He is the Egyptian thinker who took after his great counterparts, such as Al-Aqqad, Taha Hussein and Salama Moussa. He has always defended human rights and freedom. And he always made the best of the margin of freedom that was available for him. I have known him throughout the last 25 years of his life. I have even known him before that, when I was president of the student union of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science. I invited him at the time for a cultural event. That day, he told a young poet who was enthusiastically defending the politics of the sixties that he should lower his tone a bit. I met him again in the sixties when Dr. Osama el-Baz, head of the diplomatic training institute, asked him to lecture us on certain intellectual and political issues. Since then, I have always admired his deep views on Egyptian contemporary political thought. I read his books on the Arabic language and on the social and cultural history of modern Egypt. I also read his famous article on the Egyptian royal family and his meeting with Queen Nazly, the mother of King Farouk, when she was in her voluntary exile in the United States with her daughters and Riad Ghali before they passed away tragically. He was ousted by the Free Officers Movement when they purged the university professors two years after the revolution. Yet that professor of English Literature remained active in the cultural life outside the university, carrying the lamp of enlightenment in the darkness of backwardness. He is Louis Awad, who visited me in London in the early seventies. I still remember how he liked to drink rose wine. He once told me that Nasser's regime was spying on churches. When I told him that the same happens with mosques, he said because Nasser is not sectarian but rather totalitarian. I also remember our discussions about the role that Gamal Eddin el-Afaghani played as an Iranian spy working for the British intelligence. Awad was always clear and frank. This is reflected in his memoirs about his relative who had converted from Christianity to Islam and how this was a tragedy for his family. He also said that his brother Ramsis, a distinguished university professor, felt denigrated by the eminence of Louis. I later discussed this with Ramsis, who only showed every respect for his brother. Awad's wife had many pets at home. Apparently he was escaping from this into the realm of culture, contributing vastly to Arab literature in an unprecedented manner. I did not hesitate to write the introduction of a book on Awad, as I have highly respected this man. I will never forget when I used to visit him in hospital where he was suffering from a brain tumor. He never stopped smiling despite that. He is a milestone in our cultural and intellectual life.
