Poet Ahmed Al-Shahawi: The poem protected me and if it were not for the loss, I would not have written poetry

"I am the son of loss, the son of silence, the son of sign and symbol, the son of full emptiness, and the son of doubt seeking certainty," with these words summed up the poet Ahmed Shahawi himself when we met him.

He added, "If it were not for the loss, I would not have written, and if it were not for travel, my prophecy as a poet would not have appeared, nor developed poetry, this early loss has made me spirit, soul and language, and this loss has accompanied me to this day."

As for traveling, as the Egyptian poet says, it saved him from living abroad in the crowds, as Shahawi sees himself as a villager living in a crowded city.

And about the loss says, "My mother did not live with me much, and she left and did not see her well, she left me when I was 4 and a half years old, so the loss was one of my main tributaries throughout my life, and from my point of view that no good writing except through loss, loss of loved ones or loss of value, or loss of something essential in the formation of self, and from loss and emptiness be fullness, and Sufis innovate in their emptiness and loss, and from their fasting and hunger they quench and satisfy, the mystic never fills his hollow, and the poet also never fills his hollow except for love or reading or having fun."

Between loneliness, travel and alienation lives our poet Ahmed Shahawi, waived the pleasures of life from family and loved ones, and the impact of life alone, does not settle in a place only and leave again, and between travel and travel met by Al Jazeera Net in Cairo, and was with him this meeting.

• In your poetry from the beginning and with the first Diwan "Two Rak'ahs of Love" you were on a date with Sufism and love, who led your first steps to this path?

I did not go to Sufism and I am a great poet, I went to it as a religious ritual from a person prepared Azharia by his father Sheikh and a child raised in the presence of the Qur'an, and no one in my family except memorized the Qur'an small, and there was a reader in our house who reads the Qur'an daily, this is a house of the Qur'an, and my older brother took me to the presence of Sufism, and since I entered I went out to another way.

I started in Shadhili as a method and a way, and from it I went out to the Ishraqi mysticism when I was 18 years old, I went to the city of Sohag and discovered the Egyptian Noon, one of the great founders of Sufism, which was followed by famous sultans of the people of Wajd such as Ibn Arabi, and suffice it to say that Jalal al-Din Rumi has praised the Egyptian Nun in 3 poems, while Farid al-Din al-Attar, the owner of "The Logic of the Bird", has devoted a large part to him in one of his books.

The book "Be a lover" in the literature of Sufism - love and grandfather by Ahmed Al-Shahawi (Al-Jazeera)

• Which of the Sufi poets attracted you to His presence and you took the covenant on him and did not leave him?

There are Sufi poets who love his biography more than his product, for example, the Sufi Abu Bakr Shibli, his biography is more important than his product, and the biography of Dhul-Nun Al-Masri is a long path of love and research, and for this I see his biography more important than his product.

Al-Nafari is more important than his biography, because he has no biography, a mysterious, strange, unique, and fearful person as it appears in "Situations and Speeches".

There is no mystic whose products have reached us, there are those who have been lost, those who have been burned, those who have been washed in water and those who are buried underground.

All of them are my teachers, in addition to Suhrawardi, Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi and Al-Junaid, of course, and I often do not go to poets who write in a language that I am not fluent in, and this is because the poet writes in the language of his heart or the language of his soul.

My biography is present in everything I wrote in poetry or prose, and all the time I restore myself in writing, I know that I have a deficiency like all beings on this earth, this restoration or reformulation or reconstitution I practice on a daily basis

• Critics accuse you of writing your self, your changing or volatile self, maybe it is your nature or is the poet's narcissism in you?

I did not write my autobiography, because I am a person who does not hide anything, and my biography is present in everything I wrote in poetry or prose, and all the time I restore myself in writing, I know that I have a deficiency like all beings on this earth.

This restoration, reformulation or reconfiguration I practice on a daily basis, and perhaps I am the most and biggest critic of myself, and I ask others to criticize my writings, as I know my good areas, but I may be ignorant of my weak areas, so I need someone to guide me to do the reformulation and redeletion.

• Why was the novel "The Magician's Veil" written? Was poetry unable to connect you to the masses?

I am not helpless as a poet because my poem exists, my text is known critically and lyrically, and the novel "The Veil of the Magician" since it came into existence last October has been repeated several times, and what was written about it is many times what was written in it, the novel contains the literature of love, mysticism and travel literature, and in it Ahmed Al-Shahawi with its diversity, and the main character in the novel "Shams Hamdi" will remain a lot in the memory of the Arabic novel, although it is a changing character, and it is a model that exists in life, but I filled it with a lot of imagination.

Many of the world's writers and novelists are poets, most notably the German Günter Grass, the great poet and plastic artist, and many names in the world combine several worlds in writing, and why do we go far, let's go back together to the history of Arabic literature, a large number of symbols of Arab thought were working in poetry, chemistry, medicine, philosophy, mysticism, love and jurisprudence, and literature in the end is a river that has tributaries that feed each other, also plastic art feeds poetry, and poetry feeds the novel. And so on.

The book "La Arani" in Sufism Literature by the poet Ahmed Al-Shahawi (Al-Jazeera)

• The novel of Sufism has occupied a fixed place in many regions of the world, what is the reason? And why is it promoted in the world now?

I tell you the story of an Afghan academic named Inayatullah Afghani who received a doctoral thesis from Cairo University in the seventies about Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and was printed by the Egyptian-Lebanese Library, and printed copies remained for 30 years in stores that no one accepts them, until the novel "The Forty Rules of Love" by Elif Shafak was published as if people knew Rumi for the first time, so the book of the Afghan Inayatullah came out and ran out and 20 editions were printed after that.

We are therefore in front of a "fashion" for those who write about Ibn Arabi, Rumi and Ibn Ata Allah Alexandrian, but I wrote my case, I did not write about a character, and I did not go to a mystic to write it, and for this you will find in the novel "Veil of the magician" the person of Ahmed Shahawi in every character, even the female characters you will find in it.

• Has the novel proven to you that it is more widespread than poetry collections?

People are tempted to snoop on you as a writer, so whoever reads asks: Who is the character of "Shams Hamdi in the novel?" , Is it a woman that the writer has ever loved or loved? A big question mark, and a bigger exclamation mark than it, because Shams Hamdi has several women in a woman, and a woman in women.

I am preparing to release a second novel that echoes an old novel that has been damaged by days, and the new novel has a lot of autobiography, because it is about the journey of takfiri and chasing me intellectually and ideologically.

Reading is deferred writing, and when I read I see myself and I see myself

• Aren't you afraid that the novel will take you from poetry?

No kind of writing will be able to take me away from poetry, I write on a daily basis, and even if I do not write with my hands and fingers, my heart writes, and my soul writes and my mind works, and daily I read because reading I have deferred writing, and when I read I see me and see myself, and I go to the unknown areas in me, and my reading is diverse, I read a lot of poets in the world to see where I am in the world, and I read my surroundings, culture and fields, to know where my generation is, and I read to those who are younger and older than me because I have never grown up, and that I am not I am still a student reading, learning and trying to write.

• I have translated more than 10 books, anthologies and poetry collections for you, is it because your language is different, or because you were able to exert yourself to reach the world?

I tell you something I do not think is a secret, in fact I am lucky with translators who translated me into foreign languages, and from a long time ago and my poems are published in major international magazines, and thanks to the late great Dr. Muhammad Abu Al-Atta, professor at the Faculty of Al-Alsun at Ain Shams University, is the one who put my foot in the Spanish language, and this year will be issued 3 books, an anthology entitled "Dogs pass from my fingers", and Dr. Mubarak Al-Serifi - an American of Moroccan origin - translated me a book entitled "Alone near the Nile", and a book A third in German, translated for me by the poet Fouad Awad.

• Are you satisfied with what you wrote and presented? Has it received sufficient appreciation from Egyptian and Arab intellectuals?

In our contemporary Arab culture, the writer is rarely appreciated until after his departure, and there is no doubt that I received great appreciation from Egyptian and Arab critics, including: Ezz El-Din Ismail, Salah Fadl, Abdel Moneim Talima, and other Egyptians and Arabs, I wrote selections from 5 collections and called them "Water in the fingers" as if I did nothing, and published an anthology in Spanish entitled "No one thinks about my name" means I am nothing, here he showed me I did not present anything, and in the last collection I presented I called "I am the grammarians' fault" In the sense that I did not offer anything, and that for grammarians their fault, the idea of self-revision is very important to the writer all the time.

I was loyal to poetry and the poem protected me

• In your career, the poet was a companion of the journalist, which one took care of the other? And which one reaped on the other?

I was aware from the beginning of this trap, which I may be one of its victims, I entered the journalism section because it is the closest to what I want to be, a writer and a poet, but I was very careful while dealing with the journalist, and I know that the press is tempting and the lights are lethal and deadly, and how many talents the press threw and eliminated, for all this I was aware of where the trap comes from, and where the slider is, and I almost fell over and over again, but in the end I was loyal to poetry and the poem protected me.