SOUTH OF THE BORDER  (Latin America and the Caribbean)
IMPERIUM  (Global Issues)
THE LAND OF CANAAN  (Palestine, Israel)
UMMA  (Arab World, Islam)
IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE  (Activism in the Imperialist Metropolis)
PEACE AND WAR  (USA, EU, NATO)
THE MOTHER CONTINENT  (Africa, Indian Ocean)

TYPHOON ZONE  (Asia, Pacific Basin)
WITH A K AS IN KALVELLIDO (Diary of a Proletarian Cartoonist)
STORMING BRAINS  (Culture, Communication)
UNCLASSIFIABLE 
TLAXCALAN CHRONICLES 
TLAXCALA'S REFERENCE ZONE  (Glossaries, Dictionaries, Maps)
LIBRARY OF AUTHORS 
GALLERY 
TLAXCALA'S ARCHIVES 

Forbidden

AUTHOR:  A poem by Ahmad Fouad Najem

Translated by  Presented and translated and by Adib S. Kawar

Ahmad Fouad Najem
The revolutionary hero poet.
The beloved poet.
The French poet Louis Aragon said about him: He has the power to destroy the walls of fortresses.
Dr. Ali Al-Raei called him: The poet the rifle.
Former Egyptian president Anwar As-Sadat called him: The obscene poet.
He was nicknamed “the last pauper poet”.
The muffler of general security.
 
Born in Eastern Egypt 1929
His father was a police officer… He was afraid that his son would be chased by every policeman in Egypt.
He was jailed eighteen times because of his poetry.
Najem said: “I was jailed in Abu Zoubol prison” (one of the worst in Egypt) as he was accused of instigating the January 18/19 1977 uprising.
He commented: ‘Just imagine sir, that in the January 18/19, 1977 uprising in which about twenty million Egyptians participated from Alexandria down to Aswan, I was the main instigator!!!’
“In God’s name, is there a greater glory then this, which is an honor that I don’t claim? It is an accusation that I don’t deny and an honor that I claim. Can I possibly instigate one million people?”
“The moment I was released from jail in 1978 and while I didn’t have the time take a breath of fresh air, the boys of the school of engineering of Ain Shams University came to me and told me that they wanted me to speak at the commencement, I said ‘gooooood’ along with Sheikh Imam, that is Sheikh Imam to go to Hosh Adam (Hosh means ruins, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods of Cairo in which Adam and Najem used to live). The poor soul went to jail, and they sent us to Torrah with five engineering school students, and it was God’s will that the day we were arrested coincided with the ‘auspicious’ day of President Sadat’s visit to the holy city of Jerusalem!!! Just imagine God’s wisdom!!!”
“It happened that ‘his Excellency’ the general governor of the Torrah prison area was a big thief, and he had managed to eat the uncooked and the stale, and he did not want the state security to know of what he was doing; so he volunteered to make life miserable for us… I told him, ‘That is enough’, but he did not want to understand… ‘Treat us as reserve prisoners as per prison law’… but he was adamant to treat us as such so as to please his masters and mete out bad treatment… But we did not let him do as he pleased. We wrote a number of statements and smuggled them out, and started a hunger strike that lasted for 12 days… The news reached the international and local press, which was a killing blow to thief general, because they accused him of negligence and he was transferred from Torrah where he filled his belly…”