Saad Zaghlol : The Leader And His Shadow

Al Jazeera documentary surprised us in Egypt by producing a documentary about Saad Zaghlol in the anniversary of the 1919 revolution from two weeks ago. The documentary is about the other Saad we do not know from the school books, it is about the human Saad tracing his journey from an elder son of a wealthy landlord who got huge social ambitions to a grown man who was battling a nasty addiction to an old man who found himself leading a nation in one of its critical moments in its modern history.

Saad Zaghlol unlike other politicians was keen to write his diaries not to profit from  but to heal himself from inside. Unlike other politicians you will be surprised by the amount of honesty in his diaries , of course these diaries were not to be published and were trusted to very few eyes in the old Al Wafd party. Till the death of Al-Nahas pasha in 1960s those diaries were kept away from the public then the state took these diaries keeping them at the national archives of Egypt which is from the greatest archives in the whole world , you can’t imagine the treasures there. Among these treasures are the Saad Zaghlol’s diaries where you can find Saad Pasha chronicling everything in his daily life whether his fights with his wife Safia or his wish of having son and marrying a young girl from the countryside or his gambling addiction that was killing him.

If you read the diaries or you watch the documentary ,you may feel that Zaghlol was not that great leader we always imagine , well my dear reader you forget that Zaghlol was a human after all with his own ups and downs. Unfortunately in Egypt we forget that our leaders are humans , we still idolize our leaders just like the ancient days where the pharaoh was the Gods’ son but here we got a fantastic example of a person who did not glorify himself and have this inner syndrome that I am great and flawless !! I believe God gives every person opportunities and Saad may not be the hero we believed in but he may be was that antihero who played a very important and great role by the end of his life.

Here is the video recorded from Al Jazeera documentary by the fantastic Tafatefo, I wish it had English subtitles. It has photos and clips from newsreels I have not seen before. It is sad thing that our National TV is not interested in producing similar documentaries about our leaders in order to educate the people , well may be this is the reason they do not produce a documentary about our leaders.

I think the documentary was short to cover Saad’s life in order to give the viewer more information about this man and also the general climate in Egypt during that important period. I also think that there were others who can speak more Saad and this period better than Rafaat El-Said and Salah Eissa like for instance Dr. Latifa Salem

You can download Saad Zaghlol’s diaries which were published on several parts here. 

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