Ameera Fouad attends a retrospective of the father of caricature at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina An exhibition and seminar organised at Bibliotheca Alexandrina by the Armenian-Egyptian scholar Hrant Khachikyan, "The Caricature World of Alexander Saroukhan", was jam-packed with viewers and scholars of different ages, from different classes and walks of life. Saroukhan, perhaps Egypt's most famous cartoonist, has been very widely celebrated. Saroukhan (1898-1977), an Armenian-Egyptian born in Russia, began showing talent at the age of ten. By the time he moved with his family to Turkey (then the Ottoman empire), he was constantly absorbed in sketching and painting. There he studied in Catholic schools which provided him with the first opportunity to show his work in school magazines. During World War I , he worked as a translator from and to Russian , Turkish and English for the British Army, during which time he also published some of his drawings in Armenian magazines and newspapers like Le Gavroche. Due to the genocide and crimes against humanity practiced against the Armenians at that time, Saroukhan inevitably had to travel to Vienna where he joined the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. There he met the Egyptian intellectual Abdel-Qadir Al-Shinnawy, through whom in 1924 he finally moved to Egypt. Despite hardship, in 1925, he began to publish in The Armenian Cinema magazine; but it was meeting Mohamed Al-Tabei at an exhibition in Alexandria that proved a landmark in his life; they were to become fabled names for the rest of the 20th century. In 1928 he published in the extremely widespread weekly magazine Rose Al-Yusef, of which Al-Tabei was editor in chief. Saroukhan quickly made his name with such figures as al-masry afandi or Egyptian Effendi: the convincing embodiment of "the man on the street" wearing the tarboush and a kashmir vest, frequently involved in the anti-colonial struggle against the British. In 1934 he joined the staff of Akher Sa'a magazine, and in 1946 moved to Akhbar Al-Yom newspaper -- where he stayed till the end of his life. World War II marked a peak in his career; and in his pioneering book Cette Guerre he set a standard for the political cartoon: Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, A. J. P. Taylor, Churchill and Hirohito were among his many subjects. He depicted the adversities of war and the sorrow of its victims, paying meticulous attention to the details of body and soul. He is also well-known for the extremity of his reactions to events in caricature, which he did not only to make people laugh but also to drive home a strong and lasting point. At the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the corridor leading into the exhibition featured over ten portraits of important political figures in the history of Egypt. One cartoon from 1945, for example, is entitled "Egypt against Egypt in a football match"; it shows two football teams in a match fighting with each other, with the corresponding groups of supporters doing the same. Amazingly but with none of the attendant humour, the scene was enacted in real life last year in Port Said, when 74 Ahly supporters were killed in cold blood. Another, from 1948, shows the Arab League as a camel being driven by various Arab countries while Abdel-Rahman Azzam Pasha -- the head of the League at the time -- is sleeping. A third cartoon from 1969 shows a traffic jam so complex the only way out of it was to give people wings; this too is more relevant now than ever. In his 79 years Saroukhan perfected a style all his own, producing over 40 thousand drawings and publishing two books besides Cette Guerre: The Political Year 1938 and The Art of Caricature in Armenian. "Caricature," he said famously, "is not a satirical art. It is a social and political stand, stance and status."
