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The world lost a prodigious
talent with the passing of Alaa El-Deeb,
a master of words and a towering
Egyptian influence on Arab literature
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Mahmoud Al-Wardani
The late great writer Alaa El-Deeb, who passed away recently, spent almost his last three months in the
intensive care unit in Al-Maadi Military Hospital, Cairo, engaged in a ferocious battle with an illness to which
he did not succumb easily. During this
period, he was mostly in a coma, and whenever he did awake he soon returned to it.
It is certain that Arab literature has suffered a devastating loss with
the passing of Alaa Al-Deeb, especially since
he used to write — until his last days — the longest running literary column in
Arab journalism, which started in the 1960s. This focused and brief column was titled "Book Juice" and was published up until
his death.
From another perspective, El-Deeb played a number of roles in Arab
literary life. He was one of the sons of Sabah
El-Kheir magazine, one of the most important Arab journalistic experiences and the little sister of
Rosa El-Youssef magazine — the first and
foremost defender of freedom. Great writers and artists helped to found Sabah El-Kheir, such as Hassan Fouad, Salah Jaheen, then Fathi Ghanem, who
along with others made it one of the most prominent journalistic endeavours, in its openness and celebration of
youthful new experiences.
Alaa El-Deeb, who was born in Cairo in 1939, joined the magazine after graduation from the Faculty of Law in
1960 and became one of its knights. His first published work was a short story collection titled Cairo in 1964
(it included the eponymous novella, which
was published afterwards separately in several editions). Then he published five short story collections that
were characterised with compactness,
sobriety and avoidance of sentimentality. If the number of the collections seems small, it bore a
highly artistic value. We can even say that
El-Deeb strongly contributed in paving the way for the works of the 60s generation — that generation that emerged after the 1967 defeat.
El-Deeb was unique in his aesthetic achievement in the novella format,
where he published six novellas since 1964,
which are, respectively, Cairo, Lemon Flowers, Rosy Days, Children without Tears, A Moon over the Swamp, Violet Eyes and Formation. Without any
exaggeration, they are considered one of the most influential series in Arab literature. About choosing
this format of writing, El-Deeb wrote in an introduction for one of the editions: “I chose the novella because I wished
to persuade the reader to hear all what I want to say in one time, one sitting. I didn’t hesitate in the face of
what it takes concerning condensing language. I
still dream that poetry meets me at the end of my life.” He added: “The mere question about feasibility remains.
The feasibility of this attempt, which
lasted all my lifetime, in the light of the human, social and economic circumstances I’m
living and all the Arabs are living through. The personal and the universal have been mixed in my mind in
an inescapable way."
He also added: “In the three first novels, two catastrophes dominate the horizon, which all the
world’s delights didn’t let me abandon or let leave from me for one single moment: the major Arab defeat in 1967 and the vanquishment of
socialism, locally and abroad, and what this has represented in destroying justice and human dignity. As for
the following three novels, they are
dominated by the black gold — the oil, the money of which entered our Egyptian lives in a critical time, doing
what it did."
One of the most significant achievements of El-Deeb across six decades was his weekly column in which
he introduced tens of writers,
predicting promising careers for them and writing critiques of their literary mark. The column moved
with him from Sabah El-Kheir to Al-Kahira magazine, to stay eventually in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, for
which he kept writing until shortly before
his death. El-Deeb didn’t republish any of that work, so much remains to be complied, ready in having been
edited and needing no introduction.
Among El-Deeb's other contributions are his translations of a large
number of literary works of
Hemingway, Beckett, Miller, and others.
These were the broad lines of El-Deeb’s journey that lasted 77 years.
Farewell, Alaa El-Deeb.
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نشرت في موقع الأهرام اون لاين بتاريخ 25 فبراير 2016
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