Cairo – This week passed the 90th anniversary of the departure of the Egyptian poet Hafez Ibrahim, who was known as the “Poet of the Nile,” but the anniversary came at a time when Egypt is suffering from a crisis that threatens its people and its future due to the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is expected to reduce Egypt’s share of the river. Which is a lifeline for her.
In southern Egypt, where the Nile expands and appears freer, Muhammad Hafez Ibrahim was born on board one of the ships anchored on the banks of the river. His decades-long creative career is linked to the lifeblood of the Egyptians.
The man’s journey – which lasted for about 60 years – took place like the flow of a river, filled with poetic flow and artistic sweetness and the ripple between authorship, translation and criticism, and his verses reflected the sun of truth that the Egyptians lived through during the British occupation of his country.
This is what made Hafez Ibrahim nicknamed the poet of the Nile, and like the immortal river, his poems remained alive on the tongues of his fans despite the passage of 90 years since his departure, as he died on June 21, 1932.
However – and paradoxically – nearly 100 years after the departure of the man whose creativity was linked to the Nile, the usual river flow on the land of Egypt has become in doubt, with the risks surrounding the country’s share of water due to the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.