Osama Kamal meets a man who has devoted his life to writing, but has thus far seen few, if any, rewards He lives alone with his withering dreams, living in a shack on the banks of the Suez Canal. When that gets too uncomfortable, he also has the key to a lawyer's office on Sawahel Street in Port Said. His shack may be a humble abode, but it is also a Mecca for hundreds of people who go there to drink coffee and tea and listen to his stories. Writer Gamal Zahran acquired his waterfront shack in 2004. It doubles as a home and a coffeehouse, thus offering Zahran everything that a career in writing has failed to deliver. His novels have gone unpublished, his theatre plays unperformed, and his lyrics unsung. But at least he now has an audience, for his make-shift coffeehouse never fails to attract a small crowd of customers. These are people who like their coffee with a taste of art, and people who appreciate the sense of adventure he brings, along with the drinks, to their tables. Zahran lives in his own world, a world that is part fact and part fiction. When you talk to him, you see that he not only writes fiction, but also lives it. Born in 1960 to a family of limited means, Zahran grew up in Mayyet al-Raswa, an impoverished neighbourhood on the outskirts of Port Said. His mother sold tea and sandwiches from a stand near the house, he recalls. However, he did well at school, becoming a star student and scoring the highest marks in the sixth-grade finishing exams in the entire Gharbiyya governorate. Nevertheless, during tenth grade financial pressures drove him out of school and into odd jobs, mostly assisting his brother as a house painter. After a hard day at work, Zahran would come home and start writing. He would spend all night writing, at first using an empty ghee can as a desk. Later he was able to buy a desk, a proper wooden desk. He sold his first poetry collection to a man who published it under his own name, and used the cash to buy the desk. Such stories may be the product of an overactive imagination, or they may be true. At any rate, during the 1980s and 1990s a lot of poets living in Port Said began publishing lyrics that sounded quite similar in style and content, and Zahran claims that he was the ghostwriter of all of them. Having had little luck in his literary career in Port Said, Zahran decided to move to Cairo. It was a bold move, for he had no money, no job, and no family there. He says that sometimes he had enough money to sleep for a few nights in the cheapest Cairo hotels, but for the most part he slept in parks and bus stations. One day, he summoned up all his courage and walked into the American University in Cairo. He met a professor who listened to his story and in an act of compassion got him accepted onto a course on theatre writing. At that time, Zahran had a room in Ezbet al-Haggana in south Cairo. But it was a long trip to AUC, and he often slept in the bus station on Tahrir Square to save the traveling time and expenses. In his unpublished book, The Tramp and the Other Face of the Artistic and Literary Scene in Egypt, 1986-2006 (al-ghalban wa al-wagh al-akhar lil-wasat al-fanni wal-adabi fi misr, 1986-2006), Zahran offers tales about his encounters with well-known writers and artists, such as actor Abdel-Monem Madbouli, singers Samir al-Askandarani, Fatema Eid, and Ahmad Adawiya, composer Helmi Bakr, director Samir al-Asfouri, television host Mona Gabr, and dancer Fifi Abdou, among others. All of the encounters involve Zahran trying to sell them his work or solicit their advice. Their replies are often sarcastic. "You're trying to send me to an early grave," singer Samir al-Askandarani said after listening patiently to a song Zahran wrote about national unity. "Give me a second to get my gun and shoot you, bang bang," poet Abdel-Rahman al-Abnoudi told him with a smile, he says. Such people were the nicer ones. Composer Helmi Bakr kicked him out when he showed up without an appointment to offer him some lyrics. Others took pity on him, like producer Amir Sidhom, who got Zahran a job with the cleaning company at his theatre. A children's book publisher having listened to Zahran for a few minutes felt sorry for him and slipped him a 50-pound note. Zahran tried his luck with television, the theatre, and anyone who would listen. No one bought his work, but Zahran is convinced they stole his ideas. He claims that entire stage plays were plagiarised, while others were scavenged for sketches and punch-lines. Zahran cannot prove his claims, and he didn't copyright his scripts. In fact, sometimes he was so poor that he had to come up with creative ways to use his literary work. He burned the script for one television series to stay warm in winter, he says, when he was squatting in an abandoned building. Another script he traded with a bread salesman for a semita, or Egyptian pretzel. A third he lost in a laundry shop where he used to work. When Zahran speaks of the people who allegedly plagiarised his work, he gets very worked up. Several well-known song writers have stolen his work, he claims, mentioning the names of two or three. Desperate to see his work produced, Zahran once went to the office of an important lawyer, someone who specialises in cases involving major artists. He told the lawyer that he was ready to act as the fall guy for a well-known artist named in a narcotics case. He would go to prison instead, he said, if the artist in question promised to produce his television dramas. Zahran has been married, but only briefly. His passion for writing, or his failure to make money out of his writing, has stood in the way. He still writes everyday, even when he is tired and hungry, which is most of the time. The only things he needs are pen and paper, and the words just stream out of his pen. These words become poetry and theatre plays, novels and television series. They are words that everyone plagiarises, and no one wants to buy, he claims. Now back in his old city of Port Said, and following his mother's old profession, Zahran has no regrets and shows no sign of changing. He still writes every night and every time he is alone, anytime that he has pen and paper to hand, in fact.
