مقتطفات من مذكرات إنجي أفلاطون — Excerpts from Inji Aflatoun's Memoirs

Excerpts from Inji Aflatoun’s Memoirs

Post prepared by Nadine Fattaleh, a researcher based in Amman.
Translated by Fattaleh. Special thanks to Nasreen Abdelal.

AMMAN- On the occasion of her 95th birthday on the 16th of April, Google Doodle celebrated the Egyptian artist and feminist activist, Inji Aflatoun. Aflatoun‘s life and works are important because they highlight the imbrication of artistic production and political activism. Below, I selected some excerpts from her memoirs, edited and introduced by Said Khayyal, and published by Dar Su’ad Al-Sabbah in 1993.

Google Doodle celebrates Inji Aflatoun

On Inji’s birth and family life:

p.11

I was born on 16/4/1924. The year of my birth coincided with escalating tensions between my mother and my father. This was the year of their divorce.

My mom left the house of her marriage at age 19, carrying with her two daughters; I was one of them and I was only a few months old. My mom became responsible for her life and the life of her small family at this early age. She faced a relatively difficult financial living situation, for she had not yet received her inheritance, and my father, who was angered by the divorce, provided her only a limited amount that didn’t reflect his social standing or financial situation. As such, my mom preferred to live in the home of her grandmother from her mother’s side, who had died when she was still young.

My mom tolerated the many colors of hardship she faced with courage, something that we were only able to appreciate until much later.

She organized her life around her own standards and beliefs, while at the same time respecting customs and prevailing conditions.

She treaded in the path that she had chosen for herself. In spite of her young age, she refused to remarrying, worrying that she would lose custody of her daughters, especially under my father’s threats, at the encouragement of his new wife.

Not until her financial independence and foray into the work market was my mom able to truly settle down.

On her early artistic talents:

p.28

I’ve enjoyed drawing since my childhood. I used to draw small sketches of scenes from my trips with my father, and my family was aware of my artistic talents and tried to provide me with lessons. These lessons were limited to making small postcards or superficially copying from nature. This drove me away from these lessons, and drove me to rebel against them.

Kamal Al-Telmesani was a leading artist; he remains the most prominent of the forties generation of artists, and the most courageous of the group. At that time, it was difficult for artists to live solely off of their work, so Al-Telmesani, like many other artists, faced financial difficulties.

One of my mother’s friends used to know Kamal Al-Telmesani. This woman heard that I needed drawing lessons, and suggested to my mom the name Kamal Al-Telmesani. When my mother agreed, our friend arranged lessons in exchange for two Egyptian Pounds a month. I will never forget how Kamal confessed to me that he accepted this job suspecting that it will lead to no results, as he considered it a waste of time and a compromise of his values. He had thought, though I quickly proved him wrong, that it’s useless to teach a daughter of the bourgeoisie who no doubt wanted to learn how to draw for the same reasons she learned cooking, sewing, and playing the Piano; or as a kind of necessary decor.

As I took off and progressed, Kamal‘s concerns were proven untrue. It didn’t take me long to realize that Al-Telmesani‘s lessons are not just lessons in drawing, but an enchanting window to real life in Egypt. A window onto the real meaning of art. Drawing is nothing but a true expression of society and the self. This is what I learned from Al-Telmesani.   

On the origins of her political, feminist organizing:

p.37

At that time, a number of secret communist organizations were established. I was lost, looking around for any affiliation. This is what conforms with my belief in scientific socialism, which is, out of principle, the fight I chose to fight.

I took the decision to engage in secret organizing work. Secrecy was not the chosen path for the communist parties, but the path that was enforced on them by the bourgeoisie that prohibits any semblance of communist, democratic activity.

The community that I joined did not accept the mixing of genders beyond very limited boundaries. Our political work was secret, but how can this secret work involve women and men alongside each other? There are the complexes of our comrades themselves, and then there is the eyes of society that are attached to us, and the backwards gossiping that spread false and shameful rumors about Marxist women with the aim of tarnishing their reputations and struggle in public opinion.

In these conditions, it became necessary to take steps to overcome this problem which threatened to fragment our organizing and to divert our attention from the main political issues to secondary and emotional issues. We started a ‘female branch’ within our organization which separated the genders from the membership to the branches, but the leadership, naturally, remained mixed.  

That was a wise and good decision because it contributed to overcoming the backwardness we inherited and the complexes that arise from it. It also encouraged a lot of married women to join in organizing because now their husbands had no reason to complain.

On representing Egypt at International Women’s Conferences:

p.58

International Women’s Conference in Paris, 26/11/1945:

Inji’s speech:

We can now speak openly and honestly about the vicious politics of colonization that continues to hinder all progress and advancement in our country.

The Egyptian women refuses to remain, as she is now, deprived of all her rights. She refuses to be the worker that received a third of the wage of a man who performs the same job, and without any social security. She refuses to be the employee who, by virtue of tradition, is denied high-level positions.

Our national struggle persists with strength, as the national movement awakened in the souls of the female masses the memory of years of misery and hardship. She is committed to her role in the general struggle for our nation.

On pursuing art, again:

p.105

Another important thing my husband helped me in is quickly returning to my art. Hamdi convinced me to give up my teaching position which consumed so much of my time and effort in exchange for only 12 Egyptian Pounds monthly. And I must return to the studio. My interruption from my art studio was prolonged and the period of surrealism was over.  

My main desire at that point was to reflect on the ordinary Egyptian, to express the reality and the dreams of the simply, crushed person that toils in the drudgery of the day in ugly conditions, with no rights and no laws to protect him.

I wanted to expose to everyone, the exploitation of humans at the hands of humans.

I discover and shed the light on the backwards position of women in Egyptian society, and specifically the working, peasant woman burdened by two jobs. The first outside of the house, in the factory, the shop or the field. The second in the house, raising the children, and serving the family. I wanted to express with honesty all the troubles that our wretched people complain about.

This required that I study drawing anew in a real way, starting from A and B, as they say. 

After that I can decide, with confidence, that the real school that truly taught and inspired me is my village in the countryside, Al-Manshiyeh Al-Sughra.

There, my grandfather built a beautiful country house on the Nile.

Farm (Ezba), 1953, Image courtesy of the Barjeel Art Foundation

The house is on the bank of the Nile, with a backyard full of huge eucalyptus trees. The gardens are planted some with citrus and some with bananas. There, I used to watch, in awe, serene village life and the vast rays of beautiful nature. But I believe in humans. People are important. As such, I was keen to visit the village which is very close to our house.

There, I would come in contact with the painful reality  and harshness of peasant life.

A life that shakes me and makes me emotional. I react deeply in the face of this much miserly. I used to draw and record from nature and reality without interruption.  

I used to befriend the female peasants. I would enter their homes, and they would chit chat with me as they performed household chores. I would draw. The peasant has a lot of work and can’t afford to be lazy. This is how I got to know the female peasant and to understand her nature and her circumstances, which I pictured in my works. I would go to the field in the early morning, and would hang out with the agricultural worker as she gathered the produce. She continues to gather the cotton. She collects it as the sun places.

She harvests the corncobs and gathers twigs in the firewood basket. She toils with beating the loofah we use for bathing, and she climbs the orange tree to gather the fruit.

I would stay with them the entire day, roaming the fields. Upon sunset, everyone returns to their homes.

The Peasant and the Cattle, 1983, Image courtesy of the Egyptian National Gallery website

On Women’s protests in Egypt:

p.132

The most spectacular female protest in Egypt

This was the title published by Al-Ahram newspaper on 15/11/1951, the news of the great protest organized by the nationalist and progressive forced on the 14th of November 1951 in memory of Martyr Day and in protest of the atrocities committed by the British in the Suez Canal area. The Al-Ahram newspaper said in its commentary the following:

Today’s procession was a unique procession in that it included unveiled women and girls, as it included thousands of veiled women, hundreds of thousands of women in peasant attire, and they marched alongside lawyers, doctors, and nurses. Egypt has militarized its women, and nationalism has pushed to the forefront in the most spectacular populist protest witnesses in the country.

It seemed that Egypt itself had organized this protest with popular appeal and complete discipline.

Huda Al-Sharawi at the 1919 protest

Saiza Nabarawi [feminist activist and close friend of Inji] lead the procession carrying a large photo of Huda Al-Sharawi, who lead the first women’s protest in Egypt in 1919. Next to Saiza Nabarawi marched another woman carrying a poster with English bullets in the Suez Canal area, as many other posters by artists picturing the graves of soldiers, with the Quranic phrase “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord” in the background.

On Female Political Prisoners under Gamal Abdel Nasser:

p.232

This period between 1959 and 1964 represents a fierce campaign against the leftist movement in general, and the Communist one in specific. It was an attempt to destroy and eliminate the Communist movement. The male detainees were subjected to, as is well known, the most gruesome forms of physical torture and hard labor. As for the women, this was the first time there were female detainees and the authorities sought to conceal the news of our detainment as the commands were definitive in banning any published material on this topic in newspapers and media outlets.

The deliberately employed other forms of torture, emotional torture that aims to destroy our nerves and spirits by isolating us completely form the outside world.

The Line, 1960, Image courtesy of the Egyptian National Gallery Website

This was an attempt to kill us slowly, for detention or imprisonment, as is well known, submits us to the authority of the Ministry of Interior and the Public Intelligence, not to the laws and customs enforced on the regular prisoners.

We were able to access, with time, and thanks to our personal initiative, most things that were banned except of course, visits.

These initiatives have a long and funny story. We discovered that with a half a pack of Wingers cigarettes, we are able to get many thing. We established a committee with elected leadership that took into consideration political leanings to maintain the unity of the party. The leadership committee organized educational initiatives and language exchanges, amongst many things.

Progressively, we were able to access books from the prison library as well. I discovered that amongst the books in prison are the titles I used to send my husband when he was detained. This made me very happy, but I regretted having retrieved some books after my husband and his friends had read them, because I was unaware that the day would come when I would be in dire need of such valuable books in prison.  

The other prisoners were surprised by our communal life. After a while they comprehended this idea that caused me some trouble at the beginning because I had to convince the normal prisoners that what I have does not belong to me, rather it belongs to our communal life that included everyone except two comrades who were not part of the party.

On Painting in Prison:

p.240

After two or three months in prison, I felt a desire to draw, and not to succumb to the reality of life in prison. I tried to find a solution. The head of the women’s prison was kind and compassionate. He liked to draw and he would produce traditional paintings, copied or traced from books. He was keen to show me his work and to ask for my opinion, and I always complimented his talents because I needed him to help me paint.

And I did, Alhumdulilah succeed. I told him of my desire to paint, he said: you know that this is completely forbidden by the intelligence, so I suggested my willingness to paint for the benefit of the prison. At that time, I had receive a prize in painting amounting to 100 Egyptian pounds, earning me respect in the prison and a sense that I am an important artist. Hasan Al-Kurdy [the head of the women’s prison] agreed, and brought me some bad paints and the cheapest type of canvas. He asked me not to paint the prison, so I had a dilemma, what shall I paint?

The Prisoner, date unknown.   

I wanted to paint the prison, if it weren’t for the warning from the head of the prison. But it so happened that a high-ranking officer, whose name I don’t remember, visited the prison for an inspection. He asked to meet with me and asked what I paint and whether I paint the prison. I told him that the head of the women’s prison forbids me from painting the prison. The high-ranking officer told him: you have Inji Aflatoun, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, let her draw everything with full freedom, and this is an order. Since that day, I took off without limitations or hesitations, painting and recording everything I want inside the prison. One of the most important things I captured inside the prison is a detainee called Enshirah. Enshirah had been sentenced to execution, and the sentence was delayed for two years until her child becomes a toddler. Of course, the detainees sentenced with execution wear a red suit and are placed in a separate cell with special guards so that they don’t commit suicide. As she awaited her execution, I used to feel for the great catastrophe of Enshirah‘s situation. She had killed and robbed under the pressure of harsh conditions and obscene misery. When I asked to paint her, Hassan Al-Kurdi, the boss, told me that this is a depressing thing. I did end up painting her and her son, and this was amongst the works that were confiscated by the intelligence.