On 5 September 1981, President Anwar al-Sadat detained 1,536 people belonging to various political or non-political factions, whom he considered opponents. Among them were a number of the clergy and laity of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Pope Shenouda III was banished to the desert monastery of Anba Bishoi, while eight bishops, 24 priests and 24 Christian laymen were imprisoned. Sadat also banned some newspapers including Watani. This conveyed to Copts a general impression that the Church was under siege.
Sadat was shot dead a month later, on 6 October 1981, by the very people he had encouraged, the Islamists. In November 1981 Hosni Mubarak became president of
Runaway extremism
Those prison days have always intrigued the writer and Watani reporter Robeir al-Faris, whose most recent book is Days of Prison and Prayer … Pages from the memoires of bishops and priests imprisoned in 1981. In her preface to the book Samia Sidhom, managing editor of the Watani International’s English pages, recalls the disturbing forerunning years of the 1970s when Islamic groups were in their heyday and Copts underwent fretful times.
Sidhom cites a personal incident following the October 1973 War. Like countless other Christians her sister, then a university student, wore a cross. She was stopped by a young man on a Downtown Cairo thoroughfare who pointed his finger at her and said: “We’re done with the Jews, now we’ll do with you.”
This runaway extremism was gaining a foothold on the Egyptian scene; Copts felt genuinely threatened and, not surprisingly, held fast to their faith and Church for strength and comfort. An unforgettable moment, Sidhom recalls, was when the congregation joined in the popular hymn “My Coptic Church is the Church of the Lord”, which narrates the story of St Mark bringing Christianity to Egypt and how the Church was built on the blood of the martyrs and still survives despite oppression and hard times. “Never were the words so strong, never were they so true,” she writes.
Personal paradox
Days of Prison and Prayer begins by analysing the paradoxical character of the then president Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat. The man who reminded the public that his first name was Mohamed, who declared he was “a Muslim president of a Muslim country”, who encouraged violent Islamist groups, and who drove through legislation to make Islamic sharia the main source of legislation, admired the American lifestyle and offered donations to Churches and Coptic institutions.
The author delineates the turbid relationship between Sadat and the Church. Some relate it to the Pope’s ban on Copts travelling to
Prison cells
The major part of Faris’s book reveals how the pope, bishops and priests passed their time in confinement or prison, and the experiences they learnt. The pope spent 40 months behind the walls of St Bishoi’s Monastery in Wadi Natroun, but those who visited him in his quiet exile found him happy and smiling. Those visitors who arrived depressed and fearful left the monastery feeling consoled. The pope managed his life normally during his residence in the monastery; he gave sermons to the monks and helped the workmen who were doing construction work at the monastery to carry loads of silt. He wrote 16 books; among them God and no more , Presence with God, and Contemplations on the Psalm ‘The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble’.
Faris cites the memories of the late Anba Pimen, Bishop of Mallawi, in the Marg prison. Anba Pimen nicknamed the prison the Marg Sheraton, Sheraton being then the luxury name in hotels in
Lollipops and execution
Father Boulos Bassili recounted how he used to suffer from hypoglycemia—a diabetic condition—and how, when his congregation knew of it, they used to send him lollipops to boost his sugar level. Fr Tadros Yacoub Malti of
Days of Prison and Prayer gives a true-to-life account of contemporary fathers who overcame difficulty and strife, and lived contentedly with their pain and oppression.