CAIRO - With

great bitterness, the late writer Nabil Farouk spoke in a previous interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Dustour in the 1990s, complaining about the dry treatment he was subjected to when he went to meet an intelligence officer with a novel from the series "The Impossible Man" that young people were fond of in the eighties and nineties of the last century, and was met with He offered to turn it into a movie, but he refused.

Simultaneously, the late famous Egyptian spy Ahmed Al-Hawan - whose character was embodied by the actor Adel Imam in the series Tears in Rude Eyes - said that he wished for death repeatedly because he was ignored to honor him with a decent honor, and later the body of Al-Hawan was honored in the presence of leaders from the intelligence service, and the apparatus mourned in the newspapers. Writer Nabil Farouk, who died in 2020.

It seemed as if literature and artwork related to espionage and its heroes and writers were no longer at the top of the intelligence’s interests after these novels and artworks performed their mission at that time, and the current time was no longer appropriate for them, however, a press statement issued by a former agent of the intelligence service following the statements of Nabil Farouk and Al-Hawan , confirms that the agency has helped and honored everyone who cooperated with him, stressing that these complaints are nothing more than a belief from their owners that they deserve more, without considering considerations related to regulations and controls related to the work of the agency, as he put it.

In the context, the former officer - who refused to be named in his press statements - stated that the writer Saleh Morsi was writing the works he presented under the supervision of the agency, and that the series Raafat Al-Hagan specifically was commissioned by Morsi to write it as soon as the agency learned of an artist who was a friend of Rifaat Al-Jammal - the original name of Raafat Al-Hagan - Seeking to produce a series about his life story.

intelligence support

It was customary to mention at the beginning and end of the artwork - whether it was a movie or a series - that it was one of the files of the General Intelligence Service.

Saleh Morsi (died in mid-1996) presented the most important works written for cinema and television, the most famous of which is the Raafat Al-Hagan series, which tells the story of the most famous Egyptian spy in Israel. The Digger and the War of Spies.

Saleh Morsi's journey from travel literature to espionage literature made him one of the most famous writers of that literary genre.

There are spy writings by Ibrahim Masoud, including "Execution of a Dead", "The Well of Betrayal" and "The Trap of Spies", so that the drama continues to focus on intelligence texts in a number of other works.

With the departure of Morsi and Farouk Anzwa, the literature of espionage, and there is no longer a writer who can be referred to as stubbornness, or a prominent work that sticks in the minds.

And finally, a novel appeared by a writer named Samuel Al-Ashai, who presented himself as being close to the late intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. His novel was called “The Bat”, and it is a novel of a political, not spy nature, based on accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of orchestrating the January 25 revolution. 2011.

The same tendency appeared in the series "A Counterattack", which was produced last year by the United Company - which is affiliated with the intelligence service - as the author of the work and its makers saw that the January revolution was a conspiracy planned by international forces assisted by local forces, led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

boom and bust

And the critic Ahmed Bilal said - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that the spy novels were linked to the military conflict and political escalation, because the masses at that time were filled with the national feeling that contributes to the promotion of the novel and the public's desire to read and interact with it. It may continue to be popular in periods of stagnation and peace.

Bilal continues, “The popularity of these novels at that time, depending on what they contain of evoking history, will rely on the sentimental side rooted in the conscience of the nation, or rely on what it evokes of passion and suspense, especially when the narrative discourse is directed to young teenage boys who are stimulated by their feelings. It aspires to national belonging and clinging to identity.”

Critic Ahmed Karim Bilal believes that spy novels suffer from stagnation and weakness in the recent period (Al-Jazeera)

The critic who won the Katara Prize in Literary Criticism continued that this type of novel has suffered a decline and weakness in recent days, perhaps due to the departure of its great pioneers who enriched this art and paved its way without having students who possess the tools, and continue the march, and perhaps the atmosphere of meekness And the general normalization that the Arab region is witnessing with Israel makes this type of novel fraught with the danger of confrontation with the authorities, who are expected to not allow this type of literature to spread;

Because - definitely - it will cause her a lot of embarrassment with the Israeli friend, with whom she has made great strides in normalization.

Critics and the war of spies

And the teacher of literature and criticism at Al-Azhar University, Adel Neal, explained in his book “The Intelligence Novel in Modern Arabic Literature” issued by the Supreme Council of Culture, that the reliance of the intelligence novel in most of the works on real facts and events bearing documentary dimensions was the reason for some critics refusing to recognize his artistry.

The Arab defeat in Palestine in 1948 and then the setback of June 1967 was reflected in literature, as well as the psychological defeat that that defeat established in the Arab world.

While a group of creators preferred to return to the arms of the countryside and villages in what they wrote, another group of writers preferred to expose the factors of falsehood and defeat that led Arab societies to this state. The war against the colonial powers, according to the book.

The author monitored the early writings of espionage, including the book “My Story with the Spy” published in 1970 by the writer and former officer in the armed forces Maher Abdel Hamid, and his works continued in the same direction later with a number of works, including: “I was a friend of Diane” and “A Spy over the Red Sea” ".

The author pointed to the writings of Nabil Farouk, who contributed to the further spread of espionage literature through his numerous works, most notably the series "The Impossible Man" and "The War of Spies".

Spy writings flourished at that time, then works that were not popular with Nabil Farouk's work, including the novel "Spy" by the writer Abdullah Yousri in 2008, and the novel "The Serpent" by the writer Ilhami Rashid, which he wrote from the fabric of his imagination and not based on real events.

A number of factors led to the limited popularity of the intelligence novel compared to others, including the difficulty of obtaining the necessary information to narrate the novel due to controls related to the quality of the operations dealt with, and on the other hand, “there is a critical neglect of this literary color that came as a result of the belief of some critics that it lacks the elements of creativity and imagination by adopting it Most likely real events”, and the nature of the conflict in these works imposes a repetition of characters and a limited artistic framework for the characters and the expected results in the work, according to the writer.