three egyptian retellings of the denshawai incident

Three Egyptian Retellings of the Denshawai Incident

Seth Thomas

In accordance with the requirements of the

Hanna & Wardah Sbait Scholarship for Improvised-Sung Poetry & Folk Songs

Portland State University

Department of World Languages & Literatures

Arabic Section: Langauges, Literature & Culture

All Rights Reserved © Seth Thomas

Denshawai Incident! 1

Contents:

Introduction.................................................................................................................................3

Tok Tok Magazine.......................................................................................................................5

Poems and Songs Inspired by the Denshawai Incident........................................................10

Conclusion...................................................................................................................................16

Words Cited.................................................................................................................................19


Introduction

The Denshawai Incident, haditha denshawai, has become a modern parable for Egyptian

nationalism. In 1906, five British officers shot domesticated pigeons in the Nile Delta

village of Denshawai for sport. A scuffle began between several villagers and the

officers, resulting in the shooting of an Egyptian woman. One British officer ran from

the fight and, collapsing most likely from heatstroke and a concussion, was found by a

villager who was then falsely accused of murder and killed on the spot. More official

and bureaucratic punishments were carried out in the following days, including jail

sentences, hard labor, lashings and four public hangings (Luke 278-279).

! The physical violence alone does not explain why this specific episode of

imperial violence has been a consistent source of artistic and political inspiration in

Egypt until today. England’s colonial adventures were bloody, whether behind the

scenes with protectorates and mandates or on the grander stages of invasion and

occupation. “Within two days,” writes Timothy Mitchell in Colonising Egypt, “most of

Alexandria was turned to rubble and ash” during British bombardment in 1882,

purposefully demonstrating to “an ‘Eastern population’” the efficacy and superiority of

British military technology (129). Yet the gunshots fired in the small village of

Denshawai continue to resonate today as loudly, if not more loudly, than the leveling of

a major city. It is precisely the small scale of the Denshawai Incident, coupled with the

inordinately violent response of Egyptian, Ottoman and British authorities, that gives it


such staying power and artistic malleability. Indeed, “this incident, like no other,

stimulated Egyptian nationalist feelings” (Abi-Hamad 11).

! Egyptian cartoonist Makhlouf published his retelling of the Denshawai Incident

in the new alternative comics magazine Tok Tok in November 2012, close to two years

after the start of the storied protest movement in Tahrir Square and halfway through

Mohamed Morsi’s shortened presidential term. That same month, Morsi famously

issued a decree freeing his decisions from any judicial oversight, sparking more

characteristically massive protests in downtown Cairo. The context within which

Makhlouf published his rendition may have been unique in Egypt’s history, but the

retelling of haditha denshawai has become an artistic tradition in Egypt. This essay will

closely examine Makhlouf’s comic, titled Hat Al-Hamam, its use of colloquial Egyptian

Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and English and its drawing style, as well as Tok Tok,

the alternative Egyptian comics magazine that published it. In the process this essay

will compare Hat al-Hamam’s context and content to pop star Mohamed Mounir’s

Denshawai from the 1970s, and Salah Abdel Sabour’s 1956 poem The Hanging of Zahran,

and why the Denshawai Incident still has such potency in Egypt today.


Tok Tok Magazine

! Founded by artists going by the names of Shennawy, Makhlouf, Andeel, Hicham

Rahmah and Tawfik, Tok Tok launched on January 9th, 2011 (Evans, Egypt Independent).

Two weeks later, on January 25th, thousands of protestors gathered in Tahrir Square,

leading to the removal of President Hosni Mubarak by the military after three decades

of rule. However coincidental the timing, it is fitting given the risque nature of the

comics in Tok Tok; subject matter that is often censored from other forms of

entertainment, including nudity, scenes depicting couples in bed, drug use and foul

language, is regularly printed in the quarterly.


Fig. 1: The shooting of Zahran’s wife from Hat al-Hamam. Notice the use of English in the first panel.

Fig. 2: Opening scene of an earlier comic in the same issue, Inta Hurr (You are Free). By Tawfik.

! Tok Tok takes its name from the tiny three wheeled taxis (or rickshaws) that are

ubiquitous in some parts of Cairo, emphasizing the magazine’s decidedly urban focus.

Each issue features fantastically illustrated cityscapes that capture, with both a loving

hand and a critical eye, a city famous for its noises, traffic, styles of architecture and

dress. Panels are filled with buildings and people, business signs and scooters fitting

entire families weaving through street vendors trash collectors, the zabaleen. All stories

are written in Arabic, often with a combination of Modern Standard Arabic, or fusha,

and the colloquial Cairene dialect, ‘amiyya. Makhlouf’s retelling of the Denshawai

Incident, Hat al-Hamam, simultaneously embraces and breaks from these traditions.

! Set in Denshawai in 1906, Makhlouf depicts the pigeon hunting and the fight

between the filahin and the British officers. He leaves the panel backgrounds mostly

empty, emphasizing the rural setting (fig. 1). This contrasts starkly with comics in the

same issue where the buildings become extensions of the characters, if not characters

themselves (fig. 2). Figure 1, which is page seven out of seventeen, is a pivotal scene in

the story: Zahran notices the pigeon hunt while performing the call to prayer and, after

arguing with the officers along with his wife, Zahran wrestles for control of the gun and

his wife is shot in the scuffle. In the bottom row of panels, we see the stunned faces of

the officer and Zahran before we see Zahran’s wife with the same exes for eyes as a

pigeon shot earlier in the comic. Here the story implies that Zahran’s wife died as a

result of the gunshot, whereas most retellings state she was injured. The pigeon in


between Zahran’s panel and his wife’s is a stylistic choice repeated by Makhlouf, most

effectively at the end of the story, to remind the reader of the original targets of the

British bullets, highlighting the absurdity of the human violence that resulted.

! As seen in figure 1, the comic makes use of a fair bit of English. In fact, the

majority of the dialogue in the first three pages is in English, albeit mostly short

outbursts that the reader doesn’t need to comprehend to understand the the storyline.

However, No other Tok Tok comic published to this point contained so much English.

The use of English is not so surprising, though, given the cosmopolitan and

international background of both the magazine itself and the cartoonist. The second

issue, published in April 2011, includes a two page spread of drawings that were

requested by the now infamous French satirical comics magazine Charlie Hebdo. The

drawings consist of Coptic Christians and Muslims protesting in solidarity, protestors

holding Facebook shaped ‘weapons’ pointed at the army, and one of Hosni Mubarak in

just his underwear, a reference to “the emperor has no clothes.” In the wake of the

January 2015 massacre of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, Makhlouf and fellow cartoonist

Anwar, published an article in the major Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (where

both have worked as political cartoonists), vigorously defending the French magazine

and condemning the attacks. It “wasn’t well received” (Guyer).

! Returning to the comic’s linguistics, Hat al-Hamam is an excellent representation

of Arabic’s well-known diglossia. The narration uses fusha, the dialect of Modern



Fig. 3. From page 2. Translation of the Arabic: Major Coffin went out with Captain Paul to practice his hobby of hunting pigeons.

Fig. 4. From page 5. Translation of the Arabic:Panel 1: BANG BANGPanel 2: You son of a bitch!Panel 3: What are you doing here, sir?!Panel 4: Hunt somewhere else, my brother...Panel 5: Shut up, peasant!

(For an entertaining but not necessarily academic discussion on the possible origins of the archaic swear word “الفرطوس”, see this forum: http://forums.fatakat.com/thread1075198)

http://forums.fatakat.com/thread1075198




Standard Arabic reserved primarily for writing and formal speeches, while the dialogue

among Egyptians takes place in their colloquial dialect, ‘amiyya. When the British

soldiers do speak Arabic, it is almost always in the imperative form giving orders to the

residents of Denshawai, or their dialogue is even transliterated into English to

emphasize the foreignness of the soldier’s accent, as seen in figure 4.

! And we see the diglossia represented within the dialogue of the Egyptian

characters, too, as in figure 5. After Zahran has righteously punched one of the

offending officers, Makhlouf draws a simultaneously tender and ironic panel with

Zahran striking a proto-Nasser nationalist pose. And like Nasser (and indeed political

discourse in the region in general), Zahran makes use of semantic repetition,

heightening the sense that he is giving a speech. In both speech bubbles he begins his

points “wa idha kanit...”, leading into “lazem t’arrifu inna...” before concluding with the

very emphatic, and very colloquial, “mish.” While none of the words used in figure 5 are

purely fusha, some of the terms (such as “idha”) are less common in colloquial. “Mish”,

on the the hand, is never used in fusha. Nasser would take advantage of Arabic’s

diglossia and switch to colloquial Egyptian phrases in order to “establish intimacy with

his audience” (Shunnaq 213). Shunnaq argues that a translation of Nasser’s speeches, or

one like Zahran’s, that “fails to have the impact the expression had in Arabic” are not

accurate translations (214). Therefore, one could feasibly translate Zahran’s “mish” as


something more like “ain’t” in English; however, I have opted to avoid this kind of

cultural transplantation and translated “mish” as, perhaps blandly, “not.”

! Makhlouf’s handwriting also emphasizes Arabic’s diglossia by means of heavily

stylized handwriting for the dialogue and sound effects and a more reserved, though

still clearly hand written, form for the narration. Besides the discerning of fusha and

‘amiyya vocabulary, a foreign reader must carefully follow the magazine’s calligraphy-

esque lines of narrative and dialogue. One gets the impression that Makhlouf and the

other Tok Tok artists have been influenced by the political graffiti that enveloped Tahrir

Square during the protests, perhaps the most potent artistic symbol of the revolution.

Though typed comics appear regularly in the magazine, they much rarer and, like typed

newspapers or novels, are usually in fusha.

Poems and Songs Inspired by the Denshawai Incident

! Hat al-Hamam is far from the first artistic retelling of haditha denshawai. Published

in 1956, Salah Abdel Sabour’s poem The Hanging of Zahran, Shanq Zahran in Arabic, also

focuses on Zahran’s experiences. Where Hat al-Hamam starts at the beginning of the

pigeon hunt, The Hanging of Zahran is mostly concerned with describing Zahran’s

character and life before his execution. In fact, it never directly references the hunting

nor even the British. The only mention of pigeons occurs in a line towards the beginning

which describes Zahran as having a pigeon tattoo on his forehead. Instead the village


becomes “a thousand arm’d dragon / And each arm a dark and sombre alley” and

“gentle Zahran” witnesses a child “devoured by fire” one day in the market place. The

shooting of Zahran’s wife is never mentioned, although we find out her name, Jamila,

and that she and Zahran had many children together. The coupling of vivid, poetic

language and metaphor with direct, seemingly biographical details imbues the poem

with a combined sense of fantasy and realism, fleshing out Zahran’s humanity while

elevating him to the status of a hero.

! Although Makhlouf doesn’t directly reference Salah Abdel Sabour’s poem The

Hanging of Zahran, the title of his piece appears to be a play on words based on another

poem: The Pigeons Fly by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. The first stanza of

Darwish’s poem is:

يطير الحماميحّط الحمام

yatir al-Hamamyahat al-Hamam

The pigeons fly,The pigeons descend.

The couplet is repeated throughout the poem, almost like the panels featuring only

pigeons (or the pigeons floating blissfully unaware in the background) in Makhlouf’s

comic. Makhlouf turns the final part of the phrase into the past tense with “Hat al-

Hamam”, “The pigeons descended” or roosted (or landed). Because the Denshawai

Incident is well-known in Egypt, most readers would begin reading with the


understanding that death plays a key role. Thus Makhlouf’s past tense verb is more

about pigeons shot out of the sky and falling to the ground as opposed to gracefully

landing and then taking flight again as in Darwish’s poem. This ambiguous tension,

introduced right from the outset through the title, challenges the readers ability to

extract simple moral lessons from the work. It is then amplified in the first panel when

Makhlouf quotes Hafez Ibrahim, the “Poet of the Nile”, who wrote of the Denshawai

Incident: “Inma nahnu wa al-hamam suwa’”; “We are equal, the pigeons and us.”

! Sabour’s poem ends, written entirely in fusha, ends with the titular hanging of

Zahran:

Since that day does my village feed only on tears ;Since that day does my village live in desolate despair ;Since that morn does my village fear the treasure of lifeYet Zahran had been a true friend of life ;He had died with his eyes full of life ;Why then does my village fear the brightness of life !

قريتي من يومها لم تأتدم إ4 الدموع

قريتي من يومها تأوى إلى الركن الصديعقريتي من يومها تخشى الحياةكان زهارن صديقـاً للحياةمات زهران وعيناه حياة

فلماذا قريتي تخشىالحياة.

Although the translator Omar Sabry altered a couple word choices, his faithfulness to

the meaning of the original is apparent. Zahran dies with “his eyes full of life”, a

sentiment that is echoed in Egyptian pop star Mohamed Mounir’s song Denshawai.

Little information is available regarding this haunting recording. With the low sound

quality and minimalist instrumentation, the song is vastly different from Mounir’s more

mainstream productions and was likely recorded early in his career in the 1970s.



Fig. 5: Panel from page 9 out of 17. Translation of Arabic:

“If the government lets them gallop around the country, they must be made aware that this is our land... not their land!”

“And if she [the government] is selling herself... then they must be made aware that we are not for sale... and our blood is costly!”

According to fan websites, the song has never been included on an album, and was

written by the poet Abdel Rahim Mansur1. The song begins with Mounir’s plaintive

cries, distant oud plucking and drumming that becomes more insistent as the song

builds in energy. The following are the lyrics to the short song presented in full and

translated by the author:

Between birth pangs and suffering,

We are born again.

Between birth pangs and suffering,

The past is born;

Wisdom is born;

Music is born;

All that has come and gone

Is still being born in your eyes.

Oh Danshawi, Oh sad flute.

But we don’t forget,

At the gallows, my boy.

At the gallows, my pain.

All that has come and gone

Is still being born in your eyes.

ب] اZخاض واXلم

من تاني بنتولد

ب] اZخاض واXلم

اZاضي بيتول

والحكمة بتتولد

والغنوة بتتولد

كل اللي عدى وراح

لسة في عنيكي بيتولد

يا دنشواى يا ناي حزين

لكنه مش نساي

ع اZشنقة ولدى

ع اZشنقة كبدى

كل اللي عدى وراح

لسة في عنيكي بيتولد

Both Sabour’s poem and Mounir’s song end with an emphasis on the relationship


1 Source: http://abdelrehimmansour.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9960.htmlMounir’s song can be heard in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETnqHAcE348

http://abdelrehimmansour.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9960.html

http://abdelrehimmansour.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9960.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETnqHAcE348

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETnqHAcE348


Fig. 6: from pages 16 and 17. Translation of the Arabic: “Some people believe that goodness prevails in the end.”Note the bilingual nature of Makhlouf’s signature which is “maخlouf”.

between life and death: dying with ones’ eyes full of life on the one hand, and the

cyclical nature of birth and rebirth in spite of death in the other. Sabour’s poem refers to

Zahran’s noble defiance in the face of a corrupt death sentence, while in Mounir’s song

the eyes belong to an unidentified woman. Here the English suffers from translation

loss because “your eyes” can refer to any gender while the colloquial Arabic makes

clear it is the eyes of a woman looking on, perhaps Jamila or one of the victim’s

mothers. Another translation of Mounir’s lyric that could partially overcome this loss

would be “Is still being born in her eyes.”

Conclusion

! In each of these retellings, the humanity of the Denshawai residents is evoked

and expanded upon despite the imperial oppression. Whether the British and Ottomans

are directly alluded to or left out entirely makes no difference because all Egyptians

know the story. “To this day, whenever [Denshawai] is mentioned, it serves to arouse

indignation among the Egyptians” (al-Sayyid 175). What is different about Makhlouf’s

comic strip, then, is the lack of any reference to the public hangings and beatings that

resulted from British led show trials. Zahran is shown being taken away after hitting

Captain Paul and giving a proto-Nasser speech on Egyptian nationalism , or at least

anti-colonialism (Fig. 5). In the background a dovecote, burj al-hamam (literally “pigeon

tower”) stands like a statue of Saad Zaghloul with a triumphant dove flying above.


! Although Zahran’s fate is not made explicit in the comic strip, Egyptian readers

would be well aware of his sentence to be hanged. Makhlouf’s comic ends with a

farmer identified as Ahmed Said finding the British officer Captain Paul, who ran from

the fight, collapsed in a field. The villager tries to assist Paul before another officer

arrives and, in an interrogative tone that is ironic given the fact that Said lives in and is

from Denshawai, asks him “Inta bita’mil eh ‘andak?” - “What are you doing here?” The

officer accuses him of murder and theft to which Said asks rhetorically: “Why? Do I

occupy your land, steal your money, disgrace your appearance and spill your blood?!”

A bullet is fired and Makhlouf brilliantly draws a panel of a shocked flying pigeon,

seducing the reader into believing the pigeon was the victim of the officer’s bullet

before revealing the gruesome panel of Said’s head wound (fig. 6).

! But why would poets, musicians, and comic book artists from vastly different

eras in Egypt’s history all return to the Denshawai parable? A major reason for the

story’s durability is its relative simplicity and small-scale, allowing for it to be recast as

needed in different eras. In the 1950s it dovetailed nicely with Nasser’s Pan-Arabism

and the revolts against colonial rule occurring around the world. The honorable peasant

can rise up against an imperial power. In the 1970s, one could look to the story for a

different kind of meaning in a post-Nasser Egypt and the amputation of the Sinai

Peninsula in the Six-Day War with Israel. In that case the message appears to be that

Egypt is still under someone else’s rule.


! What makes Makhlouf’s story so compelling is that, in my reading, the harsh

response of the British officers represents Mohamed Morsi’s November 2012 decree that

his decisions are above the Mubarak-influenced courts (Kirkpatrick and El Sheikh). Like

the British authorities in the early 1900s, who “[sacrificed] justice in the short term in

favour of overall stability,” the actions of Morsi’s government had much the same

rhetoric (Luke 280). Morsi declaring power over the nation’s courts is a powerful

reminder of the British allocating their harsh punishments of Denshawai residents

through a supposedly independent court system. Already when Morsi declared his new

powers, which he reversed soon after, political opponents called it a “coup”

(Kirkpatrick, et al). Seven months later, Morsi’s term would abruptly end due to the

combination of renewed Tahrir Square protests and a military coup only four days later.

Indeed, with the military coup, the United States’ refusal to call it a coup, Abdel Fattah

el-Sisi’s “sweeping” electoral victory and the harsh death penalties and lifetime

sentences given to Muslim Brotherhood members in more kangaroo court cases, it is

only a matter of time before another artist draws from the Denshawai Incident. The

question is only what medium, and what message.


Works Cited

Abdel Sabour, Salah. Afro-Asian Poetry; An Anthology. Ed. Youssef El Sebai. Trans. Omar

Sabry. Cairo: Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers, 1971. Print.

Abi-Hamad, S. "The Colonial State and Its Multiple Relations: A Case Study of Egypt."

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32.1 (2012): 1-12. Web.

Guyer, Jonathan M., and Benedict Evans. "Being a Political Cartoonist in Egypt Has Always

Been Hard. It's Even Harder After the Charlie Hebdo Attacks." Daily Intelligencer. New

York Magazine, 01 Feb. 2015. Web. 23 May 2015.

Kirkpatrick, David, and Mayy El Sheikh. "Citing Deadlock, Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power

and Plans Mubarak Retrial." The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2012.

Web. 2 June 2015.

Luke, Kimberly. "Order or Justice: The Denshawai Incident and British Imperialism." History

Compass 5.2 (2007): 278-87. Web.

Makhlouf. “Hat al-Hamam.” Tok Tok Nov. 2012: 48-65. Print.

Mitchell, Timothy. Colonising Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988. Print.

Mounir, Mohamed. “Denshawai.” Unknown date.

Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi. Egypt and Cromer; a Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations. New York:

Praeger, 1969. Print.

Shunnaq, Abdullah. "Arabic‐English Translation of Political Speeches." Perspectives 8.3 (2000):

207-28. Web. 29 June 2015.


three egyptian retellings of the denshawai incident

Documents