GAMAL EL-GHITANI is fascinated by medieval Arabic literature, a fact that may help explain why most of his works are historical. He is the author of Al-Zini Barakat, an allegorical novel about Nasser’s police state that has been translated into several European languages.

For his assault on the regime of his day, El-Ghitani was thrown behind bars for five months in the 1960s; he remains an open critic of state censorship.

To speak about the future, I must be optimistic. I believe Egypt has profound cultural capabilities. Although the state is calling for privatization in all fields, it still deals with culture from a totalitarian perspective.

To save Egyptian cultural life, intellectuals must rely on themselves, as was the case in liberal Egypt before the 1952 revolution. This requires business leaders to support culture without self-interest. Also, the Ministry of Culture must be abolished and a Ministry of Antiquities established in its place.

Privatization will be the savior of Egypt’s culture. It is crucial to loosen the state’s grip on culture, because if matters remain as they are, I think intellectual life will get much worse. However, to be clear, one must admit that the Ministry of Culture is not solely responsible for this; the Ministries of Education and Information are also to blame.

At this point, Egypt’s intellectual life is in a peculiar condition. Our cultural policy relies on maintaining an outward show. I call it a policy based on delusions. For example, we insist on spending millions of pounds to hold the Cairo Festival for Experimental Theater every year, even though we do not have a theatrical movement. We organize lots of movie festivals while movie production has dropped from 150 movies a year two decades ago to 10-15 movies now. Policies based on parties and festivals do not produce culture; these policies have seen Egypt lose one of its primary advantages [in the Arab world]: its role as a leading center of culture.

Normally, cultural production relies on the medium and the environment. Cultural media include books, movies, audio records and their modern incarnations. All three branches have deteriorated over the last few years. Egypt was the spearhead of the translation process, but we have fallen behind in translation and the production of cultural heritage. Moreover, rising book prices discourage those who are financially squeezed mostly students from reading.

[First Lady Suzanne Mubarak’s] Family Library project is an exception, although it does not last the whole year and relies on reprinting old works.

Intellectual life is constrained by attempts to co-opt intellectuals instead of giving their talents free rein. Economic conditions and the absence of strong political movements facilitated these attempts. In the past, Egyptian intellectuals were always backed by political forces, I mean, political parties. Al-Aqqad was backed by Al-Wafd party, Taha Hussein by the Liberal Constitutional party, etc. Now, we don’t have political parties at all except for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today, Egyptian intellectuals play no [political] role. They have been marginalized in an insidious and intelligent way. In the past, intellectuals clashed with the government. Some of them were even imprisoned. This does not happen now; intellectuals speak, but nobody listens.

Egypt is rich in talent if privatization comes, perhaps people will listen again.  et