Egypt’s “poet of the people” died on December 3 at the age of 84. Known for his sharp tongue and untiring satire, Ahmed Fouad Negm was the voice of the Egyptian working class and cast a light on the realities of politics, society and even his own work as a revolutionary. Each President faced the daggers of Egypt’s Uncle Ahmed who lived through 84 years of conflict and authoritarian rule in the region, and accumulated 18 years in prison for his irreverent poems tackling the corruption of power. He was seen by many of the current generation as the voice of the revolution, and it was his words that were chanted across Tahrir Square and inscribed into the walls of what was seen as a “new” Cairo.
Negm was born on May 22, 1929 in Kafr Abu Negm, a village just north of Cairo. At the age of six his father died and left his mother unable to provide for their 17 children. Negm was put in an orphanage in the city of Zagazig and went on to work on a British Military base and as a street vendor until he was imprisoned for forged papers at the age of 30. It was this incarceration by the establishment that led him to pick up the pen and use colloquial poetry to curse the inequalities of the system. Inmates and prison guards alike helped spread his word, smuggling tape recorders into his cell and sneaking his verse out. While in prison he achieved underground fame as the dissident leader of a counterculture.
His poetry blended the aesthetic, political and crude expletives of a working class hero — and with every confrontation with the establishment his work grew in popularity and strength. His time would come in 2011, when his words were given a new life as they were chanted against Hosni Mubarek as the youth took to Tahrir Square. It was just as the youth were bringing his revolutionary spirit to life, that he was struggling for inspiration — he was overjoyed to see this generation escape the shackles of fear, and his children became the teachers. He wrote, “When the people choose freedom / Destiny must surely respond.” He saw his job as a poet to “wake them up”.
His lines remain in the minds of the revolutionaries, and in the graffiti that expresses the youth’s freedom in Cairo. Yet Negm watched as the march for freedom turned on itself in a step back towards authoritarianism. He was disparaging towards the Muslim Brotherhood in both voice and lifestyle. Known for having up to eight wives, and not impartial to hashish or blasphemy, he came up against the new guard, while his daughter, Nawara Negm, was recently assaulted by an Islamic voiced mob. His comments were offensive but a message of freedom underlied them. He once spoke of leading prayers to some Muslim Brothers in prison, where he’d leave the room once they bowed their heads and “leave them for hours trying to work out: Is this permissible? Is this not? How do you imagine they can run a country as rich as Egypt? The poor of Egypt are geniuses, don’t underestimate them.”
It seemed that Negm constantly needed to confront the establishment in order to gain the assurance that he was part of progression. He used words to establish himself as part of the poor and weak against the rich and powerful. He learnt this in a region that has also been defined by this struggle, but only at points has had the opportunity to express their true desires. Negm recently reminisced on where he learnt this freedom of voice, his mother once instructed: “Don’t ever hold your tongue. God hasn’t created you with a tongue for you to bite it. It’s yours to speak with.”
