I said to Mrs. Nazima, his office manager: I want to meet the professor!

She asked me: Do you have an appointment with him?

I said: No, but I am a poet from Alexandria, and I want to meet him.

She smiled and said: I have instructions from the professor that any poet who wants to meet him should be admitted immediately.

She opened the door to his office and said: Please, come in.

I entered the office of the poet Salah Abdel Sabour at the Egyptian General Book Authority, and it was the first time I met him face to face.

Before that, I had visited the office of my poet friend, Mohamed Abudoma, and presented him with a copy of my first poetry collection "Traveler to God." He flipped through it and asked me: Did you give a copy to Professor Salah?

I said: No.

He said: You must give him a copy. He is in his office now. Request a meeting and you will be admitted immediately.

I asked him: Won't you come with me?

He said: No, but the professor will meet you right away. There are instructions for his office manager to admit any poet, without a prior appointment.

Then he added: Come back to me after you meet him.

I couldn't believe I was in the office of the great poet Salah Abdel Sabour so easily, and luckily, there were no other visitors in his office.

I entered the spacious room and walked towards him. He got up from his chair, shook my hand, and I mentioned my name, adding: A poet from Alexandria. He said: I know your name, but this is the first time I see you. I said: It's an honor.

Before meeting the poet Salah Abdel Sabour, I used to write in the magazine "Al-Jadid," edited by Dr. Rashaad Rashidi, and I published some of my poems in the magazine "Al-Katib," which was edited by Salah Abdel Sabour. However, my interactions were with Dr. Ali Shelsh, who used to visit us at the Palace of Freedom Culture in Alexandria. We would gather around him, and he would take our poems, stories, and articles to be published in the upcoming issues following his return from Alexandria.

It seems that our poet Salah Abdel Sabour had read my name in one of the magazines and remembered it when I mentioned it during that first meeting.

I took out a copy of my small poetry collection "Traveler to God" from my leather bag and wrote a dedication that I still remember to this day, saying: "To the sun of contemporary Arabic poetry, the great poet, Professor Salah Abdel Sabour."

Salah Abdel Sabour read the dedication as soon as he received the copy, smiled, and thanked me. He asked me: Why didn't you print the collection at the Authority? I smiled and said: It would take a long time and a queue of waiting. I had printed "Traveler to God" at my own expense through Pharos Publications for Literature and Arts, a group that we had formed in Alexandria in 1979. The great poet then realized that we were writers, poets, and artists with great ambitions, and that we printed our books outside the official circles. He praised this and said: Our problem is indeed the large number of books submitted to us for printing at the Authority, and most of their owners want them to be published immediately.

The poet opened the pages of the small collection and began to read. I didn't want to bother him with questions and requests, so I remained silent. He flipped through the pages, and I thanked God that none of the visitors or Nazima, the library director, interrupted us. It was a golden opportunity to have the poet Salah Abdel Sabour read to me in his spacious office.

After a few moments of silence, the great poet surprised me with a question: "Have you read Farid al-Din Attar and Saadi Shirazi?" I answered honestly, "No." He said, "You should read them; you'll benefit from their poetic experience."

During those few minutes of reading some poems from "Traveler to God," Salah Abdel Sabour noticed a Sufi direction in the poems of the small collection, so his valuable advice was to read the works of Sufi masters.

However, what I wondered about but didn't want to ask was about Hallaj, whom he wrote his famous poetic play "The Tragedy of Hallaj" about, which I had read before meeting him in the early eighties. Why didn't Salah Abdel Sabour advise me to read Hallaj and Ibn Arabi?

I promised the great poet that I would read Attar and Shirazi, and I told him that I had read "The Tragedy of Hallaj." He smiled and said, "If you have a new poetry collection, bring it to my office right away."

My eyes widened in surprise and at the unexpected request, which I had not dreamed of in that meeting. It seemed that I was afraid the great poet would change his mind, so I said to him as I prepared to leave, "I'm afraid I may have overstayed my first visit to you." He smiled and said, "No, you didn't."

I greeted him and left his office, intoxicated by his request to submit a collection to the organization, which meant that my poetry had won his approval.

I thanked Mrs. Nazima, the director of his office, who stood up to shake my hand and quickly entered the professor's office, as if the meeting had been private.

I went to my poet friend Mohamed Abou Dema in his office, and he saw the signs of happiness on my face. I told him what had happened between me and the professor, and he said, "That's why I asked you to go to him alone."

I didn't have an ample number of poems to form a poetry collection to be published by the organization at the request of its president, so I thought of issuing a joint collection with my poet friend Abdelrahman Abdelmoula. We indeed chose its title "Two Sparrows Burning in the Sea" and had the introduction written by our friend, the poet Ahmed Soweilam. We submitted it to the professor's office, but he was not present during my second visit with Abdelrahman Abdelmoula, so we left it with the director of his office, Nazima.

My second encounter with the poet Salah Abdel Sabour took place in Alexandria, where a significant symposium was organized for him at the Freedom Cultural Palace. After he recited some of his poems, the floor was opened for discussion with the audience of literary figures who filled the large hall (which was later named after Tawfiq al-Hakim, who passed away in 1987). I asked for the floor, and the symposium director (who seemed to be the Alexandrian poet Abdel Monem Al-Ansary) gave me the opportunity to speak. I introduced myself and informed the great poet that my friend, the poet Abdelrahman Abdelmoula, and I had left a manuscript of a collection titled "Two Sparrows Burning in the Sea" with his office director on a specific day. The poet was jotting down what I said on a piece of paper on the podium and promised me that he would look into the matter upon his return to Cairo.

Salah Abdel Sabour returned to Cairo, only for us to be shocked a few weeks later by the news of his death on August 13, 1981. The collection "Two Sparrows Burning in the Sea" remained in the obscurity of the various departments of the Egyptian General Book Organization for five years until it was finally published in 1986.