I left the palaces to struggle with the patriots and the poor
Amina Rashid, “The Daughter of the Pashas and Aristocratic Families” is leaving this world
Ismail Sedky Pasha.
archival
Dr. writer and critic Amina Rashid.
archival
picture
The critic, translator and political activist, Dr. Amina Rashid, passed away last week, after a long struggle with illness, at the age of 83, and she was known for her alignment with the national and popular movement despite belonging to an ancient aristocratic family in Egypt, one of whose faces was the Prime Minister of Egypt in the forties, Ismail Sidqi Pasha, and the famous journalist writer Mohamed Sayed Ahmed.
She was born in Cairo in 1938, and a demonstration chanting against her grandfather, Ismail Sidqi, changed her convictions and aligned herself with the popular struggle, so she joined a leftist circle, and because of her struggles, she was persecuted and arrested.
She studied French literature in Egypt, then traveled to Paris, where she obtained her doctorate, and returned to Egypt to present academic studies, including “The Fragmentation of Time in the Modern Novel” and “The Story of French Literature,” and she paralleled this with a political struggle during the era of the late President Anwar Sadat. Its most prominent manifestations is its establishment, with writer Safinaz Kazem and Dr. Latifa al-Zayat, of the “Committee for the Defense of National Culture.” These struggles ended with her arrest in September 1981, as part of a campaign that included hundreds of intellectuals and politicians, and her joining the “Egyptian Group to Resist Globalization” and the “March 9 Movement.” for the independence of universities.
Rasheed said about her experience in the September arrests: “It deepened her relationship with my cellmates, Latifa Al-Zayat and Safinaz Kazem, as she helped me overcome the lack of self-confidence.” The first is in prison as an Egyptian Arab, who lives experiences in all its dimensions and belongs to this society with all its problems and difficulties.
Safinaz Kazem recounted in a sarcastic context Rasheed's arrival in prison, and she said: "On the evening of Friday, September 4, 1981, a new detainee entered and told the prison guard accompanying her to the cell: Mercy is strong.
I was lying on my bed, right inside the door, thinking about sleeping crickets.” Kazem continued: “I did not know who the new detainee was until I heard Farida al-Naqqash’s cry: Amouna .. Amouna, then embraced and cried.”
Kazem continues: “Amouna started speaking in a calm Francophone Arabic voice: I was not (collecting) my books in isolation boxes (moving in housing), and Marwan, my son, helped me.
I said where?
He said a little while that we are talking, I told him, Your Honor, is it not possible for us to postpone this talk for a week?
He said no, it's only five minutes and you come back, I said if that's okay, Marwan said, Mama, they lie.
Kazem adds: "I was following the sound with my eyes closed, and at the end I couldn't help myself from laughing until I almost died!
O white day, Amuna is in the cell and wonders with all seriousness and innocence if the arrest is false or true!
I got up and said to Amouna: Make sure you are in Al-Qanater Women's Prison.
Writer and novelist Dr. Eman Yahya lamented on his Facebook page, "I got to know her closely in the Committee for the Defense of National Culture, which was formed after Camp David, headed by Dr. Latifa Al-Zayat, and which continued for 20 years in a regular weekly meeting." And she contributed a great deal to it after her release from prison, along with Dr. Latifa, in the September 1981 campaign, and she published the magazine (The Confrontation).
In his elegy, Yahya narrated on the authority of Rashid that he watched her with her husband, literary critic Dr. Sayed Al-Bahrawi, in a small street in front of the High Court in central Cairo, during a demonstration in front of the Judges Club prior to the January Revolution, amid the hustle and bustle of the demonstrations, and the air saturated with the smell of tear gas bombs. .
Amina Rashid presented academic studies, including “The Fragmentation of Time in the Modern Novel” and “The Story of French Literature,” and she paralleled this with a political struggle during the era of the late President Anwar Sadat, and its most prominent manifestations was the establishment, with writer Safinaz Kazem and Dr. Latifa Al-Zayat, of the “Committee Defending the national culture.
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news