Explore AMGAD ELKAHWAGI World

This is my most beautiful medal of honor, The words of the great Ahmed Fouad Negm, from his article published in Al-Dostour newspaper, January 2008.

" Then Amgad –El-Kahwagy– surprised me.
And you might imagine, sir, that he's just a "kahwagy" (a coffee server)...
No — he's a damned poet, rising from the banks of the Nile in Mansoura, chirping and saying:

"Oh heart’s eye, oh dreams...
Why don’t you come from the future’s time
And arrive here in the moment, now —
Bahiyya, with the children lost,
Drinking sorrow, and crafting pain.
She kneads no bread for her little ones,
Weaves no clothes for her boys,
And there’s no feast in sight.
Bahiyya is far from joy,
You see her wandering the fields,
Watering barren and salty land,
Dreaming of the sky — then standing tall like a palm tree..."

And so continues his aching poem — one that feels decades older than his age.
This young peasant whose roots run deep in the mud of Mansoura,
Until they meet the roots of his great Egyptian grandfather:
The Eloquent Peasant. "