It was 20 years ago that I found my way to Hagg Wahba's bookshop. I was clutching my manuscript, "On Veiling and Unveiling." I had been to all the print shops in Faggala and downtown, but none had been willing to take it. As I was walking down Gomhouriya Street, I glanced into the bookshops that line it. I went into Hagg Wahba's, and there was the hagg himself, sitting at his desk, almost obscured by the piles of paper in front of him. The empty glasses on the desk showed the dregs of the herbal infusion his previous visitors had been drinking. Several voices responded to my greeting, but the hagg's was distinctive. "I would like to have a word with the person responsible here!" I proclaimed. He flashed a broad grin, and motioned me towards a seat. His generous smile had already uplifted me. With the glass of anise infusion in front of me, I told him about my text, and the rejection I had met with over and again. "I just want to see my text published, accessible to the public, but I don't want to pay for the printing." He asked me to give him one or two days to read it. Hagg Wahba talked about his books with the devotion and affection of someone speaking about members of his tribe. He knew the books thoroughly. I sat there opposite him, feeling his immense kindness and compassion engulf me. I sipped the anise slowly; I was in no hurry, and my frustration at having been turned away so many times was dissipating. Here was the hagg, ready to give my book a chance, although I had virtually confessed that he was my last hope. How had this meeting come about? When I started my career in journalism in 1955, aged 18, he was behind prison walls serving a five-year sentence. He was arrested in 1954 because he had been paying rent owed by the families of imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood members. When I came back from the United States in 1966 to continue my very short-lived career as a professional journalist, he was back in prison with many others. He was released in 1972, when I could no longer publish in Egypt; I had been arrested, imprisoned, exiled and was utterly disillusioned. It was thanks to the single manuscript he had published in early 1981 (the book sold for 30 piastres) that I was able to meet this wonderful person. He likes to call himself Al-Kutubi Wahba (Wahba the bookseller). The glasses of anise are a fixture of any visit to his bookshop. I rarely visit him, though; when last I did, after a five-year absence, I noticed the ravages of age. His eyesight had dimmed, and his movements were slower, but his vivid spirit and spontaneous smile were the same. He is as passionate as ever; his mind is flooded by memories and his speech eloquent. I wonder how he looks in times of anxiety, bewilderment and distress, for I am sure he has seen some very hard times. Every time I meet him, no matter how long I have been away, I find everything in its place. The books stand in neat rows on the shelves and the floor is impeccable. One time, though, he pointed to the shelves and said nonchalantly: "All this was burnt and destroyed..." But suddenly he stops and changes the subject. The smile returns to his face; the glass of anise is never empty. After the usual greetings, he resumes the conversation in the same quiet, polite tone, as though it had never been interrupted. He uses the softest terms to give meaning to the most brutal, gruesome events. When at a loss for words, he will simply fall silent. Only this year, I sat opposite him with a tape recorder on his desk. " I want the story of your life." I had come to understand the personality of the kutubi, of someone whose passion is to safeguard and promote Arab culture and learning. I saw no computer, only a cell phone near his son Hussein, who sat at an enormous manual typewriter working on some correspondence regarding the dispatch of an order of books. The bookshop has remained an unpretentious place, full of the fragrance of past days, true to its traditions, values and methods of operation. "In our business," he says, smiling, "we strive for nothing more than satr [protection] -- to have a blameless record, pay our dues, run into no debt: our standard is to live strictly within our means!" Hagg Wahba was born in Al-Khalifa to Cairene parents in 1923. His father owned a bakery in Abdin and his mother had an education, which placed her above many women of her generation. Wahba was their firstborn. There were many children, but only he and his sister Zeinab survived. No wonder he was so pampered by his doting parents. He was close to his mother, who was a devout woman, especially knowledgeable in religious matters, and who took him to the kuttab (Qur'anic school) of Sheikh Ayoub in Al-Khalifa when he was five. There, he remembers: "We used to write in ink on a sheet of tin; then we advanced to writing on slate with a reed. When we grew up, we used to write the vocalisation signs of Qur'anic texts in red ink..." He then moved to the kuttab of Sheikh Abdel-Maqsoud, where he learned ten complete sections of the Qur'an. His father had dreamed that Wahba would be his right hand at the bakery, but the young boy never aspired to such a future for himself. Instead he took up a job at a bookshop, as suggested by one of his father's friends. "This is how I came to work with Sheikh Rashid Reda at Dar Al-Manar on Al-Insha' Street..." Wahba was only 10, in 1933, when he joined the labour force. But "in those days, at ten, a lad was considered a man." He was responsible for helping Sheikh Zaki, who managed the bookshop. Sheikh Rashid, he explains, lived above Dar Al-Manar; "he was tall, with a fair and reddish complexion, commanded respect, and was more than a father to me, or in modern terms was the spiritual father of us all. The books were quite limited in the '20s or '30s. Among the works were Al-Wahi Al-Mohamedi, the interpretation of the Qur'an in 12 volumes and books by Sheikh Mohamed Abduh." Hagg Wahba remembers that Sheikh Zaki once refused to deliver an order of books. "Why didn't you deliver this man's order?" inquired Sheikh Rashid. Sheikh Zaki tried to explain that the person who had placed the order had once before taken a book and failed to pay its price. On hearing this, Sheikh Rashid shook with anger and said: "Do you wish to send me to hell, Sheikh Zaki? Do you withhold knowledge until you obtain its price? Have I harmed you so much that you wish to hurt me?" He sent the book off immediately. Recounts Hagg Wahba: "We all stood trembling, not out of fear but out of love. We could not stand his anger. The policy of the house has always been never to deny knowledge to him who seeks it." In 1933, Sheikh Rashid Reda was 68. Wahba was learning the trade and receiving two piastres every Friday. "I indulged, buying sugar cane and candy with the money." But Wahba's father had other plans: he wished his son to learn a craft. After one and a half years at the bookshop, just before Sheikh Rashid's death, Wahba went to work at another bookshop and print shop owned by Mustafa El-Babi El-Halabi on Al-Tablita Street in Al-Azhar. When a print shop worker died after his galabiya had got caught in the press, however, Wahba's father got scared, and had him transferred to the letter-setting section. "I learned it all: each letter has four different forms. After six months, I was transferred to the binding section. Moving from one section to the other proved useful later in life. At the Halabi print shop, I learned to be accurate and precise, qualities which were to prove invaluable in my life with books." The head of the team of editors and proofreaders was Sheikh Ahmed Saleh. Correction work focused on books of hadith (Prophetic sayings) and turath (classics). "Before beginning his work, Sheikh Saleh used to perform the ablutions and pray, then produce a bottle of some fragrance and whisk on a few drops as a final touch to his toilette before handling such venerable texts. We children used to stretch out our hands for a drop or two of the cologne, and he never denied it to us. Seeing these preliminary rituals, Hagg Ali El-Ashqar, the head printer, used to yell: 'Sheikh Ahmed, you are delaying our work,' but Sheikh Ahmed insisted that he would not approach the sayings of the Prophet without being fit and scented so that God would protect him from committing errors. This was characteristic of the man in his approach to a work he revered, and it taught me to prepare myself fully for whatever I was about to do." Hagg Wahba's wages were now four piastres a day. He loved binding, which he regarded as both artistic and creative. After three years at Halabi's, he had grown older and more experienced. He came to Abdin and entered another printing and publishing house: Dar Al-Nashr wal-Ta'lif, owned by Mohamed Mursi Hassan. "It stood exactly where my present bookshop is today," the hagg recalls. "My pay had increased to 10 piastres a day or LE3 a month, and I was already a suited and tied effendi. I was responsible for organising work in the press as well as sales in the bookshop. At the time, there were no companies that undertook the sale of books alone. Mu'allem Maher Farrag monopolised Ataba, which was the best market for books at the time. He dealt with 15 sales agents. The mu'allem was usually a thug, whose headquarters was some coffee house, and who used his abusive tongue extensively to intimidate sales agents who urged him to pay for the books he bought." Hagg Wahba worked for Hagg Mohamed from 1936 to 1941. By 1943, he had saved LE40, which his mother kept for him, and bought a small showcase, one and a half metres high by one metre wide, at 176 Mohamed Ali Street. The showcase cost LE25 including shelves, and he bought books for the remaining LE15. He registered his little stall, and started to forge a place and a name among bookshop owners. "Only my mother knew that I treated myself as though I was an employee, allowing myself only LE6 a month. I devoted myself totally to my work, from eight in the morning till midnight. I established good relations with everyone I dealt with." In 1951, he bought the bookshop where we sit today, but kept the one on Mohamed Ali Street as well. With that achieved, he married a girl his mother had chosen, who gave him four children. It is this background -- his mother's influence, even more than the classic works of Arabic literature, and that of writers of his time like Sheikh Rashid Reda, discussions with other scholars on literary and religious subjects, and his visits to the shrine of Al-Hussein in times of trouble -- that have shaped Hagg Wahba's character. In 1941, he met Sheikh Sayed Sabeq and Khaled Mohamed Khaled, then a student at the secondary school of Al-Azhar. Khaled is of Wahba's generation, Sheikh Sayed Sabeq a little older. In 1946, the Muslim Brothers opened a centre opposite the bookshop. There was already a temperance society in place, headed by Ahmed Ghalwash. Hagg Wahba took Khaled Mohamed Khaled and went to meet Hassan El-Banna. When Nuqrashi Pasha was assassinated in December 1948, after having banned the Brotherhood, Wahba was arrested, but released the next day. He was to have been transferred to the prison in Al-Tor, "but my mother went to some high-ranking officer at the Ministry of the Interior who was a member of the Saadiya Committee [affiliated to Saad Zaghlul's political party] and who gave her his card. She put this inside the food she brought me in prison. The prosecuting attorney was known to be an insolent man, so before he could question me, I gave him the card and told him its owner was my relative. Thus was I saved from prison in 1948." In 1950, the Wafd government released the Muslim Brothers from prison. Meanwhile, Khaled Mohamed Khaled had published his book Min Huna Nabda' ("We Begin Here"). He printed 2,000 copies and gave them all to Hagg Wahba to distribute. Twenty days later, hardly two or three copies had been sold. It was not until an article was published in Akhbar Al-Yom attacking the book that the 2,000 copies flew off the shelves. Hagg Wahba also distributed Sheikh El-Ghazali's book Min Huna Na'lam ("We Know Here"), which attacks Khaled's arguments regarding the separation of Shari'a and state. He has no first editions left, however -- not a single page of any of the controversial works he published. "This is my third bookshop: the two previous ones were seized on 7 August 1965. At nine o'clock one morning, seven or eight officers under the command of Ahmed Rasekh, the head of the Cairo Police Office, walked into the bookshop. They split up into three groups: one remained at the bookshop, another headed for the store-room, where Cinema Ideal stands today, and the third went to my house around the corner. They searched the house, spilled the food and created havoc. They turned the store-room upside down, and the officers who searched the bookshop tore the books to pieces, and destroyed my office files. Two days later, I was arrested." He remembers his first time in prison (1954-60) as "not so bad, as compared to the second, which was terrible. When I was released from prison in 1960, my business seemed to boom as never before, as though God had wished to compensate me for what I had endured. The cobwebs were dusted away and the empty shelves were restocked with valuable books as in former times. Orders from abroad poured in as though mine was the only bookshop in Egypt." During the period, Hagg Wahba came to know Sayed Qutb. They were introduced in 1963, when Qutb was released before the end of his term after serving a 10-year sentence (1954-63). Hagg Wahba published nine or 10 of Sayed Qutb's books (previously he had published 18 works by his brother Mohamed). "Among the books I printed for Sayed was Fi Zilal Al-Qur'an ("In the Shade of the Qur'an"). In its initial edition, it was a relatively small book, but Sayed revised the text and elaborated on it during his prison years from 1960 to 1963. He used to smuggle the manuscript out of prison to my bookshop so that the second edition could appear in comprehensive form. From 5-9pm every day, I revised and checked the manuscript with Mohamed until it finally appeared in eight large volumes. When Sayed Qutb was released in 1963, we had already established strong ties in this manner." In 1965, Sayed Qutb's house was searched while he was away in Ras Al-Barr. When he returned, he sent a written complaint objecting to the search, which took place during his absence. Two days later, Mohamed was arrested; Sayed came by the bookshop, in disguise, to say good-bye. "After that day, 5 August 1965, I never saw him again." During his prison years (1954-60 and 1965-72), Wahba Hassan Wahba was an inmate in most of Egypt's prisons. "It was a rich period in terms of human relations. I came in close contact with an intellectual elite: Sheikh Youssef El-Qaradawi, Sheikh Mohamed El-Ghazali, Sheikh El-Bahiy El-Kholi... Sometimes things went smoothly for the inmates: we were allowed to bring in books, and to write. But things could suddenly change, and we were denied all such privileges and exposed to bouts of harsh discipline." As he speaks, his face clouds over, and he breaks suddenly into tears. He has remembered the day the court condemned him to five years in prison. He had sent a message to his mother; but when she heard the news of his imprisonment, she died. A month later, his father followed her to the grave. As I leave the bookshop, I look back at Hagg Wahba. He has dried his eyes, regained his composure and is smiling serenely. As I wait for a taxi, I watch him anxiously. He walks slowly towards his home, around the corner. photos: Randa Shaath
