Obituary: Twin icons of the left Abdel-Azim Anis and Mahmoud Amin Al-Alim had much in common. For many of us who came to know them during the past decades, the two men seemed to be inseparable icons of the left. The two were born in the 1920s. And they left this world within days of each other. Anis and Al-Alim came from the same generation and the same class. They were the offspring of the generation of effendis who fuelled the 1919 Revolution, a generation of small merchants, artisans, farmers, teachers, clerics and clerks. Anis's father was a small-time contractor, and Al-Alim's was an Azhar teacher. The two parents instinctively knew that Egypt, once rid of British occupation, would need educated locals to run it. So the children were sent to Western-style schools in preparation for a career in the middle- and senior- management service, until then the exclusive dominion of British employees. The two would eventually qualify for enrolment at the Egyptian University, which was placed under government control in 1925 -- only two years after Anis was born and three years before Al-Alim came into this world. In their childhood, the two lived in homes where the 1919 Revolution was fondly remembered. Theirs was a time when the country fought for independence and prided itself in its constitution, a fruit of the 1919 Revolution. They grew up reading newspapers before moving on to books. Al-Alim had no trouble finding books in the library of his Azhar-educated father. Anis found ample reading material in the homes of his college-educated maternal uncles. Because both men were avid readers, they started frequenting the national library, Dar Al-Kutub, for an unlimited supply of knowledge. Eventually, they discovered the writings that shaped the conscience of the nation and paved the way for 1919. They read Lutfi Al-Sayed, Taha Hussein, Abbas Al-Aqqad, Salama Moussa, Ismail Mazhar, Georgi Zeidan, Yaqub Sarruf, Hafez Awad, Ahmed Amin, Ahmed Shawqi, Hafez Ibrahim and Khalil Motran. They followed with interest the intellectual debates of the 1930s. The country was trying to find its way, and the intelligentsia was abuzz with questions. Does Egypt need science more or literature? Does it need the West more or the East? Is it more suited for dictatorship or democracy? Is it more Arab or Pharaonic? What is the relation between religion and science? How to reconcile the theory of evolution with the holy books? When it was time for the two young men to decide what they wished to study in university, they would have probably preferred to study both science and philosophy simultaneously, but since inter-disciplinary studies were not an option, they had to choose. So Anis majored in mathematics while reading philosophy in his spare time. Al-Alim majored in philosophy, but wrote a doctoral thesis about philosophy and physics. In the early 1940s, when Egypt became a passageway for Allied troops, the generation of the 1920s came to realise that the 1919 Revolution had little to offer beyond the 1936 agreement. The country's independence was restricted by a military treaty with the British. The country had a semi-constitutional, semi- democratic system. And its people were plagued by poverty, illiteracy and disease. In Alexandria University, where Anis joined the Department of Mathematics of the Faculty of Science, and in Cairo University, where Al-Alim joined the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Literature, the future of the country was hotly debated. Their generation fell into three groups. One believed in the national liberal politics of the Wafd Party. Another, including the Muslim Brotherhood, dreamt of the purity of the times of the Muslim Caliphate. A third was ultra-nationalist, harking back to Pharaonic times. Young Egypt, a group that made no secret of its respect for the fascist and Nazi movements, adopted the slogan, "Egypt Above All". Marxist ideas, in their Stalinist interpretation, were making headway during the war years. Leninist ideas had expired with the disbandment of the first Egyptian Communist Party in 1923, two years after its formation. It was the kind of party that would attract a young romantic with great sympathy for the poor, someone whose family was only marginally better off than the impoverished classes, someone just like Abdel-Azim Anis. Unlike Mahmoud Amin Al-Alim, whose specialisation in philosophy led him to an excessively idealistic stance, the mathematically trained Anis slipped easily into Marxism, having familiarised himself with Engels' work. Anis threw himself headlong into the Egyptian communist movement during the late 1940s, recruiting followers, leading student demonstrations, and organising labour strikes. Like all men with a mission, Anis was a natural teacher, charismatic and persuasive, capable of encapsulating the most complex issues in simple phrases. He was lecturing everywhere, in the university, in the cells of a communist organisation, and in various communist-run cultural forums. He was to go on lecturing for the rest of his life. Even when Anis was imprisoned, he taught illiterate inmates how to read and write, gave evening lessons in statistics and pure mathematics, then wrapped up the night with a summary of a world-class novel. The attraction of communism having worn off because of the internal divisions of the movement, Anis left prison for the United Kingdom, where he continued his studies. He came back to Egypt to work for the university, where he still preached socialism but without joining any particular group. The two men met for the first time in 1953, by which time Al-Alim had developed a taste for leftist thinking. Their first meeting of minds was their questioning of the commitment of the 1952 Revolution leaders to democracy. Another was their need to reach out beyond the university to the general public. It is no coincidence that they wrote for the same publications, Rose El-Youssef and El-Masry in particular. The two lost their university jobs in the mid-1950s for calling on the army to go back to barracks during the March 1954 crisis. So they turned to fulltime journalism. Anis became an editor of Arab and international politics with the left-leaning newspaper Al-Masaa -- published by Khaled Mohieddin with special permission from Gamal Abdel-Nasser during the first honeymoon period (1956-58) between the revolution and the left. Al-Alim became editor-in-chief of Al-Risala Al-Gadida (The New Message), which was sponsored by the publishing house created by the revolution. During the second honeymoon period (1964-69) between the government and the left, the two men managed government-owned publishing houses. Al-Alim became chief executive of Akhbar Al-Yom, while Anis became senior manager at Dar Al-Kateb Al-Arabi. Despite their different attitudes to organised political work, the two managed to stay friends. Anis rejoined the Communist Party when it was unified in 1958, was arrested from 1959 to 1964, and swore off affiliation with communist groups after the latter disbanded and its members joined the Socialist Union as individuals. Al-Alim returned to organised political work when communist groups reappeared in the mid-1970s, and remained so involved until he died. Anis, who joined the Tagammu upon its formation in 1976, soon froze his membership over differences concerning the party's stand on Palestinian organisations. Whereas Al-Alim comes across as an orthodox communist in his theoretical works, he was flexible and remarkably pragmatic in his political views. In contrast, Anis was flexible in theory, but unbending in his political views. Their friend, Mohamed Sid Ahmed, says that the difference between the two men was similar to the difference between scientists who believe in the abstract and politicians who believe in the art of the possible. Salah Eissa
