I
have a difficult question asking: does death protect those who died by
spreading over them what we used to call “solemnity of death” which some
believe in based on a quote or perhaps a Saying of prophet Muhammed meaning:
“Tell of the good deeds of your dead people”. Also, some others cite a verse
from Quran having a rhetorical question saying: “Would one of you like to eat
the flesh of his brother when dead”?!... is there a time period for that
“solemnity” to fade away allowing what was once not allowed?... to what extent
can we approach the life of those who died?... what are the things we can never
tackle?
Moreover,
is it a coincidence that libraries of national archives and documentation in
most of the advanced countries set rules for releasing the documentation after
a certain time period starting from thirty years in the British archive– as I
can remember –and which may reach fifty?... also, sometimes there is some documentation
impossible to be released for the public. Documentation here is not mere
stamped official papers, but above that, they include narration of events and
contexts relating to certain individuals and peoples, meaning that putting a
time period for releasing such documentation for the public or even preventing
them from being released altogether includes protecting those mentioned in
them. In addition, there are some public figures of politicians, thinkers and
others who write their memoirs or leave diaries and state in their wills not to
publish them unless a certain time period elapses after their death!
It
also happens that some do not respect this “solemnity of death” despite that
only few hours or days have passed since the late died, meaning they start
talking about the dead man in a bad way while they are still carrying his
coffin or sitting in ceremony halls offering condolences, to the extent that the
Quran reciter stops to remind the audience of listening to Quran. That usually
happens in the commemoration ceremonies of public figures where the audience is
the “crème de la crème of the society.”
In
such regard, I recall a scene that I will never forget. That was when my wife
and I were invited by her professor, the great one Mr. Hamed Rabie’a, at his
house. We spent the evening, in which the man didn’t miss to drop some of his harsh
words that were sometimes clear, and we went back home. At dawn, we received a
phone call from his wife, an Iraqi kind woman who had a son from him, telling us
of his death. I didn’t know what to do. I called Dr. Usama al-Ghazali Harb, his
student, and we agreed to meet at the late man’s house. When we arrived, we
found him lying on the carpet in the hall. Some of his brothers, meanwhile,
were surrounding him and doing what I cannot say.
We finished
preparing the man to be buried and went to have funeral prayers in a mosque
close to the zoo. At the mosque’s door, two of the late man’s big colleagues were
standing. It looks like they, like me, didn’t have the time to wash in order to
pray. At that moment, while the dead man was not yet buried and funeral prayers
were not even held, I heard the two men talking over the dead man of what no
one can ever imagine. Ironically, they used to start every “attacking” sentence
saying “May he rest in peace but he was bla bla bla…” I knew very well the late
man had a prestigious scientific stature, rich knowledge and strong character, the
thing that made the most eminent professors of political sciences look small
compared to him.
Back
to the difficult question, as since the beginning of the twenty-first century
until this year 2017, many prominent figures of politics, journalism,
literature and art left our world. There were many writers who committed to the
“solemnity of death” in their writings about them. However, there were some others
who lacked this commitment and defamed the reputation of some of those late
figures. Many, including me, were lucky to get close to those late people whom
one couldn’t meet some of them unless with pre-fixed arrangements and time-limited
appointments. Some others of them, meantime, used to live a full life rejecting
all restrains and formalities. We used to have rich discussions in the evenings
we had in downtown Cairo as dawn breaks while we are still discussing or
enjoying the beautiful music or singing in the softly-lit place we are in. On
both levels of high and low class people, there are hundreds of scenes and
thousands of incidents that those who died had and whose contemporaries,
fellows and friends can tell about them. Of course all those scenes and
incidents contain all that is human, meaning there are mistakes.
The
question now; is it likely that we turn from the “solemnity of death” to the “solemnity
of truth” and initiate a new concept of commemoration that is not limited to
mentioning the good deeds, wisdom, knowledge, talent and genius of those late
great people; however, we provide an effective critique about their lives, for
exaggerating in flattering and praising is not less terrible than exaggerating
in defaming and libeling.
What
I want to say is that we should realize that the issue has two sides; one
personal that has to do with the personality, reputation and family of the
late, and another public one; public here means that the domain where the
politician, thinker, writer or artist had was his country during certain cultural
social political circumstances; meaning the late figure was part of the big
picture. He affected it and got affected in return, and perhaps his role has resulted
in great achievements or costly failures. With time and within a system of such
way of thinking, such “raw material” is squandered, although it may turn, using
tools of scientific research disciplines in various branches like history,
politics, sociology, literary criticism and more others, into academic studies carried
out by scholars of master and doctorate’s degrees. Also, some others may author
books to remain as scientific resources indispensable for the future.
Finally,
I’d like to say that “solemnity of death” will not prevent the dead from being
judged in the afterlife, as we know it’s an accurate judgment based on the very
minute details of what the late man did, said, thought of, hid, desired, shed
tears for, put his heart into, uttered of words in praise of God… etc. If humans
could have a similar database in making their mundane judgments, things would
have been different.
Translated
into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper
on February 15, 2017.
To see the original article, go to:
#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #solemnity_of_death
#solemnity_of_truth
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