Article
Son Naguib Surur forced into exile after posting poetry on web
January 18, 2006
Naguib Surur, a poet, playwright, actor and author, stirred controversy all throughout his life with his self-styled ‘shock poetry’, written in colloquial ‘street’ Arabic studded with explicit sexual imagery, and his powerful critiques of Egyptian society. He died in 1978.
His most offensive, and most celebrated, work is the long satirical poem “Kuss-Ummyyat Naguib” (“Naguib’s Mother’s Cunt”), a fierce condemnation of Egyptian politics, society and culture, written between 1969 and 1974, after Egypt’s war with Israel. It was the online publication of this poem that in all likelihood led to his son’s conviction. “Kuss-Ummyyat” was never published during Surur’s lifetime, although cassette tapes of Surur reading the poem circulated in Egypt’s literary underground. Because of his provocative use in the title of the worst street curse in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, the poem is usually referred to as “Naguib’s mother”.
According to Egyptian academic Mahmoud el-Lozy, however, the “Kuss-Ummyyat” is central to Surur’s work, and can be seen as “the repressed collective unconscious” of the entire Egyptian people, writes the Index on Censorship. The charges against his son, according to the Index, are part of a “wide-ranging state-sponsored crackdown” on perceived public immorality in Egypt, that bodes ill for the freedom of artistic expression and internet use.
“Kuss-Ummyyat Naguib Surur” is published in Arabic on Wadada, a website entirely devoted to Surur, where further information and articles in English on the wild man of Egyptian letters and his son’s court case can be found.
More articles on the Surur case are posted on wired.com, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line and on cnn.com
Egyptian webdesigner Shohdy Surur has been sentenced to one year in prison after publishing a controversial poem written by his late father, the notorious iconoclast, poet and playwright Naguib Surur.
Shohdy Surur had been publishing his father’s poems for over a year on his personal website, when the Egyptian Adab Unit, a special police squad that monitors vice and ‘immoral conduct’, came across his web tribute in November last year, and promptly arrested him. Surur was detained for three days, and subsequently sentenced to a year in prison with labor last June. After appealing the sentence, Surur left the country, causing the Sayyeda Zeinab Court of Misdemeanors to uphold the conviction in a recent appeal hearing. Surur has thus become the first person in the world to be convicted in court for publishing poetry on the internet. Naguib Surur, a poet, playwright, actor and author, stirred controversy all throughout his life with his self-styled ‘shock poetry’, written in colloquial ‘street’ Arabic studded with explicit sexual imagery, and his powerful critiques of Egyptian society. He died in 1978.
His most offensive, and most celebrated, work is the long satirical poem “Kuss-Ummyyat Naguib” (“Naguib’s Mother’s Cunt”), a fierce condemnation of Egyptian politics, society and culture, written between 1969 and 1974, after Egypt’s war with Israel. It was the online publication of this poem that in all likelihood led to his son’s conviction. “Kuss-Ummyyat” was never published during Surur’s lifetime, although cassette tapes of Surur reading the poem circulated in Egypt’s literary underground. Because of his provocative use in the title of the worst street curse in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, the poem is usually referred to as “Naguib’s mother”.
According to Egyptian academic Mahmoud el-Lozy, however, the “Kuss-Ummyyat” is central to Surur’s work, and can be seen as “the repressed collective unconscious” of the entire Egyptian people, writes the Index on Censorship. The charges against his son, according to the Index, are part of a “wide-ranging state-sponsored crackdown” on perceived public immorality in Egypt, that bodes ill for the freedom of artistic expression and internet use.
“Kuss-Ummyyat Naguib Surur” is published in Arabic on Wadada, a website entirely devoted to Surur, where further information and articles in English on the wild man of Egyptian letters and his son’s court case can be found.
More articles on the Surur case are posted on wired.com, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line and on cnn.com
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