The Diaries of Waguih Ghali

Description

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties, in two volumes, is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likable and highly enigmatic literary personality.
Waguih Ghali (1930?–69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali’s Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London’s swinging sixties. Volume 2 covers the period from 1966 to 1968. Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali’s trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile.
Including an interview conducted by Deborah Starr with Ghali’s cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta.

Sujets

• Middle Est
• Histoire
• Egypt
• History

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617977947
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

ThE DIàRIES Of WàguIh GhàlI

Diaries THE of WaGUiH GHaLi an eGypTian WriTer in THe sWinGinG sixTies

VoLUme 2: 1966–68

Edited by May Hawas

The American University in Cairo Press Cairo New York

Copyright ©2017 by The American University in Cairo Press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt 420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 www.aucpress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Exclusive distribution outside Egypt and North America by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd., 6 Salem Road, London, W4 2BU

Dar el Kutub No. 8468/16 ISBN 978 977 416 812 3

Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hawas, May The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian Writer in the Swinging Sixties, Volume 2 (1966–68)/May Hawas.—Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2017 p. cm. ISBN: 978 977 416 812 3 1. Ghali, Waguih, 1930–1969 — Diaries 2. Writers, Arabic I. Title 928.927

1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16

Designed by Amy Sidhom Printed in the United States of America

CONtENtS

Interview with Samir Basta, by Deborah Starr

The Diaries of Waguih Ghali 1. I Just Stayed at Home Yesterday. Sober. 2. Been Here for Six Days Now 3. Tragedies—Catastrophes 4. Those Last Three or Four Weeks Have Been Utterly Mad

Notes Index

1

15 47 103 169

213 217

iNtERvIEw wIth sàMIR BàStà bY DEbORàh stàRR

Dr. Samir Sanad Basta received his doctorate in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early in his career, he conducted applied research in nutrition in Mexico, Indonesia, India, and Kenya. Basta worked for ten years as an expert in nutrition at the World Bank. In 1982, he joined UNICEF, first in Sudan, then in New York. In 1990 he was appointed director of the UNICEF office in Geneva, where he served until his retirement in 1998. Samir Basta is also the author ofCulture, Conflict, and Children: Transmission of Violence to ChildrenAmerica, 2000).(Lanham: University Press of In addition to his illustrious professional career, Samir Basta is Waguih Ghali’s first cousin. They both resided in London in the late 1960s, and saw one another with some regularity. Ghali’s diaries record some of the interactions between them during this period. In this interview, Basta shares his family history and recalls his relationship with Ghali. This interview was conducted via correspondence and video conference between June 2013 and January 2015.

DEbORàh stàRR: tell me about your relationship with Waguih Please Ghali.

sàMIR BàStà:  I knew Waguih, or Toutou as we all called him, from a young age. I am his first cousin. I was with him occasionally during his time in Egypt—my mother had more or less adopted him. Then I saw

1

him very frequently when he was in Germany and in London. I was in London when he died. I had seen him only a few days before his death. I remember him as very amusing and fun to be with in Cairo. He belonged to that group in their early twenties, circa 1950, who frequented “L’Americaine,” a trendy café in the center of Cairo, full of fashionable, rowdy, and cosmopolitan young men and a few “liberated” young women, mostly of Jewish, Greek, or Italian origin. That group also included writers, and actors like Omar Sharif. I admired them, but couldn’t join for I was too young. Waguih, who would come to my home often, would regale me with jokes and funny stories about people he had met. My father, Sanad Basta, by then a serious painter, artist, intellectual, former well-to-do playboy, and world traveler, would get into furious arguments with Waguih about his communism, his street demonstrations against the king [Farouk] and the British, and his drinking and aimlessness. My father, more than anyone, pushed Waguih to leave Egypt to further study abroad (which made my mother, Ketty, sad). Hence, Waguih’s departure for Paris, where he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine. My parents paid for his stay there, and when we visited him in 1951–52, he seemed happy, owned a new Peugeot car, and lived on the Left Bank (although rue des Écoles apartments were shabby then, a far cry from today!). He seemed to spend every day with us, and for a whole month he didn’t stop taking me and my very young sister, Miha (or Samiha), to fairs, amusement arcades, and the like, and to the Bois de Boulogne where we often hired rowboats. We adored him and he was always making us die of laughter. That was the last time I saw him happy. The next time I saw him was several years later, in the early 1960s, when, as a student in England, I took a train from London to visit him in Rheydt, West Germany. He was not happy, and hated Germany. He introduced me to his friends, but they all seemed to be obsessed with drinking. I was seventeen at the time and, unlike Waguih, didn’t enjoy drinking, (too much), which he must have thought was boring. Anyway, since I didn’t understand German, I could not follow much of what they seemed to be saying. Then, on a second trip to see him, this time with Diana Athill, a year or two later, we met him in Bruges, Belgium. He seemed a little more cheerful. I shared a hotel room with him, and one evening I showed him a manuscript I had written. I wanted to be a writer as well! But he went

2 Interview with Samir Basta

absolutely berserk, telling me I could not write. Why that reaction? Hard to say. Our relationship cooled after that, and when he came to London, I began to get angry with him about his constant drinking and his constant, never-ending requests for money, both from me, then in University, and from mother who, now widowed and in London, had a hard time making ends meet, despite her friendship with many rich people there. He began to turn against us. Only my sister, he trusted. He would not take a job, and he became more and more insulting with my mother’s friends (except Soad, a very tolerant lady!).

stàRR:  I understand that, despite Waguih’s discouragement many years ago, you have started writing about your experiences and about your family. Please tell me about your two current writing projects.

BàStà: I am writing for my own pleasure. I write both short stories and novels for different reasons. I write mostly remembrances or experiences in several countries, or about corrupt characters I meet here in the French Riviera, or about semi-fictional sagas in long ago Egypt and Sudan. Everybody keeps telling me for the past few years that I should jot down some of my life, that I have had a very interesting life. I was brought up in this upper-bourgeois milieu in Cairo and I lived through the revolution. I witnessed the rise of Nasser and my father’s rage at seeing a lot of his friends dispossessed or in jail. I want to describe the beginning of my youth, eventually going to an English school, Victoria College in Cairo, an elite British secondary school. There were still English professors until 1956. It was a very important place in Cairo where we mixed with different social and cultural groups. There were a lot of Egyptians from my background, but they were also a lot of poorer Egyptians who managed to get a scholarship, or whom the British Council had helped get into the school; and there were Arabs from Saudi Arabia and Libya, and the beginning of the Gulf states, which were mainly desert outposts that nobody cared about. These students had come for the first time to Victoria College, where they mixed with us, and we with them, and it was very interesting to see the different behaviors and mentalities. I think that was one important part of my life in Cairo. Outside of school my friends were Egyptians, French, English, Armenians, Jews,

Interview with Samir Basta 3