Obituary: True to his roots (1936-2011) Like a child looking out of a train window kept an open eye and mind about the world around him. For 75 years the renowned cartoonist dreamed of a better life for all Egyptians, of a world where people could speak without fear, and of a day when the country was finally democratic. Hegazi was an intensely private man who for the last 25 years shunned the limelight. His death, early this week, has deprived the country of an exceptional cartoonist. Hegazi was born in Alexandria in 1936 to a family of 11 children. His father, a train driver, used to take him along on the train. "In summertime my father would take me with him in the train to many governorates. I saw all of Egypt through the window of a train. Father was a quiet man, just like me, but sometimes he would speak about the conditions at work. He once told me that he was punished for getting the train into the station two minutes late." Growing up in Tanta, Hegazi would be invited to the homes of better-off friends. He found it difficult to comprehend why his family was poor while others lived well. In high school he developed a passion for painting. "I became very enthusiastic and used to draw expressive paintings. I didn't have any interest in cartoons then." After high school Hegazi went to Cairo to study at the College of Fine Arts. Teenagers expected their families to help them move ahead, but Hegazi didn't want to burden his family. He took the train to Cairo without saying a word. In a note he left behind he told the family that he didn't want to be a financial burden and intended to support himself. This was 1954, and Cairo was abuzz with revolutionary zeal. Hegazi started offering his paintings to various magazines. In 1956 he started working regularly for the magazine Rose El-Youssef, where he met the country's top cartoonists: Salah Jahin, George Bahgori, and Ragaei. He also contributed a comic strip called Tanablet Al-Sultan (Couch Potatoes) to the children's magazine Samir. Having joined Rose El-Youssef Hegazi became a keen commentator on public issues, mixing lighter drawings with deeper analysis. Friends say he was puzzled by his success, intrigued that his drawings would be met with such adulation. In the one book he wrote Hegazi said that he didn't expect that the childish creatures that populated his drawings would bring him so much acclaim. But even back in Tanta, where the family lived, his art teacher knew Hegazi had potential. His paintings were used to decorate the school walls, and other teachers would come to the art class to watch him paint. At school Hegazi's paintings were realistic, almost academic in style. At home he experimented with a more flowing, less exact style. He didn't know such painting could be taken seriously until one day he picked up Rose El-Youssef and saw the work of cartoonist Abdel-Samie, who was railing against the excesses of the British and the king. He later said that Abdel-Samie's work influenced him and gave him a sense of purpose. An avid reader since childhood, Hegazi would check out books from a used bookstore on Bahr Street in Tanta. Am Ibrahim, the owner, had something of a rental operation going on. If you returned a book you'd read, you could exchange it for a piastre or so. Recalling this period, Hegazi says that he read books that he could not understand, from East and West, about heritage and contemporary literature, on history and philosophy. He didn't understand what he was reading but continued anyway. Later in life he re-read some of these books and discovered that he finally understood what they were about. When he read the poetry of Bayram Al-Tonsi for the second time, Hegazi was moved. "The imagery I found in his poetry shook me to the core. I felt that there was someone out there who understood the conditions of poor people and wrote about them. I was so in love with Bayram's poems that I read them every day." Hegazi was proud to work at Rose El-Youssef. He said that he learned art "from all those who came before me and who followed". He was particularly fond of Salah Jahin, who he said had engineered a "quantum leap" in Egyptian cartoon. When Ahmed Bahaaeddin became board chairman of Dar Al-Helal he asked Hegazi to work for the children magazine Samir. At the time most children's magazines used foreign comic strips, translating the dialogue into Arabic and altering the names of the characters to give them a local flavour. Hegazi changed that, producing Egypt's first graphic stories. Hegazi recalls a story from his school days, one that illustrates East-West relations at the time. "Do English people learn Arabic, just as we learn English?" Hegazi asked. "Why would they do that?" the teacher shot back. The teacher's words infuriated Hegazi. "I felt frustrated and humiliated. His answer still makes me mad. This is why I started drawing the first serialised pictorial story for children, drawing on Egyptian ideas. It was called Tanablet Al-Sultan." From then on Hegazi's work acquired ever greater subtlety. Instead of exaggerating and shocking he would offer real scenes that bordered on the bizarre, thus engaging his audience in the process of interpretation. In his cartoons Hegazi commented on political, economic and social issues as they unfolded, consistently siding with the poor, even as the concept of poverty was changing. "The scene keeps changing for the cartoonist. There is no longer a pictorial vocabulary that clearly denotes social conditions... time was that a tabliya [low table] and a kerosene lamp were enough to denote poverty. Now this same social class owns VCRs and drinks 7UP. When you draw them, how can you refer to their poverty?" Cartoons are supposed to disturb, Hegazi used to say. He kept his ideas simple, witty, but left a rough edge, something austere and rugged that sets his work apart from that of other cartoonists. The aim of the cartoonists, he maintained, was not to make people laugh but to make them think. Even today, when you look at the cartoons he drew 30 years ago, sharpness lies just beneath the surface, a scalpel of wit that is about to excise our innocence. Then he quit. At the top of his career, with fans clamouring for his next cartoon, he simply withdrew from public life. For a while he barricaded himself in his flat in Manial, rarely going out, and hardly keeping up with friends. He mostly stopped drawing, although he would occasionally publish a cartoon in the magazines Al-Arabi and Aladdin. Months passed, then years, and one day Hegazi decided to leave Cairo and go back to Tanta, his birthplace. He packed his luggage and went to see his landlord. The conversation between the two is worth retelling. "I'm going back to Tanta and came to give you the key to the flat. I no longer need it," Hegazi told the landlord. "Fine, give me two days and I will get the money. Your flat must worth about LE200,000 now." "Man, just take the key. Did I give you any money when I rented the flat? Just take the key back," said Hegazi, turning down the khelew [key money] to which he was entitled. Hegazi took the train back to Tanta, where he was raised and where he first entertained dreams of moving to Cairo and winning fame and fortune. He had achieved his dreams. Already, he was a legend. Hegazi, says cartoonist Rakha, was the Sayed Darwish of cartoon. Zohdi, another cartoonist, said that "Hegazi was the benchmark of the trade". "If you're in the business you always compare yourself with him." Salah Jahin, another legend in the world of cartoons, used to postpone his own to publish those of Hegazi in their place. Appreciated by his peers, cherished by his audience, Hegazi was more than a cartoonist. He was a sage who could look into the human soul and see what the rest of us miss. By Nader Habib
