Amal Donqul is widely regarded as the poet who foresaw that the response to an autocratic regime would be popular resistance. Osama Kamal attended a poetry reading to mark the anniversary of his birth Had the poet Amal Donqul still been with us today, he would have celebrated his 71st birthday on 23 June. As it was Donqul hardly ever noted the day in his lifetime, but his friends and fans have been marking it ever since he died of cancer in a Cairo hospital on 21 May 1983. Donqul's last collection of poetry, published pothumously, was Papers of Room 8, reflections written from the confinement of his hospital room. This volume has entered the annals of Egyptian literary history. He is especially remembered in 2011 as a prophet of an uprising that he anticipated many decades ago. Donqul's life and work was commemorated last month at the House of Poetry, the renovated house of Sitt Wasila in al-Azhar. The event began with a showing of Atiyat al-Abnoudi's documentary film Talk in Room 8. The film, released in 1990, reviews Donqul's life and shows the only remaining video shots of the poet. Donqul gave another interview with poet Farouq Abu Shousha on the TV show Omsiya Thaqafiya (Cultural Night), but recordings of the episode have been lost. The film includes interviews with family members at Donqul's birthplace in the village of Qalaa, near Qena in Upper Egypt. In it his mother Nagafa speaks about the poet's childhood and his love of reading, and how, unlike other children, he spent long hours of solitary contemplation. In one emotive scene she leans on Donqul's grave, her black robes contrasting with the dazzling whiteness of the cemetery. Silence descends around her, and the solitude for which the poet once yearned is complete. Donqul once said that poetry was not just his life, but his death as well. Interviewed in the film, shortly before he died, Donqul talks about his early life; what he read, how he worked, and what poetry, art, and freedom meant for him. He tells how he left Qalaa and went to Cairo, where he was seduced by the big city but also found it tough and unrelenting. His first stay in Cairo lasted only 18 months, but his second in 1962 lasted for the remainder of his life. He and his close friend, the poet Abdel Rahman El-Abnoudi, called themselves "invaders" of Cairo, a reference to their southern beginnings as well as to the unyielding nature of urban life. The film has plenty of shots of Donqul with his family and friends: Abla El-Roweini, Abdel Rahman El-Abnoudi, Abdel-Mohsen Badr, Mona Anis and Asmaa, the small daughter of the novelist Yehya El-Taher Abdallah (1938 "" 1981). Abdallah was the third "invader". He too hailed from the south, lived hard, and died in a freak accent just two years before Donqul passed away. Both men died at the age of 43. The film's director Atiyat El-Abnudi was too ill to attend the event, but when I interviewed her a few months ago she told me that Talk in Room 8 was born out of a desire to document the artists of her generation, the generation of the 1960s. The shock of Abdallah's sudden death was one of the things that prompted her to make this film. Speaking after the screening, the poet Helmi Salem recalled the descriptions given to Donqul during his life. He was called, among other things, a "poet on the line of fire", "prince of rejection", a "poet of national certainty". Salem, who noted that Donqul's work anticipated the 25 January uprising, read out these prophetic lines from the "Abu Nawwas Papers": Ask not if the Qur'an is created or eternal Ask if the sultan is a thief or a demigod Ahmad Abdel-Moati Hegazi read parts of his own poem "Southern Train". Published in 1985, the poem describes some of the common experiences he shared with Donqul. Donqul was a great admirer of Hegazi and thought of him as his mentor. Donqul once said that Hegazi taught him the "colour of letters". Hegazi, however, denies being a mentor for Donqul or any others. "I wasn't a mentor of Amal Donqul or any of his generation of poets," he says. "They read my work and I read theirs and I learnt from them and they learnt from me. A poet learns from all his surroundings, from the entire legacy of art." The poet Farouq Abu Shousha read out the hugely popular "Stone Cake", which Donqul wrote immediately after the government's crackdown on the January 1972 student demonstrations. This is a particularly relevant poem now, since its tone and imagery resonate with the images repeated 39 years later in the same location. "Motannabi Diary", a poem inspired by the turbulent times the poet Motanabbi spent in the service of the 10th-century Egyptian ruler Kafour El-Ikhshidi, was read by Mohamed Ibrahim Abu Senna. In this poem Donqul draws parallels between Motanabbi's life and his own. "No Reconciliation," delivered by Sameh El-Soreiti, is undoubtedly one of Donqul's best remembered poems. It was written in protest to the Camp David accords and was widely read across the Arab world. Mohamed Soliman read out sections of this evocative poem The Psalms of A, D one of the less known works by Donqul. Listen to these uncannily prophetic lines: The wall is harsh, Blocking the sunrise, We'll spend our whole lives, Drilling a hole, For the light to reach future generations, But if it weren't for the wall, How could have we appreciated, The wonder of unfettered light?
