Egypt, the bastion of literature and culture, the cradle of arts and civilization and the mother of the world decided to shut down an unnecessary literary magazine called Ibda’a (Creativity), which was published for years by the Ministry of Culture.
The magazine is truly creative. Over the years, it published nothing but creative poetry, novels, and articles on literary criticism and culture.
Creativity in our society – as we all know – is unnecessary. So, why should we waste time in creativity for no other reason than to keep up with countries whose traditions are totally different from ours?
Those countries honor men of intellect, culture, and arts, and boast unashamedly of their men of letters, like Shakespeare, Goethe and Molière.
They pledge hundreds of thousands of dollars to reward distinguished writers, novelists and poets whom they provide with Nobel, Booker, Goncourt and Pulitzer prizes. But we have nothing to do with this.
We are preoccupied with more pressing issues like whether statues are prohibited by religion; whether we should enter the toilet with right or left foot, or whether men should wear a gold or silver wedding band. All these issues are undoubtedly major, and they cannot be settled hurriedly. Our scholarly sheikhs, therefore, go on discussing them in the media, especially after these sheikhs became TV stars.
What is the value of literature and art compared to these vital and urgent issues? We can live without reading a poem or listening to music, but what shall we do if scholars don’t tell us how to enter the bathroom? Unless we settle this issue, we will probably remain standing at the bathroom door at home, at the office, or at the cinema until we are forced to answer the call of nature in a way that my cause us a lot of embarrassment in front of the others who also don’t know whether to enter the bathroom with the right or the left foot first.
This point defines the priorities of our Eastern societies that differ from the priorities of Western societies, which pretend to have progress in order to pay attention to things like science, thought and literature.
Thus, the issuance of a literary magazine called Ibda’a is not only futile, but is also a waste of the state resources. A sheikh won a lawsuit he filed against the Ministry of Culture demanding the retraction of an award obtained by poet Helmi Salem, who had written a poem entitled The balcony of Laila Murad which was published in the same Ibda’a magazine.
We thought that the matter had ended at that point, which was deterrent to all poets, especially those who had already received awards. Nevertheless, one of the righteous sons of Egypt, who has nothing to do with poetry or culture, got angry and raised the issue with the Administrative Court, using hisbah law No. 3 of 1996, which gives every citizen the right to become attorney general, although our judicial system states that only the attorney general assumes such public issues.
The Administrative Court paid attention to the court case and issued a ruling to withdraw the license of Ibda’a magazine for publishing a poem considered blasphemous. Some senior critics, who spent many years studying literary criticism in some of the best universities in the world and obtained PhDs, told me that their interpretation of the poem in question did not contain that serious meaning, which the court adopted without referring to any of them.
As the Ibda’a magazine was shut down, I see that the words literary criticism should be cancelled from our dictionary. We should instead send every creative work to the Administrative Court to issue its ruling on its worth, be it a poem, classical symphony, or painting. This may allow critics to turn their attention to the pressing issues that concern people, and tell us – quickly and before it is too late – whether we should enter the bathroom with the right or the left foot first.
Mohamed Salmawy is President of the Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
