We stick to life because we knew there is death… we
knew what death does to us as it deprives us of the people dearest to us… it
also takes away enemies… and so, it can sometimes make us grieve and some other
times make us happy while we are still alive… it is true that many things start
small and then gets bigger… except for death – as said in Quran – as it starts
big and with time gets smaller… it is God mercy upon us that it is so.
Perhaps we can say that our feelings turn from panic
and difficulty to adapt with death to accepting it… also, they turn from mere
feelings of panic and sorrow into a chance for deep thinking, calm
contemplating and wise handling of situations… I believe every one of us has
been through this experience; from aware children to old men.
I myself witnessed this experience for the first time
at the first half of the fifties of the last century when I was five or six
years old… I am now seventy one… I still remember the pavilion erected before
the mayor’s house while there was a small ox being slaughtered in preparation
to feed all those who came to offer condolences and the crowd that came to
listen to Quran recited by Sheikh al-Hosari whom they went to bring from his
village Shubra an-Namla near to Tanta… the deceased was my maternal aunt
As-Sayeda.
After all this time elapsed, here I am… having feelings
mixing between sorrow and sadness… hope and contemplation… as some of my
friends left our world recently following one another… without chronological
order, they are poet Sayed Hegab, intellectual translator Talaat ash-Shayeb,
artist Gamil Shafiq, Dr. Hisham Sadeq, Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, Mr. Azer Farag,
Mr. Sayed Yassin, Dr. Adel Ghoniem… I hope I have not forgotten any other names…
I knew all those, was close to them and had friendships with them… I owe some
of them favors I always talk of and admit.
A whole bunch of friends I lost in less than a year…
they were preceded by other bunches where friends used to leave our world
following one another as if they had an unwritten or unspoken agreement to leave
together… perhaps the bunch of friends that included Sayed Khamis, Ra’ouf
Ayiad, Fawzi al-Hawari, Gouda Khalifa and Hamed al-Awadi was the one that left
the most profound effect in my life.
Furthermore, writing about late friends in a
journalistic article with limited number of words seems as if one is washing
his hands by appearing like a loyal friend to his late ones… meaning to
remember them and pray for God’s mercy upon them… while it really deserves more
than this… especially that all of those who left – with no exception – have
legacies of giving and doing noble things… the thing that deserves we should detect
and make morals out of it.
For example – and despite this may be unfair towards
the others – I knew Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish when I met him for the first time
almost two decades ago when we were on our way to Yale University in New Haven
in America… we were invited to a seminar discussing the Western-Islamic
relations held by Yale Divinity school in cooperation with Alexandrian
Bibliotheca… during the seminar days, we – Dr. Abouleish and I – interacted together
until it seemed as if we met long time ago.
Our relation went deeper until Dr. Abouleish started
establishing Heliopolis University and we discussed in the phenomenon of
extremist religious radical ideology wide spreading among students and
graduates of STEM faculties… upon our discussion, I knew he sought the approval
of the official entities to teach the subject of history and civilization for
the students of his university in STEM faculties… at that time, they were
faculties of engineering, pharmacy and business administration.
I was surprised when he asked me to teach this subject
for the students of those faculties… and already I agreed to do this mission… I
started teaching the subject under a broad title; that was the question: what
has Egypt given to humanity throughout its history?... the man, along with the university
chief, faculties’ deans and professors, were keen on attending those lectures
and participating in the discussions that followed.
If I had the chance to write about this experiment in
detail that in the beginning was received by reluctance and disapproval from most
of the students asking in reproof what a student of alternative energy
engineering or clinical pharmacy might benefit from history, I believe the details
would be very important to tell… as lecture after another, students started to
have interest in attending and began to interact too… even after I told them
that the exam would be from “The Dawn of Conscience” book authored by James
Henry Breasted and that there would be a whole question over the history of the
Egyptian Church and its contribution to humanity.
I used to go where my friend Ibrahim Abouleish used to
live in an elegant simple house receiving light and unpolluted air… in a place
where he used to eat non-cancerous simple food… always having a gentle smile
over his face and a soft voice tone… despite all this, he was attacked by a
microbe that sickened and killed him… indeed Ibrahim Abouleish lived his life
as he wished… an epic of continuous giving and on-going innovation.
It is certain that I will write about the rest of my
friends whom I mentioned some of their names in the above lines as I started
recently to write about friends like Kamel Zoheiri, Muhammed Ouda, Mahmoud
as-Sa’adani, Tarim Omran and Muhammed Hassanien Heikal… I did not write an
eulogy but rather I tried to write about a biography.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in
Almasry alyoum on July 5, 2017.
To see the original article,
go to:
#almasry_alyoum
#ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #Ibrahim_Abouleish
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