When I was younger I used to think that I could resist death and I was very convinced that no one dies unless they agree to die
and that if I insist on rejecting death all my life I actually won’t die.
I really did believe that, I really did believe that I could spend my entire life refusing death.
And then I found out that this is practically impossible.
I couldn’t find a single creature that lived, not a single creature escaped death.
So I kept looking for anything that could prove this idea of mine.
So I found some indications of when people do agree to die.
So I found for example a program once featuring Mohamed Nouh in his final days;
the host asked him “What do you want?”, he told him “I want to die”.
A few months later, Mohamed Nouh died.
During the interview, he was asked “Why do you want to die?” and he said
“When you get older and you can’t see, you can’t eat, you can’t hear,
what do you want from life?”.
He lost the will to live, he agreed to die.
Another thing I saw
was an interview with Naguib Mahfouz in his last days
where he was asked “What have age and time done to you?”
He said “They allowed me to make peace with death”.
Which means that he too had a problem with death throughout his life
he rejected it.
I had a friend who died in 2000, his name was [Mohamed] Bahnasy.
He was 34 years old. He didn’t know he had cancer.
He had cancer and he used to travel abroad to receive medication
and his parents never told him about his illness.
During the last trip the doctor told his father that he had a month to live.
But because Mohamed was young and he rejected death,
they gave him painkillers for 3 months,
and he lived for a year.
For one year, he resisted death;
he wasn’t sure he would die and he didn’t want to die.
He reached the final stages of the illness
and during his final days in the hospital I spent a lot of time with him.
He was very ill but he used to smoke.
He would ask me to light him a cigarette and I would light him the cigarette.
The last time I offered him a cigarette I told him “Mohamed should I light you a cigarette?”
he told me “No, it’s haram”.
He went into a coma 2 hours later and he passed away 48 hours later.
He had agreed to die; he wasn’t willing to live anymore.
My mother also died in 2008. She had cancer.
And my mother was a very religious woman.
When I found out she was ill I imagined that she would be able to resist.
I used to think that she must be able to overcome this illness.
And the illness didn’t show on her.
She was ill for 5 years and the medication was working.
Once during her last 6 months I walked in on her in the morning –
we live in the same building –
and I found her reading out of the Bible and writing something down on a piece of paper.
I asked her “What are you writing, mother?”
She told me “I’m going through the final revision
because the exam is right around the corner.”
Then I was certain that she wasn’t intending on resisting;
she was ready to die.
As I looked around,
I realized that it really is impossible to resist death.
You cannot imagine the amount of symbols of death that surround us;
they are infinite.
Your seafood meal,
valentine roses,
all of these are dead things.
The probability that you will survive all this,
that you will eliminate it from your thoughts
is close to none.
And certain things begin to pressure you into thinking about death:
greying hair, crow’s feet, receding vision,
you have to agree to die.
The probability that you don’t agree is nonexistent.
I found a quote by someone by the name of Banksy –
I’m not sure if you know who he is –
he’s an English graffiti artist.
This quote summarized my attempt to resist.
He said that man dies twice:
once when he draws his last breath
and the second time when the last person on Earth speaks his name.
This means that Salah Gaheen is alive, Picasso is alive
when we stop speaking their names they will die.
Fine, I’m holding onto this.
I don’t want to resist the first death.
I will die. But I won’t die again.
This is my desire.
I don’t want to die the Second Death.
I will die the first death, there’s nothing I can do about it.
I will spend my life resisting the second death.
But you have no idea how submissive we are;
we’ve become like dead fish.
We go with the flow.
ll that’s required is that we resist.
Do you think for example that the Mona Lisa has what no other artwork has?
I draw and paint and I know art.
The Mona Lisa is special in some ways, but what it is most special about it
is that it contains Leonardo’s desire to survive.
This desire always shows itself in the product of people’s work.
This is the desire that surfaces in the works of Naguib Mahfouz and Salah Gaheen,
and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Mozart.
Their desire surfaces in their production.
They can’t not resist death,
so every product of theirs embodies their rejection.
People think that you have to do and create great things to survive,
or that you have to be exceptionally talented.
That’s not necessary at all. All you have to do is reject.
I don’t know if anyone knows this coming example.
There’s a woman called Kay Parker; she was a porn star in the 70s.
I don’t think you’ll get the chance to watch her works.
Kay Parker has on Wikipedia a page that is as grand as Cleopatra’s;
it might even surpass that of Mme Curie the physicist.
The point isn’t to create something important,
the point is to believe in yourself and reject the second death.
History doesn’t only save the memory of the great people,
I’m not talking about immortality
–to be immortal you have to be great.
I’m talking about survival.
History is like a stamps collector.
It doesn’t matter how much the stamp costs, or where it comes from,
or its size or design
all that matters is one thing:
That it isn’t repeated,
that there aren’t 2 copies of the same stamp.
You can never live if you don’t love yourself.
You can never live forever if you don’t.
You have to love yourself because who else are you living with?
The probability of your survival when you hate yourself is nonexistent.
The probability of your survival when you’re stuck in your generation [is also very low].
I am 47 years old. If I can’t talk to people who are 23 years old,
then I’ve already died. I
f I can’t talk to those who are younger then I have already died.
If you can’t talk to people who are younger, who are you going to live with?
Your friends are all going to die anyway.
You have to be able to overcome the age barrier.
This discrimination of generations, saying this generation understands better than that
won’t lead you anywhere.
And you can’t act like you’re “accepting” the younger;
you have to be able to listen to them, truly, like they’re your friends.
Besides you have to be real.
Because you can’t be fake and survive.
Because fake acts create wrong products.
You won’t be able to tell who you are and where you stand in the first place.
How can you survive when all your information about yourself is wrong in the first place?
You have to have the right information about yourself.
Money kills. Money turns you into a product.
And every product in the world has an expiry date.
There’s no product without an expiry date.
Not just food, even shirts and shoes have expiry dates.
Everything that can be bought and sold has a production date and an expiry date.
Always try to resist the temptation of money. Money won’t elongate your life.
But a long life, the second life that I’m talking about, is what makes money.
Salah Gaheen is still making money, he’s still selling. So is Naguib Mahfouz.
The probability that they will stop making money is still nonexistent.
People always inoculate their children to make them immune in the face all of kinds of diseases,
so they can live.
You need to inoculate them with other things so they can live:
inoculate them with dreams.
If your son likes playing soccer, take him to the soccer field
so he can dream to be the next Pele or Maradona.
If he likes drawing take him to museums so he can dream of the era of Picasso and Matisse.
Make them listen to music so they can live like Mozart.
I don’t need to mention more names; you get the point.
I have no proof of anything I’m telling you right now.
I can’t prove it to you. I believe it.
And I don’t want you to think that I’m telling you this on the basis that I’ve succeeded in surviving;
I don’t know: I’ll keep trying until my last breath
to leave something behind, to survive.
I don’t want to pass by this life unnoticed.
Plus, I’m telling you this because I’m sure that someone here or out there
has what will make him survive, he definitely has it;
he just needs the theory. I’m formulating this as a theory
because this idea might make that person continue trying.
I was once sitting with a friend in Alexandria by the sea talking about a completely unrelated topic
and he suddenly asked me “Hani, was there TV in the days of the pharaohs?”
Of course not!
He told me “No, it did exist.
What didn’t exist were the theories that manufactured the TV.
But all the components of a TV set were existent on Earth.
The theories were all that was missing.”
So if the theory is there, everything can be solved, anything can be created.
I’m almost done but I wanted to end with this anecdote.
In 1995 when Sheikh Imam passed away, above his obituary were a couple of verses
from a poem by Ahmed Foud Negm, not from the Quran.
I didn’t look for these verses, but because this is what I’ve been thinking about
I came across them. I don’t know if you know them;
“Who remains? And who disappears?
Who is burdened? And who has reached?
Who stands steady during the storm?
Who of us dies? And who of us lives?
God lives!”