This is how the American University, France, and Germany corrupted Egyptian literature

The Harafish epic is one of the masterpieces of novelist Naguib Mahfouz (social networking sites)

At a time when Cairo University was maintaining what remained of its academic prestige, the Arabic Language Department at the Faculty of Arts included professors who practiced applied criticism, and printed and published books containing their important visions.

Among them is Dr. Sayed Hamid Al-Nasaj, the author of an important study on the short story in Egypt in the sixties, and this study was issued by Dar Al-Maaref years ago. Dr. Shukri Ayad used to write criticism from time to time on the pages of Al-Hilal magazine.

 Evil forces

This era ended and the respected academics died, and the “novel and story market” in Egypt became permissible for the public and the demagogues, and was permissible by evil forces that do not serve literature or the culture of society, but rather covet membership in the entities that unite writers in all their spectrums, such as: “The Writers Union” and “The Story Club.” ".

Among the non-academics who wrote literary criticism and benefited the late creators were “Farouk Abdel Qader,” “Yahya Haqqi,” and “Rajaa al-Naqqash,” and the creators knew the value of these greats, and learned from what they wrote in newspapers.

Starting in the 1990s, the novel and short story scene in Egypt changed. The Ministry of Culture’s magazines faltered, and began to be published quarterly after being regularly published monthly. Instructions for “American cultural globalization” were issued, and American intelligence, “through the American University in Cairo,” pumped in crowds of young people. "Orientalism" for the study of the Arabic language.

The Department of Translation and Publishing at the aforementioned university was active, and an award in the name of the pioneering writer, Naguib Mahfouz, was established by the university, to control the “novel market” and make young people aspiring to the “imagined internationalism” write according to the American requirement, and thus obtain the title of “international writer.” Meaning that he is a writer whose works have been translated into English, French, German and others.

 Miserable literary works

Although these “translations” do not go outside the “university wall,” and if they do, they do not exceed the limits of the “random sample” that researchers need to test their scientific hypotheses, and they are not presented to all readers in New York, Berlin, or Paris, except for writers who aspire to “imagined universality.” They swallowed the bait and believed that they were international, and that the Western reader knew them and read their miserable works!

The American destruction befell the established Egyptian novel, the foundations of which were laid by Naguib Mahfouz and his generation of pioneers. It turned from a creative work aimed at awareness of the movement of society, and an attempt to understand its secrets and study its characters and social segments, into a work concerned with the “oppressed” female body!

This is a calamity that they titled “Body Writing.” Hundreds of novels and stories were published containing tales of unnatural sexual relations and “circumcision” that killed “femininity” among rural girls. This topic found critics writing and theorizing about it and considering it a “revolution” in the world. Literature, and the matter did not stop there. Rather, males competed in writing stories telling about their exposure to harassment and rape in the cane fields and Egyptian deserts.

 Minority writing

These types of stories found listening ears, “all French and American ears,” and found critical warmth. “France, as well as Germany, pumped in tremendous amounts of money to support “minority writing,” which means writing about “Copts,” “Nubians,” and “Arabs,” which is Minorities have their own cultures, but in light of American-European globalization, they have turned into a cultural investment subject.

The writers who wrote about the reality of these minorities turned into “literary experts,” detailing novels and stories according to the “Western translator’s” approach. This wave receded at the turn of the millennium, following the American invasion of Iraq, and “intelligence” thinkers of the type of “Fukuyama” retreated from the statements of “the end of the world.” History” and the eternal control of the American master over the world, and the “anti-globalization resistance” teams organizing themselves, in European countries, such as: “Sweden” and “Britain” and within America itself, and their success in confronting this “barbaric discourse” wrapped in expressions about “freedom.” The body, and the freedom of minorities..”, exposing its colonial essence that is hostile to the environment, life and humanity.

Black money

But "Egypt" was facing "black money", which is the money resulting from the trade in ancient Egyptian antiquities, which is a "million- and billion-dollar" trade practiced by organized groups, and from the trade in drugs and other illegal activities, and this illegal money was found in the publishing of books. “Money laundering” as a way to gain legitimacy. He chose a number of semi-educated people and made them run “publishing companies” that specialized in publishing “nonsense” and everything that has nothing to do with literature, ever since Flaubert, Balzac, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky published their works. The first!

“Sniper groups” were formed - made up of half-creators “remnants of American cultural globalization” and half-academics “holding hard-earned doctorates” - and united with those with “black money” and established publishing houses and took control of state awards committees “through corruption networks in the Ministry of Culture.” These groups spread a state of liquidity, chaos, and a lack of value and meaning, and flooded the Egyptian market with books of huge sizes, trivial in content, and awarded prizes to the owners of these books. This made many emerging writers accept this type of writing, to ensure winning the financial prizes that represent a lifeline from the grip of The devastating financial crisis that has been ravaging the Egyptian middle class for years.

Magic mixture

On another level, government publishing houses that were publishing works written by the pioneers and those who came after them, “the generation of the sixties,” collapsed, such as “Dar Al-Hilal,” which had a famous series: “Al-Hilal Novels,” which presented important Arabic works translated from European languages, and were distributed in all capitals. Arabic, Dar Al-Maaref, which published the novels of Tawfiq Al-Hakim and Taha Hussein, and the Misr Library, which was owned by Saeed Gouda Al-Sahar, and published the works of Naguib Mahfouz.

The Egyptian novel scene turned into “chaos and triviality,” and a type of male and female writers emerged, claiming to present “history” with a novelistic vision. This type combines misery, thievery, and triviality in a “magic mixture” that is accepted by teenagers and novice readers looking for “the joy of achievement,” and who want Reading large numbers of books; To feel that they have become educated, they read novels, drink coffee, hear “Fayrouz” and pronounce wisdom on “Facebook”!

This is what happened in the Egyptian novel scene, and this means that all those we read about and whom people describe as “the great novelist” and who win local, Arab and American “awards” - “globalized, of course, and subject to the agenda of American intelligence” - differ from novelists who are devoted to the art of the novel.

The value of human literature is that it is concerned with studying society and understanding it in a way that aims to achieve progress. It is important to point out here a book translated by the late Egyptian translator, “Talaat Al-Shayeb,” and issued by the Supreme Council of Culture, entitled: “Who Pays the Piper,” in which the date of the beginning of the formation of the Writers’ Department was mentioned. And artists in American intelligence, after World War II, and the formation of institutions including the “International Pen Club”; With the intention of employing these people in the Cold War, and the war of ideas and ideology.

This section is still working diligently and actively, and is playing its role in recruiting Third World writers and artists who long for the title of “international,” and who aspire to spend happy weeks hosted by an American or European cultural body and publish articles about them in the “Washington Post” and other major newspapers in America and Europe.

It is also important to say; The “empire of triviality” will collapse, due to the “axis of resistance” in the Arab world, the gangs of “cultural globalization” will disappear, and the writers of globalization will disappear and people will forget them in the near future.