As the son of the 1960s and 1970s' legend Salah Jahin -- vernacular poet, lyricist, cartoonist, cinematic figure, journalist and spokesman for the July Revolution -- Bahaa Jahin tends to fall under the enormous shadow of his father. This is compounded by both his choice of profession -- though no draftsman, Bahaa too is a vernacular poet and a journalist -- and his unabashed admiration for the figure that begot him. Yet he has managed to carve out an entirely different niche for his writing, no doubt benefiting, however subliminally, from the many gifts of his mother, painter Sawsan Zaki, and the patriotic lineage of his paternal grandfather, army officer Ahmed Helmi. His poetry may include explicit allusions to the work of the old man, whether thematic or stylistic, but its subtlety, its intellectual range and the way in which it infuses the tradition, far more explicitly, with a whole spectrum of modernist and post modern influences, gives him a unique edge. Still, in much the same way as Salah Jahin -- an affable man if ever one existed -- Bahaa is a character to seek out at this time of year, for his humorous nature and profound sense of grassroots culture, not to mention his often critical awareness of the most prevalent social and political concerns, make him an ideal companion for culturally specific a festive occasion, be it the end of the month of fasting or the advent of the Eid. Interview by Samir Sobhi The tradition of colloquial Arabic poetry -- at least as old as the earliest, Fatimid rooted manifestations of the holy month, and just as popular -- could be said to underscore the secular experience of Ramadan. Whether in the form of songs, interactive recitations, dramatic works or fawazir (riddles, often in the form of musical drama), vernacular verse occupies a position of prominence in the media and public forums of Ramadan -- a month which, at least in modern- day Egypt, is noted as much for piety as for festivity, as much for asceticism as for the enjoyment of life. And Bahaa Jahin, though of an academic background that might suggest otherwise, is one of the best known practitioners of colloquial Arabic poetry now working in Egypt. He graduated, with honours, from Cairo University's Faculty of Arts, Department of English Language and Literature, in 1978. Five years later, he spent a year studying at New York University. But by the time he came back home, in 1984, he had decided categorically against a career in academia -- a thought that had been on his mind, on and off, since he graduated. Naturally enough for Salah Jahin's arts-oriented son, he opted for the cultural press, and in 1985 joined the daily Al-Ahram as a reporter on the Culture page. Later in the same year, perhaps to seal off his never consummated marriage with scholarship, he obtained an MA in art history from the American University in Cairo. Certainly, since earning his BA, Bahaa had never stopped working, with the studious application of a young man as dedicated to learning as he is to life; this found expression in a range of ways, notably the literary experiments he had started undertaking, and in the end the effort paid off, professionally speaking. Bahaa now edits the literary page of Al-Ahram -- a position for which his father, who spent most of his working life at Rose El-Youssef institution, would have had deep respect. The dilemma of scholarship vs created writing is registered by English professor Mohamed Anani, Bahaa's teacher and mentor: "I knew Bahaa when he was studying at the English department. His talent was in evidence even back then. You could see that his passion for poetry sometimes tormented him. He used to write poetry and bring it to me for critique. He would disappear for days or weeks afterwards, then come back with more. He was torn between academia and creativity, not completely sure whether he wanted to be a critic or a writer. I encouraged him to press on with his studies, and he took my advice. He assumed a teaching post at the university, and he wasn't writing much any more. It wasn't until he had spent some time in the United States and actually earned his Masters that he could overcome his shyness enough to publish his work; for a long time, he was sceptical about his own talent." Now 48, and as physically imposing as his famously obese father, Bahaa had started his career with the song lyrics of Khashab Al-Ward (Rosewood), a 1978 play. It was his first professional venture into song writing -- and it took. He has since contributed song lyrics in a range of contexts including such popular films as the late film star Ahmed Zaki's Al-Beh Al-Bawwab (His Excellency the Doorman), Samaa Hoss (Silence, Please) and Ya Mehallabiya Ya (Sweet Pudding) as well as stage comedies like Fouad El-Mohandes's Shari Mohamed Ali (Mohamed Ali Street) and Adel Imam's Al-Zaaim (The Leader). But it wasn't until 1996 that he started to make his mark on the fawazir, time-honoured Ramadan entertainment, on radio and television. A decade earlier, he had already started publishing poetry, intended as reading rather than singing material though written mostly in colloquial Arabic. His books include, among others, Al-Raqs Fi Zahmet Al-Morur (Dancing in the Traffic Jam, 1986), Ayam (Days, 1996), Mokashafat Shakhsiya (Personal Disclosures, 2000), Kofiya Souf Lil Sheta (Woollen Scarf for Winter, 2003) and Al-Irtifaa Al-Masmouh Metr (Maximum Height: 1 Metre, 2004). "I learned the principles of poetry from my father," Bahaa recalls. "I grew up listening to his poetry together with that of Salah Abdel-Sabour, Ahmed Abdel-Motie Hegazi, Amal Donqul and Mahmoud Darwish." Significantly, aside from Salah Jahin, every one of those poets -- the first two are Egypt's principal contributors to the mid-20th century movement that made taf'ila (a freer modification of the old aroud metres) the common poetic idiom, the third a powerful practitioner of the form, a short-lived voice of Upper Egypt, and the fourth, "the poet laureate of the Palestinian resistance", an earlier master of it -- all wrote in classical as opposed to colloquial Arabic. But "when I was 22", he goes on, "I fell in love with the poetry of Fouad Haddad" -- a figure of Jahin's time and stature, another great vernacular poet -- "which is when I started writing in colloquial, and that's the way it's been since, except for the occasional foray into classical Arabic, particularly in things amorous". In 1986, when he met the woman who was to become his wife, Bahaa, realising "she was no fan of colloquial Arabic", courted her in the classical tongue: "The poetry I wrote for her then was later collected and published in the book Al-Qamis Al-Maskun " (The Haunted Shirt, 1990). It was the matrimonial union that proved lasting, however, and Bahaa speaks of its fruit with relish: "I have a 17-year-old boy, Omar, who inherited his grandfather's knack for acting. He is also a composer. He has just finished setting some of his grandfather's verse to music, a work that will be broadcast on Rubaiat (Quatrains)", a radio serial programme named after what remains, perhaps, Salah Jahin's greatest work, "in April". Indeed, in the process of becoming a father, Bahaa developed an interest in children's literature: "We may know what values we want to instill in our children. But we have a problem when it comes to aesthetics. It is not enough to wrap the educational pill in a sugar coat. Beauty must be an end in itself. Beauty makes a moral impact, it lives apart from any values we might want to teach our children. Pure art, such as music, refines the character, even if it has no intellectual content. We have an aesthetic problem, for we have no children's books of outstanding literary worth. We don't have anything we can compare with the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen, for example." Such comparisons had occurred early on, judging by the comments of Fatemah Moussa, another English professor. She recalls the day Bahaa came to her with the idea of translating John Donne: "Now Donne is not the first poet to come to mind when one talks of English poetry. I cannot recall a single Arab translator who took an interest in that poet, for his work departs from the mainstream of Elizabethan poetry. Donne is cerebral in his creation of complex images and allegories, full of contradiction and tension." And it is in the reverberations of such complexity, in the end, that Bahaa's work resembles his father's the most. "Salah Jahin," he says, "was a poet of the people, not the government. He taught me that the most important thing in art is simplicity. He used to sit with me for hours, telling me of his life..." Such is the what he told him about Gamal Abdel-Nasser, it would seem, filtered through Bahaa's own creative machinery: "Man/There once was a man/I loved/And he's no more/A man people chanted for/In public, or hated indoors/ Now everyone has/Something to say/And much more in store." And such, more poignantly, is how the old man's bitter experience was reincarnated in his son: "God, I pray to sleep/On the side of comfort/Reading in a book/Of light and darkness/Satisfaction is deeper than joy/A spring outdoes a fountain/Happiness is a wave/ Sadness, an ocean/Despair is a well/Hope, a mere notion/A dream is but a trap..."
