A few hours before he died at his house in Muqattam at the age of 84, the vernacular poet and icon of the 1970s leftist movement Ahmed Fouad Negm — galabeya-clad as usual — gave an interview to Al-Mihwar TV in which he said, “If anywhere in the world you deposed two presidents and put them in jail, that would be a tragedy — but the Egyptians can make a joke out of it. A joke... I travelled all around the world but I never found people like the Egyptians.” The by now world renowned Ambassador of the Poor — as the United Nations Poverty Action declared him in 2007 — is best known as the lyricist of the wildly popular if for the longest time banned Negm-Imam duo: together with the blind Quran-reciter-turned-patriotic-song-composer Imam Eissa, he was the voice of the Student Movement following the 1967 War, and among the harshest and funniest critics of the late president Anwar Al-Sadat (1970-1981), his capitalist policies and his initiative for peace with Israel. Negm also wrote many volumes of a rambling memoir in colloquial Arabic named Al-Fagoumi — a slang term for the kind of streetwise man of the people he was — by which term he is also known. He was a prolific and articulate versifier and a legendary conversationalist, though he is known to have claimed he never read a book in his life. Negm was born in the province of Sharqiya to a policeman and a peasant woman, one of 17 children. On his father's death he lived with his maternal uncle but was soon placed in an orphanage in Zagazig. At the age of 17 he returned to his village briefly before embarking on a life of wandering, working — among any number of jobs — as a tailor, a peddler, a footballer, a postman, a factory hand and a builder. He also worked in British army camps, and participated in fidayeen operations against the occupation. By 1946, he had taught himself to read and write and embraced socialist principles, joining in the National Committee for Workers and Students. He was jailed and savagely beaten following a workers' strike in 1959, and again for three years in the 1960s, when he produced his first book, to which the celebrated journalist Soheir Al-Qalamawi wrote the introduction; he became known prior to his release. Soon afterwards he met Sheikh Imam, with whom he lived in Ghouriya and was imprisoned under Sadat, went on world tours to give concerts and eventually broke over a major argument. Negm married many times, and he is survived by three children. With the writer Safinaz Kazem he had Nawwara Negm, the celebrated journalist and activist. He was also famously married to the singer Azza Balbaa. His current widow is Omayma Abdel-Wahab, with whom he had his youngest daughter Zeinab. Negm also had a daughter by his first marriage, Afaf, and three grandchildren.
