To the other side he crosses and back again Walk into the movies five minutes before the film ends, and you won't understand a thing. Regarding my Coptic identity, I've always felt like a person late to the movies. Having not grown up in Egypt, I habitually identified myself as "Egyptian" or "Christian", seldom as Coptic per se. And I very rarely related to the ebb and tide of the community back home. I first met Samir Morcos in the middle of the controversy about Bahheb Al-Sima, a film released last summer to which Copts responded with mixed emotions. It focussed solely on a Christian family, portraying its members as neither heroes nor villains, and exposing their all too human faults and frustrations. The controversy resulted in a lawsuit in which Morcos -- first introduced to me as someone who wrote about Copts -- was directly involved. I was instantly curious. I wanted, first, to know his views, then why and how he does what he does. Copts have been in the limelight this past year, and it has not been positive. Blame and critique have constituted the vast majority of the headlines in question. Perhaps as a result of the Bahheb Al-Sima debate, Bent min Shubra, a serial drama about an Italian-Egyptian (ie Christian) young woman who marries a Muslim man, was not allowed on terrestrial television during Ramadan; there was evidently concern about it generating even more "sectarian strife". Months later, the case of Wafaa Constantine (a priest's wife who, having left her husband, wanted to convert to Islam, purportedly under pressure) caused a commotion outside the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral following the funeral of writer Said Sonbol. Demonstration, arrest and public discord led Pope Shenouda to go into seclusion. But the furore would not subside: it was under pressure from the Pope that an "amicable" resolution was found, with the police arresting Constantine and handing her over to the Church, where she remains, in a convent, under strict confinement. The government's concern with sectarian strife is such that the angry Coptic mob is appeased at the expense of individual Copts' rights. More recently, the murder of a Coptic family in New Jersey solicited a new series of conjectures -- rumours, lies and tabloid campaigns. And it is at times like these that Morcos is called on to explain, demystify and provide commentary. Morcos is a scholar and writer, an active voice in the realm of Muslim- Christian relations for the last 20 years. Last November, Morcos and his wife Vivian Fouad jointly received a prize from the Norwegian Academy for Arts and Freedom of Expression in recognition of a lifetime's achievement in opening up an arena for inter-religious dialogue in Egypt and instilling a notion of citizenship in the politically Coptic community. The unofficial authority on "the Coptic question", he has carved out a niche in the media. To stereotype in a way of which Morcos himself would not approve, one could say that he is the quintessential middle-class Copt, born and brought up in Shubra in the late 1950s. Though often thought of as a predominantly Christian neighbourhood, in Morcos's version of his birthplace Shubra emerges as a cosmopolitan neighbourhood; it evokes an atmosphere reminiscent not only of Naim Sabry's eponymous novel but of Alexandria in the films of Youssef Chahine -- cosmopolitan, multi-religious, multi-racial and above all peaceful -- a well- integrated community. Morcos attended the English Mission School in Heliopolis, Al-Salam. In his book Protection and Punishment: the West and the Religious Question in the Middle East, he critiques the colonial undercurrent of the work of missionaries, including school teachers, pointing up the connection between their presence and religious discord. Like many Arabs, Morcos is aware of the complexity inherent to any such argument: "It was a good school. My parents did not send me there because it was the school of the English mission. English was the emphasis, not mission." Like many middle-class families, his was keen on education. His paternal uncles had attended university in England but his father, deterred by World War II, studied medicine at Cairo University. He was not alone in the post-colonial dilemma: "I can clearly separate Western culture from Western imperialism. I respect the culture and dislike the politics." This is reflected in his being something of an anglophile, all things considered: a pipe smoker, he will like a restaurant as much for its Victorian décor as anything. On graduating from the Faculty of Agriculture at Ain Shams University, he taught secondary school science at his alma mater. Like many Christians, much of his free time was spent in church, in Shubra, where he met and fell under the spell of by William Soliman Qilada, a scholar who wrote on Copts and citizenship. (This is also how Morcos met his wife: Qilada was her mentor too.) Society and religion quickly won over in the next few years, and he gave up his job to work with international development agencies. All the while, though, Morcos lived for what he did "off the job": research and writing, with a special focus on issues of citizenship. This is, he insists, his vocation, a vocation he shares with Qilada: "William Soliman Qilada went into the hospital with a briefcase full of books. Two days later, he took it with him into intensive care. He had hope that the crisis would pass, and he just wanted to work. Hope and perseverance -- those are the things I learned from him." And in the same way as when one endures sectarian strife -- an economic crisis that will pass, Morcos insists -- "there is always hope." Yet involvement in development -- an arena he tends to dismiss as "mere breadwinning" -- started almost simultaneously. In 1986, with Bishop Moussa, archbishop for youth, Morcos set up a forum for cultural development to inform the Coptic laity on civil life -- something the forum undertook through symposia, courses and publications. And in 1994, along with Fouad, the duo set up the Coptic Centre of Social Studies, a resource for publications, conferences and research. Morcos later moved to the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC). Today his principal affiliation is with Al-Fustat, a major development research centre. His scholarly interests are relatively narrow, encompassing only Copts and the consequences of American hegemony in the region. Qilada's influence may have played a part, but with an inborn sense of socio-political concern, the heyday of sectarian violence in the 1980s and 1990s could only have taken its toll on Morcos. He himself has never suffered persecution -- something he sees as evidence of the fact that the problem is primarily economic; the middle class suffers less than the working class: "One cannot generalise so simply and say that all Copts are persecuted in Egypt. 'Copts' and all their life experiences cannot be lumped together. Periods of economic hardship in Egypt affect all aspects of life and especially Muslim-Christian relations. Problems between Copts and Muslims are a result of the wavering economy... Women and the young as well as Copts will all get a smaller part of the cake when the cake is smaller." And his interests pervade his life. The Al-Fustat office is in the same building as Morcos's home in Heliopolis. While the famous serial drama Abbas Al-Abyad fil Yom Al-Eswed is showing, Fouad turns up the volume, "Watch this, Samir. Yehya El-Fakharany is talking about citizenship." Commitment is certainly part of this package, but passion is not easily ascribed to Morcos. A soft-spoken man with a ready smile, he is not the type to dominate a conversation or raise his voice. Cautious, discerning, understated: he tries to share his values without drama. His statements about culture, during this conversation, would seem to be the exception that proves the rule: mainstream culture is impressionistic, polarised and biased. "It is a culture of Ahli versus Zamalek [the two main football clubs]. Whatever the issue, you have to be either this or that. There always has to be a them and an us." With stickers and trinkets in cars, clothing and modes of greeting all flaunting religious identity, one cannot disagree. But it is not only negative, Morcos insists, it is politically suicidal: "It was wrong of the Copts of Shubra not to vote for [the late] Farag Fouda when he ran in the elections there. What does it matter that he was Muslim? More important to see what he stood for. We don't want to be given special seats because we are special people. We are Egyptian citizens; what sets you apart is what you do, not your religion." It is in this context that he critiques "the Egyptian way": "We've imported this sense of tribalism from the oil-rich Gulf. People leave the country and gather in tiny circles of belonging, both Copts and Muslims do it. Then they come home and enforce a segregated lifestyle." In Morcos's Egypt, Copts are not a minority, nor are they the sole descendants of the Pharaohs and hence superior. (All Egyptians share that honour): "It's reductive to define people according to race, sect or number. Why not just be an Egyptian citizen..." For Morcos and Fouad's friend Marie Assaad, former deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches, "the word muwatana (citizenship)" is what Morcos stands for. As a discourse, indeed, "citizenship" flouts both "minority" and "sectarianism": "This is the choice I've made: to try to recapture the nationalist sentiment of Egypt in 1919 -- one nation with many individual citizens." Morcos aspires to objectivity: the Kosheh incident, he has written, was not of a purely religious nature; other events in Upper Egypt were. Such views ironically place him in a problematic relation with much of the Coptic community, "people who never tire of remembering Al-Hakem Bi'amrillah", the Fatimid caliph most notorious for persecuting Copts, for example. Morcos has no patience for such people: "I read Fatimid history specifically to find out the story of this man. First of all, there were two periods of Fatimid rule. The first was a time of economic and cultural buoyancy; Copts were never persecuted at that time. Al-Hakem ruled towards the end of the second period, when a considerably worse situation had worsened further: the depression affected everyone, not only Copts." And he feels the same way about so-called conversion houses, in which young Christians are said to be converted to Islam by force: "It doesn't matter if this really happened." And this is a symptom of insecurity, nothing more. In the end, Morcos concludes, it is Coptic insecurity that must be addressed. But are there violations of Copts' rights that need to be redressed, nonetheless? Yes. But they are unduly exaggerated: "Like most of their compatriots, Copts respond with anger to things they are ignorant of -- a monk they don't know personally, a film they haven't seen, a woman they never spoke to..." But whatever the case, Morcos insists, problems are best resolved internally. Copts abroad gather outside embassies; Morcos and his likes, back home, can only shake their heads. A Lebanese journalist once asked Morcos whether he would call himself Egyptian or Copt -- he chose the first. At a time when nationalists and left-wing intellectuals like himself disown religion with vehemence, when religion immediately brings to mind extremism, Morcos remains a pious Christian. A protégé of Bishop Moussa, he edits a church magazine for the young and writes on Christian love -- a love not conditional on gender, race, religion or class. A sometime member of the Tagammu' Party, Morcos left without explanations; he has foregone politics since. Indeed the right to withdraw could be the leitmotif of Morcos's life. But he does not withdraw into seclusion, rather into clearly constructed social circles, perhaps to an Egypt he wants to preserve. His closest friend is scholar Nabil Abdel-Fattah of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. A Muslim, Abdel-Fattah tends to be more outspoken regarding violations of Copts' rights than Morcos. Perhaps, it takes a Copt to reform his own community from within while the protection of Copts' rights is best left to others. An intricate dance, this: it can only be fully appreciated when the steps of both partners are taken into account. They tend to be invited to speak on the same occasions, Morcos and Abdel-Fattah, and the former will often explain to the latter otherwise inaccessible intricacies: "My friend Nabil wrote an article about Vivian and myself in Al-Ahram Al-Arabi. He called us 'bridge- builders'. And that is what we hope to be. By definition, bridge-builders cannot be too comfortable on either bank. They must always strive from one to the other, keeping the fewest number of affiliations, reluctant to be involved in anything that prevents crossing the gulf they bridge." Profile by Maggie Morgan
