Wednesday 28 March 2018

“Getting out of Kandahar”... a flawed abridgement





If it’s about me; meaning if I were the one taking the decision of publishing in a decent newspaper or periodical, I would have published the whole text with no single interference. That text is what the prestigious cardiology professor Dr. Charles Beshri Megally wrote on his Facebook page over eight episodes titled “Getting out of Kandahar”.

Dr. Megally; the one adoring Fairuz and captivated by analyzing the music and lyrics of the Rahbani Brothers… the one doing his best to decipher the secrets of Arabic language… the Egyptian-to-the-bone patriot with every and each microscopic cell in his body holding all the Egyptian cultural and civilization composition… with Akhenaten’s hymns, David’s Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount and the Holy Quran inscribed over each nucleus side by side with the eloquence of the Eloquent Peasant, bravery of the martyrs of Diocletian’s era, the very profound meanings of theology of the proper Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the knowledge of Al-Layth ibn Sa’d and manifestations of Fathers of monasticism and Qutbs of Sufism… this is enough for now!

Dr. Charles Megally wrote about some of the incidents that took place, and which I may call the second era of persecution of Christians spanning from the mid-seventies until now, throughout what he lived as a student of the faculty of medicine, Asyut University which he joined in 1976 and left in 1981 to join the faculty of medicine, Cairo University where he graduated in 1982.

It’s an eyewitness testimony over a very dark era of the history of our beloved Egypt exceeding that dark one of the Roman Byzantine ruler Diocletian, since standards and criteria of judging in our present time are deeper in context and more disciplined than before due to many criteria of beliefs, civilization and culture.

Charles Megally; a young man qualified to join one of the top faculties, brought up in a family old in its traditions and high values starting from the elite forgiving morals and not ending by devotion in worshipping God, loving his creatures and assuming duties of brotherhood, neighborhood and friendship towards people, either Muslims or Christians. Now we go to the students’ dorms in Asyut; a city whose society’s nature is known to all who joined its university, then we come to the bloody twilight… afterwards the bleeding dusk… then a darkness with no moon, stars or torches… a silence where humans turned into frozen stills with no blood running in their veins and features captured still at contractions of fear, panic and horror.

Twilight, dusk, darkness and silence during which psychologically-distorted creatures holding sickles, hammers, swords, daggers, knives and jack-knives appeared. Such creatures went loose with no control, values, mercy or understanding to destroy and kill in the universities, worship places, streets, public transportation and markets!

The country’s president, meanwhile, was the one who gave the starting signal for such thing claiming establishing the state of faith calling himself the Muslim president of a Muslim country… the big head of the family… and the one maintaining the traditions and ethics of the Egyptian village. He was the one who summoned the “corps” of muslim brotherhood from their exiles in the oil-rich Arab countries and their hideouts in the very far spots in the countryside and cities. He also allowed them to have their magazine “Ad-Da’wa” and welcomed their spiritual leader and guide Omar at-Telmesani…

He was the one who took the old member of muslim brotherhood Uthman Ahmed Uthman as an in-law and contractor representing the capital of muslim brotherhood. He was also the one who gave green light to Muhammed Uthman Ismail and others to form Jama’at Islamiyah arming them with iron chains, jack-knives and iron fests and supplying them with money to brutally muzzle any voice coming from a throat not covered by a beard or Hijab or veil and to deactivate any mentality having an ideology based on understanding the true goals of Shar’ and noble teachings of religion. Sadat, however, did not realize that the snake he summoned and guaranteed warmth will sting back and kill him.

Charles Megally narrates his testimony while depicting a horrific picture in which he himself was present as those who ruled Asyut and gave themselves all the authority to do anything, to the extent that they separated between the man and his wife in the street even if this man was a professor teaching them in the university, decided to kill Charles Beshri Megally; student of medicine who refused to surrender to such discrimination and persecution. They beat him to the ground while pounding his head and body with iron pipes. Then they stabbed him with a knife in his chest close to his heart. However, God’s will was above theirs. He survived despite all those bearded ugly faces and rotten minds.

A picture in which he gave a vivid accurate description for the attack over the university students’ dorms, ravaging the rooms of the Christian Egyptian students and destroying all they contain of religious depictions and electric machines, especially the recorders over which the lectures are recorded. In that picture, he gave a clear illustration for what those criminal savages tried to impose of humiliation over others, and how the Christian Egyptians along with many of their Muslim Egyptian brother colleagues and professors reacted with great courageous humane resistance.

Yes… it was not a state inside a state… rather, it was a state stronger than that of Sadat; a state with many ruling Emirs whose names are iterated by people and in media and whom many bought their lie that they repented and became moderate mentalities… names including: Abu El-‘Ela Madi, Helmi al-Gazzar, Essam Derbala, Nageh Ibrahim, Abdel-Moniem Abul-Fettouh, Ali ash-Sherif and Usama Ibrahim. The name of Nageh Ibrahim was well known in the time of that bloody twilight, bleeding dusk and pitch darkness in Asyut! Professor Charles Megally did not escape what happened in the Greater Bairam of 1981 in Asyut when the terrorists killed brigadier general Reda Shokri al-Kholi and peed over his dead body along with three other officers, 62 soldiers and 21 of innocent citizens injuring 237 people!

No matter how I try to give an honest satisfying abridgement, I will not be able to abridge this picture of “Getting out of Kandahar” depicted by Charles Megally. Finally, I would like to ask a question that keeps haunting my conscience hoping some of you may find an answer for it. The question is: how values of loving, forgiveness, amiability, brotherhood and citizenship grew bigger in the mind, heart and conscience of Charles Megally and he remained a normal sane balanced human despite all that happened? And how those stupid still can’t see the crime of Anwar Sadat which we still live its black tragedy throughout this country?

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar



This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on March 28, 2018.

To see the original article, go to:

#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #Charles_Megally

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