Wednesday 11 January 2017

Gamil Shafik and “tram” memories




Four simple frames are hanging on my office wall opposite to the door. The four of them include four faces sketched in quick strokes with some funny satire words written over them. Whenever I look at them – and I usually do – I ask myself silently: “who’s next?”

The pictures are hanged on two crossed lines. On the left, the face of Ra’ouf Ayyiad… on the right, Abdel-Hadi Weshahi… up, Gamil Shafik… and below, me. The pictures were quickly sketched in 1991 while we were sitting in the bar occupying the last floor of Odeon hotel.

Ra’ouf Ayyaid portrayed himself and wrote a long phrase saying at the beginning “on the occasion of launching the great Cognac River…” mocking Gaddafi and his great river. He also portrayed Gamil Shafik and wrote him a dedication starting “to field marshal comrade Gamil Shafik, leader of “Odean hotel” Ba’ath party…”. Then Shafik drew a picture for Weshahi and another one for me with my eyebrow hanging up and my eye semi-open as I am known by this look, but with no comments for Weshahi or me.

Ra’ouf passed away… after him, Weshahi left … a few days ago, Gamil died… and I stayed to stop asking the question: “who’s next?”

Frankly, I looked at the frames before I write this paragraph in the article as if I am refreshing my memory that proved it needs no refreshing as to remembering the far past incidents, unlike the very recent ones.

The three of them; Ra’ouf, Gamil and Weshahi, were plastic artists. Ra’ouf was a talented one without a university certificate in this specialization. As to Gamil and Abdel-Hadi, they were graduates of the Fine Arts school. Gamil came from Tanta, like me. He got his secondary school certificate from Al-Ahmadiya secondary school where I graduated as well. Artist Ahmed Hegazi – may he rest in peace – was a graduate of this school as well. Also, Mr. Amr Moussa and Dr. Amr el-Sebbakhi – May they lead long lives – graduated from the same school too.

I felt sorry for Gamil as I had called him a few days before he left us to check on him. When we talk on the phone, we recall memories. In our last call, we remembered that story of Weshahi with sweat potatoes and potatoes. The story begins when the great sculptor Abdel-Hadi al-Weshahi was living in an apartment with his colleagues – among them was Gouda Khalifa – while he was still a student. Weshahi had a separate room for himself that he used to close whenever he is out. However, he used to store some stuff that belongs to him in its balcony shared with the others. Among those stuff was a box where he used to keep some sweat potatoes and potatoes that he liked their shapes as sculpture projects. One night, his colleagues along with their guests felt hungry and they were all penniless. One of those regular guests – that was the noble late Sayed Khamis – remembered Weshahi’s future “sculpture models” that he keeps in the balcony box. And so, they raided the box to have all its contents boiled and eaten. When Weshahi came back late, he noticed a sweat potato that looked familiar to him. In silence, he jumped to the balcony to find his box empty and started yelling “you sons of $#%%^… you ate the sculptures, you ignorant morons”.

Gamil loved crooning, especially some songs of Muhammed Abdel-Wahab, for example “ya wabor qolli rayeh ala feen” or “tell me train, where are you going?”. When he was pretty drunk, he used to tap with his fingers and sing. Sometimes, he loved to mock the repetition style in some Egyptian songs and so he starts singing one-sentence song asking why the monkey’s ass is red and then he starts answering the question using the same sentence but with different word positions. He keeps repeating the song until everyone burst into laughing as if they were begging smiles and laughter when there was nothing to make you smile.

Gamil was really good at drawing pictures using Chinese ink… in drawing dots and very delicate and thick lines denoting very beautiful shadows and lights. The obese fish, challenging horse, palm trees’ trunks and foliage and buffalo were continuous themes in his paintings. I was lucky enough to collect some of his art works that dazzled me. I also had long conversations with him over the effect of the Bible of the New Testament on him to the extent that I used to interpret his paintings to Christian verses when he used to laugh and say that I am free in what I see and taste.

Then Gamil started his theme of “Tarh el-Bahr” or “what comes out of the sea” to make very beautiful artistic pieces as he stayed long in the journalists’ village in the north coast and he liked fishing. He used to encounter the wooden objects, stones and seashells coming out of the sea on his daily route from his residence to the beach. The artist’s talent extended to what the sea threw out.

Gamil used to have several exhibitions where he used to show his sea artistic pieces. In one of those exhibitions, I went accompanied by the artist and the one with the loudest and most beautiful laugh; Gouda Khalifa – May he rest in peace – who was also a big pedestrian despite his old age as he used to walk from Nasr City to downtown Cairo. Once we entered I was surprised to find Dr. Yehia el-Rakhawi wandering among the exhibition’s pieces of Gamil Shafik. I scolded el-Rakhawi severely that he stood still incapable of speaking or moving then I left with Gouda. Gamil considered this a very uncivil and rude act of me. The cause behind that admonishing was that an Emirati newspaper published a page for al-Rakhawi where he presented a psychological analysis for one of the Egyptian leaders.

After this, we moved from Odean hotel bar to another one also in downtown Cairo. We used to have a big table composed of several small ones noticeably taking the shape of a long rectangular, and so the late Sayed Khamis called it “the tram” as it looked like a multi-wagon tram. Ra’ouf used to sit at the forefront of the table and then we follow until we all settle on the table. Plates of salted cheese, tomatoes, cucumber, falafel, cress-water, lupin beans, bean sprouts and peanuts were placed on the table while groups of different people sit on nearby tables; journalists, singers, composers, poets, story tellers, novelists, actors, directors, painters, sculptors and scenario writers. Also, Usama el-Baz used to come from time to time to listen and laugh. We used to stay until dawn.

We had hundreds of discussions over thousands of issues, ideas and practices. We also used to have tens of hot-debated verbal clashes that few of them developed to quarrels and physical fights. In addition, we had jokes, satire and… tears.

Then some meddlesome people, who used to watch our “tram” from a distance, started to get closer and sit with us. One of them was a journalist of Al Ahram who was not liked by the original passengers of the “tram” but was able to impose himself on the group. That man lived for a while in the United States of America as a correspondent for one of the Egyptian newspapers. He disagreed with its management and its owner; a famous media man and son of a famous scenario writer who was a friend to the entire group. This man sued the newspaper and got a verdict from the American courts to freeze its assets and so the journal paid him a tremendous sum of money in dollars. The man used to start talking saying “when I was in the States” or “back there in the States”… and so the late satirist Sayed Khamis used to call him X “Abu States” following the name of the famous Upper Egyptian family of Abu State. This journalist disappeared in mysterious conditions during Mubarak’s time and he still is until this time despite Mubarak regime is gone now and another two followed it.

I will not look at the frames and ask once again… I shall wait.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar


This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on January 11, 2017.

To see the original article, go to:


#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #gamil_shafik

No comments:

Post a Comment