Egypt: Ahmed Fouad Negm - A man who loved a tortoise

IHT: In Egypt, poet keeps his words sharp

"This is my sweetheart," said Ahmed Fouad Negm as he gently kissed the dried, motionless head of a dead tortoise, patted its shell and tenderly placed it back onto the ground.

Negm was on the roof of his apartment building, high above a sprawling, chaotic, filthy, garbage-strewn neighborhood of Mokkatem, where he dispensed with formalities and introduced himself as a man who loved a tortoise. "Glory for the crazy people/In this stupid world."

The words were carefully painted in yellow on the wall, right beside his beloved dead tortoise. They were his words, the words of a poet, a harsh critic of power, who has spent 18 of his 76 years in prison largely because Egypt's leaders tended to despise his words.

It was vintage Negm, a kiss, a comment, a bit of poetry.

Negm is among Egypt's most popular poets, and has been for four decades. He is regarded as the first to have written in colloquial Egyptian, and from Gamal Abdel Nasser to Gamal Mubarak, the son of the president, he has skewered those he feels have led a once great country to the tangle of poverty and indifference played out in the fetid landscape beneath his rooftop.

"Congrats our groom," he wrote in a widely circulated poem about the young Mubarak's recent engagement to a woman nearly 20 years his junior. "You of fortune and fame for who we're all inheritance/ be merry, be game/ We couldn't care less!"**

Negm is a bit of a folk hero in Egypt, and has remained popular even while the street - his street - has turned away from his vision of modernity, which would be largely secular. The changes on the street have only fueled his contempt for the ruling elite, as he says Egyptian identity has become less distinct, and more defined by faith, because of what he calls an illegitimate government.

"The government has always been run by Pharaohs, but in the past they were honorable," Negm said, returning to one of his favorite topics. "Now, Egypt is ruled by a gang, led by Hosni Mubarak, and he is only there because America and Israel support him."

It is that contempt for power, his giving voice to a desire for justice, which seems to keep him popular, keeps his books selling and recently led to a reprisal of a popular play called "The King is The King," which showcases his poetry.

He loves to smoke. He loves to curse. He loves to boast with a wink and a smile that he was married six times, that his current wife is 30 and that his youngest daughter, Zeinab, who is 11 years old, is not forced to adhere to the strict religious practices that have spread throughout his country in recent years.

"I am free," Negm said. "I am not afraid of anybody, because I do not want anything from anyone."

And then, looking down from his rooftop perch, where children, dogs and donkeys competed for scraps in a pile of rotting trash, he lamented what has come of Egypt.

"This is not Egypt. I weep for Egypt." Read more

db: **For a translation of this poem go to Toman Bay - there is also an audio file - which sounds like fun. [Further translations wanted].