A Celebration of Life and Art
Hamed el-Oweidy was a world-renowned artist, top book designer, political activist — and husband to Egypt Today Senior Writer Manal el-Jesri. A promise to write about him turned into a love affair and a 12-year marriage. She never did get around to writing that story until now for
By Manal el-Jesri
Egypt Today
May 2008



El-baqa’a liLLah (God is Everlasting) are two tiny words that carry so much meaning. When the young resident doctor at the Sherif Mokhtar Intensive Care Unit came to say them to me not even 40 days ago as I write this, life as I knew it ended. Hamed el-Oweidy — my lover, my friend, my sounding board, my anchor — was to walk this earth no longer. My husband, the celebrated calligrapher, graphic designer, music critic and writer, died on March 14, 2008, and I thought at the time that I was going to come apart at the seams. Strangely enough, I did not. And here I am, doing something that I had promised Hamed I would do 13 years ago.




I am writing about him.

You see, this is how we met. He was a familiar face to me at the time as I would see him frequenting what intellectuals like to call “intellectuals’ cafes” and liked the salt-of-the-earth quality about him. When I heard he was holding a calligraphy exhibition in celebration of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi’s millennial anniversary, my interest was piqued. I confess I knew very little about calligraphy at the time, and as an obsessive compulsive I cannot look at written text because I keep reading it over and over.

Still, the writer in me wanted to find out more.

The chance came a few months later when I found out Hamed was going to Italy to exhibit his work at the Egyptian Arts Academy in Rome. I had just interviewed Hamdy Attia, an up-and-coming painter who soon after moved to Rome. Would Hamed be kind enough to take him a copy of the magazine? I met him at Estoril to give him a copy and to arrange for an interview once he came back. The rest is history: He called me every day from Rome, brought me back a beautiful Murano glass necklace, and nine months later we were married.

The story I was to write about him? It never happened. There was too much conflict of interest. Besides, our other story was a lot more interesting.


Hamed loved this about me. He would proudly tell his friends that I never wrote about him because I had too strict a code of ethics. It was a kind of private joke. When, five years ago, he held an exhibition in celebration of the anniversary of Amal Donqol’s passing, I wrote about Donqol and mentioned that “this writer’s husband” was exhibiting works inspired by the poetry at the Supreme Cultural Council. It just made him laugh. And this was one of the most unique things about Hamed: He never craved publicity or coverage, although his work was known and appreciated all over the world — and frequently the subject of rave reviews in the Arabic-language press in the past few years.

That’s why some of his colleagues at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, where Hamed had worked as art director since 1995, were surprised at the amount of interest Hamed’s passing sparked. Many thought that Hamed was just that quiet graphic designer who produced their books and periodicals on demand.

Dr. Abdel Moneim Saeed, the Center’s director, wrote in his weekly op-ed in Al-Ahram: “All of Egypt was there for the azaa. In an unprecedented Egyptian scene, which I found myself describing to Assem Hanafy, Naguib Sawiris the well-known businessman sat next to the poet ‘of public unrest’ Ahmed Fouad Negm. On the other side was Dr. Rifaat el-Saeed the president of the Tagammoah party What existed in the presence of Hamed el-Oweidy’s soul was a repetition of what happened with Younan Labib Rizq, Ragaa el-Naqqash and Magdy Mehanna at the moment of passing and memorial. I do not know why death has this effect on Egyptians. It makes them more noble, more transparent and more intimate and unified. When everyone, be they government or opposition, conservative or leftist, rich businessmen or their pro-poor critics who stand against capitalism, sits together, it was because they realize that one of them had passed.”

And each of the people who attended remembered something personal about Hamed, although very few knew everything about him. Some had known the young Upper Egyptian who came from Qena to study engineering in Cairo, but who later decided to switch to the faculty of mass communication simultaneously with his studies at the Egyptian Calligraphy School. Others knew the budding socialist who helped launch Al-Ahali newspaper together with his mentors, the great Abdel-Ghani Aboul Einein and the greatest Egyptian cartoonist, Ahmed Hegazy. Some knew the calligrapher/student who carried his box of tools around to different offices, writing logos and plaques to support himself and his family back in Upper Egypt after his father passed away. Others remembered Hamed as the calligrapher who won a competition carried out by a leading Japanese publishing company and subsequently went to work in Tokyo for two years in the mid-1980s, during which time he designed the poster for the opening of the Cairo Opera House — and penned the logos of countless Japanese products while still managing to hold a resoundingly successful calligraphy exhibition in Japan’s largest city.

Some know Hamed to be the creative book-cover designer who has worked with Egypt’s leading publishing houses. Others know him as the designer whose penmanship can be seen repeatedly on Egyptian and Arab newsstands: Al-Ahali, Al-Arabi, Al-Karama, Al-Qahira, Sout El-Omma, Al-Badil, Kol El-Osra, Al-Ahram El-Riyadi, Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, Ahwal Masriyya, Al-Yasar Al-Gadid, to name only a few. Others know Hamed as the music critic who owns a priceless music library of mowashahat and adwar and taqatiq (old forms of Arabic song) in addition to unique recordings by Egypt’s greatest Qur’an reciters. Some know him as the opposition writer who wrote about his recent Hajj trip and the atrocities that take place in Mecca on the watches of the official Egyptian organizers of the Hajj convoy. More recently, others know Hamed as the student of qira’at, or reciting, which was his first step towards realizing his dream of writing the Qur’an in a new, modern way.


And many more know Hamed as a modern artist. Hamed was the only classical calligrapher who was able to use the strength of the Arabic letter in all its malleable beauty to come up with very modern forms and constitutions. He took calligraphy out of the frame — and even took the letters out of words. He broke the classical sobriety of the calligraphy painting, introduced colors that none had dared use in calligraphy before, and brought calligraphy to a new level without compromising the rigid rules of the different forms. I can easily and with a good conscience say that no one in the whole world wrote Thuluth or Farsi like Hamed. Thuluth is an Egyptian calligraphy form, while Farsi is, of course, Persian; Hamed loved the richness of the first and the simplicity and cleanliness of the second.

He breathed his calligraphy. When we were first courting, I was surprised to sometimes see him tracing shapes in the air. “I am imagining the relationship between letters,” he told me, reassuring me I was not about to marry a crazy person. I came to enjoy those moments, the times when I delved into a book and he sat in the same room either doodling in the air or on paper, both of us silent, both of us content just to be.

I believe the most unique things about Hamed’s calligraphy, in addition to the freedom he gave his letters, were his choice of text and the way he perceived it. For example, in one of his most classical works, Elayhi yas’ado al-kalimo al-tayyib wal amal el-Saleh yarfa’ah (verse from the Qur’an that means “to God rise the good words and deeds”), the calligraphy rises up gradually from the right to the left. The verse looks compact, a perfect example of Thuluth, but as he frees it from the frame, giving just a few strokes of pastel pinks and blues to the background, you can actually see a good person’s deeds and words going up to the heavens. It is uplifting. If you understand it, it changes you — it can make you a better person.

There were a number of phrases and sayings that Hamed repeatedly worked on and that can be seen in different phases of his work, be it the beginning or the end. Among them: Al-Elm min waraa al-hurouf (knowledge comes from letters), Takallamo to’rafo (speak and you will be known), Al-Kitabato darbon min al-salat (writing is a form of prayer), Qayyido el-elma bil kitaba (preserve knowledge through writing), Fal kalimato in toktab la toktab min ajli al-tarfih (when a word is written, it is not written for entertainment), and my favorite: Annaso a’da’o ma jahilo (people are the enemies of what they are ignorant of).

Hamed visualized what he wrote, he felt and transported you into his art. When he took words from a poem, he focused his audience’s attention on new meanings, new possibilities.



His love of music and famous Qur’an recitations can be easily seen in his work. The mélange of letters, be they from the same style or in different styles (and which he spread out before introducing the main verse or even calligraphic constitution), is like the chorus and the introductory music that precede the main part of a song. Meanwhile, his variations on the shapes of the letters and the words are like the variations the reciter improvises to emphasize a meaning of the Holy Qur’an, or simply to please the listeners, as in the case of Sheikh Mostafa Ismail.

Unlike other calligraphers, Hamed’s art was a form of political protest. His famous La Tosaleh (Never Acquiesce) based on Donqol’s equally famous poem protested the atrocities committed by Israel, as did his work Mohammad, based on Mahmoud Darwish’s ode to Mohammad el-Dorra, the Palestinian boy who was killed while seeking refuge behind his father as the whole world placidly watched. This work, Mohammad, was the back page or centerfold of most opposition newspapers when Hamed released it. Equally suggestive was his Oghnia li Baghdad (Song for Baghdad), a poem by the celebrated Ahmed Abdel Moati Hegazi in protest of the American invasion of Iraq. Hamed believed in the value of work, and the value of protesting calmly and through what he did best, his work.


In that, in protesting through diligent work, he was similar to his best friend, Magdy Mehanna, who protested strongly but quietly through his daily column in the leading independent daily, Al-Masry Al-Youm.

As I sit in our bedroom, writing this piece, I can see Hamed’s galabiyya hanging outside our closet. Behind the door is an older winter galabiyya that also belonged to Hamed, but which we refer to as ‘galabiyyet Mehanna.’ It is an ancient garment that predates our marriage, but which Hamed never had the heart to throw away because Magdy used to wear it whenever he stayed over in Hamed’s apartment. The integrity that bound Hamed to Mehanna, and to a group of very special friends including Diaa Rashwan, Abdel-Fattah el-Gibali, Diaa Hosni, Khaled el-Sirgani, Nabil Abdel-Fattah, Magdi Sobhi and Mostafa el-Saeed, set this group of friends apart from the rest of the opposition. And because they were a class apart, they were respected and even feared by the more compromised members of the opposition.




But the link between Hamed and Mehanna was a deeper, more symbolic one. Two months ago, I sat in this very spot, my face awash with tears as I wrote a eulogy for Mehanna. He passed on a Friday of complications related to his liver disease, and the day he died, something broke inside Hamed. I felt it, but was not able to verbalize or even cognitively realize it. I was full of fear when I wrote about Mehanna, and now I realize that I somehow knew Hamed was next. After Mehanna died, I did not see Hamed cry, but he refused to shave or change. Hamed had cirrhosis of the liver like Mehanna, but had refused to consider the option a of transplant. Instead, Dr. Hosni Salama, a well-known hepatologist, convinced him that an adult stem-cell injection would cure him.

On a Sunday, Hamed underwent the procedure, and for the first time in his disease history went into a coma, followed by another coma a few days later. Then, finally, came his first episode of bleeding, which sent him into shock and caused peritonitis. He died on a Friday, exactly five weeks after Mehanna and barely more than a month after his stem-cell injection.

I still remember him lying down on the couch opposite me as we watched clips of Mehanna’s funeral on television. Hamed had attended the ceremony and came back steaming because leading figures from the governing National Democratic Party (NDP) had presided over the funeral and were the first to march in front of Mehanna’s coffin. This disgusted Hamed, who called his friends lamenting how the people Mehanna spent his life criticizing were trying to “cleanse themselves” by “riding” his funeral. Five weeks later, the same was to happen to him.

Hamed was 50 when he died, almost the same age as Mehanna. Both have accomplished so much. It is always like this with the prolific writers and artists: They give so much to the world that they burn themselves out. As I look at the many stories printed after my husband’s death, I am happy for Salah and Aida, our 10-year-old twins. He left them so much to be proud of: his art, his designs, his writing, so much love in the hearts of the many people who knew him — and the even greater love he showered upon them.

He also left them a beautiful family in Upper Egypt. I had not realized how amazing his family was until I went one week after Hamed’s death to visit his grave. That first week had been the worst in my life, and I believe I was on the verge of breakdown. But the minute I set my foot in Qus, I felt Hamed hugging me and reassuring me that it was not over. I felt him as I stood in front of his grave in that peaceful Oweidat graveyard, and I felt him as I sat in the mag’ad (living room) of his family’s Qus home. His elder brothers (who were shaken by Hamed’s death and had week-old beards) and his 74-year-old mother (who had just lost another son) all greeted me with open hearts. And suddenly I understood why Hamed was so unique. This was a family without guile, without pretense. They accepted themselves for who they are. And all of them are excellent calligraphers. His elder brother, Saleh, teaches calligraphy in Safaga and is a published and well-respected poet.



Saleh has promised to teach my twins calligraphy, something Hamed had planned to do but never really got around to. But he had planted the seed there. Salah, my son, has terrible handwriting at the moment, but a deep love for Egypt’s most beautiful mosques. Every week, Hamed and Salah used to go to a mosque of Salah’s choosing. It had to be an old mosque, one famous for its calligraphy and architecture. They went to Amr ibn Al-Aas, Ibn Tuloun, Sultan Hassan, Al-Hussein, Al-Sayyeda Zeinab, Al-Sayyeda Nafeisa and Mohamed Ali, where Hamed got into an argument with security because they asked him to buy a ticket if he wanted to get in.

“I will write about this and give them quite a scandal. Imagine Muslims having to buy a ticket to get into a mosque,” I remember him fuming that day. Hamed, through these weekly excursions, was able to instill in Salah a love for the spiritual beauty of Egypt’s mosques. At 10, Salah can tell you that Amr ibn Al-Aas and Ibn Tuloun are the simplest but most peaceful, while Sultan Hassan has the best calligraphy and architecture. Being a girl, Aida is exempt from Friday prayers and thus did not go on these trips with Hamed. But she has something better: a very unique spot in his heart, one that was a little bit bigger and more special than anybody else’s.

Hamed had many dreams for the children. And he had many dreams for Egypt and for calligraphy, his passion. He hated driving, and when his health permitted, he walked around Downtown and Old Cairo looking at the buildings, the architecture and the street signs. He could tell which calligrapher had written which sign, and his heart broke every time an old sign was replaced with a new one lacking all the aesthetic elements of good calligraphy. He dreamt of seeing these signs preserved from theft and negligence, to be either placed in a museum or pointed out as an example of great naskhi or thuluth or farsi. He also dreamt of applying his modern vision and expertise to the writing of a purely Egyptian copy of the Holy Qur’an.

But his greatest dream was to preserve the art of calligraphy from oblivion, from becoming something that only belongs in museums. He had often expressed his disappointment in modern artists who use Arabic calligraphy in their art. It was not that he wanted a monopoly on the art, but that he wanted the artists to understand the classical beauty of each letter. Once they did, they would be able to use it better, he believed. He also dreamt of seeing Arabic calligraphy become one of the specializations at the Faculty of Fine Arts. Hamed believed calligraphy, which he called the art of Muslims, had great undiscovered potential and wanted to introduce it to the young artists studying academically at the faculty.

The children’s primary-school Arabic and religion books drove him crazy. It saddened him that our twins enjoyed their English books more than their Arabic ones, and consequently were better English than Arabic students. Hamed could not understand why they had to use five or six different fonts — “fontat wes’kha,” (dirty fonts), he called them. The paper quality drove him crazy, the printing quality drove him crazy, and the sheer lack of interest displayed by the Ministry of Education just broke his heart.



As a graphic and book designer, he prized readability. His covers and the insides of the books he designed were never too ostentatious or busy. He understood the value of space in a page, the value of a good picture and the value of a clear, readable font. He designed a font that he sold to a Gulf magazine and was in the process of designing another because he believed that what gives a publication character is having its own especially designed font.

And this is exactly what set Hamed apart from other calligraphers. While classical calligraphers lament the advent of the technological age, believing that the computer will soon take away all their business, Hamed believed the computer is a helpful tool that is to be befriended and respected. If you feed it good calligraphy, it will help the art, not harm it, he used to tell me.

The Tuesday before he died was the last day he was lucid and in a good enough mood to talk. Our very dear friend Abdel Fattah el-Gibali was standing next to Hamed’s ICU bed, while I sat across from him. Suddenly, smiling, Hamed started tracing something in the air. It was the first time that I saw him go back to this beloved quirk in over six months, and I broke down and ran out of the room. I thought he missed his calligraphy. But el-Gibali knew better: Hamed wanted him to tell me that this is not the case. It was just that he could see Al-Ka’aba. He was tracing the writings all around it.

Amir Abdel-Meguid, the famous composer and Hamed’s close friend, went on Omra with Hamed last Ramadan, and later described to me how Hamed used to roam around like a soul that had found its home around the Ka’aba. He had become besotted. Another of his unrealized dreams was to write the calligraphy for the kiswa (covering) of the holy shrine. He had so much to give, but had already given so much. During his final months, he had become such a transparent soul that the shackles of this ordinary life were not for him any longer.

El-Baqa’a LiLLah. I have heard this phrase hundreds of times since Hamed left this world, and they are the two words that now give me hope of being with my love again one day.