϓ :ΔϏϼΑ ώ˸ ˴Ϡ˴Α (ώ˸ ˴Ϡ˴Α) (balagha) to inform, convey, impart: to communicate a message effectively and eloquently, and he, therefore, is effective and eloquent (balƯgh) and plural is bulaghƗ’. .ϪϠλϭ΃ :Ϫϴϟ΍ϭ Ίθϟ΍ (˵Ϫϐ˴ ϠΑ΃) (ablaghahu) to fulfill a mission: deliver a message or something. .Ίθϟ΍ ϲϓ ϲϟΎϏ :ώϟΎΑϭ .ϲμϘΘγ΍ϭ Ϫϴϓ ΪϬΘΟ΍ :˱ ΎϏϼΑϭ ˬΔϐϟΎΒϣ˵ ˬϪϴϓ (˴ώ˴ϟΎΑ) (bƗlagha) and (mubƗlagha) is exaggeration; and (balƗghan) to report: by

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making an effort and investigation; and (bƗlagha) in doing or saying something: that is to exaggerate. .ϩΎϳ΍ ϪϐϠΑ΃ :Ίθϟ΍ Ύϧϼϓ ώ˸ ˴Ϡ˴Α ϭ .ϪϠλϭ΃ :Ίθϟ΍ ώϠΑϭ .ήϬυ :Ϫγ΃έ ϲϓ ΐϴθϟ΍ (ώ˸ ϠΑ) (balagha al-shaybu fi ra’sihi) his hair turned gray which clearly shows that he is growing old, literally: to disclose; (balagha (v)) something: to deliver; and (ballagha (v)) something to someone: was informed. (tabligh) something: to receive a message and be satisfied.

.ϪΑ ϲϔΘϛ΍ :΍άϜΑ (˴ώϠ˴Β˴Η)

:ύϼΑϭ .ΔϳΎϐϟ΍ ϲϟ΍ ϪΑ ϞλϮΘϳ Ύϣ :ύϼΒϟ΍ϭ (αΎϨϠϟ ύϼΑ ΍άϫ) :ϢϳήϜϟ΍ ϥ΍ήϘϟ΍ ϲϓϭ ˬώϴϠΒΘϟ΍ :(ύϼΒϟ΍) .ΎϫϮΤϧϭ ΔϟΎγέ ϲϓ ω΍άϳ ϥΎϴΑ (al-balagh): the announcement or proclamation, (al-tabligh): conveyance, notification, or delivery; in the Holy Qur’an: (“This is a proclamation to the people”), and (al-balagh): the declaration: what leads to the fulfillment of the mission; and (balagh): a proclamation made in a message, a letter, or any other way. (61). ήϴΛ΄Θϟ΍ ΓϮϗϭ ˬϥΎϴΒϟ΍ ϦδΣ :(ΔϏϼΒϟ΍) (al-balƗgha): rhetoric; the power to make a profound, lasting effect.

It is significant that these eight entries include a quotation from the Qur’an and three illustrations that have cultural implications: the tree and fruits (pertaining to agriculture and a rural community), and two gender specific (male of course) references to puberty, and gray hair. What is also interesting is that the sequence in which these entries are arranged reaches a culmination when the term balƗgha as a field of knowledge is introduced. The first meaning (to attain) refers to a process that leads to fruition; the second to communicating a message eloquently; the third to fulfilling a goal; the fourth to reporting, but such a report could be subjective, emotional, and intense (hence the possibility of exaggeration); the fifth to clarity in delivering the message; the sixth to receiving a message; the seventh to making a proclamation, sending a message, fulfilling a mission etc.; and finally the direct reference to the field of knowledge, balƗgha. Although the definition of balƗgha in the list above does not include these details, the list shows that this term can be used in three contexts: to praise the skills of the speaker, to describe the effectiveness of the speech, and to refer to the discipline. The term does not simply mean eloquence, which is expressiveness, articulateness, persuasiveness, and fluency, but covers all areas of speech and style, as well as the legacy inherent in the language and the human ability to understand and use language. The entry on khatƗba in Al-Mo‘jam Al-Wajiiz lists the following

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explanations: ...ΔΒτΧ ϢϬϴϠϋ ϲϘϟ΃ :ΔΒτΧϭ ˬΔΑΎτΧ – ϢϬϴϠϋϭ ˬϢϬϴϓϭ ˬαΎϨϟ΍ (ΐτΧ) (khatƗb): spoke to the people. Oratory. Speech: deliver a speech. ϪΛΪΣ :ήϣϷ΍ ϲϓ ϪΒρΎΧ :ϝΎϘϳϭ .Ύϣϼϛ Ϫϴϟ· ϪΟϭ :ϪΒρΎΧϭ .ϪΛΩΎΣϭ ϪϤϟΎϛ :ΎΑΎτΧϭ ˬΔΒρΎΨϣ (ΔΒρΎΧ) ...Ϫϧ΄θΑ (khatabah) to talk to someone, to deliver a message: to speak to someone: to address someone. To talk to someone about something. ...ϢϬϋΎϨϗϹ αΎϨϟ΍ Ϧϣ ΎόϤΟ ΢ϴμϓ ϢϠϜΘϣ ϪΑ ΐρΎΨϳ έϮθϨϤϟ΍ ϡϼϜϟ΍ Ϧϣ :(ΔΒτΨϟ΍) (khotba): A speech delivered publicly by an articulate speaker to persuade an audience. .(202) .ϡϮϘϟ΍ Ϧϋ ΙΪΤΘϤϟ΍ϭ .ϩήϴϏϭ ΪΠδϤϟ΍ ϲϓ ΔΒτΨϟΎΑ ϡϮϘϳ Ϧϣ :(ΐϴτΨϟ΍) (khatiib): the one who delivers a khatƗba in a mosque or elsewhere. Someone who speaks on the behalf of others.

These definitions clearly show that like oratory, khatƗba stresses the emphasis on the speaker, the message and persuading an audience. Unlike oratory, however, khatƗba changed from focusing on tribal issues to becoming a tool to spread Islam. The khatiib is one of three figures who played prominent, albeit different roles in the Arab society, namely the poet and rawi. In pre-Islamic Arabia, each tribe had a khatiib who glorified the tribe. The poet had a similar role and the significant status of poetry before Islam is not debatable. Differing versions of a poem were produced depending on the audience (members of a tribe, patron or political leaders or causes), or on the transmission from the poet to the rãwi, who had the ability to improvise. Because the poet creates a poem, but the rãwi is simply a performer, the poet is described as baligh, but the rãwi is regarded as faseeh, which means articulate. Fasãha, which describes the speaker as simply being articulate, or the language used is free from Arabized forms of foreign words or coinages, is a term that is often confused with balãgha. Unlike oratory, the purpose of the khotba changed in time. For the Prophet, the khotba was to guide those who converted to Islam to a better life according to the tenets of Islam. The first message of the Prophet was that Islam is a monotheistic creed that succeeds Judaism and Christianity, and that as the descendants of Adam, Muslims belong to God and will be judged by him. His second message was to balance and reconcile one’s duties toward God and one’s duties toward oneself and others: doing good works and collaborating to benefit society. During his last illness, when Prophet Mohammad could not lead prayers at the masjid, he appointed his

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companion Abou Bakr Al-Seddiq as the imam (the root of the word literally means to lead). This was not only because Abou Bakr Al-Seddiq was pious, but this selection implied that he possesses the qualities of a leader who can follow the Prophet as the guide of the people. Implicitly, this choice provides evidence that Al-Seddiq can be trusted as the khatiib who addresses the concerns of the people and can think of the best interest of the community. The role of poetry and the poet became extremely controversial during the life of Prophet Mohammad. The fact that the Prophet was illiterate is often over emphasized to indicate that he could have not produced the inimitable Qur’an himself. When Prophet Mohammad introduced the new faith and recited the Qur’an in different contexts, poets and orators marveled at the eloquence of the extracts they heard when commissioned to attack Mohammad. He challenged them to produce anything comparable and it is, therefore, understandable for Mohammad to hate poets because of their eloquent attack. After the revelation of the Qur’an, a lively debate started about the pre-Islamic literary heritage, and the relevance of the poetry of a pagan society in Islamic cultural legacy became questionable. The tension between poetry and the role of the poet in society on the one hand, and the Qur’anic text and the role of Prophet Mohammad as the messenger of God on the other, has often been highlighted by many religious figures. Unlike Prophet Mohammad, the khatiib does not have religious authority because every Muslim is accountable before God, but from this position on the minbar, the khatiib is a role model. Being physically presentable and clean (having purified his clothes and body through ablution), knowledgeable, righteous, eloquent and articulate, and with insight about Islam, he is respected as the spiritual leader of the prayer. Because the imam leads the Muslim congregation in the five daily prayers (praying is, thus, an important duty in Islam) and can deliver the Friday khotba, the careful selection of such a figure can have an impact on the life of the community: his behavior is emulated and his words can be inspiring. The audience of any khotba expect the khatiib to refer to public events which are local, regional and/or global and comment on them. If the khatiib is trustworthy and effective, he can mobilize the audience to perform good deeds for both the well-being of individuals and national development. Many key words in the two lists of definitions quoted above (“to communicate a message effectively”, “inform”, “deliver a speech”, “persuade an audience”, etc.) show that links can easily be established between balƗgha and khatƗba on the one hand and rhetoric and oratory on

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the other. In both cases there is a message to be delivered, the speaker has a “voice” and plays a role in articulation and communication, and an audience receives this message in a specific context. The fact that Muslims have a “model” of balƗgha in the Qur’an is a major distinguishing factor that separates balƗgha from rhetoric, but this distinction is known and does not need to be reiterated here. The final reference to “good style” and effectiveness establishes a link, first between writer/speaker, text/speech, and reader/audience, and secondly, between balƗgha as a field of knowledge, and grammar and linguistics, khatƗba, criticism, composition, rhetoric, and logic. In the specific khotba dealt with here, as will be evident below, GhazƗli quotes freely from the Qur’an and from poetry depending on the context. This shows that for GhazƗli, the distinction between a poetic composition and the divine revelation is explicit and does not call for an explanation.

Sheikh Mohammad Al-GhazƗli Ahmed Al Saqqa (1917-1996) The prominent twentieth century Egyptian Muslim scholar Sheikh Mohammad Al-GhazƗli who graduated from Al-Azhar in 1941 and was named after the Persian/Iranian Sufi Islamic philosopher Abu Hamed Mohammad Al-GhazƗli (1058-1111), delivered the Friday khotba on many occasions and captivated a large audience without being loud or bombastic (which is often the case with others in his position today). Recorded on paper, and bound in two volumes during GhazƗli’s lifetime by Kotb Abdel Hamid Kotb, and revised by Mohammad Ashour, this two volume book includes 43 sermons in vol. I (1987) and 46 in vol. II (1988). Reading through the two volumes that record the 89 khotbas by Sheikh GhazƗli, it is not difficult to observe that each khotba has a clearly identified focus and that the collection can be divided into five different themes: the first deals with the five pillars of Islam8; the second introduces Sheikh GhazƗli’s reflections on specific selected suras in the Qur’an9 (in his attempt to produce and encourage “A New Reading of the Qur’an”, as he advocates in his introductory article cited above); the third and fourth discuss Islam in the past10 and at present11; and a last group deals with common concerns in the world12. Before dealing with the specific khotba “To the Masjid,” it will be important to mention two short articles published at the beginning of the first volume because each in its own way serves a purpose in clarifying the value of devoting more attention to the role of the khatiib who stands on the pulpit and the content of his khotba. The first article is the “Preface”

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by the late professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at Dar Al-‘Ulnjm, Cairo University, Abdul Sabour ShƗhƯn. In this short piece, ShƗhƯn (3-7) states that where Islamic preaching is concerned, this age should be known as “the age of GhazƗli” and gives a brief history of the pulpit on which GhazƗli stood. Starting with the first, “single” pulpit on which the Prophet Mohammad stood “to deliver the message and establish a faith and a nation,” ShƗhƯn proceeds to criticize the conflict and controversies that Muslims are involved in, and the sermons that lack content. The pulpit is the site of ShƗhƯn’s three step solution where the khatiib should help Muslims become faithful believers, address the needs and problems of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim communities, and deliver the message of God coherently, methodologically, and wisely, far and wide. Justified in praising this collection of sermons, ShƗhƯn concludes by applauding, first, the breadth of knowledge and broad experience GhazƗli draws upon to address the problems of the Muslim communities; and second, the ways in GhazƗli’s sermons can be compared to a live performance, a drama, where different scenes that are dynamic and vibrant are introduced lucidly and in succession to exhibit the life of a scholar and an intellectual who struggled and deserves the title of “The Father of Contemporary Preachers.” In this “Preface”, GhazƗli emerges as a spiritual leader who understood the duties and responsibilities of standing on the pulpit. In the second article, GhazƗli himself is directly addressing the preachers in order to convey his own experience and to give them guidelines and instructions. Although much can be derived about what constitutes a good khotba from the sermons themselves, this article is written to address preachers specifically and a wider audience. GhazƗli’s introduction is about his roots, his father, who was a merchant, studied the Qur’an and encouraged his son to do so, admired his namesake, Abu Hamed Mohammad Al-GhazƗli, and moved from his village to Alexandria to give his ten year old son a chance to study at an institution affiliated with AlAzhar. After this background information, that might indicate that GhazƗli is privileged or different, which could alienate the common reader, GhazƗli states the following: “my childhood was typical and uneventful, but was dominated/characterized by a love of reading” (13). The first part of the sentence creates a bond between him and his reader and allows him to indirectly convey the message that, in general, a good reader can achieve his goals. GhazƗli provides preachers with a strategy that is clear, well-structured and comprehensive. Such a strategy starts with stressing “The Importance of Reading”, which eventually enabled him to have what he calls “My Special School” (i.e. school of interpretation). The sections entitled “My Experience in Preaching” and “Preconditions of the

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Preacher” provide evidence that Muslim preaching was easier in the past because preachers were simply required to be well versed in studying the Qur’an and the history of Islam, but the demands of contemporary times are different, necessitating “A New Reading of the Qur’an” and hard work to produce “The Successful Khotba.” A brief review of this last section, “The Successful Khotba” (19-23), is relevant because GhazƗli enumerates eleven points that can help the khatiib in preparing the khotba. This checklist is significant in showing his expertise, but in also indirectly pinpointing the shortcomings of those who stand on the pulpit. GhazƗli argues that as a meeting place, the masjid constitutes the “heart” of the Muslim community in general and on Friday specifically. When Muslims congregate in the masjid to listen to the khatiib with piety and serenity, he says, this is an infinite source of spiritual energy. The khatiib, therefore, who studies and presents the focus of his khotba, from GhazƗli’s point of view, takes part in educating the people and developing his nation at many levels, linking its glorious past to its desired future. Here GhazƗli also inserts his checklist that indubitably demonstrates that in theory he is familiar with the tools of balƗgha. The first central point is that the khotba ought to have one focus without digressions to allow the audience to concentrate and acquire a clear mental image of the Muslim teaching that is conveyed. GhazƗli stresses that in educating an audience, clarity, rather than generalizations or ambiguity, is vital. To elucidate what the focus ought to be, GhazƗli explains that the Friday khotba is not meant to be a lesson in theories, but ought to communicate an element of “truth” in a way that allows the audience to digest and assimilate it. The second and third points deal with the structure of the khotba, the logical sequencing of ideas, ensuring that the audience will get the message and quoting adequate extracts in the Qur’an and Traditions of the Prophet Mohammad that are relevant in supporting the message. The three points that follow (four, five, and six) discuss what the khotba should not do, namely introduce a dogmatic position in a controversial issue, get involved in conflict, ignore public events, or recite one of the Traditions of the Prophet, especially those that refer to duties and obligations, without an in-depth analysis. The next three points suggest the main themes that the khatiib should highlight, such as how virtues and vices affect behavior, how cultural and political accomplishments glorify the Muslim past, how the intellectual and religious revival instigated by the Qur’an belongs to all people, how the pioneering role of the Prophet Mohammad inspires Muslim listeners with self-confidence, and how local or global misconceptions about Islam hurt the Muslim population of the world. The final two points stress the

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credibility of the khatii, which must be achieved through the effort he exerts in preparing the khotba and checking the validity of his focus, the social and psychological impact of the contents of his oratory, the accuracy of the data he uses, and finally, and the importance of being brief. These two final points, according to GhazƗli, show that the khatiib has self-respect and respects his audience, who will in turn be receptive to the message he imparts. Some argue that GhazƗli belongs to an era during which religious figures started to play a prominent public role and were concerned with their image in society rather than with their teachings. This does not apply to GhazƗli, though. He was a scholar who published more than 90 books in his lifetime. The titles of some of his books, namely Islam and the Modern Economy, Islam and Political Despotism, Faith, the Mind and Heart and Fanaticism and Tolerance between Christianity and Islam, show his deep interest in the relation between religion, on the one hand, and social, economic and political problems in Egypt and elsewhere, on the other. During the last two decades of GhazƗli’s life, there were two distinct religious trends in Egypt, one that is described as a revival of Islamic faith and another that is regarded as militancy. Although his views and testimonies were controversial at times and many commentators traced the changes and development in the positions he held at different points, as demonstrated in his writings and teachings, he ultimately belonged to the revivalists not the militants. Although this paper will not take part in this controversy, the khotba that is the focus here suggests a revivalist rather than a militant message.

“To the Masjid”: Context and Structure The khotba “To the Masjid/Mosque” by Sheikh GhazƗli was delivered in Old Cairo at Jami‘ ‘Amr Ibn Al-‘Ɩs, the first mosque built in Egypt in AD 641-2. This mosque was built on the site of the tent of the military commander in Fostat (tent), a name for which that district in Old Cairo came to be known. The date of the khotba, February 23rd, 1972, is quite significant as well. The week before this khotba was delivered, the Israeli Air Force shot down a Libyan airplane in Sinai resulting in the loss of lives. Practicing what he preaches as outlined in GhazƗli’s “The Successful Khotba”, this khotba has one focus, is structured, and sheds light on current events. GhazƗli’s focus is the central role of the masjid in Islam, and throughout he directly and indirectly deals with the Israeli aggression. Like all the Friday khotƗb, this one addresses men and is divided into two major parts, a long one (twelve pages on paper that starts

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and ends with the traditional du‘a’ (invocation of God and the reference to Prophet Mohammad)) and another that is short (three pages long that starts with a quote from the Qur’an followed by the traditional du‘a’). The first part criticizes the role the masjid plays as an institution at present, deals with the role of Prophet Mohammad in establishing the first masjid as a “factory” producing men and heroes, and suggests ways to reform this institution for the good of the individual and society. The second part reiterates what he previously said, but specifically deals with the bombing of the Libyan airplane and the death of civilians, a current tragedy that concerns the audience. Before embarking on the analysis to determine whether GhazƗli employs the tools of balƗgha, one initial interesting observation concerning the title “To the Masjid” has to be made. Although this khotba is devoted to the “journey” to the masjid rather than the jami‘, the subtitle that introduces the details of date and place, refers to the ‘Amr Ibn Al-‘Ɩs mosque as jami‘ rather than masjid. How different is the masjid from the jami‘? Obviously, these two words have different roots that are semantically different. Whereas the root of the word masjid is sajada, that is, to prostrate to pray, the activity of an individual in jami‘ means to get together in a communal activity. The term mosque in English, derived from the Arabic word masjid, is used to generally refer to a Muslim place of worship, the house of God, or the house of prayer. This common use of the word mosque in English obliterates the distinction between the Arabic jami‘ and masjid, and does not convey the sense that the Arabic words put across. The first part of the khotba conveys the focal message that nowadays the masjid is not playing the role it should, as a “factory” producing men, because of what GhazƗli regards as a “disease” (35), namely the absence of leadership. In the second part of the khotba, he focuses on victory as a possibility if Muslims unite (and the masjid is the space they can use for this purpose), learn from experience, and adhere to the teachings of Islam. The first part can be clearly divided into three scenes that are tightly interwoven: the first begins when GhazƗli introduces the Prophet Mohammad’s purpose in building Masjid QibƗ’ by referring to the masjid in Madina, which GhazƗli regards as a “factory” producing men and heroes; he describes the model that Muslims have, and compares it to the role the masjid is playing at present. In the second scene, GhazƗli envisions Prophet Mohammad during the Friday noon prayers, and in so doing analyzes samples of Qur’anic texts recited by the Prophet, focusing on the possible effect these choices could have had on those who pray with him. In the third scene, he turns to how the masjid can play its traditional

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role today to save individual Muslims and Muslim countries in general from defeat and backwardness. One can easily detect an organizational pattern in which GhazƗli transfers information and addresses the mind of his audience by mentioning the facts and following with his analysis and inferences. Simple and straightforward, in the first scene GhazƗli is initially factual when he starts by indicating that after emigrating from Makka to Madina in what marks the first year of the Hijra calendar, the Prophet Mohammad’s primary concern in Madina was to build the masjid “for the believers to stand side by side, and for him to meet them from dawn until after sunset, and to read the Qur’an to them during the publicly audible prayers.” After these indisputable facts, GhazƗli smoothly inserts his inference, which brings about interaction with his audience. He introduces his argument through the use of the extended image that constitutes the backbone of the khotba when he said that in so doing, Prophet Mohammad ϝΎτΑϸϟ ΎόϨμϣϭ ϝΎΟήϠϟ ΎϨπΤϣ ΪΠδϤϟ΍ ϞόΟ “made the masjid an incubator of men and a factory that produces heroes” (24). This image deserves attention because it is functional not simply decorative and recurs in a variety of forms in the khotba to serve as a refrain that GhazƗli’s audience can understand, appreciate, and remember after the khotba ends. What is not difficult to assume is that being in Jami‘ ‘Amr Ibn Al ‘Ɩs located in one of the poor districts of Old Cairo, the audience of this specific khotba are men who belong to the lower middle class and have a simple educational background. This is why the extended image of the masjid as a factory for “making” men and heroes is appropriate. The factory in this context has a positive connotation. To a western audience, a factory would “make” men that are units rather than individuals with character, but to GhazƗli’s audience, a factory refers to industrialization, progress and development. The idea of mass production and the negative effects of the industrial revolution would not be relevant to this audience. What they want is someone to explain how the Prophet Mohammad accomplished his goal and what kind of men he produced. As one reads on, one observes the pattern: GhazƗli introduces the facts followed by his analysis, maintaining an interaction with his listeners. He builds on this interaction to introduce an attention-grabbing image. He said “The masjid was the “heart and soul” of the first Muslim community (24). This analogy between the masjid and the human body prepares the audience for GhazƗli’s claim that the society is suffering from a disease and an immediate cure is crucial. Believing that the “heart and soul” of every organization, institution, or society is the people, he draws a portrait of the men that were produced by the masjid at the time of the Prophet and

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that should be produced today: “the masjid preserves the spirit of the Muslim community and the men brought up in the masjid are responsible for reform, the builders of civilizations, and the contributors to the development of society” (24). These values are constant rather than variable. Here GhazƗli is referring to the mental cultivation that leads to collaboration and creativity, which were vital at the time of the Prophet and are still vital today. Alluding to the efforts of the Prophet to create a new nation out of the disparate warring tribes in Arabia, brought up on internecine fighting, GhazƗli explains that as the Prophet of Islam, Mohammad instituted that the primary task of Muslims is to innovate by making the earth habitable and capable of supporting the new nation. To achieve such a purpose, Islam calls for unity and the idea of collectivity and collaboration is basic to the message of Islam. This audience is familiar with such a theme that is clearly expressed in the Qur’an in many ayƗt like, ΎόϴϤΟ ௌ ϞΒΤΑ ΍ϮϤμΘϋ΍ϭ ΍ϮϗήϔΗϻϭ (All of you, hold fast to the cord of Allah, and do not be disunited, 3:103) and ϥ΍ϭΪόϟ΍ϭ ϢΛϻ΍ ϲϠϋ ΎϧϭΎόΗϻϭ ϱϮϘΘϟ΍ϭήΒϟ΍ ϲϠϋ ΍ϮϧϭΎόΗϭ (Cooperate with one another in virtue and piety, and do not cooperate in vice and hostility, 5:2). Another recurring theme in the Qur’an, linked to collaboration and creativity is one that calls upon people to reflect on the wonders of the universe. In the following ayƗ, έΎϬϨϟ΍ϭ ϞϴϠϟ΍ ϑϼΘΧ΍ϭ νέϻ΍ϭ Ε΍ϮϤδϟ΍ ϖϠΧ ϲϓ ϥ΍ ΏΎΒϟϷ΍ ϲϟϭϷ ΕΎϳϷ (In the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day, there are signs that encourage men of understanding/those endowed with intellects, 3:190) to use their minds, not only to be guided to the right path of worshipping God, but also to improve their life. For GhazƗli, the key adjectives are “responsible”, “builders”, and “contributors”, which are qualities that the individual acquires in time and with effort. To hold the attention of his audience, he asks the questions that he anticipates “How? Where?” In answer to these questions, GhazƗli develops his image further, There are two kinds of factories, a factory for everyday products or for weapons, but the masjid is a factory producing men. Nations without factories that produce men are no good: because if the factories of such nations produce weapons but have no institutions that produce men that can use them, these weapons are useless (24).

His method of reasoning here is logical and clear-cut: the enemy is dangerous, weapons are needed, institutions that train men to use these weapons are vital, and the masjid was competent at the time of the Prophet and ought to be now. In order to accomplish the goals mentioned above,

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namely development, reform and building a civilization, GhazƗli now stresses the role of the masjid as an educational institution. In the masjid, the men, who will build, develop and reform society must be trained to have skills in the ways of the world, and must be courageous believers in the justice of their cause. Here, GhazƗli only alludes to the attack on the Libyan plane and to the idea that the Arab countries should realize they are at war, and ought to defend themselves against Israel. GhazƗli later informs the audience that some of those who died in the Libyan plane shot down by the Israeli Air Forces were Azharites, which implies that this is a national loss for Egyptians and for him, being an Azharite himself. Since GhazƗli’s focus is the journey to the masjid, choosing to initially refer to the first masjid that the Prophet Mohammad established during the Madina phase is quite relevant. He moves through time and space to Makka by introducing a short history of praying, to link this major part of the khotba to the second and shorter one where he hopes for unity that leads to victory. GhazƗli reminds the audience of the facts: in Makka Muslims prayed secretively in two prostrations a day until the night journey of the IsrƗ’ and Mi‘rƗj when the five prayers a day were instituted; that is, before the Hijra (flight of the Prophet) to Madina, Muslims prayed secretively and were prohibited from holding congregational prayers in a masjid. Commenting on these facts, he uses two juxtapositions, the first is between al-haq (the truth, rightness, correctness, an attribute of God) and al-bƗtil (being misguided or led astray from the right path), and the second is between those who fight as individuals and are bound to lose, and the united forces that are strong and can, therefore, be victorious. Using the conversational style, GhazƗli takes his audience from Makka to Madina when he said: “The Prophet’s primary concern in Madina was to establish the masjid. Why?” His answer is threefold: first, the individual cannot fight/resist evil single handedly; second, if those who call for the truth are not strong, they cannot face the forces of evil that are united; third, it was vital for the Muslim community in Madina to have members that stand side by side, and who meet morning and evening in God’s name. The idea of the possibility of victory is not mentioned here, but is one he highlights in the second part of the khotba. Here, he casually refers to praying in rows, which recreates a scene that is organized, much like a factory, to prepare his listeners for the recurrence of this “factory” metaphor, in the context of colonialism. This idea of praying in rows is emphasized later. When GhazƗli uses the factory image again, he compares the time the masjid fulfilled its purpose in Madina with the time colonial powers invaded the Levant and settled in Palestine. Addressing the minds of men, he shows that this comparison leads him to three inferences: first, that the

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success of the military invasion was followed by efforts on the cultural and social levels to neutralize the role of religion and to dissociate Islam from resistance. Second, the imperialists could not stop Muslims from meeting in the masjid, but were able to render the meetings ineffective. Because of the lack of freedom, the masjid became a token institution, and what was said in it was empty and uninspiring. Third, the Jews were thus able to win without fighting because Muslims were disjointed, a point he reiterates in the second part of the khotba. GhazƗli had already discussed what the purpose of the masjid is when the “factory” image recurs for the third time. At this point, he is ready to direct the attention of his audience to the facts about what the masjid is not: elaborate or fancy. He then gives a detailed description of the simple structure of the first masjid in Madina followed by an assertion in which he repeats ϝΎΟήϟ΍ ϲϨΑ ϯάϟ΍ Ϯϫ ςδΒϤϟ΍ ΪΠδϤϟ΍ ΍άϫ ϦϜϟ ˮ΍ΫΎϤϟ !ϝΎτΑϷ΍ ΝήΧϭ (But this simple masjid is where men were made and where heroes graduated! Why? (26). GhazƗli stresses the value of simplicity and again asks the straightforward question “Why?” to address the discrepancy between the crudeness of the masjid and the sacred purpose of this institution. To answer this question, GhazƗli blends observations and inferences: the first masjid is the place where “the Prophet recited the Qur’an to the men to help in their upbringing, to serve as their guide, and to bring them together five times a day to charge them with spiritual strength, and enthusiasm that enabled them to face evil with the force of an “earthquake or a volcano” (26). Clearly, the masjid is not simply a physical space, but an educational institution devoted to spiritual solace and religious activity. The idea is that these were men who would “erupt like a volcano” or shake the surface of the earth only when they faced evil, i.e., they did not start a war, but they had the power and strength to fight when and if they were attacked. Here GhazƗli may be alluding to the Israeli attack on the Libyan plane. Undoubtedly, the central figure in this khotba is Prophet Mohammad who is portrayed as the founder of the masjid, the leader of the prayers, the manager of the factory, and ultimately the messenger of God. He was in charge of the “factory” that produced courageous men. One can ask: does GhazƗli provide the audience with a live example of the kind of men the Prophet produced? Throughout GhazƗli stresses that these men were heroes, and he illustrates this in the second section/scene of part one that discusses praying with Prophet Mohammad in the masjid. In this long section, GhazƗli makes use of three different sources, a poet, the prophetic traditions, and the Qur’an. The first live voice the audience hears is that of Abd-Allah Ibn RawƗha, a poet who is a contemporary of Prophet Mohammad. GhazƗli actually recites two sets of three distiches13 (a line

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that is subdivided to constitute a poetic unit). In the first set of three distiches the poet Ibn RawƗha deals with the impact of listening to the Qur’an and praying with the Prophet. Proud to be a man brought up in the masjid under the Prophet’s tutelage, the poet uses imagery that introduces juxtaposition between being blind as opposed to acquiring knowledge and seeing the light, receiving guidance and having a secure heart as opposed to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. In the second set of three distiches, Ibn RawƗha describes his feelings when his friends bid him farewell before going to war. The imagery he uses shows that he had no fear of war or death, knowing that he was fighting for a just cause not as an aggressor. In the khotba these lines of poetry are followed by, “In this masjid heroes were made morning and night” (26), to indicate that the masjid was not simply the place for prayer, but it was a home, a meeting place and a haven, where the Prophet met the people of Madina to discuss all their affairs. The masjid was a “factory” that worked around the clock and already served as a city/Madina center. According to GhazƗli, this factory produced men who experienced the light of knowledge, were courageous fighters, but were not hostile. A poet is quoted to represent them after all. In the second part of the khotba, GhazƗli quotes yet another poet, one belonging to the twentieth century, namely the distinguished Egyptian intellectual Abbas Mahmoud Al ‘AqqƗd14 (37). Repeating the words of such literary figures shows GhazƗli’s appreciation of poetry specifically and art in general. In the second scene that deals with praying with Prophet Mohammad in the masjid in Madina, GhazƗli reverses his pattern by giving his inference and then providing the evidence, to attract the attention of his audience: “I traced the effect of praying on the individual and on his social life and was enthralled by what I read” (27). The key words here are “traced” and “enthralled”, which imply that the effort and search for knowledge will lead to a discovery and enlightenment. To refer to the specific texts used by the Prophet from the Qur’an, GhazƗli’s citation is from the prophetic traditions by the Muslim scholar Mohammad AlBoukhƗry (810-870) who is acknowledged to be the most credible. BoukhƗry, who quotes the father of Mohammad Ibn Jubayr Ibn Mut‘am, said that while praying at sunset when the Prophet Mohammad recited part of “Snjrat Al-Tur” (The Mount) and reached 52: 35-7, his heart was about to fly. GhazƗli explains that this led him to read “Snjrat Al-Tur” to find out why it had this effect on the listeners. Indirectly, he has set an example to his audience hoping they would think about what they hear and possibly reread the Qur’anic text as he has done. Rereading led him to “discover that the first part of “Snjrat Al-Tur” deals with the message, the day of

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judgment, and reward, and punishment, while the last part includes fifteen questions that make use of the coordinator “or,” which leads the human being to explore what comes before it in order to understand what comes after it, as the rhetoric of the Arabic language requires” (27). Respecting his audience, GhazƗli explains that analyzing this snjra will lead to a digression, and prefers to remain focused. What follows is linked to his focal extended image because it is a description of the men the masjid produced. To stress that the Prophet’s choice of Qur’anic texts during prayer was significant, GhazƗli said: “This was a learning experience through which the men acquired more mature and organized minds, and became united” (28). GhazƗli informs his audience that he had to conduct more research to find out what Qur’anic texts the Prophet used in prayer and discovered that on Friday at dawn the Prophet often recited “Snjrat Al-Sajda” (32 Prostration) and “Snjrat Al-Insan” (76 The Human Being). GhazƗli discusses the controversy between different schools of thought in Sunni Islam concerning whether to use the same Qur’anic texts that the Prophet used in prayer or not. He explains that those belonging to the Shafie School prefer to follow Prophet Mohammad while the Hanafi and Maliki schools prefer not to use the same texts so that the common man would not think that praying with texts other than the ones Prophet Mohammad used is wrong. GhazƗli, in this case, asserts that either standpoint is acceptable. To answer the question why the Prophet used “Snjrat Al-Sajda” and “Snjrat Al-Insan” in prayer at dawn, GhazƗli said he consulted scholars to report what they said: “These two snjras discuss creation, human behavior, and good deeds that have an effect on one’s status in paradise. It was as if the Prophet wanted people to know these facts in order to inspire them to act accordingly, improve their conduct, and make sure that ones’ intentions are good” (28-9). He, at this point, explains to his audience that he studied the two snjras himself and devotes the next section of the khotba to quoting and analyzing extracts from these two texts to infer how the men at the time of the Prophet Mohammad benefited from these extracts. In the process of comparing and contrasting specific extracts, GhazƗli systematically identifies and analyzes how differently the two snjras discuss creation, the behavior of people, and how such conduct will be judged. He poses different kinds of questions that lead his audience to think. In one of them he asks, “If you are skeptical about resurrection, why not observe the land that you live on?” He quotes an ayƗ (the Arabic word for Qur’anic verse) from “Snjrat Al-Sajdah” that said ϲϟ΍ ˯ΎϤϟ΍ ϕϮδϧ Ύϧ΃ ΍ϭήϳ Ϣϟ΃ ϥϭήμΒϳ ϼϓ΃ ϢϬδϔϧ΃ϭ ϢϬϣΎόϧ΃ ϪϨϣ Ϟϛ΄Η Ύϋέί ϪΑ ΝήΨϨϓ ίήΠϟ΍ νέϷ΍ Have they not seen that we drive water to arid land and bring forth crops which they and their

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cattle eat? Do they have no vision? (32: 27). GhazƗli follows this by referring to details from real life by saying, You eat and get rid of what you do not need, which is all carried away to the plantation of “Al Jabal Al Asfar” (the yellow mountain) by the Cairene drainage system. After recycling, some of these unwanted items become fertilizers that are used in the cultivation of fresh fruit, bright in color, with a good fragrance, sugary and nutritious. Do you not think of the transformation that has changed what was rotten to what is sweet? (30)

Here, GhazƗli’s initial question establishes a link between a barren piece of land in the absence of water and a human body without a soul. His audience can easily infer that the prevalence of water, however, does not necessarily mean the land is fertile or will bear fruit. Sometimes human effort is not enough. Introducing the analogy that refers to recycling is quite appropriate because GhazƗli uses it to highlight that human beings should not take what they have for granted. The analogy also sheds light on the mega system that human beings have devised, but underlying this system, there is a universe that clearly reflects the power of God the Creator. He concludes this comparison with the following statement: “When the masjid was first built it was a school where the Qur’an was read analytically, in a way that led them to develop and have integrity” (31). In the third scene, GhazƗli reflects upon what they are doing together in the masjid and argues that prayer has a positive psychological effect on the one who prays and on society at large. He provides evidence that prayer benefits the individual mentally and spiritually. He goes through “Snjrat Al-FƗtiha” (The Opening) that is repeated in every prostration to show how while praying one has to think about what is recited (praying is not mechanical), and that every ayƗ involves interaction between the individual and God. After dealing with prayer as an invocation that teaches sincerity, loyalty and discipline, and trains the individual to think, to be selective in choosing the texts recited in praying, and to do good works five times a day, GhazƗli claims that the skills and qualities acquired in this learning experience are transferable to different aspects of the life of the individual. GhazƗli illustrates this effectively, first, by using the positive: the one who prays has a good heart; and second, by using the negative: the one who prays is not a hypocrite, and does not cheat. He said, Such a prayer which is an invocation to God has the first direct effect of teaching people to be devoted to God, and to be honest and sincere in dealing with others. Whoever trains himself to be submissive in such

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Pointing out the spiritual effect of praying, namely enabling one to control his desires, GhazƗli establishes a link between this virtue and the wellbeing of society at large. Here, he provides three kinds of evidence: first, an ayƗ from the Qur’an that links those who do not pray with those controlled by desire; second, a criticism that Muslims are disjointed/ disconnected; and third, a citation from the prophetic traditions concerning strictly following the imam when he leads prayers (33). The ayƗ (19: 59) that portrays the predicament of those who do not pray and are controlled by their desires is very cleverly chosen by GhazƗli who explains that the second (being controlled by desires) is the outcome or the result of the first (not praying). He thus implies that praying affects the individual’s sense of morality. He points out that Muslims are criticized as selfish and Muslim societies suffer from a lack of unity. Perfecting the prayer and straightening the rows, according to GhazƗli, can be physically and spiritually transformational. This can cure the individual and can be a remedy for many of the ills of society at large. GhazƗli goes on to explain in detail that regularly performing this ritual and adhering to the rows establishes a sense of equality, togetherness and unity, organization and discipline, creating a positive force in society. Stressing the importance of rows, he again consults Al-BoukhƗry, but cites a rather shocking prophetic tradition that urges those who pray to follow the imam closely and compares a head raised before the imam to that of a donkey. GhazƗli identifies with his audience and asks the question any of them could ask: “What kind of Prophetic Saying is this?” (33) There is a short monologue where GhazƗli acknowledges that at an early stage of learning, this position seemed ruthless. In time he understood that such a relentless position is justified. In very simple terms, he is skilled in showing how he himself realized that one who does not adhere to a system will be unable to take part in team work or cooperate with his colleagues. GhazƗli points out that he arrived at the conclusion that by doing as one pleases, one is bound to lead a chaotic life and is, therefore, more like an animal. At this point in the khotba, GhazƗli attempts to identify the symptoms of the disease Muslims are suffering from in the hope that a remedy could be sought. He does not make a sweeping generalization by referring to all Muslims, but he said many of them have “lost the spirit of unity” and act impulsively by following their desires. Again, he sheds light on the value of standing in rows to pray five times a day, and quotes four citations from

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Al-Boukhary to show how Prophet Mohammad was concerned about perfecting the rows in prayer. Those who pray with him learn to follow a leader, acquire a sense of morality and discipline, and unite. Two other focal points are mentioned by GhazƗli here, namely cleanliness and smelling good when going to pray. This is symbolic of being at one’s best appearance when taking part in a communal act of acknowledging God’s power. Praying and being at the masjid, therefore, trains the individual to attend to what is the physical and spiritual as well. This undoubtedly has a positive effect on society as a whole. In his conclusion, GhazƗli ties all the threads together, by reminding his audience of his three focal claims: first, establishing a masjid was the Prophet Mohammad’s primary concern: he actually took part in building it with his men (repeating lines of verse and singing) and was emotionally involved in the process. GhazƗli reiterates that at the time, the masjid fulfilled its purpose as a factory producing men, but that colonialism had a negative effect on nations and generations who now do not feel the bond with the masjid. Second, GhazƗli stresses that Islam addresses the mind not desires: the call for prayers “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar” reminds Muslims that at prayer time anything is insignificant compared to communicating with God. Third, GhazƗli encourages Muslims to conduct congregational prayers rather than pray individually because this will unite Muslims. He identifies the ailment as the absence of leadership without which unity is not possible and victory is unattainable. Muslims cannot and will not overcome their enemies so long as the masjid is not a factory producing men who have a sense of belonging. Invariably defined as the art of public speaking, oratory is a form of discourse in which the orator makes use of balƗgha and rhetorical language in order to be known for his eloquence. Clearly, the late Sheikh Mohammad Al-GhazƗli is an example of such an orator/khatiib. To readers rather than listeners of the khotba, it is impossible to determine how GhazƗli observed his audience and reacted accordingly and how he employed paralinguistic cues by use of tone, intonation, pace, instances of hesitation, or time to monitor what he said and to analyze its effect on the audience in order to determine how he would proceed. What is also not available to readers of the khotba is the manner in which it was delivered and the emotions involved in the process of delivery. However, what is crystal clear from the written version of the khotba is that GhazƗli emerges as a khatiib who respects his role model, his vocation, and his audience. It is true GhazƗli focuses on the first masjid built in Islam, but one can easily assume that being at Jami‘ ‘Amr Ibn Al-‘Ɩs, the significance of this masjid as the first built in Egypt is on the mind of Sheikh GhazƗli. The

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journey to the masjid, according to GhazƗli, should encompass both a physical and spiritual learning experience. It is a journey in time and out of time. Standing on the minbar where the Prophet once stood, GhazƗli is following the footsteps of his mentor. Like his role model, GhazƗli both implicitly and explicitly regards the masjid as a place for religious practices and education leading to the correct understanding of the teachings of Islam. In the language of modern times, it is a community service center, a center for learning and social development where congregational prayers are held and where all those who enter receive guidance and counseling and take part in debates and talks that stress the inculcation of universal values like honesty, integrity, civil responsibly, discipline, sincerity, diligence, and tolerance. GhazƗli uses a set of images that are effective and appropriate in addressing this lower middle class audience. The metaphor of a journey is a powerful and familiar one that is particularly apt on both the physical and spiritual levels. As he speaks, everyone in the audience can easily move with him in time and place, from the present time in Old Cairo to Makka and Madina during the time of Prophet Mohammad, and back. The image of a factory is another that is useful in examining the role of the individual in a technologically advanced society. It can inspire the old members of his audience in one way and the young in another. If an old man is simply a cog in a wheel, the young will question the futility of such a position and aspire for more. This factory image that creates the mental picture of order is reflected in the prayer rows that GhazƗli values. In such rows, every individual plays an integral part that can only be understood when someone deviates and creates chaos. Such organized rows are meant to be temporary for the purpose of praying collectively, but this ritual is followed by freedom and individuality and by partaking in the life of the community. The final image of a sick society that needs an immediate remedy is also appropriate because it reflects the value of diagnosis and treatment. The analogy is extended and highlights that if the members of society are weak and unhealthy, they will affect the society at large, depriving it of coping with internal or external problems. GhazƗli is sending the message that like an ailing body that deserves attention, the whole system of society needs help. According to GhazƗli, the journey to the masjid has a spiritual dimension that cannot be ignored. Just as the body needs time to recover, so the spirit needs time to go on a journey that will also lead to its recovery. Prayer in the masjid equips the believer to take the first step to awaken and enhance his spiritual life. Learning to be at peace with oneself, with others, with God, and with the world requires reflection, self-

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discovery, and self-discipline. Stressing that praying has a spiritual value that does not only have a positive effect on the individual, but on the society, GhazƗli believes that although each spiritual journey is unique, the effect and the outcome of this journey can be shared. Those who pray are better human beings and, therefore, better members of society. It is true praying occurs in time and place, yet it can allow one to experience a moment that is timeless. Throughout the khotba, it is obvious that GhazƗli is not a political activist, but is an enlightening scholar and a reader who has done the research to be prepared for his audience. This khotba is definitely not improvised. It is intact and well structured; one can easily argue that it was read out from a written document and qualifies as a lecture in an academic institution because it not only instructs, but also demonstrates the importance and value of research. Here, GhazƗli also delivers a sacred, religious address that uses the imagery and figurative language of poetry to a illuminate a controversy between different schools of thought in Islam. When he diagnosed the problem of some Muslims as having “lost the spirit of unity”, he does this to give his audience something to reflect on after the khotba is over. The implication is that collaboration is vital to find a remedy. It is significant that GhazƗli initially cites two poets, one of whom is a contemporary of the Prophet Mohammad, to implicitly indicate that poetry and poets were not condemned or silenced in Islam. When the Prophet took part in building the first masjid, he recited lines of verse and chanted them with his companions, GhazƗli tells his audience. Undisputedly, with many similar figures in positions of leadership who read, think, and sing as both the Prophet Mohammed and Ghazali did, Egypt after the January 2011 revolution would be developed rather than developing.

Notes 1 The transliteration system used here is a modified version of that of the Encyclopedia of Islam and that of the Library of Congress. Being a native speaker of Arabic, I could not stick to one system or the other in order to be more accurate in conveying the Arabic sound. 2 The translation of the ayƗt of the Qur’an cited here are based on both Yusuf Ali and Muhammad Ghâlî 3 Among the prominent Egyptians who delivered the different khotƗb in Tahrir are Sheikh Mohammad Jebril (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9TXHMCNYA), Sheikh Youssef Al Qaradawi (who has lived in the Gulf area since 1981 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrI7RwICQxg), and Shiekh Mazhar ShƗhƯn,

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the Imam of the Masjid Omar Makram on Tahrir. Video clips on youtube: on 4th February: EURONEWS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99i3lVcfNw&NR=1 Al-Jezirah International: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx22nN5YJm0 Nightly News: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/united-in-friday-prayerat-tahrir-square/6a7bvs0?from= 18th February on Egyptian TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2p4e8fMX4 4 This is done by the muathin to give the worshippers time to arrive, settle down and perform a two rak‘a prayer as a way of greeting the jƗmi‘/masjid. 5 This is also done by the muathin. 6 The imam can serve as the khatiib. These two terms can be used synonymously, but in this paper the one who delivers the khotba will be referred to as the khatiib. 7 Being a Semitic language, more often than not, Arabic words are based on trilateral consonantal roots. In the Arabic dictionary quoted here, the parts of speech and pronunciations are not included in the entry. The dual form and the gender inflections are not mentioned either. The translation of the Arabic definitions are mine. 8 “Yes, to the oneness of God” (I: 31), “Like the Sun, Muhammad Rises” (I: 3), “The Qur’an, an Eternal Miracle” (I: 40), “The Qur’an on the Hijra” (II: 25), “In the Pilgrimage Procession” (I: 17), “Reflections on the Rituals of the Pilgrimage” (II: 1), “A Month with a Philosophy” (I: 14). 9 Sheikh GhazƗli at times devotes a sermon to one snjra:”Reflections on Snjrat Al Waqi‘ah (The Event)” (I: 12), “Reflections on Snjrat Al Tawbah (Repentance)” (I: 21), “Reflections on Snjrat Al Nour (The Light)” (I: 24), “Reflections on Snjrat YƗsƯn” (II: 41); and at others he devotes three sermons to Snjrat Al Baqara (The Cow) (II: 15-17) and four to Snjrat Al NisƗ’ (The Women) (II: 20-23). 10 “The Characteristics of the Muslim Community before Hijra” (I: 11), “A Survey of the Spreading of Islam during the Past 14 Centuries” (II: 11), “Apostasy from Islam: Past and Present” (II: 12), 11 “Who are we?” (I: 37), “The Relationship Between the Muslim and the World” (I: 39), “Muslims in the Philippines” (II: 13), “Islam and Global Changes” (II: 26), “Islam and the Human Need for it” (II: 32) 12 “Palestine, the Usurped Jewel” (I: 4), “The Leaders of Good and the Leaders of Evil” (I: 5), “Youth in the Islamic Procession:” (I: 9), “Why the Begging” (I: 16), “What is for and against Sufism” (I: 27), “Remembering and Forgetting” (I: 38). 13 ΪΠδϤϟ΍ ϲϓ ϢϠγϭ ϪϴϠϋ ௌ ϲϠλ ϝϮγήϟ΍ Γϼλ Ϧϋ ΙΪΤΘϳ Ϯϫϭ ˬϪϨϋ ௌ ϲοέ ϪΣ΍ϭέ ϦΑ ௌ ΪΒϋ ϝϮϘϳ: ϊρΎγ ήΠϔϟ΍ Ϧϣ ϑϭήόϣ ϖθϧ΍ ΍Ϋ· ϊϗ΍ϭ ϝΎϗ Ύϣ ϥ΃ ΕΎϨϗϮϣ ϪΑ ϊΟΎπϤϟ΍ ϦϴϛήθϤϟΎΑ ΖϠϘΜΘγ΍ ΍Ϋ·

ϪΑΎΘϛ ϮϠΘϳ ௌ ϝϮγέ ΎϨϴϓϭ ΎϨΑϮϠϘϓ ϲϤόϟ΍ ΪόΑ ϱΪϬϟ΍ Ύϧ΍έ΃ Ϫη΍ήϓ Ϧϋ ϪΒϨΟ ϲϓΎΠϳ ΖϴΒϳ

GhazƗli has a footnote to cite these lines of poetry as he does on all occasions when he quotes from a source. This provides evidence that this khotba was written rather than improvised. In this case the footnote cites Al-BoukhƗry, the canonical collection of the traditions of Prophet Mohammad. GhazƗli also quotes the following lines by Abd-Allah Ibn RawƗha before taking part in a war to show his bravery:

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΍ΪΑΰϟ΍ ϑάϘΗ ύήϓ Ε΍Ϋ ΔΑήοϭ Γήϔϐϣ ϦϤΣήϟ΍ ϝ΄γ΃ ϲϨϨϜϟ ΪΒϜϟ΍ϭ ˯ΎθΣϷ΍ άϔϨΗ ΔΑήΤΑ ΓΰϬΠϣ ϥ΍ήΣ ϱΪϴΑ ΔϨόρ ϭ΃ ΍Ϊηέ Ϊϗϭ ίΎϏ Ϧϣ ௌ Ϊηέ΃Ύϳ ϲΛΪΟ ϲϠϋ ΍ϭήϣ ΍Ϋ· ΍ϮϟϮϘϳ ϲΘΣ 14

GhazƗli quotes the following line of poetry by Al-Aqqad: ϢϟΎψϟ΍ έάϋ ϡϮϠψϤϟ΍ ΔϟΫ ϲϓ

ΎϤϟΎυ ϒμϧ΄ϓ ΎϣϮϠψϣ Ζϔμϧ΃

Works Cited Al-‘Askari, A-H. ϦϴΘϋΎϨμϟ΍ ΏΎΘϛ (The Two Crafts: Verse and Prose). Cairo: Halabi Bookshop, (1971). Al-Mo‘jam Al-Wajeez (The Shorter Dictionary). The Arabic Language Academy in Cairo: AmƯriya Print Shops, (1998-99). Becker, C.H. “On the History of Muslim Worship.” The Development of Islamic Ritual. Ed. Gerald Hawting. Cornwall: Ashgate Publishing Limited, (2004).. Berkey, J. Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, (2001). Daif, S.. ΦϳέΎΗϭ έϮτΗ ΔϏϼΒϟ΍ (The History and Development of BalƗgha). Cairo: Dar Al Ma‘aref, (1977). Denny, F. “Islamic Ritual: Perspective and Theories.” Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, (1985). Gaffney, P. The Prophet’s Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, (1994). Hussein, A-R. Arabic Rhetoric: A Pragmatic Analysis Culture and Civilization in the Middle East. New York: Routledge, (2006). Al GhazƗli, M. (1988). ϩΎϴΤϟ΍ϭ ϦϳΪϟ΍ ϥϮΌη ϲϓ ϲϟ΍ΰϐϟ΍ ΪϤΤϣ Φϴθϟ΍ ΐτΧ Khutab Al Sheikh Mohammad Al GhazƗli (The Sermons of Sheikh Mohammad Al GhazƗli: On Matters of Religion and Life). K. A.-H. Kotb (ed.). Revised by M. Ashour. Cairo: Dar Al E‘tisƗm. Rady, Abdel-Hady. Ώήόϟ΍ ΪϨϋ ϲϏϼΒϟ΍ ήϜϔϟ΍ ϕΎϓ΁ (The Scope of Arab Ideas on Balãgha) Cairo: Maktabet El Adab, (2006). ShƗhƯn, A-S. “ Preface.” Khutab Al Sheikh Mohammad Al GhazƗli ΐτΧ ϩΎϴΤϟ΍ϭ ϦϳΪϟ΍ ϥϮΌη ϲϓ ϲϟ΍ΰϐϟ΍ ΪϤΤϣ Φϴθϟ΍ (The Sermons of Sheikh Mohammad Al GhazƗli: On Matters of Religion and Life). Kotb Abdul Hamid Kotb. Ed. Mohammad Ashour. Cairo: Dar Al E‘tisƗm, (1988). Von Grunebaun, G. E. Mohammadan Festivals. London: Curzon Press, (1976). Zayed, A. ‘A.. ΎϬΠϫΎϨϣ ,ΎϫέΩΎμϣ ,ΎϬΨϳέΎΗ :ΔϴΑήόϟ΍ ΔϏϼΒϟ΍ (Arabic Rhetoric: Its History, Sources and Methods). Giza: Youth Bookstore, (1982).

UNIQUE SITUATIONS DEMAND A RARE LEADER: FATHER DANIEL ISAACS’ “NOTHING IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR YOU”

MICHAEL GIBSON

“Have the wisdom to abandon the values of a time that has passed.” —Graffiti on a tomb near Cairo

In January 2011, as refreshing breezes moved through the Nile River Valley, changes in Egypt's political climate began to occur. But this was not the first sign of unrest. Just as centuries ago small groups of Christian and followers of other religions had challenged traditional religious practices and beliefs by seeking a more relevant belief system, so, shortly before Egypt's January 2011 revolution, a small group of Orthodox Coptic Christians had broken away from their traditional devotions to explore an unfamiliar approach to their beliefs. This small group continued to question the teachings of the Coptic Church until they found a more meaningful purpose for their spiritual lives. This analysis will discuss one specific message delivered to these people in order to explore similarities between those who sought to transform their spiritual lives and those who sought to transform Egypt’s civic and cultural life. In the early 1950s, Daniel Isaac was born in a tiny Upper Egyptian village to a Orthodox, Coptic Christian family. After earning an engineering degree, he decided to join a monastery and prepare to become a preaching monk. Teaching in the Orthodox Coptic Church for many years, he later broke away from the mainline denomination and started an independent group to whom he now speaks weekly in a rented building near downtown. In addition to his commitment to this group, he also carries his message to other communities through speaking engagements both inside and outside Egypt. Due to his former affiliation with the Coptic Church, those who see him as their spiritual father call him “Abouna” (“our father” in Arabic). Others, who see him as their new spiritual shepherd, refer to him as Pastor Daniel. Week after week, he consistently delivers a homily that emphasizes the grace of God,

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interpreting Biblical passages in a simple and direct way, clearly attempting to enable his listeners to apply certain practical principles to their daily lives. Whether in formal gatherings or in one-on-one counseling sessions, he no longer wears the robes of his former church, but dresses casually in khaki pants and a subtly solid-colored chemise. When speaking to the crowds who faithfully gather to hear him, he carries a wireless microphone so that he can be free to walk around, though he usually remains standing behind the podium that holds his Bible. When he enters a gathering, he immediately proceeds to the platform at the front of the main hall while those in attendance sing Arabic Christian songs, the words of which are displayed in front on wide screens. He joins in a few songs, and then the music, performed by a band consisting of guitars, drums, keyboards, and bongos, accompanied by the voices of those in attendance, dies down, and Father Daniel begins praying aloud. He generally prays for several minutes before he begins his sermon, which lasts about an hour and a half and includes spontaneous prayer during and after his message. When he finishes speaking, the singing begins again, while those who want “Abouna” to pray for them make their way to the front platform. People in the main hall are able to see and hear the musicians and the speaker directly, but those in the overflow rooms on the same floor and on the second and third floors of the building view the sermon on large television screens. At the back of the main hall, to the left of the sound booth, translators attend to those who require translation of the sermon from Arabic to either English or French. In each of the building's large rooms, the women normally sit on the left and men on the right, except for a few women who can be found sitting among the men, probably with their husbands or other family members. The culturally traditional separation of sexes that is strictly practiced in Egypt's churches and mosques is not purely observed here, where there is little emphasis placed on the time-honored traditions and rituals that are so often associated with both Coptic orthodoxy and Islam. As they venture out on new ground, members of this group are often criticized by friends or family who still believe in more traditional ways of practicing religion. Those who decide to worship here can feel lost at first, as they disassociate themselves from the ancient Church that defined their families' identities for generations to worship with a smaller, newer gathering whose beliefs appear to be more practical and real. Eventually, whether Coptic or Muslim, they soon become accustomed to this gathering, called the “Rivers of Life,” which is situated in a culture that is steeped in a tradition based on ancient customs of the Arab world. The worship service consists of prayers, songs, and sermons performed

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in no prescribed order. The sacraments of communion and baptism are not usually observed, no offerings are ever collected (nor funds solicited in any way), and no choirs or soloists perform. A very relaxed atmosphere pervades the building. One wonders how the church survives. Nevertheless, once a week, a faithful group numbering in the low thousands appears every week to sing enthusiastically the songs that are being displayed on the screens and to listen attentively to the words their spiritual father has for them. The words of his prayers are always spontaneous and the preaching extemporaneous. Abouna clearly has a strong command of Christian doctrine and Biblical scriptures; carrying no notes or source material, he brings only his large Bible. In the meetings, there are no memorized prayers, creeds or doctrinal statements voiced. The messenger uses no anecdotes in his weekly talks. His rhetoric is subdued. And interestingly, even though he seems to be giving an impromptu message, it is clear that the address is both structured and relevant. He speaks softly and deliberately as he moves from passage to passage in the Biblical text, employing several scriptural quotes, paraphrases, and allusions in both his speech and prayers. It is obvious that he has spent much time in counseling with the various members of his group. It is also obvious that he has devoted countless hours to study and preparation for the weekly sermons. His audience sits quietly, attentively hanging on every word, taking copious notes. The pastor seems to know just what his listeners need to hear. This paper will focus on one sermon that Father Daniel delivered entitled, “Nothing is Too Difficult for You,” a sermon that directly relates to his audience, which, for the most part, represents a cross-section of the city of Cairo: a large section of mostly poor, a much smaller section of middle class, and a handful of rich. They are part of a group-oriented society, where the common interest of the group is often perceived to be a more important priority than that of the individual in the group. Most of the individuals in this group derive their identities from family, culture, and faith. Moving away from their original faith puts them at risk. One person who left the Orthodox Church to join Daniel’s group was consequently disowned by his father. Although he was able to find solace in the new group, he struggled immensely with his father’s rejection and the criticism of other family members. With time, however, the young man's father was able to listen to his son. After more time, the father also began to question the relevance and validity of some of the ancient traditions that were still observed. In addition to family struggles, the congregation (along with the rest of their fellow citizens) suffers from decades of emergency law and a regime

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that exploits its people with corrupt practices that allow the rich to enjoy their luxuries while the majority of the population lives in abject poverty. Thus, it goes without saying that the sermon Abouna Daniel delivered a few years before the revolution, entitled “Nothing is Too Difficult for You”, was and may still remain, in its recorded form, a potentially significant message for people who have faced and continue to face seemingly insurmountable challenges in a place where daily living can be filled with challenges. The message begins with statements inviting the audience to join in glorifying “the Lord,” whom Daniel claims is “in [their] midst.” Thus he invites them to make a statement of faith that presupposes an invisible, yet powerful presence nearby. He immediately substantiates this idea with a Biblical quote (Matthew 18:20): “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” (NKJV) This establishes a pattern that is carried throughout the entire message, a pattern which reveals his familiarity with the Christian scriptures. The implication he provides with the first Biblical allusion is that the one they worship is with them in spirit, a claim that many of these Egyptians might equate with the breezes of the Nile and the winds of the desert. He quotes another verse where Jesus Christ states: “Come…and I will give you rest.” This is probably a comforting “promise” for the listeners who live in a city bustling with about twenty million frazzled people and hundreds of thousands of automobiles blasting their horns as they compete for limited space, a city located in a country with high levels of air, water, and land pollution that threaten the health of its residents.. Not only do the Cairenes have to work to support their families and spend hours with family and friends trying to maintain healthy relationships, but they also have to cope with insanely crowded conditions. Daily life can be an enervating experience. Who would not want to hear a message of hope? And so Father Daniel invites and encourages his congregated followers, reaching out to a rather broad audience longing to hear words of hope. The sermon can be summarized in a few main points: First, Father Daniel acknowledges that everyone listening to the message is most likely facing challenges of some kind, such as physical sickness or disability, emotional pain, mental strain, financial loss, relational problems, work issues, material or personal losses, or any combination of the above. Second, as pointed out in several Biblical references, the God of the Bible is all-powerful, yet caring, and having created the universe (a Biblical teaching), is willing to solve any subsequent problems, challenges, or difficulties. Third, in order for listeners who are struggling with one or more of the above listed difficulties to obtain his help, healing, or services,

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they must have faith and confidence in an omnipotent and caring God. In addition to this faith, they must be willing to confess and give up any “sinful” habit(s) in their lives. This, according to Daniel, would ensure the “closing of the deal” and the realization of God’s blessings in their lives. As he begins his sermon, Father Daniel addresses his audience, inviting them to glorify and thank God. He then begins praying aloud. After several minutes, he closes the prayer by including himself with the people, saying [to God], “Touch me,” after which he pauses, gives the main Biblical reference from which his sermon will come, and begins reading and expounding on the verses. A couple of times throughout the message, he will invite the people to repeat a prayer to God, such as, “I place my trust in you,” or he will ask the gathering to declare their commitment to give up a certain sin or habit by repeating the words, “I stand against it,” thus inviting them to participate in a dialogue with their creator. Otherwise, the entire message is spoken directly to the people until the end, when he closes with a long prayer to God. For his believing audience, Abouna Daniel's authority comes from the Christian scriptures (the Bible), which he uses amply throughout in the form of readings, memorized quotes, allusions, paraphrases, and references to other spiritual sources. According to his followers, his authority also comes from the spirit of the God, which they believe is present. Father Daniel has a certain peacefulness and joyfulness about him as he delivers his sermon. At times, he will speak with excitement, but his message is always imbued with a spirit of humility. His style reveals the existence of a subtle, well-trained, educated mind. His message contains several instances of anaphora and repetitions of opening clauses used to illustrate and emphasize a point. He engages his audience in dialogue. For example, he begins with “Let’s give glory to the Lord for…,” followed by several more of the same type of statements, but with different endings. Then, he moves to direct prayer, continuing the anaphoric pattern: “We give you glory, Lord for…,” or, “We thank you, Lord for…,” with several statements to conclude the same opening lines. He especially uses this rhetorical device when he is excited. For example, in the closing prayer he states, “Give us the faith to…,” or, “Give us the faith of…,” followed by several more different endings, thereby demonstrating what the people's faith can potentially accomplish as well as referencing Biblical models of strong faith. He often delivers several sentences beginning with, “It is the prayer of faith that...,” in which each phrase ends with a different result of the prayer of faith. As he gains momentum, he spontaneously begins to pray in the middle of his introduction, addressing directly “the Lord” who is “in the midst” of the audience. He glides smoothly throughout, making

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transitions naturally and freely. He recapitulates some of the earlier concepts mentioned, adding the metaphor of “a door,” which comes from John 10:9 and is reminiscent of both the door to heaven and the door to the city. He specifies that the Lord is the door of rest, peace, and joy. He asks this “Lord” to “reveal” himself so that the audience may “experience and…know…[God's] love.” His words provide relief for the harried minds in the audience, who meditate on the thoughts offered, attempting to believe and assimilate them as practical truths. The word “love” follows them as they begin their journey of trust. When Father Daniel refers to God as “Lord,” he includes with that image a message of “love.” It seems an unusual association. It certainly must peak the curiosity of the audience, leading them to desire to hear more. He concludes this part with an explanation of how this “Lord” demonstrates his love for them: He promises them rest. At that point, what attracts the listeners is the deviation from the traditional view of God as one who is hard to please, one who requires people to perform many rituals and observe many traditions that do not make sense, a being who is quick to judge, a being who instills fear in the people he created. Abouna, however, paints a picture of a being who created the human race in order to love them and whose mercy and grace overshadow judgment and condemnation. Is it any wonder there are people who find refreshment in such a concept? Obviously these listeners are willing to risk some rejection by their fellow man in order to embrace this new concept of a God who deeply cares for them. Usually, their acceptance of the concept results in a shift in their identity because they no longer view themselves as despicable worms deserving of hell, but instead view themselves with the kind of worth their creator supposedly attributes to them. After assuring them that they are worthy of grace, mercy, and love, Father Daniel continues with another scriptural allusion (Malachi 4:2) in which he suggests that there is a relationship between rest and healing. “What can make people weary,” he asks, “physical sickness and emotional pain”? He offers with these opening verses a glimpse of how the weary will find rest through healing. He then suggests another cause for weariness: bondage. Offering specific examples, such as fear, depression, or sense of failure, that occur in those who are unable to break from their condition, Daniel continues to speak. His voice accelerates in speed and rises in volume. He grows more elated as he expresses his thoughts. The words flow quickly and freely from his lips, making him sound inspired and full of power. He alludes to the Biblical scripture passage that claims the Lord never changes (Hebrews 13:8), perhaps providing listeners with the confidence that just

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as God worked in history, he is ready and able to work now as well. The audience is enthralled, listening intently. Barely moving, they consider every word spoken. Many in the crowd have their Bibles with them so they can follow along in the referenced passages; some are writing notes in the margins of their Bibles, or on separate pieces of paper, or in notebooks. It seems that the audience not only wants to benefit during the sermon, but also wants to continue reviewing and reflecting on the message. As Richard Weaver writes in his classic essay Language is Sermonic, “rhetoric…appeals to… [Man’s] nature as a pathetic being, that is, a being of feeling and suffering. A speech…achieves little unless it takes into account how men are reacting subjectively to their hopes and fears and their special circumstances.” (205) In the last line of Father Daniel’s prayer, not only does he demonstrate his awareness of the audience’s need for compassion, but he also suggests that a spiritually present higher authority (“Lord”) is cognizant of and sympathetic to their “torment.” He reveals his own humility by expressing gratitude and glory to God and includes himself in the audience when he says, “you [God] feel what we feel.” This mixture of authority, grace, and humility surely helps the audience to trust their leader as he begins a message of rich content. By now it is clear that Daniel is well schooled in both the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of western rhetoric. As Weaver, a wellrespected rhetorician notes, “every speech which is designed to move is directed to a special audience in its unique situation.” (206) Father Daniel not only understands well the economic and emotional status of his listeners, but he also understands his audience’s situation as he is indeed one of them: born in Egypt, he is a stranger in his own country, a nonMuslim living in an Islamic country. In fact, the religious body that Father Daniel leads is not officially recognized in Egypt. Its members share the same needs as most of the population who are fighting for survival, but also encounter additional daily challenges by living in a place where they may not feel they completely belong – even though they are mostly Arabic-speaking Egyptians living in Egypt. Father Daniel addresses their potential desperation, possibly knowing well from his hours of counseling how spiritually and emotionally hungry they are. The people in Daniel’s audience have already taken a first step by joining his group. Now they are ready to move toward action. What they've survived so far has only made them stronger for what is to come later. Throughout all of this, their identities continue to be re-shaped, re-formed, and refined. Again, the speaker addresses his audience directly and invites them to invoke “the Lord” to touch them, to experience something beyond just hearing the message to be delivered. Here, he presumes that his listeners

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believe with him that the Lord is present and that, moreover, he can actually “touch” them. This is an additional call to faith. The people respond (in Arabic – but the entire message is being translated by a proficient interpreter, enabling the English transcription found herein.) [Lord, I don’t want to be influenced by mere words or by my foolish inclinations, but I want you to touch me with your Holy Spirit.] Thus, as the speaker actively involves the audience by exhorting the people to join in an expectant declaration of faith and confidence that God will work in their lives, they are refreshed in their spirits, and are now able to respond with strong voices, confident in their faith, trusting their leader, believing in their God. To this religious minority within a religious minority, populated with individuals who sometime feel like giving up, like abandoning any attempts to mend their broken relationships or their broken hearts, Pastor Daniel offers a chance to declare their faith aloud. At this point, a wave of muffled, murmured prayers arises, as the people “proclaim” their faith in their own words. Then, Daniel concludes by addressing the invisible “Lord” who is “present.” However, this time, he invokes the image of a “Heavenly Father,” whose love mirrors that of a nurturing, caring parent. The pastor then appeals to a higher authority by claiming that his words are coming from the “Heavenly Father” and are to be received as both prophetic and personal. At this point, Daniel redirects his sermon. Quoting the Biblical passage of Jeremiah 33:6: “I will bring you health and healing. I am the Lord who heals you,” he posits healing as a transformation through faith. If his audience is weary because of emotional problems or the physical pain, then his words must touch them and show them that he not only understands, but can offer some relief. This is exigency: this perceived need for which the speaker can try to offer practical help is at the heart of Father Daniel’s mission on earth. Obviously, when he encourages the listeners to “come…and he [God] will heal you,” he is making an emotional appeal, but he also knows that the faithful cannot live on pathos alone; they must have proof that if they “come to him,” healing can occur. Father Daniel then quotes another Biblical verse, Exodus 15:26: “I will bring health and healing; I will heal them. I am the Lord that heals you” and demonstrates through specific examples his acute awareness of his listeners’ uncertainty. He speaks with compassion and understanding, quoting passages from scripture that speak to those emotional needs addressed. He expounds further by offering a somewhat vague application for the hearers, speaking of faith in the abstract terms and urging them to “come” to “the Lord” in order to find true freedom, real healing, abundant

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peace, and genuine rest. When Father Daniel earlier referred to being “touched” by “the Lord,” he was assuring the audience that the Lord does not want them to leave as they came, carrying burdens, being sick, feeling depressed, fearful, or angry, full of bad memories. Both “coming to the Lord” and “being touched by the Lord” require faith in an invisible spiritual being presumed to be present. Some of the people interviewed testified to receiving emotional or physical healing in these meetings while others celebrated changes in their economic circumstances. Through these testimonies, more are encouraged to believe in the reality of God’s presence and the possibility of receiving benefits from his spirit by faith. This possibility transforms a vague and abstract concept into a clear, practical, and tangible application. Simple faith can lead to concrete facts and real experiences. And through the testimonies of certain beneficiaries, the messenger’s credibility as well as that of his message is further enhanced. More importantly, the participants are gaining something they need. At this point, it would be well to stop and reconsider the main rhetorical situation in which the audience finds itself. The people have been living in a steady state of stress in a highly traditional culture which has many expectations and rules, Those listening need metaphors, words that remind them of a cool rain after a long hot dry spell or a cup of cold water offered to a parched traveler. But the expositor does not intend to give words of comfort that would lead the listeners to a position of complacency. He explains how the people will be brought into a new way of life for one reason: to be useful to others. The audience will not simply hear about peace and relief, but gain the strength and power to help others by giving credit to the supernatural one who touched them and who gave them a new experience. They are to be agents of change in Cairo. The congregation is ready for this. They have already taken action for themselves, and now they are prepared to hear how they can act on the behalf of others. For them, faith is not a selfish act: it is not something they've engaged and invested themselves in only to receive blessings and to avoid hell. For these spiritual pioneers, to receive more enables them to give more, and to love and worship their God is not an act of fear, but an act of returning the love they believe he extended to them. And as they believe in receiving supernatural healing, whether physical, emotional, or otherwise, they see what their teacher has taught them: any new strength gained through healing is strength and power to be used for the benefit of others. They will become conduits of blessing for those around them. They will love as they have been loved by a greater being, even if the objects of their love are themselves unloving or seem unlovable. These people are

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forming a new identity, and part of their new identity is not to give so they can receive something back, nor is it to love so they can be loved back. They have a new power from on high, as they see it, and it enables and equips them to support a change. Father Daniel proceeds to illustrate how peace comes as a result of grace, which is relevant to many who have been living a very long time with the rules and expectations of their culture and family and faith, but have possibly failed to realize any positive results. The pastor defines this peace as something within. The world on the outside can be in great turmoil, but the peace that Isaac speaks of is inside the person, acquired by faith, coming as a result of God's grace and remains intact regardless of any situation or circumstance in the listener's world. In order then for the listener to receive abundant peace, he/she must believe in the truth of God’s grace. All is to be believed by faith. Abouna then defines faith from a Biblical passage (Hebrews 11:1) as the assurance of things not seen and then quotes another scripture that states it is impossible to satisfy God without faith (Hebrews 11:6). Then, he invites the audience to participate again, offering them the chance to exercise and vocalize their faith. The people respond by murmuring their own personal prayers as he instructs them to bring their worries, burdens, sicknesses and confessions to the Lord in order to be delivered, healed, and forgiven. Daniel’s next step is to link un-confessed sins to the absence of healing, peace, joy, and blessings by instructing them again: Say, “I stand against it (sin) now.” And they respond accordingly. [I stand against it now.] Then he acknowledges their potential position, explaining what they need to do to improve their situation: confess and repent. If they are weak, it may be due to sin in their lives. He says God will not stop dealing with them as his children because of sin or weakness, but he will stop the blessings when sins are allowed to continue in their lives, implying a sort of discipline that is administered until the believers change their negative behaviors. Again, he has them repeat something: If there is unfaithfulness, I stand against it. I stand against hate and impurity and pride in my life. Involving them in action then and there creates for them a first step towards more required action and keeps them alert to the message. His meekness shines through as he explains that he knows how difficult it may be to give up certain vices, identifying with them as a fellow human being. Moving towards his conclusion, Daniel restates the idea that “the Lord” wants to do something through the individual, that he or she is being transformed for a reason, but he also adds that these individuals are not alone because God will stay with them. He then repeats the spiritual or moral responsibility that the audience must fulfill in order to fully enjoy

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God’s blessings. It is after the people have heard many encouraging words that the speaker introduces the logic behind doing something in order to receive something. It was of utmost importance to the early Greek rhetoricians, such as Plato and Aristotle, that the spoken message be logical. And it was very strategic of Daniels to begin with positive and attractive aspects, thereby capturing the audience’s attention before explaining their responsibility. George A. Kennedy in his work Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition states that the classical definition of “preach” (Gk. Kyrgma) is literally “ to proclaim” and that in such a proclamation, which is based on authority and grace, the listener can warm up to the message when it is delivered energetically. According to Kennedy, when the audience connects to the message being given enthusiastically by the preacher, belief and trust (faith) result (146). He then defines a homily as a common type of religious proclamation that is not systematic or formal but simply seeks to tell the listeners “what they need to know to understand the text and apply it to their lives” (156). Father Daniel uses the presumed authority of Biblical scripture and seeks to give a simple, informal, and practical message to his listeners. After he enables the listeners to “warm up” to the message, he gives them what they need to know in order to understand and apply the message, ideally leading them into a position of faith and trust. From the Biblical verse Jeremiah 32:17, the speaker offers an idea that could be applied to any of the aforementioned challenges - emotional, physical, financial, cultural, religious, political, or even spiritual - . No matter how the members of the audience may be experiencing a “mountain” in their lives, the pastor shows them again that if they have faith in their God, the God who cares about them, he can help them. The hope for the people continues, the words of grace drip from the speaker’s lips, the perceived authority comes from his many references, his vast knowledge, his sincere humility, his consistent logic, his knowledge of the persuasive properties of repetitive schemes, his genuine care for the people, and his endless energy. He continues to expound on the fact that the blessings should not inactivate the beneficiary; on the contrary, they must propel the recipient forward into beneficial actions of their own. The strength they receive is to be used to help those around them. What people fail in, he [God] will succeed in.” Abouna reminds his audience that the focus must be on God, whose infinite power and unlimited capability can do anything. The preacher then begins to move toward his conclusion by employing different figures of speech to reinforce the message: “Do not consider the size of the problem; instead, consider the power of God. Do

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not look at the weakness of man; instead, look to the strength of God.” With added excitement, he continues in this rhythmic way as he proclaims: “Prophet Jeremiah prayed with faith and Jeremiah’s God is the same God of today. He heard Jeremiah’s prayer and he is still listening today. He answered Jeremiah’s prayer and he is ready to answer prayers today.” As he concludes, Father Daniel offers another example, Job, the ancient Biblical character who lost everything he had, his many possessions, his children, and his health, but still maintained his relationship with God by faith. All that he had lost and more was later restored to him by God because he did not lose faith. “Nothing is too difficult” is repeated several times with various specific applications and scriptural allusions. Also repeated is the statement that the audience is not just listening to words, but they are coming to the mighty God, believing that he can perform miracles and set captives free, that he blesses, he increases, and he restores (spoken rhythmically and enthusiastically). The repetition leaves a lasting imprint in the minds of the listeners. Finally, asking the question, “What was it that restored twice as much back to Job,” he answers, “Job’s prayer of faith, his certainty, in his heart that God could do everything.” This is what leads to experiencing God’s power and blessings in unimaginable ways, a full assurance, not just in the mind but also in the heart, that God can do anything.” He further supports his message by referring to the gospel of Luke, Chapter 11, which describes how God wants to help his people because he loves them and is never too busy for them. Referring to the moment when Jesus is teaching how to pray, so that anyone can approach God at any time, he notes that the word “persistence,” when translated from the original Greek text of the New Testament (adding credibility to the message) means a person is able to go to God boldly, without being ashamed. He claims that it is not God who is bothered when people pray to him, it is the devil. Prayer destroys the strongholds and bondages placed on people’s lives. Summarizing his message, Daniel speaks of the availability of God, of the closeness of his presence. He repeats that believers are children of God and God is a loving Father who would not deny the needs of his children. As he delivers his message, he once again becomes more excited, enunciating every word and accelerating in speed, turning-up the volume. Thus, with all rhetorical devices in play, he returns to the theme of hope for people who need it. At the end of the message and final prayer, he asks God to lead the people and asks the gathering to pray with faith. The music begins, the congregation sings once more. As the singing continues, many individuals walk to the front of the main hall where Father Daniel stands ready to pray

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for each individual. This continues for a couple of hours. For many, this is the most meaningful part of the whole evening. It is the desired climax, the moment when they not only feel cared for by their pastor, but also believe that he is a conduit of God’s spirit caring for them. His message contains words of grace. His authority derives from The Bible and the spirit of God. He speaks logically and passionately. His advice to those who come echo the words of Jesus himself: “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” He is someone they can trust. It seems there are many who need and want to hear what Daniel Isaac has to say. And as they move into their new individual and group identity, it is apparent they are not only eager to hear and learn more, but they are ready and willing to put into practice what they've learned, first to improve themselves, and then to live for the sake of others. Having taken the risk to better their spiritual lives, the followers of Father Daniel head to the streets to join others who will eventually seek to find a better future for themselves and for Egypt.

Works Cited Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1999. The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984. Print. Weaver, Richard M. “Language is Sermonic.” Weaver on the Nature of Rhetoric. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1970.

PART IV WHO AM I: RHETORIC, MEMORY AND PERSONAL IDENTITY

GROWTH AND MATURATION: DEVELOPING IDENTITY IN THE TAHRIR SQUARE CLASSROOM GHADA EL SHIMI

“Look to the experienced rather than the learned” —Arab Proverb

As protestors took to Tahrir square in January 2011, and TV cameras panned a crowd of no less than a million individuals, the camera lenses often paused for a moment on the faces of young adults who were voicing their demands - fiery looks of determination, passing shadows of fear, defiant stares, radiant joy. Who were the young adults who stood in the square? How did this experience affect them? Would they come out of this experience transformed? The events of the Egyptian Revolution have been well documented by news agencies all over the world, and there is fair agreement that these tumultuous 18 days in Egypt brought change to the people by bringing an end to a decades-old regime. While the collective experience is clear, a unique experience of these days resides within every individual based on his or her perception of events. For young adults, the revolution provided a unique growth experience that would continue to shape their identity throughout the remainder of their lives. Transition into adulthood takes place both suddenly and tentatively as roles, beliefs and values take shape and bring forward identities that have come about as a result of an interaction between internal makeup and external circumstances. For a brief moment in Tahrir, this ongoing process was interrupted as a unique set of circumstances set off a revolution that removed young adults from their classrooms and university campuses and took them to the streets of Cairo, where they experienced events that had never been experienced by their parents. Nothing could have prepared them for the confrontation that ensued. Nothing could have prepared them for the moment when their beliefs and values were called into question and they put themselves in danger to support the movement they had initiated. As they gathered in Tahrir to

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attend a simple protest, they unwittingly started a revolution that accelerated a process that would transform their sense of self, their understanding of the world, and the identity of their nation. What prompted them to take such courageous action? An examination of psychosocial theories of identity development yields some insight into the processes that were taking place in the minds of these young people as each continued to construct individual identities that would extend beyond Tahrir into mature adulthood. Psychosocial theory examines human development and growth as it relates to the interaction of psychological qualities with the environment to bring about changes in identity that include discovering and building a sense of self, learning how to relate to others, and developing a better understanding of one’s role in the community. As early as 1950, Erik Erikson investigated psychosocial development at different stages of adulthood, examining how development through each stage occurs as a result of confronting critical moments or events, and forces one to make decisions and reflect on his or her beliefs, roles and values (Evans, Forney and DiBrito, 1998). Building on the work of Erikson, Arthur Chickering and Linda Reisser (1993) proposed a description of the psychosocial development of college students, suggesting that college is a critical time for individual development, a time that nourishes significant changes that will contribute to the lifelong construction of identity. The Chickering and Reisser theory discusses seven dimensions along which college students develop as they are forced to resolve critical events that cause them to question who they are and what they want. The resolution of these crises contributes to the establishment of an adult sense of identity (Chickering and Reisser, 1993). While there is overlap among each of the dimensions, and development along them is not sequential, the theory provides a conceptual framework that helps us understand the learning that goes on during a young adult’s daily interaction with ideas and events. As someone who works with college-level writing, I am often taken aback at how open students can be when they write. As the students describe, narrate and analyze, they allow me into their social interactions, interpretations of their world, and struggles to make sense of often confusing experiences and ideas. Their revelations allow me to affirm the validity of selected developmental theory as I witness some of the dimensions of personal growth described by Chickering and Reisser (1993). And as I read their writing, I realize that Tahrir had been the perfect vehicle for individual growth as well as social change. According to Chickering and Reisser, the first dimension in development

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is developing competence. At this stage, young adults develop critical and analytical thinking capacities, improving their ability to acquire academic knowledge and skills. Specifically, they make changes in the ways they acquire knowledge, and reason about it. In addition, they develop learning interests outside the classroom, such as cultural or aesthetic interests, which equip them for lifelong learning. They also develop in their ability to collaborate with others and understand their perspectives. They share their findings with their peers, recognize flaws in their logic, and look to others for argument strategies. The need for effective communication becomes a necessity rather than a chore as they engage in analytical thinking and assessment of strategy. Nowhere was the need to demonstrate competence of ideas stronger than in Tahrir. Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms provided the perfect venue for college-age adults as they integrated ideas from the classroom with the realities of their society and sifted through the thoughts and reactions of friends, who were also exposing themselves to informal representations of newly learned social and political theory. Making arguments and countering arguments became a solidifying force in the square, and a culture of intellectual discussions, analysis and evaluation grew and expanded. The second vector of Chickering and Reisser’s theory (1993), managing emotions, requires that individuals interact with controversy and move out of their comfort zone. At the end of this stage, mature management of emotions is reflected in an improved ability to recognize an emotion, express it appropriately and understand and respond to the emotions of others. This may apply to positive emotions as well as negative ones. During this stage, individuals may improve at anger management or develop sympathy for others. And so, as young people moved from the digital to the public space, they learned how far they were willing to go with their anger, and how and when resolve could break into confusion and fear. They also learned that when emotions are experienced collectively, they become stronger and removed from the individual, potentially spurring mass behavior that is not possible at an individual’s level. Young people, also for the first time, faced the wrath of regime, and the confused emotions of being torn between the need to be fearless, and the need to be safe. The third vector is marked by the recognition that one can achieve emotional and interdependent independence while at the same time making use of community support. During this stage, individuals move away from the idea of defining independence in absolute terms, and recognize that interdependence is not a weakness. Evidence of this stage may be seen as individuals develop self-direction, needing less approval or

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reassurance from others, and they redefine relationships with parents and friends to reflect their perceived new roles as equals in those relationships. The desired interaction with the crowds, the explanations to parents of the need to participate, the decision as to when to return home all reflect this stage. Developing mature interrelationships is an important milestone in young adult development. It involves an increased tolerance for personal and intercultural differences, and an ability to take others for who they are, unaffected by stereotypes and preconceptions. Inherent in this element of identity development is the potential to form intimate relationships and accept others as equal in importance as oneself. Tahrir Square was an intercultural haven, a tapestry of Egyptian cultures, attracting people from all geographic regions, social classes, religious tendencies and political views. All Egyptians integrated seamlessly, united by one goal of bringing about change. Prior to the square, although individuals may have had some doubts about their elected leaders, they eventually defined, through their interaction with friends in cyberspace and strangers in the square, what they truly thought. They also learned to listen, reflect and respect. “Other people really do sometimes express what I mean better than I do,” reflects Amina* in her writing journal. The framework for student identity development describes the stage of establishing identity as a culmination of the above areas of growth, and perhaps the most complex to assess. As students become comfortable with their ideas, lifestyle, culture and values, they develop a sense of who they are, and are better positioned to face challenges and transitions; their concept of self is now more solid. Throughout the events in Tahrir, students came face to face with the different perspectives of different groups. They had to analyze the perspective of the military, the hated state security police, the looters, and members of different minority groups in order to survive. They had to think about why they refuted ideas and embraced others. Adopting the persona of a police officer assigned to quell the riots, Karim* writes, “I cannot look people in the eye. If I started to read their looks, I would never be able to do what I have to. They are wrong. Chaos is wrong, and I will defend Egypt’s right to be peaceful and stable.” The last two areas for possible growth, according to identity theory, is to reach the highest level of maturity, which requires that they establish professional and personal priorities and commit to them. This stage manifests itself in the ability to make deliberate choices that bring them closer to their goals in areas of career, family and personal interests. It requires clear analysis of one’s values and qualities, and the desire to live

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purposefully, to achieve pre-planned intentions. Developing integrity calls into question the values acquired from parents or community as the individual attempts to make conscious decisions about which values to ‘own’ and which to discard, based on conceptions of emerging identity. At this stage, behavior now becomes more congruent with thinking, and the person moves away from rigid understanding of morals, such as classifying events and people into right and wrong or good and bad, and develops a deeper understanding of how values may change when applied to different situations (Evans, Forney and Di-Brito, 1998). Personalizing values includes affirming the values that support one’s beliefs and developing respect for the beliefs of others. The individual’s behavior at this stage embodies his/her values, and actions become based on this mature value system. “I’m not sure why I’m involved,” Omar* writes. “I was never into politics. But this is a revolution against all that is unethical.” Tahrir was the perfect crucible for growth. Students had to consciously go against the grain of their cultural upbringing, and ask themselves why their parents and the generations before them had submitted to decades of oppression. They had to examine the values of their friends from opposite viewpoints, and openly take sides, risking damaged relationships and hurt feelings. They had to learn that there was no peace without being true to yourself and your values, no matter the social expense. As I hear the voices of my students who have been through this experience, I begin to see their identities emerge through the lines. Tahrir has undoubtedly ushered in processes of reflection, questioning and a search for truth within these young people. Their reflections on Tahrir invite them to use their newly acquired perspectives to examine the rest of their lives, emerging transformed at the end, from the person who started writing: Samah’s* knowing account of her torment as she tries to quiet doubts about her family’s faith and search for a spiritual identity, Ahmed’s coming to terms with feelings of inadequacy as he is cut off the swim team, Lina’s* objective narration of childhood terror, growing up with an abusive father, and Farida’s* making peace with her guilt about not having the courage to join protests against corruption. I am reassured that no matter what the outcome of each individual experiences, these young adults have been exposed to greater opportunities for growth than many others. I tread around these voices quietly, hoping to hear them without interrupting their thoughts or disturbing the silence they need to make meaning of the events of their lives.

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Note Names have been changed for confidentiality.

Works Cited Chickering, A. W. and Reisser, L. (1993) Education and Identity (2nd edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Evans, N. J., Forney, D. S. and Guido-DiBrito, F. 1998. Student Development in College. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

WHO AM I ˮΎϧ΁ Ϧϣ: NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY STRUGGLES IN YOUNG EGYPTIAN ADULTS NOELLE HOUSSNEY EHAB

Language—code and content—is a complicated dance between internal and external interpretation of our identity. —Kari Gibson

I proudly presented my Lebanese passport to the passport control officer at the airport in Beirut. I was 18 years old, and this was my first time traveling alone to Beirut. The man said something in Arabic and I understood that he wanted to see my landing card. This, I had filled out in English on the side marked ‘foreigner’, since I could barely scratch out my first name in the Arabic letters of a five-year-old. The officer didn’t like that. Gruffly, he asked me “why didn’t you write on the side for Lebanese?” In my broken language that certainly revealed the fact that I’d spent most of my life abroad, I told him the shameful truth. “You’re Lebanese, you have to fill out the Arabic side,” he insisted. Refusing to fill out the card on my behalf, the officer sent me to the back of the line to manage on my own. This experience was just one of the many I’ve had where I was forced to confront my own perception of my identity as a Lebanese -American. In an increasingly globalized world, with a larger and larger portion of Arab society experiencing migration and the influence of westernization, a large portion of the emerging generation in the Middle East is in a similar position. French-Lebanese writer, Amin Maalouf begins the introduction to his book On Identity, with a question I can relate to, “How many times, since I left Lebanon in 1976 to live in France, have people asked me, with the best intentions in the world, whether I felt ‘more French’ or ‘more Lebanese’?” (Maalouf 3). For a long time I identified myself as more Lebanese. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in the US that I clung to my other side. Many people do the opposite and reject their ‘foreign’ side in order to fit in, but I was happy to be different and to feel there was another place in the world where I would ‘fit in’. It was not until I started spending

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time in Lebanon that I realized how far I was from fitting in as I had hoped. The most obvious thing, besides an ambiguous physical appearance and numerous deeper cultural differences that set me apart from my Lebanese kin, was my language. In my childhood home, we had used only a spattering of Arabic, and though I was never under any illusion that I was fluent, I also did not understand how truly devastating my poor language skills would be to my sense of identity. This became for me a defining characteristic and a roadblock that kept me from being able to assert my identity as a Lebanese. No amount of insistence or flashing of my passport could make up for the fact that I could not communicate in what was supposed to be my native tongue. I have been living in Egypt now for several years as an adult and have largely come to terms with my mixed-identity and accepted my language skills for what they are. My Arabic is much improved, but I do not by any means sound native. If I take Amin Maalouf’s example, this imbalance is something I should embrace. Maalouf says, “So am I half French and half Lebanese? Of course not. Identity can’t be compartmentalized. I haven’t got several identities: I’ve got just one, made up of many components combined together in a mixture that is unique to every individual” (Maalouf 3). Maalouf considers himself to be both French and Lebanese, but as a writer, he chooses to write in French. By now I am old enough to realize, with Amin, that I am neither more one nor the other, but a unique mix of both along with other things that make me the unique individual that I am. At the same time, having gone through this struggle myself, I am acutely aware of the effect that one’s language can have on one’s sense of identity. Over the last couple of years as a rhetoric and composition instructor to primarily Egyptian students at the American University in Cairo, I have had my students write narratives around the subject of their own identities, and I have discovered that many of them have personal conflicts regarding their Egyptian-ness and one of the areas that this conflict most commonly manifests itself is through language. In many cases, as with my story, this problem appears in those from a mixed-race. Layla, who is half Egyptian, half Irish, struggled a lot to fit in with her Egyptian relatives, partly due to her fair skin and light eyes, but primarily because of the difficulty she had in expressing herself in the Arabic language. In her narrative, she describes a powerful scene that left her feeling foolish and ashamed in front of her Egyptian relatives: every time my parents threw another dreaded party, it was just one more chance to embarrass myself and yet again have Arabic fail me. One of those usual

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dinner parties, when I was around the age of nine years old, continues to pop into my memory whenever people laugh at what I call my clumsy Arabic. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins were sitting in the living room. As I was coming down the stairs I heard the greetings and laughter as they echoed through the hallway. After taking a deep breath, I thought to myself, “Here we go again, I hope I don’t mess up this time”. I entered with a smile and made my way around the room, greeting everyone with hugs and kisses. My relatives are quite loud and don’t wait for other conversations to finish before starting their own, so questions were immediately thrown at me from all directions. Being so insecure about the way I sounded when I spoke Arabic, I felt very inadequate with my meager collection of words. Seeing my confused expression, my aunts decided to stop the commotion and wait politely for my answer. The only problem was the last question asked was the only one I didn’t know how to answer. Standing there with a puzzled face, blushing cheeks, swinging from side to side, I struggled to think of something intelligent to say. I was so consumed with what the whole family, especially my father, must be thinking of me, that I couldn’t even think of something else to say to them. After what seemed to be an everlasting silence, I replied, “I don’t get it…” in English and immediately regretted it. The room filled with laughter again, however this time it was a product of my inability to answer the simplest of questions in Arabic. As they criticized, I heard the correct words rush into my head in the most clear and organized manner. I knew the answer! I knew I wasn’t as illiterate as they made me out to be. Layla paints a vivid picture of how her language has caused insecurity around her sense of cultural identity and belonging in her own family. As the narratives of other young men and women reveal, she is not alone. Lack of confidence in one’s own mother tongue has been a common theme. It’s not surprising that this is an issue for people such as Layla and I, who are mixed-race, or even those who are fully Arab, but have spent much of their life abroad. However, it seems increasingly common to find this same identity conflict among young people who have spent their entire lives in Egypt. One of the more touching narratives reads: “My grandfather kept a dairy. Ever since I was born I became a big part of it and he promised himself that when I turned 18, he would hand me over his diary to read.” Unfortunately, her grandfather died when she was 16, and she was given the diary earlier than promised. As she eagerly held this precious gift in her hands, the story continues, “… and at that moment it all hit me. I had a serious problem. My grandfather’s diary was written in traditional Arabic.” Although this young woman had grown up in Egypt and had never lived abroad, she was unable to read classical Arabic.

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When discussing written Arabic, it is important to note that it is quite different from the spoken language. It is not uncommon for those who have grown up speaking the Egyptian dialect to struggle with writing and reading in Classical Arabic. Likewise, a foreigner who has studied the written language may have trouble adjusting to what is spoken on the street. However, apart from the written dialect, many of the young Egyptians who attend the American University in Cairo prefer to speak English. Sara says, “I look around me here in the AUC and see Egyptians who are completely capable of talking Arabic, but instead they are always talking English, even with their friends outside the classrooms.” Whether or not they are capable, many seem to struggle with speaking Arabic. Another young Egyptian woman, Rania, talks about how she has a tendency to speak in English instead of Arabic, and when she does speak Arabic, she says that she finds herself “pronounc(ing) Arabic words with a sloppy accent”. However, Rania still claims that she knows how to speak Arabic well if she wants “but,” she says, “I find expressing myself in English much easier and much more convenient so, typically, I take the easy way out and use it instead of my native language.” This confirms the proposition of Galal Amin, a well-known Economics Professor at the American University in Cairo, who believes, “the main source of trouble lies not in a lack of ability, but rather in a lack of will; it is not that people are no longer capable of expressing themselves correctly in Arabic, but that people no longer want to do so, or are no longer willing to make the effort” (Amin 88-89). Amin, dedicates a whole chapter is his book, Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?, to the decline of “The Arabic Language”. He laments how, according to his own observations, “television announcers seem to take pride in the fact that they cannot pronounce Arabic words properly”, and “writers… just like university professors, seize every opportunity to use the foreign equivalent for an Arabic term, even if the Arabic equivalent is quite appropriate and unambiguous, or even clearer and more precise than its foreign counterpart (Amin 87)”. There seems to be an overall impression that English is more prestigious than Arabic. One young woman, Yasmine, feels that, “Most of the Egyptians now see the Arabic language as a sign of a poor humble past they are trying to forget. They are still doing their best trying to forget Arabic and its rules, thinking that mastering any other foreign language may prove that they are originally from a higher social class than they were from in the first place.” There are even certain situations where young Egyptians feel that Arabic is simply not appropriate, for example one young man reports, “even though I have a good command of classical Arabic, I would never

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consider using it to write a letter because no one would appreciate it.” Christina was not as aware of the benefits that come along with speaking English until one day while she was trying to book a family vacation at one of Egypt’s many beach resorts: “Usually… we have to call a company to reserve the resort or the hotel we are going to stay in, I noticed that every time we called they would tell us that ‘all places are booked’... So one time I decided to talk to them in English. That time they treated me respectfully.” Christina learned the hard way, but many others are aware of this distinction With foreign languages, particularly English, emphasized over Arabic, it is no surprise that, as one young man, Karim, explains, “a ‘good’ education is linked to a ‘good, international’ school, and therefore parents would preferably send their children to those kinds of schools where English is the main language, rather than to the public schools in the country to learn Arabic.” This perception that international schools are better than public schools is probably true. Although I can’t vouch for how well students perform in subjects such as math and science, I can see an observable difference in the quality of work being submitted by entry-level students coming from government schools compared to those coming from International schools. This difference is seen not only in their command of English, but also in their analytical skills and critical thinking abilities. However, while these schools may be rigorous in some subjects, it appears that they do not place the same importance on learning the Arabic language. Describing his experience at an international school, Mahmoud writes, “…teaching of the English language was the main focus, and Arabic classes became just a requirement that I needed to pass. There was no emphasis on learning the language, the teaching was lax and it didn’t matter if students didn’t take it seriously.” Another young woman, Sandra tells her story, “once I entered an international school all my concentration was on speaking English and eventually my knowledge of the Arabic language became very diluted.” This has become a vicious cycle, Egyptians want their children to know English, and in exchange Arabic is sacrificed. However, this emphasis on English over Arabic in Egyptian society is beginning to take its toll on the sense of identity in Egyptian youth. Although Sandra can appreciate her international education, she can also feel “the disadvantage that comes from this is that I cannot speak my own language fluently. I am way more fluent at speaking English than I am at speaking Arabic. It’s a great disadvantage that I can’t read or write Arabic well… it’s hard for me to communicate with people from my own country. “ Even Edward Said, who grew up going to international schools in

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Egypt like many of these young Egyptians, has experienced some of this tension. In his memoir, Out of Place, he discusses how growing up with English and Arabic caused confusion about his identity. Said explains how being caught between the two languages, he never fully identified with either one. “I have never known what language I spoke first, Arabic or English, or which one was really mine beyond any doubt… Each can seem like my absolutely first language, but neither is” (Said 4). He uses dramatic language, expressing this internal conflict as an “unsettling quandary” and a “primal instability”, which illustrates how this fact has deeply affected his concept of self, although he actually spoke, read and wrote in both English and Arabic quite well. As exemplified in my students, many of Egypt’s emerging generation have a much lower level of ability when it comes to the Arabic language than Edward Said, who actually had to work very hard at developing his classical Arabic skills, and was still criticized for his lack of eloquence when speaking classical Arabic (“Living”). One student, who thought his classical Arabic was adequate until he failed in a spoken exam, expressed his disappointment, “I cannot forget that shame because it is unbelievable to be Egyptian and not able to talk the original language of your own country.” The Arabic language skills of the Egyptian elite have continued to go downhill with each passing generation. Galal Amin laments, “people used to take pride in being able to write good Arabic, in being well acquainted with the rules of Arabic grammar and in observing them even in writing an ordinary letter, let alone in giving a speech in public” (85). Some of my student’s narratives use equally dramatic language to express the feelings that come along with the loss of Arabic in their generation. “Time is stealing away our culture,” writes Ahmed, “the Arabic language has been declining. One step at a time westernization has devoured parts of our culture, feeding on it more and more each generation, making it weak and helpless. I can’t help but notice how I, myself, am contributing to this wateringdown of my student’s native Arabic and the consequent identity-shift in Egyptian youth. When I overhear my students conducting in-class discussions in Arabic, I encourage them to switch to English. They need to practice discussing their subject in the language in which they will write. However, as for my own children, I cannot take for granted that living in Egypt means they will learn Arabic. If I want them to be able to fully embrace all of their cultural identities (Egyptian, Lebanese, American), I will need to consciously immerse them in Arabic from a young age. I hope young Egyptian adults, and the generations that follow, will recognize the same need.

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Note Student names have been changed.

Works Cited Amin, Galal. “The Arabic Language”. Whatever Happened to the Egyptians. Maalouf, Amin. On Identity. London: Random House, 2000 Said, Edward. “Living in Arabic.” Al Ahram Weekly On-line. 677 (12-18 Feb. 2004). 7 Nov. 2010

—. Out of Place. New York: Random House, 2000

OMAR HAS A QUESTION: HOW TRUTH AND MEMORY SHAPE FICTION AND NONFICTION JAMES P. AUSTIN

“He who foretells the future lies, even if he tells the truth” —Arab Proverb

Omar, a senior in my narrative writing class, arrives at my office hours with a question. He wants to know what to do if he does not remember something—the essential thing, the pivotal moment—in a scene from his narrative. What if his mind has screened it out? What to do then? He shares this urgent concern during a conference wherein we discuss the scene in his narrative where his mother, suffering from cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, removes her hijab (headscarf) to reveal her bald head to Omar for the first time. This is the moment in the narrative when Omar understands and reflects upon his role in his family. While Omar is a son in a culture that prizes sons and often grants them authority in family decisions, his mother’s cancer diagnosis was concealed from him for months while he studied in Egypt. This moment also underscores what has been taken from his mother, for her covered hair, a symbol of modesty for a veiled Muslim woman, has disappeared from underneath her hijab. There is no hair to conceal. The hijab has instead concealed the extent of her illness from Omar. Problem one: Omar does not remember his mother removing her hijab. He knows he was there, knows he observed it. He has memory of the sight registering. The memory of the moment itself is concealed. Problem two: the narrative does not really “work” without that crucial moment rendered in scene. Omar has come to me now because he wants to know how to proceed. Should he leave the scene in its present incarnation, where the pivotal moment is only a brief reference, and risk a failed narrative? Should he ruminate on cognition and the vagaries of memory? Or should he imagine what this locked-away memory contains and, in reconstituting it, illustrate the very moment he has forgotten?

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I was not certain how to advise him at first. There are no hard and fast rules, only spheres of debate. Omar had entered a minefield where the advocates of fact, memory and imagination do constant battle with one another, seeking purchase and supremacy. He had brought me along with him, hoping for a guide. I knew that there are some areas of broad agreement. No writer or critic would argue that a work of narrative nonfiction is a simple recitation of facts any more than s/he would advocate that a narrative nonfiction piece should be a completely imagined story. There must be basis in fact, for integrity’s sake; there must be memory to provide the perspective for how a person, place or event seemed to the writer; and there must be acts of imagination to re-create real events from memory, transforming them into a discourse and genre recognized as narrative nonfiction—or more broadly, creative nonfiction. The forever struggle is one of alchemy: how much of each, and which matters most? Many writers and critics argue that one’s fealty is to the art itself, to the rendering of experience through the medium. This includes luminaries such as William Falkner, who stated that “[t]he writer’s only responsibility is to his art” (qtd. in Mills) and the nonfiction writer Joan Didion, who claimed that the author’s responsibility is to the truth of the experience (Bloom 278). To these titans, art is a medium through which experience is rendered, not reported, and it is the responsibility of the writer to render that experience using the tools of their medium and genre for the effects and impacts associated with the genre. Many writers who have encountered the hazy overlap between memory, imagination and fact would concur. Two of the most famous such writers are Truman Capote and Tim O’Brien, whose mixed-genre classics reveal fealty to the art more than the strict facts, and question the role of memory. Capote’s nonfiction novel In Cold Blood tells the story of a mass murder using a mix of journalistic and fictional techniques to create a narrative that resembles fiction, even though the events themselves were true. Capote creates a rendition of true events based upon qualitative methods, such as interviews and extensive research, alongside fictional imaginative license. Capote rather proudly anointed his book an innovation, a new genre called the “nonfiction novel” that was “immaculately factual” (Plimpton). Collective memory mattered to him only as raw material to be collected through research, sifted, and transformed into a work of art. Tim O’Brien made no grand claims of innovation in his classic The Things They Carried, but he did sunder truth into “story truth” (as it felt) and “happening truth” (what actually occurred), with clear preference for the former (O’Brien). For O’Brien, the story is what matters, it is all that

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matters; it matters more than an individual’s memory because the story will outlive its author and become the preserved memory, a contribution to collective memory that lives on independently of its authors. The complex relationship of Capote and O’Brien with memory, fact and imagination can be accepted only because they are exceptions, and because these writers, like Faulkner and Didion, are luminaries. Most agree that nonfiction stories must have a foundation in truth, that our memories are based in fact, and that there is an expectation among the readers of creative nonfiction that the story on the page is true. It happened. We might accept some flourishes around the edges, but the fundamental events come from the writer’s memory, and these events did happen. Writers such as Binjamin Wilkomirski and James Frey, authors who invented facts, timelines, entire experiences (or who misnamed fiction as nonfiction, perhaps to sell more copies of books), are of a different stripe than Capote and O’Brien, who are credited as innovators— controversial though their books may be to some. Certainly, Tim O’Brien must not be advocating that writers who play fast and loose with factual truth should be handed the keys to the collective memory he prizes, especially in the realm of creative nonfiction—where the story that survives its author is also expected to be a story of real human events. Those writers and critics who argue for a close relationship between narrative nonfiction and the facts would likely cite Wilkormirski, Frey and others as cautionary tales, evidence of a slippery slope. Writers and critics such as Robin Helmy, Lee Gutkind and Philp Gerard object to including anything that does not qualify as the whole truth—no composite characters, no fudging timelines, no making things up (qtd. in Bloom 278). Otherwise, these critics might argue, there is an inevitable amalgamation of the truthful with the half-truthful and the outright lies. How could we ever tell the difference between them? I admire the ethics of these writers and critics and agree, largely, with their positions as guardians of the tower: not of academe but of creative nonfiction. Still, as I thought about Omar’s situation, I could not forget the role of imagination in writing narrative nonfiction. How else could the biographer David McCullough create a three-dimensional portrayal of John Adams from letters and other correspondence? Without imagination, he could just have posted his primary sources online and been done with it. How else, without imagination, do we create coherence from our own life experiences, transcending transcription, connecting our lives to those of others? The questions go a long way toward explaining why I advised Omar to imagine what the experience of his mother’s veil-removal was like for

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him. In imagining, he would connect how it seemed to him now with how it seemed at the time. In trying to understand, he might remember; but even if he could not recover the memory, the imagined memory would stand in nicely. This position, my advice, is not without risks. Patricia Hampl, a highly-regarded American nonfiction writer, is surely comfortable with imagination’s relationship with memory and nonfiction writing. In her essay “Memory and Imagination,” Hampl sees imagination as the mind’s way to fill in the potholes and the blank spots in memory, to fulfill a wish, a tool for augmenting memory and smoothing out a narrative. She discusses the tendency, in recreating a setting from the past, to generate portraits from a large store of memories dislodged from specific time or place. She says nothing of central events, pivotal scenes being imagined, reconstituted. She says nothing about the advice I gave to Omar. Hampl also states that a person “only store[s] in memory images of value” (311). She equates “memory” with “image,” and “value” with “feeling.” This does not much help Omar, who suffers from the opposite problem: possessing the memory absent of the image. Unlike Hampl, Omar did not “store the images safely away in memory” (311). The memory, we assume, was there—he certainly knew it was there—but, like another of my students who remembers breaking her arm but cannot recall having felt the pain of it, the memory is not preserved safely, ready to be accessed. It is under lock and key, hidden away from the one who experienced it, safely beyond the reach of memory. Hampl also claims to remember images because they matter when she writes: “I persist in believing the event [about which she is referring] has value—after all, I remember it […]” (311). She assumes the reason for that value is that it corresponds to a remembered emotion, and that the memoirist’s job is to find “a permanent home for feeling and image,” to create a congruency, a connection that Hampl describes as symbol (311). She also assumes that forgetting is either the individual mind sorting out the important from the insignificant, or the collective cultural shedding of an unpleasant or wearisome memory (312). Hampl’s piece is difficult to disagree with on the one hand, because the views expressed are clearly her own. I can stipulate that the outlooks are true to her experiences as a human and as a writer of her own experiences. At the notion that her views can be generalized to all people, or even transferred to another singular human, all stipulations cease. Hampl appears to believe that what is present is significant, and what is absent is not significant, and the job of the writer is to fuse the images and feelings of memory into digestible symbols. Omar’s conundrum eludes Hampl’s

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conclusions, for the crucial memory is an empty shape; it is present, it happened, but there is no image to accompany the feeling. There is no inherent coherence to codify into a symbol. There is only the decision of what to do about this problem in this particular piece of writing for this writer. For Omar. In the end, I offered the advice one offers when there is not a clear path. I borrowed a nugget from Hampl, and adapted it to Omar’s conundrum. I recommended that he imagine the scene based upon his other memories: his mother’s bald head remembered later, the details of that head, the fashion in which she wore her hijab and her normal method of removal. He can call upon the shock, the sadness, the bitterness of his revelation. He remembers how it felt. He can recreate that moment every bit as much as Hampl can recreate a scene from a store of dislodged memories or give herself, in memory, an object she had always wanted but never possessed. It’s also true that this debate did not introduce itself into my head as I sat in my office, talking with Omar, with the same fluidity with which it now appears on these pages. As the writer of this piece, I had to consider how best to represent not only Omar’s question and the conundrum it presented, but how it touched upon debates among writers that guided the advice I gave in a single conversation. My advice borrowed from and adapted Hampl’s approach, but for reasons I would like to think Capote and O’Brien would understand. Those writers, as genre innovators, made deliberate choices about representing true events and truly felt and experienced feelings. Their innovations imply that what happened, how it felt, and how writers might hope that their readers react to the writing is not always—perhaps not often—neatly aligned. Choices must be made. Such choices, one might assume, have always been made. What I hope I passed along to Omar, aside from a response to his immediate concern, was the seriousness of the choice, the unavoidable ethics of this decision— and the others he and his peers will likely make when sifting through memories of past events, such as those in Tahrir, to shape present and future memories.

Works Cited Bloom, Lynn Z. “Living to Tell the Tale: The Complicated Ethics of Creative Nonfiction.” College English, 65.3 (2003): 276-289. Hampl, Patricia. “Memory and Imagination.” The Fourth Genre. Eds. Robert L. Root, Jr. and Michael Steinberg. New York: Pearson

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Longman, 2005. 306-315. Print. Mills, Claudia. “Appropriating others’ stories: some questions about the ethics of writing fiction.” Journal of Social Philosophy, 31.2 (2000): 195-206. O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

PART V EPILOGUE

OF PLACE AND POSSIBILITY MELANIE CARTER

This was once an imagined city. Desert stretching out to the blue horizon, an idea shimmering above it on waves of heat. Was there a word? Perhaps. If there were a word. If there were a city… January. Early morning. On a road from the desert, seven men huddle in the back of a pick-up. They look sleepy, new to the world, almost elemental, as if they have just arisen from their camel-hair blankets, from the fold of a dune. The fabric of their galabeyas whips in the wind. The one riding with his back against the window has pulled his scarf up around his mouth so that when he shouts above the roar of the engine, the only sign of language is in the strain around his eyes. What is heard above the din is something more like music… a momentary rise in pitch before the quick, rhythmic cadence of a laugh. The truck pulls ahead. You, who drive in silence, watch it go… into the erratic flow of cars that cross and weave, merge and break free again, through morning fog dense with exhaust. Is there a line we cross from the desert to the imaginary? You stop your car and stand with your back to the window of air. Before you, a thousand half-constructed buildings—offices shimmering with glass facades, green-lawned villas and apartment houses—stretch over the horizon to where the word began. Whether they have risen from the earth or lowered themselves out of the air, they appear in swaths: at first, weedy rebarred stakes on the world. And then, by kilometers, claims. Painted. Slammed down like fists.

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Your own hands hang by your side in the open air, the sound of wind over dust and gravel like something they could hold. Look, you say as the wind whips past, how the desert rises into concrete monuments. But your words feel slight, and the air so dry that nothing hangs in it. If you brushed your hand against the edge of a building, what would you bring away with you but dust? Or if you were in a room, fluorescent lights humming overhead… If you were not the ordinary, disembodied voice, hovering over words, distracted by mere mechanics of a pen, but could lie on your back and watch from below how a vision, backlit, can surface on a page, how ideas emerge as if by magic… From a distance you watch as workers move, barefoot, building to building, their voices blending. Their words building promise in the dusty air. Scientists have a word for the place landscapes make as they merge: grassland into swamp, forest into open field. Where environments blend, but carry the memory of their separateness in divergent plants. That allow, within this new place, new ones to emerge. Ecotone, it is called. A word. It sounds like music. You drive. You imagine. Words are a place. Words, something the place makes. Place makes possible. When it reaches the center of the ancient city, the truck stops at the edge of a square. The man who has ridden with his back against the window climbs down from the bed. In the chaos of crowds and taxi horns, he unwinds his scarf. The words caught there scatter in the wind. Tahrir is a place. And across the city, under fluorescent lights, sound is dust swept in through the window. Words, as they enter, mark the page as the curved

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hand slides across it. The way the curve of the hand miles away cups its words against the wind, directing... Is the wish we speak shaped only by the tongue? Does the mind alone guide it? Because dunes, too, arc. Roads turn. The sun, held in the air, falls in a long slow curve. And you, who step from behind the barricades, watch how the sun falls and rises again with the pitch of a hundred thousand voices. How in prayer, the bodies become the desert they are, words wafting over the dunes of their backs. The landscape speaks to us of our importance. When it is full. When it is barren. Because nothing vanishes. A voice may sweep away in the wind, but the wind will carry it. And whatever settles into the horizon’s undulating script will be read and written. Words float over the crowd on hand-lettered signs. They are held up. Offered to cameras. They are passed from group to group on torn-out sheets of notebook paper: song lyrics, hopes. You read the one that is handed to you. There, in the spill of script, the weedy back and forth of thought, is a smudge midway down where someone grabbed and pulled. The square is an ecotone. Watch. Nothing vanishes. Words take root. Place makes possible. You raise your fist in the dusty air and brush your hand against the imagined city. What stays with you becomes your fingerprint.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Austin, James James Austin is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has taught for over twelve years, four of which were in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. He has published two works of fiction and written several encyclopedia entries and radio scripts. Carter, Melanie Melanie Carter teaches composition and creative writing in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. She has been a finalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award and her poetry has appeared in such journals as The Gettysburg Review, Antioch Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review and in other venues such as Best New Poets and Best of the Web. El Shimi, Ghada Ghada El Shimi teaches rhetoric and writing and is chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo, where she also serves as a mentor in the new AUC Graduate School of Education and a consultant for a local community school in Establ Antar, a less developed area of Cairo. Prior to coming to AUC, El Shimi was involved in several writing/education projects in Denver, Colorado. She has published children’s books and worked as a freelance writer and a school administrator for over twenty years. Fields, Amanda Amanda Fields is a PhD Candidate at the University of Arizona with a research emphasis on youth participatory action research and slam poetry. Her research about a youth slam poetry group in Tucson is forthcoming in Sexuality Research and Social Policy. She has taught writing since 2000, with four years in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. She has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in journals such as Indiana Review and Brevity, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2007. Her creative work has been

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reprinted in composition textbooks through Bedford St. Martin’s and Pearson’s. Gibson, Michael Michael Gibson has taught writing for over seven years, with five years in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. He is a trained spiritual leader and an accomplished musician. Gironda, Belle Belle Gironda has taught for fifteen years, with four years at the American University in Cairo. She has published three books of poetry, over ten reviews and essays, ten poems and video poems, and other freelance pieces in a wide range of local and national magazines. Golson, Emily Emily Golson has taught rhetoric and writing for over forty years, with three years at the American University in Cairo. She has developed several writing programs, directed three Writing Centers, and served as the first Chair of the Department of Rhetoric at the American University in Cairo. She has published over 30 articles in journals, studies, and books, coauthored one book, and co-edited two books. Hassan, Maha Maha Hassan has taught for over twenty-six years. She is a professor at Cairo University and has been on secondment to the American University in Cairo for the last eight years. She has published over ten articles in various books, studies and bulletins. Holdijk, Lammert Lammert Holdijk has taught writing for thirty-four years, with thirty-two years at the American University in Cairo. He was instrumental in creating the Department of Rhetoric at the American University in Cairo. His publications include a chapter on his work on the newly created Department (with Emily Golson) in Thaiss, C., G. Braeuer, P. Carlino, Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places. Greenville, SC: Parlor Press. His outside interests include Jekyll and Hyde, Taoism, Sufism and holistic medicine. Houssney Ehab, Noelle Noelle Houssney has been teaching for six years, four of which are in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in

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Cairo. She has published numerous newspaper articles as well as written and acted in her own one-act plays. Sperrazza, Lelania Lelania Sperrazza is a PhD candidate at Exeter University, currently teaches at the American University of Sharjah. She has been teaching for over eight years, with two years in the Rhetoric and Composition Department at the American University in Cairo. She has published four articles and given over eight conference presentations on topics concerning rhetoric, language, and identity in writing. Warren, Timothy Timothy Warren has taught for a total of thirty years in the Middle East and Japan. He has been at the American University in Cairo since 2004 and is currently a senior instructor in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition, where his areas of interest include English for Business Purposes and Academic Integrity. Youssef, Loubna Loubna Youssef is professor and chair of the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. She has taught for more than thirty years and was on both part-time and full-time secondment at the American University in Cairo for nineteen years. She has published over sixteen book chapters, articles and studies and has translated several Egyptian stories for children and two books: My Father, An Egyptian Teacher (2014) and the Egyptian bestseller A ¼ Gram (December 2009). She served as a radio announcer for Radio Cairo and hosted two cultural programs on “Egyptian Treasures” and “21st Century Egypt” for the Local European Service of Cairo Radio for eighteen years. Youssef, Hesham Youssef Youssef Youssef holds a bachelors degree in business administration, graduating summa cum laude from the American University in Cairo in 2013. His interest in photography has led him away from his field of study. For him, photography is slowly growing into a passion that takes up much of his time. The photograph on the cover of Cairo Studies (Cairo University Press, 2013) is his first published work. The book cover of this volume is his second.