Poet exulted in the slang of slums

CAIRO — Ahmed Fouad Negm, who died Tuesday at the age of 84, was Egypt’s poet of revolution, inspiring protesters from the 1970s through the current wave of uprisings with sharply political verses excoriating the country’s leaders in the rich slang of colloquial Arabic.

Silver-haired, with a face creased by age and a lifetime of smoking, Negm — always seen wearing the traditional galabeya robes of the poor — tapped into the sentiments of Egypt’s impoverished population, marginalized by the ruling elite.

Key to his poetry was his use of the Egyptian dialect, which is shunned by many elite poets, but which Negm exulted in, playing with puns, obscenities and rhyming slang that came straight from Cairo’s slums or from its long-neglected rural areas.

Negm died at his home in Cairo. “Today, we lost a peerless poet who only concerned himself with what’s good for Egypt,” said close friend and publisher Mohammed Hashem. “He remained a champion of just causes until the last minute.”

Known as the “poet of the people,” Negm shot to fame in the 1970s and 1980s when his poetry was sung by blind musician Sheik Imam Issa. Their songs blasted presidents Gamal Abdel-Nasser and his successor Anwar Sadat over the humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 war, then what they saw as a surrender with the 1979 peace treaty.

The duo mostly performed in popular coffee houses and for university students, and their songs became the soundtrack for leftist student protests against Sadat.

Negm, who was jailed for a total of 18 years for his political views under Nasser and Sadat, saw a revival in popularity during the later years of the 29-year rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, whom he skewered with his harshest verses over corruption, heavy-handed police tactics and broken promises of reform. That made him a star of the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak, and a new generation of protest singers put his verses to music and performed them in Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square, birthplace of that revolt.

Negm, who was married six times, had been scheduled to travel to Amsterdam later this month to receive the Prince Claus Award, one of the Netherlands’ top cultural prizes.