Knee-Deep in Cultural Thingies

Attentive Reader –

In reviewing the past twenty-six years of life I’ve spent on Earth, I have found my life divided into two major periods: the one before last Sunday, and the one since then. For it was last Sunday at 11AM Cairo time that I and the rest of my fellow study abroad students enjoyed the presence of one of Egypt’s great intellectuals, journalists, and proponents of linguistic and artistic excellence, Farouq Shousha. He had a widely-syndicated television show for decades, featuring interviews and debates with leading figures and intellectuals in the Arab world. He regularly publishes articles on various political and social topics, and has been publishing collections of poetry since the 1970s. Among other things, he is famous for his mastery of spoken Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is considered difficult even among native Arabic speakers. Having listened to the man himself, I can confirm that his is the best spoken MSA I’ve heard thus far, given my limited experience with Arabic study.

Verbal acrobatics were only part of the joy of listening to Shousha talk on Sunday. The man also has encyclopedic knowledge of the linguistic and literary history of Arabic, which he drew upon in order to explain developments in the language. For instance, he explained that the reason classical Arabic poetry is so hard to understand (and the reason why I love it so much) is that it employs vocabulary and expressions which differ from their current usage in both lexical and socio-cultural meaning. One example will serve to illustrate: the phrase “the dog’s cowardice” is common in classical panegyrics as a compliment to leaders and other great men. “He is a man of the dog’s cowardice” means “he is generous,” referring to the fact that dogs often kept watch at the entrance to encampments. The tribal leaders who were known for their generosity were those who held back their dogs (making them appear cowardly), thus allowing all to enter and partake of their hospitality. Circumlocutions such as this one are ubiquitous in classical Arabic poetry, and they remind me of kennings from medieval Old Norse poetry, where a phrase such as “wave’s steed,” which means “ship,” is strung together which other such convoluted references, making one line of poetry a linguistic and cultural thicket to be waded through.

The other amazing cultural moment from this week involved a classic work of Egyptian cinema: “The Candle of Om Hashem,” a black-and-white flick from 1968 and directed by Kamal Attia. It’s based on a short story by Yahya Haqqi, one of Egypt’s great modern fiction writers, and whose daughter we are going to meet this coming Friday. The story revolves around a man who grows up in Sayyida Zaynab, a traditional section of Cairo featuring the Sayyida Zaynab mosque, named for the prophet Mohammad’s granddaughter. People from all over the country come and visit the tombs present in the mosque, in a form of saint-worship not without parallels to Roman Catholicism. Many come for healing powers believe to be invested in the mosque. One practice in particular involves putting hot oil from the mosque lamps into the eyes of those with vision problems; thought to cure such ailments, this practice inevitably led to the blinding of many people. The man who grows up in Sayyida Zaynab leaves Egypt to study medicine in Germany, after which he returns and, to his shock, realizes the danger of the practice of putting hot oil in peoples’ eyes. The confrontation between Egyptian religious tradition and Western medicine is a microcosm of the infamous “clash of civilizations” that isn’t supposed to exist.

So, an eventful seven days to say the least. And there’s more where that came from, so check in next week for reports on a lecture from one of the most popular authors in Egypt, who works a day job as a dentist in Cairo. You won’t want to miss it.

Salaam,
K