Galal Amin's second autobiography Rahik al-Omr is much more than a personal autobiography by one of Egypt's most prominent Egyptian economists, says Rashda Ragab Rahik al-Omr (Nectar of the Years) covers two thirds of the 20th century from the viewpoint of Galal Amin, a leading political and economic analyst, economics professor and author of Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Published by Dar Al-Shorouk earlier this year, this is a personal autobiography that also offers readers a fascinating insight into the heart of Egypt through some of the spheres with which Amin has been closely connected, including education and women's rights. Amin writes in a very appealing, narrative style. His childhood seems to have been a happy one: he was fortunate in receiving the best possible education then available as a student at the Model School, which had a very low teacher/ pupil ratio. Exams were designed to make an assessment of the students' understanding of lessons, not of learning by rote. Students at the school had an opportunity to practice sports, music, and acting -- Amin once played the role of Napoleon Bonaparte in a school play that took almost a year of rehearsals. He later went on a school trip to Idco, a small village in the north- western Delta, where he and fellow-students carried out field research on the issues that residents of the village faced in their daily lives. Amin, who has the eye of an analyst, compares the kind of education he received with that of his own children 30 years later when the family returned from the United States and settled in the relatively quiet suburb of Maadi. He chose to send his children --Dania, Tamer and Ahmed -- to Victory College, the best of the nearby English-speaking government schools. Unfortunately, however, his children were deprived of the chance of a good education: students at Victory College did not have the opportunities for activities and school trips that he himself had enjoyed at school a generation before. Moreover the school rented a large part of its huge playground to the American school nearby so as to raise money. Amin remembers only one occasion on which his son was asked to produce an artistic work for the school's art exhibition. To the consternation of the family, other parents bought ready-made works of art which they labeled with the names of their children, and at the end of the day their son and his handmade piece lost out. After choosing three or four vivid anecdotes to illustrate his children's school life, Amin concludes with an unexpected comparison with the level of education received by his grandchildren, Sherif and Lara, who are enrolled in the American School in Maadi. There they enjoy the best possible international education, in which they practise abundant activities and have the chance of foreign travel for music and sporting competitions. And since their mother is a clerk at the school there are no school fees to pay. However, Amin says that this comes at such a hard price. Both of his grandchildren take private Arabic lessons and can hardly read Arabic at all. They would not have needed to pay this price if Egypt had maintained good education levels in government schools. In his 461-pages book Amin, the youngest of eight children, gives a flawless portrayal of the social position of women in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century. In so doing he keeps a close eye on the personal experiences of his mother, sisters, and female colleagues. Amin's own father, he reveals, would have wished his mother to be more beautiful. His father Ahmed Amin confided this to his unpublished dairy. When Amin wrote these words after keeping the diary for more than 50 years, he had to face a good deal of controversy on a very sensitive and personal issue. Yet he regarded it as a very honest human desire at a time when married couples hardly saw each other before marriage. Women were rarely educated. And even if they were, they had almost no chance of working outside the home. Hence, his mother's sole source of pride was her children; they were a guarantee against divorce, ill treatment by the husband, and poverty. That was why his mother had eight children. Her only aim was to keep them alive, an aim she tried to achieve through good food and healthcare. Amin compares her lot with the women of today who are bent on helping their children achieve at school and do well in sports and arts. Calling on his highly-developed sense of humour Amin remembers his mother's superstition about envy and the evil eye. Asked by a plumber whether all these children were hers, she avoided his evil eye by answering, "No, this blond boy's mother is an Italian." Amin had two sisters, Fatma and Naema. Fatma, the oldest, was a brilliant student who got obtained her high school certificate and in 1939 convinced her father to send her on a scholarship to Paris. Unfortunately World War II broke out and all female Egyptian students were obliged to return home. So Fatma ended up as a wife and mother just like her own mother and the rest. As a law student from 1951 to 1955, Amin found himself with a maximum of 10 fellow female students among about a thousand males. The girls therefore tended to be sensitive and shy, and would arrive in class only seconds before the entrance of the lecturers so as not to give the male students a chance to talk with them. A brilliant student and an ambitious professor, Amin writes frankly about the system of wosta (finding scholarships or jobs through the help of a favour, not through one's own efforts). The most poignant examples he gives are of his brother Mohamed and his brother-in-law Abdel-Aziz Ateeq. The former received a scholarship in London to study electronic engineering with the help of Taha Hussein, a friend of his father; the latter was appointed to the scholarships office in London and obtained a PhD. Later on, the 1952 Revolution placed very clear conditions on scholarships. Amin was himself a revolution scholarship student at the London School of Economics. Some of the shortcomings in the higher education system in the 1950s made Amin depressed and frustrated. One ambitious young university lecturer, for example, came home to Egypt after a six-year scholarship in London and was obliged to teach courses he know nothing about such as "African Economy" and "Cooperation". Such courses were chosen either by the dean of the faculty or the Egyptian Revolutionary Government to spread awareness of its mores, even though neither teachers nor students cared much about the subjects. Amin cites other reasons responsible for the inefficiency of returning young university teachers, and consequently for the weak educational level they provide to their students. Most important, and most destructive, is that their salaries are quite inadequate to maintain their expectations so they are forced to find other jobs in an attempt to increase their income. He also writes of Egypt's great dream of achieving greater world standing starting with the July Revolution; and of the unfulfilled schemes of a country he loves to the bone.
