“I live in a limbo. I want my days to pass fast. I am lost
now. I’ve spent all that I had on medicine and treatment. Fear haunts me…the
pain I have because of people has become more than all the pain that gathers in
my body,” said Mohamed Younis Al-Qadi to Al-Akhbar newspaper in 1966. Alone and
forgotten, he was incapacitated because of illness and poverty. He couldn’t
Imagine that his anthem Beladi, Beladi
(My country, my country) and his songs, like Aho Dah Eli Sar (That is what happened) and Ana Haweet (I fall in love), would be repeated by revolutionaries
in Tahrir Square 42 years after his death. Sung during the events of January 25th,
they were patriotic songs to strengthen the protesters’ determination and give
them steadfastness.
Beladi Beladi became the national anthem in 1978, when President
Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat asked Mohammed Abdel Wahab to compose a melody for the lyrics.
During the 18 days that started on the 25th, it was the first time
for a lot of Egyptians to hear the national anthem out of the context of morning
lines at school and sports games. Despite the fame of the anthem in Egypt, and no
matter how many people repeat it in the streets, the name of its author is
still forgotten in Egypt. He wrote hundreds of songs, poems, journalism
articles, and plays. He worked as a State Censor as a favor for someone
he called “a friend in the Ministry of the Interior.” Still, Egyptians are more
likely to remember singers’ and composers’ names than the names of authors.
He was born on 1 July, 1888 in Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, Cairo.
He was one of 9 children. His father was worked as a judge and loved literature
and poetry. The family moved to Minya, where his father used to host a literary
salon every Friday. In his bookcases, he
had thousands of books. Al-Qadi attended the weekly salon and took minutes as its
secretary. That is when he first started his hobby with literature and poetry,
as he recalled in many later interviews.
When Al-Qadi was 12 years old his family moved again
to his father’s hometown of Asyut, where he finished his primary education. He
moved back to Cairo to go to school at Al-Azhar. On his return to Cairo,
Al-Qadi tried to became a journalist. He met national leader Mustafa KamilPasha at Al-Hezb Al-Watani (National Party) and handed him his first article,
which Kamil published in Moayad newspaper. After some time, Al-Qadi became
responsible for simplifying Kamil’s speeches to the Egyptian public. Kamil wrote
his speeches and articles in French or complicated Arabic, and believed that
Al-Qadi could simplify his work to reach more people—more of those who couldn’t
understand his words, as he wrote them. Meanwhile, Al-Qadi helped found 14
associations to teach rhetoric, became an activist at Al-Azhar, and
participated in its first revolution from 1908-1909.
From 1905 to 1942, Al-Qadi wrote thousands of zajal, a traditional form of oral
strophic poetry written in a colloquial dialect, to be published in the
newspaper. He also wrote more than 2000 taqtuqaand muwashshah, many of which were
recorded with the most famous singers of the time, such as Mounira El Mahdeya,
Zaki Murad, and Abdul Latif Al-Banna. Al-Qadi also wrote over 58 musical,
social and comedic plays, almost all of which had political content. After some
of those plays, audience members went to the streets to protest against the British
occupation in Egypt. One of those plays, Kolaha
Youmen (It’s just a couple of days), was censored by the British occupation
authority 17 times because it contained “violent expressions against Great
Britain.” Al-Qadi himself was arrested 19 times.
From 1943 to 1953, Al-Qadi worked as a State Censor as
a favor for someone he called “a friend in the Interior Ministry.” The job was
the beginning of the end of his career; because of it, Al-Qadi was not allowed
to work in entertainment, so after a while he stopped writing to focus more on being
a censor. When he left his work, he was sick, and spent all of his money on treatment
until his death on 1 July 1969.
This article appeared in AlMasry AlYoum on 13 March 2013.
This article appeared in AlMasry AlYoum on 13 March 2013.