Culture, diplomacy and creative answers A breezy ride Profile by Youssef Rakha Click to view caption "Of course I am familiar with the Weekly, and with the Profile page, yes. You know you can write a profile of me without doing any interview at all. You know everything about me, really, don't you..." To profile Cherif El-Shoubashi is to encounter a friend. This may not have been quite so obvious had the conversation taken place under better, more relaxed circumstances. Days before the opening of the Cairo Film Festival, however, the logistic and organisational mania surrounding any encounter with its new and promising director proves revealing. Unlike many Egyptian officials of his stature, El-Shoubashi does not employ his authority as an excuse for absent-mindedness; neither is he too scrupulous about adopting a down- to-earth and breezy, if never dismissive, attitude. He may be doing one hundred and one things all at once but, for the brief time span during which he speaks to you, in the process, you have the benefit of both his undivided concentration and all the good will in the world. I have brought along a young performer with a piece of paper to be signed, an experimental project that requires his intervention; this is her only chance to meet him, and we are both apprehensive about her unsolicited presence. But as he receives the two of us, one by one, nodding to the photographer who wields his camera in the background, El-Shoubashi beams. This allays my fears somewhat, and no sooner do I get into position opposite him, placing my notebook on the elegant glass desk, than he begins to take his pills even as he answers phone calls. "You're going to photograph me taking my medicine?" he scowls at the photographer. "Of course I am familiar with the Weekly," he turns to me; "and with the Profile page, yes." Another half dozen interruptions precede his next statement. "You know you can write a profile of me without doing any interview at all," he effortlessly flatters the present writer. "You know everything about me, really, don't you..." This, then, will be the tenor of the conversation: ceaseless busyness which, even as it direly restricts the scope of interaction, never implies reluctance or a superior stance. "You want me to start with my childhood, oh God." Several guests, including a French-speaking young woman, have already entered the room; and El- Shoubashi excuses himself to deal with them before he resumes the conversation. "I grew up in a house where the atmosphere was intensely cultural, as you say. The walls were not only lined but stuffed with books, as it were. There were some 4000 books in my father's library, no less. It was a house that loved, even worshipped culture. It was only natural, therefore, that I should grow up with cultural inclinations." Moufid El-Shoubashi, the owner of the library in question, was a well-known and highly educated lawyer who held a regular literary salon in his house and undertook literary composition. Of Sherif's siblings, one (Faten El-Shoubashi) was an actress, another (Ali El-Shoubashi) a writer and activist. "The book dimension was essential. There were many, but pressed to specify two, I would mention, in the non-fiction category, Georges Pulitzer's Principles of Philosophy and, in fiction, definitely, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. I read both of these before the age of 20, yes; and I would say they remain among my more significant formative influences. Until eight months ago," the date of his arrival in Cairo, "not a single month passed since I learned to read and write during which I didn't read at least one book. Since coming here," he smiles ironically, "I have not read a single book." El-Shoubashi is hard pressed to name names but undoubtedly books were not the only influence; the people with whom the young El- Shoubashi mingled (some of Cairo's best educated and most widely appreciated intellectuals) must have played their part; so did his French education. To this day El-Shoubashi represents an all but extinct species of the educated Egyptian -- the Arabofrancophone. He attended French-language schools in the late fifties and early sixties, while the English-speaking rank and file was in the process of taking over. French was very probably a second language at home; and the very notion of the West -- a central theme in El-Shoubashi's life -- finds its clearest expression in the cultural achievements of France. Of his literary life, El- Shoubashi places Molière, Racine and Corneille -- the subjects of his Cairo University, Faculty of Arts, French Department studies as well as abiding interests, independently sought -- before, if not necessarily above, all else. "At school," he recalls, "there was this French language teacher who contributed to my love of literature -- both French and otherwise. He employed a clear-cut analytic methodology in presenting us with French classics, in which I would later specialise. It was principally novels and drama that opened out onto everything else." Direct experience of French culture was never quite so straightforward, however. "Books have been written about the difference between Egypt and the West, it's not something that can be dealt with in a few words." Considering the more than two decades El-Shoubashi spent living in Paris, though, more head-on commentary is inescapable: "If you adopt material criteria, there is no doubt that life in Europe is more civilised and more comfortable. There is order, a clearer conception of choice in responsibility, clean streets. But the problem is that in Europe the human dimension of life is far weaker. Emotionally, an individual is far more alone and far more vulnerable in Europe. And you feel this at your moments of weakness," El-Shoubashi's voice grows suddenly more earnest. "At the moments of the death of my father and mother, for example -- on both occasions I was in Paris -- I felt this need for human support very intensely. I had never intended to live in Europe forever, but certainly this experience made me all the more focussed about my need to eventually return. Which is not to deny the drawbacks of living here..." Some 20 minutes into the conversation, the frequent interruptions abiding, El-Shoubashi abruptly excuses himself, exiting the room. On his return, five minutes later, he declares that he has to be at the Opera House -- right now; something to do with the opening ceremony of the Cairo Film Festival that he must attend to in person. "Why don't you just come with me, we'll go on talking in the car," he suggests on the spur of the moment. "The mademoiselle can come along," he casts a sidelong glance at my companion. "This must be the most creative profile interview I've ever undertaken," the present writer will remark on the way back to the festival headquarters on Qasr Al-Nil Street, inducing in El-Shoubashi a reassuringly appreciative smile. We dither before the elevator, which, despite the best efforts of one of El-Shoubashi's more devoted assistants, is not ready when we arrive, jogging to catch up with El-Shoubashi's inherently rushed, perhaps slightly anxious pace. "Okay, I will not answer any more phone calls," he confides impatiently, in the car, pleading with the driver to turn on the siren after yet another unsolicited wireless conversation. "Every new phone call is the sign of a new catastrophe," he mutters. "Give me another minute, please," he responds to the same question, scribbling a phone number on the female performer's document, which she eagerly hands him as soon as he asks for a piece of paper. Naglaa, his secretary, is the subject of a brief but intense yelling bout; something about a World Bank official trying to get through to the minister; and could you please just call the minister's house, right now... "I started my career in journalism, yes," he has evidently had to count to 10, inhaling and exhaling deeply, before he could finally answer the question. Graduating in that fateful year, 1967, El-Shoubashi in fact commenced working in the Middle East News Agency (MENA); and though he downplays the political dimension of his contribution, you cannot help noticing, however momentarily and tentatively, that both his family background and his own experience necessitate some degree of involvement in politics. He was a highly-educated, bilingual intellectual coming into his own at the most crucially turbulent time in post-1952 history; his language skills were probably in greater demand in political than in cultural circles. This would explain his work in the Egyptian Broadcasting Corporation (initially in 1968 and again, as a French news anchor, from 1974 to 1980) and the often diplomatic slant of his journalistic assignments for Al-Musawwar and Image, the now defunct French-language magazine published by Dar Al-Hilal; it might even explain the fact that he ended up working for UNESCO (1980-1985) and as the Al-Ahram Paris Bureau chief (1985-2002). Perhaps, indeed, the post of undersecretary of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture for Foreign Cultural Relations -- assumed prior to that of director of the Cairo International Film Festival earlier this year -- is the best answer to El-Shoubashi's multitude of diplomatically oriented cultural achievements. "I couldn't describe myself as a diplomat," El- Shoubashi explains, "although all the foreign ambassadors visit me regularly, so do our own ambassadors to other countries. In progressing from the media to UNESCO I developed a concept of each brand of cultural endeavour, no doubt. And diplomacy, I will admit, does form a significant part of what I do now. Journalism is fast-paced; it requires a certain kind of dynamism, which is a great advantage but takes away from the experience of any one subject or topic. When you cover something journalistically -- my most memorable assignment must be my interview with the late Guinean president Ahmed Sekou Toure in Conakry; I spent four days with him, talking to him for five hours each day -- very seldom do you get the chance to delve deeply into the many sides of that subject, to approach it comprehensively, as it were. That's what I found out while working for UNESCO, where circumstances allowed me to undertake a more thorough investigation of the subjects at hand." El-Shoubashi has managed to supply all this within the 10-minute ride to the Opera House grounds, which also provided for the phone call he received, the one he made to Naglaa and his momentary exchanges with my female companion. "The one figure who was a positive influence on me while I was working as a journalist, in this case in Al-Ahram, was [the late] Ahmed Bahaaeddin," he adds as the car comes to a stop. "And Fikri Abaza," he remembers, "in Al- Musawwar." The quarter of an hour or so spent on the Opera House grounds were not entirely lost on the present writer, even if they formed the longest gap in the progress of the conversation. In interacting with Samir Farag, the Opera House director, and other officials present, El-Shoubashi looked like the odd man out. Farag was, in fact, overheard laughing, in muted admiration, "He's thinking in French terms still, he's dealing with the ceremony as if it were taking place in Paris." Resolving the dispute, El-Shoubashi nonetheless managed to argue his point forcefully. "Fikri Abaza was of an older generation, of course," he resumed almost as soon as the car started moving back. "So what I learned from him was of an altogether different kind. But journalism was a major part of my life, it's very hard to talk about anything this way. But as you can see..." El-Shoubashi looked at his phone once again. "Maybe that's why I never actually undertook writing until a very late stage in my career, when Is France Racist? came out in 1992; I was too busy doing things like journalism administrative work." Since then El-Shoubashi has also produced a short story collection, Sheikh Abdalla (1994), a play, Lan Tasqut Urshalim (Jerusalem Will Not Fall, 1994) and two books of nonfiction, Nihayat Al-Tafkir (The End of Thought, 1998) and Al- Daa Al-Arabi (The Arab Ailment, 2002). Given his ever heavier load of government oriented responsibilities, will El-Shoubashi manage to go on writing? Either he ignored the question or failed to hear it. "If I take this piece of paper now it will get lost," he was telling my companion. "Look here, I'll give you my number and you can call to remind me in a week or two, then we will sort it out. You've seen what it's like..."
