Ahmed Fouad Negm was born in a small village north of
Cairo,
Egypt, to a family of
fellahin. His mother, Hanem Morsi Negm, was a housewife, and his father Mohammed Ezat Negm, a police officer. Negm was one of seventeen brothers. Like many poets and writers of his generation, he received his education at the religious Kutaab schools managed by
El-Azhar. He was six years old when his father died. He went to live with his uncle Hussein in
Zagazig, but was placed in an orphanage in 1936 where he first met famous singer
Abdel Halim Hafez. In 1945, at the age of 17, he left the orphanage and returned to his village to work as a shepherd. Later, he moved to
Cairo to live with his brother who eventually kicked him out only to return to his village again to work in one of the English camps while helping with guerilla operations. After the agreement between Egypt and Britain, the Egyptian National Workers' Movement asked everyone in the English camps to quit their job. Negm was then appointed by the Egyptian government as a laborer in mechanical workshops. He was imprisoned for 3 years for counterfeiting form, during which he participated and won first place in a writing competition organized by the Supreme Council for the Arts. He then published his first collection "Pictures from Life and Prison" in vernacular Egyptian Arabic and became famous after Suhair El-Alamawi introduced his book while he was still in prison. After he was released, he was appointed as a clerk in the organization for Asian and African peoples. He also became a regular poet on Egyptian radio. Negm lived in a small room on the rooftop of a house in
Boulaq el-Dakror neighborhood. When he met singer and composer
Sheikh Imam in Khosh Adam neighborhood, they became roommates and formed a famous signing duet. Negm was also imprisoned several times due to his political views, particularly his harsh criticism of
Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser,
Anwar Sadat and
Hosni Mubarak. == Negm-Imam duo ==