23:08
Saturday 29 October 2022
Books – Mohamed Emara:
Writer Safinaz Kazem’s attack on the late writer Bahaa Taher sparked widespread controversy that still resonates on social media.
He posted on his personal account on the social networking site (Facebook) saying, “Bahaa Taher is dead, it was one of my generation’s cultural nightmares.
The publication prompted many intellectuals to attack its writer. Writer and novelist Ibrahim Abdul Majeed said: “Aside from Safinaz Kazem’s words about the late Bahaa Taher, all this praise and pity for him reflects the extent to which Baha Taher was, shows no hostility towards anyone. One or more attacks him. , so the terrible proportion is for praise. “
Abdul Majeed added: “This confirms to you the importance of not getting into personal battles with anyone and not insulting anyone for a personal reason. This is how you gain the sympathy of many even if they don’t read you. No old man will be able to. to bar the way for future generations, as life progresses, nor will God respond to his death wishes, adults only in time.
Writer Magda Al-Qadi questioned the nature of the “obstruction” that Baha Taher caused the “Kadhim” generation, and are awards given or allowed? According to her comment, she continued: “Bahaa Taher is by no means a talented mediocre writer. Her language, her works and the reader’s love for him, despite her little production and distance from the lights, Glory to God testifies to it, for those who love to eat in the dead because they do not know how to answer ».
“Masrawy” reached out to writer and critic Safinaz Kazem to ask what she wrote about Baha Taher.
Safinaz said in exclusive statements to “Masrawy”: “The problem is that the demons of the universe and the demons of men and jinns did not understand my sentence, and the reaction to what I wrote is strange, and those that I they attacked they didn’t understand it read something about Baha Taher. “
He added: “I didn’t say anything about Baha Taher except that he was one of the nightmares of my cultural phase, because he was born in 1935 and I was born in 1937, and we’re close in age and we’ve lived with it, and the strangest thing was his control of the Supreme Council of Culture, and at the time of Abdel Nasser he was a Nasserist, and during the Sadat period I was He and a large group of intellectuals from whom Sadat imagined that we support the era he does not like, and traveled abroad, until the reign of Hosni Mubarak came, and took possession of the Supreme Council of Culture, and I am a contemporary of it, and it is not necessary that I have been harmed by him personally, but rather I have been damaged by his unfair domination, over culture in Egypt, so he used to decide who gets up, who doesn’t get up, who gets an award and who doesn’t get a prize, and all these things are known to contemporaries, if they come from the Supreme Council of Culture or from the east ro.
And about not writing his opinion on the late writer Bahaa Taher in his life, “Kadhim” said: “I am the one who determines when I express my opinions, because Saddam Hussein is dead, the pharaoh is dead, Al- Hajjaj bin Youssef Al-Thaqafi is dead, and many people have died, and I will die, and we will all die, and death is not a rank that one person gives. ” So rank and inviolability that it ruins the world, and if he died and his followers would shut up and put their tongues in their mouths, I would have shut up, but what happened is that they (sat down to hurt each other ) saying the great, the beautiful, the powerful who did not resemble the one who .. These are all lies that can deceive the contemporary generation, so I went in and said My opinion in the face of these lies “.
And he continued: “I said that I do not compliment Bahaa, because he is a mediocre talent, and this is a critical opinion, no one disputes it with me. You press and I see that his talent is average, while at that moment he c ‘were people who should have taken prizes and took nothing, like Fathi Radwan, Hassan Suleiman and Muhammad Afifi, the author of the great novel (In the ruins of Tamara) and I am not competing with him and I am not a novelist but a critic ».
He said, “I’m not competing with him, even if people say my writing is fake and I can’t write. People don’t understand anything. I’m defending my country, our culture and the rights of others, and that this man, in his period of dominance at the Ministry of Culture, robbed the rights of many people for the sake of his whims. “I am contemporary and I do not participate in it.”
And he added: “I answered him while he was alive, and now I answer to those who lie after his death, and I have no problem with him, but I answer to those who say, ‘Oh, peace be upon his beauty, and this is a lie, so I just said it’s a nightmare for my generation. Personally I was wronged, but it was Egypt that was offended when talented people didn’t get the right to the awards. “
And about the end of disputes between people with death, he said: “Death does not put an end to disputes and problems. Is the dispute between us and Hosni Mubarak over? No, it is not over, because there are issues that end with. death, such as personal matters such as marriage and others, and general issues such as the loss and undermining of the value of the homeland at all levels. It ends with death, and I speak in my space, which is culture and criticism, in which this man abused Egypt, and I faced him in his life and I said these words to him in the days when he was not present, besides other situations, I just am not satisfied with telling stories.
Safinaz Kazem recounted an incident that occurred between her and Bahaa Taher, saying: “I once opposed him in a symposium and he did not answer me at the symposium. He went to the chairman of the board, Makram Muhammad Ahmed, and he made his office manager speak and answer, and I told them to come and answer me here? And for the record, my position is not the result of a personal problem with him, but rather the result of a situation, and many say that now it has good things, I am a witness of history and a contemporary of it, and I know what it is and what it is “.
Regarding the fact that he got the Booker Prize, he said: “He does not take the Booker Prize, but this is not an award except when he gets it, and this is not a test of superiority.”
On her accusation of being angry because she has not received awards, she said: “I do not want awards and I have only received one award in my life and I am happy with it, and if I did not receive it, I would not be sad, which is the award of. Mustafa Amin in 1996 “.
And speaking of the quarrel with some intellectuals, he said: “I am my money and the money of society. What happened to the repeated use of the title of intellectual with some people, and they were educated among the people, why? Because the world is full of lies, because a group is the one who said and decided who gets fame. “
And he added: “I couldn’t delete the post unless they deleted all the impostor and the lies they said about me, and if they said so-and-so is dead, God have mercy on him, I would have. As for them they wrote inappropriate words and one of them wrote saying, “Ali the bitch, the drug addict’s wife, and these are crawling insects, and I take the fly killer and hit him.”
