Rouah wa That – Min Hekayat Safinaz Kazem (Perspectives and Persona – From the Tales of Safinaz Kazem), Safinaz Kazem, Al-Shorouk, Cairo, 2024, pp. 291
In Rouah wa That—Min Hekayat Safinaz Kazem, the esteemed literary critic and commentator Safinaz Kazem offers a deeply personal profile—not only of herself but also of Egypt throughout the mid-to-late 20th century.
This book is a sequel comprising 40 chapters—articles not arranged to fit any particular timeline or thematic segmentation. Instead, it is a rich and free-flowing collection of thoughts and impressions that the author is putting down on paper, perhaps not primarily to share with readers but to record.
In doing so, Kazem is unapologetically herself, daring to state her views without much concern for the reactions she might provoke—whether from those who encounter her ‘tales’ or from the subjects she dedicates whole chapters to as part of her broader ‘piece,’ which ultimately reads as a memoir of sorts.
Kazem's 291-page volume is mostly an unassuming recollection of a journey unfolding over half a century, accompanied by equally unpretentious reflections.
Born in the late 1930s in Alexandria, Kazem has lived in Cairo, New York, and Baghdad. She has known love, dismay, hope, and loss. In the tales she shares, she recalls her time as a school and university student in Egypt’s capital, first under the country’s last monarch, King Farouk, and later under the regime that came to power with the Free Officers in 1952. She lived through momentous political events—the defeat of 1967, the crossing of 1973, and more. She taught at university, wrote for newspapers, endured imprisonment as a political prisoner, and ultimately led a very eventful life.
Yet, there is no preaching in Kazem’s book, an updated version of a similarly titled volume published around twenty years ago by the General Egyptian Book Organization (GEBO). Her tales do not come across as judgments of right or wrong, nor as declarations of who was right or wrong, but rather as expressions of what she found genuine and engaging, contrasted with what she deemed banal and uninspiring.
Kazem’s tales are not merely accounts of the journey but also explorations of questions she has wrestled with—perhaps without conclusive answers—about love, the dynamics between oppressor and oppressed, the nature of nostalgia, the impact of trauma, and the influence of childhood.
She dedicates the book to Baba Sharo, Mohamed Mahmoud Shaaban (1912–1999), a legendary radio figure who was not only a top presenter of children’s shows but also the producer and director of some of the most iconic radio art and culture programmes of the 1950s and 1960s. Kazem devotes a chapter to this unique figure, cleverly illustrating the imprint of radio programmes on intellectual life from the 1940s through the 1970s and beyond.
Other notable figures in Kazem’s tales include Latifa El-Zayyat (1923–1996), a professor, activist, and author; Amina Rachid (1938–2021), a professor and activist; and Taher Abou Zeid (1922–2011), a leading Egyptian radio broadcaster.
Through her ‘profiles’ of these celebrated 20th-century Egyptian figures and her recollections of life in mid-century Cairo, Kazem—whether intentionally or not—paints a sequence of portraits of a country that experienced turbulent, unsettling changes.
The book is a tribute to love, even when it fails to endure; to dedication, even when unrewarded; and to truthfulness, as defined by the author. It is a self-portrait of sorts, written with wit and a certain cynical edge.
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