By Mahmoud Nessim Nezar Samak (b. 1953 - d. 2005), the writer and theatre critic who died on 5 September when a fire broke out during a theatrical performance in a cultural palace in Beni Sweif, obtained his bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University. As an undergraduate he played a prominent role in the 1970s left-wing students' movement, and was to represent "a unique combination" for all his life of "socialist thought" and "the asceticism of Sufis," as theatre director Nasser Abdel-Moneim wrote in a tribute to Samak. He worked as a theatre critic at the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (GOCP) where he was in charge of the Theatre Club and edited the theatre bulletin. In addition to a host of articles, Samak published three books: Al-Watan Al-Mubah Bayna Al-Nukhab Al-Fasida wal-Badil Al-Qatel (The Permissive Nation Between the Corrupt Elite and the Deadly Alternative, 2002), Daqqat Masrahiyya Mughayera (Divergent Theatrical Knocks, 2002) and Al-Busna wal-Turath Al-Dami (Bosnia and the Bloody Heritage, 1995), which his sister Tayseer Samak says was taught at Cairo University for two years. He helped found a research unit within Al-Mahrousa, an independent publishing house and research bureau, where he worked as a researcher for several years, concentrating on international affairs. Nezar Samak is survived by a daughter, Maryam. Mahmoud Nessim (b. 1956), a member of the 1970s movement of experimental poetry, obtained his PhD in the philosophy of art, and was recently appointed director-general of Theatre Administration in the GOCP. He has published two volumes of literary criticism, four poetry collections -- Al-Sama' wa Qus Al-Bahr (The Sky and the Bow of the Sea, 1984), Urs Al-Ramad (Ash Wedding, 1989), Kitabat Al-Zill (Shadow Writing, 1994) and Ta'ir Al-Fukhar (Terracotta Bird, 2000) -- and two verse dramas, Mar'a Al-Ghuzlan (Gazelles' Pasture, 1988) and Al-Ghurfa (The Room, 2004). The poem "Death as narrated by Nezar" draws on a wide variety of literary canons and religious traditions, including the Ancient Egyptian and Biblical. Whereas one can only speculate whether the speaker's companion is an allusion to the figure of Virgil in Dante's Divine Comedy, there is no doubt that a key intertext in the poem is the Quran and Islamic tradition. This is clearly signaled in the invocation of the figure of Ibrahim or Abraham, whose traditional epithet is "Al-Khalil" or "Khalil Allah," believed to have laid the foundations of the Kaaba. In alluding to the episode in the Quran when Ibrahim destroys the statues and the idolaters punish him by burning him but God commands the fire not to harm him, the poem adapts, with a reversal of words in "it became safety and coolness for me", a phrase from the Quran (21: 69). I feel nothing, just... my body burning I feel nothing, but... I saw my blood aflame in its cells and what had been my face become gelatinous featureless flesh and what looks like the soul dissolve in the gasp of burning my bones liquefy in the deluge of fire and come apart to stick to metal chairs I kept my body in its place and seemed to seek shelter in a window or wall, as if wanting air and water air and water, as if passing on the brink of death My father's doppelganger comes towards me, extends the path and lifts the veil from me so my vision returns I spoke letters without language and asked a blind man walking with me: Why, in this place, do we abide without time, want without desire He brought memory and words back to me and said you will remain here without knowledge and if you come to know you will read the tablet of commandments without prophets and if you come to read you will remain a being disembodied having forgotten what you have come to know: I recited the Shahadah for the two angels and spoke ancient words but no sooner made utterance and became aware than a gush of flaming darkness infused the ghostly world and no sooner did I weep and cast my eyes down than I was raised and, within minutes, had grown tranquil I saw a hand touch the fire so the fire withdrew it became safety and coolness for me I said: I received no covenant, I raised no foundations of a Holy House Nor am I a Khalil How then do I, who have lived a sinner, die miraculously I became conscious of my body floating in the rays of death I saw disfigured angels alight on the water with an old tablet and a throne: I made out my name, my form and my last day and spread my body on the water, the throne under my hand fiery clusters of birds I accompanied the blind man and he kept miming with me the final moments in the burning theatre -- the anguished screams, each taking refuge in his companion, the soul's pebbles between his hands, his bird at the neck -- and he went on miming and narrating, so I said the story calls for concision; he put up tombstones amid the candles and kept our two pictures together in the mirrors of the graves I seemed then as if gazing out on my corpse in its shroud while old friends returned to the bar after the funeral the silence of a hasty wake oppositional placards in the rally of the angry and the sheikh at the funeral tent reciting the Surah of Maryam the smell of the wind over the cemetery permeated with dust I drew nearer, wanting to become manifest but I am energy that feels only itself, wanting to pass through but I am hidden, wanting to be present so I fold my hand into its eternal coldness but, with its yearning for contact, it passes through my world without coming close. All things endure -- if we only abide for minutes after the absence. Introduced and translated by Hala Halim
