Appointed minister of culture in this week's new government, writer and academic Gaber Asfour has long modelled himself on pioneering Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, explains Osama Kamal Gaber Asfour often speaks of his admiration for Taha Hussein, the Egyptian writer who was also a pioneer of modern Arabic literature and of modern education. Since he read Hussein's autobiography Al-Ayyam (The Days) as a teenager, Asfour has made it his goal to follow in the great man's footsteps. Born in Mahala Al-Kobra in 1944, Asfour soon became active on the cultural scene in his city, befriending writers and poets including Ahmed El-Huti, Mohamed Saleh, Mohamed Farid Abu Saada, Said El-Kafrawi, Mohamed El-Mansi Qandil, Garallah El-Helw and Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid. After a brief involvement with the Muslim Brothers, Asfour became a sworn leftist. In college, he studied Arabic literature with Soheir El-Qalamawi, Shawki Deif and Abdel-Aziz El-Ahawani. He was top of his class and once had the chance to read works of classical Arabic poetry aloud to his hero Taha Hussein. The latter told him that he would be a prominent literary critic. Asfour got a government job in Upper Egypt after graduation, which disappointed him as he had graduated with honours and expected a teaching job at Cairo University. He complained to president Gamal Abdel-Nasser in a letter and was transferred to Cairo University, where he proceeded to earn a PhD degree in 1973. By that time, Asfour had already written a thesis and a book about Taha Hussein, and he was a pallbearer at Hussein's funeral. A prolific writer, Asfour has written numerous books including Artistic Images (1980), Poetic Concepts (1996), Time and the Novel (1999), Literary Criticism (2002) and Cultural Papers (2003). He won the Ministry of Culture Award for Best Book in Literary Studies in 1984, and there have also been many other prizes, including the Kuwait Foundation Award for Best Book in Literary Studies (1985), the International Book Fair Award for Best Book in Humanistic Studies (1995), the Tunisian Presidential Cultural Medal (1995), the Sultan Ben Ali Al-Oweis Award (1997), the Arab Woman Shield (2003) and the Gaddafi International Prize for Literature (2009). Two of these awards grated against the sensibilities of some Arab intellectuals, who could not understand why a prominent scholar like Asfour would accept awards from dictatorial regimes, such as those in Libya and Tunisia. Asfour defended his decision to accept the awards by saying that the awards were not given by the leaders, but by the nations. Asfour chaired the Arabic Department of the Faculty of Literature at Cairo University from 1990 to 1993. He was also secretary-general of the Higher Council for Culture from 1993 to 2007. During his tenure at the Higher Council of Culture, he was instrumental in persuading the country's intellectuals to collaborate more closely in the various activities of the Ministry of Culture. This, too, irritated a certain section of the intelligentsia, which would have preferred to see Asfour work outside the boundaries of officialdom. His position, by contrast, was that working for the government was a way of keeping Islamist extremists at bay. Asfour founded the National Council for Translation and ran it from 2007 till 2011, when he was named minister of culture in the current cabinet. This was the last straw, Asfour's critics now say, unable to understand why he would accept a cabinet post at a time when people are still struggling for regime change. Asfour himself has not commented. He has always said that his role model is Taha Hussein, who was both a minister and a liberal icon. Now Asfour, too, is a minister, but can he still claim to be a liberal?
