Remembering Nabil El-Hilali.. The reluctant hero of the Egyptian left

“If death is stronger than human beings, then life is stronger than death. For the fighters death snatched from our ranks remain alive, enshrined within our minds and hearts, and death’s hand cannot tear them from their place.”

This is how Ahmed Nabil El-Hilali eulogized his wife, Fatma Zaki, in the spring of 2004. He had first met her in the late 1940s as “Comrade Nabila,” using codenames as was customary in clandestine communist cells at the time. Twenty years after his own death on June 18, 2006, those words feel like they could have been written about him.

The communist aristocrat

El-Hilali collected honorifics the way other men collect medals: the knight, the saint, the monk, the nobleman. Each one was meant to capture the reverence he undeniably inspired.

Yet up close, he seemed far simpler than those descriptions suggest. Such titles embarrassed him, made him uncomfortable. The eloquent lawyer whose courtroom pleadings shook the halls of justice and captivated audiences who came specifically to hear him became even more striking when seated quietly among students. He would listen carefully as they spoke about the student movement and what had become of it, hearing each of them out with full attention. Only after they finished would he ask questions, trying to piece together a clearer picture of their movement on the ground — what was hindering its growth, what it needed, and what support he could offer.

El-Hilali was born in Cairo in August 1921, and died there in June 2006. Though born and raised in an aristocratic family, he joined the ranks of the left as a young man in 1947.

His decision not entirely unusual at the time. Many sons and daughters of Egypt’s aristocracy joined leftist and communist movements, placing the interests of the broader society above their individual, familial, and class interests. Among them were Amina Rachid, Inji Efflatoun, Fawzi Habashi, Youssef Darwish, and Mohamed Sayed Ahmed, whose elite education and exposure to modern global political thought drew them away from aristocratic conservatism and toward the left.

Despite the violent upheavals he lived through, El-Hilali never abandoned his convictions

His decision to join the Egyptian communist movement shaped many of the choices that followed, beginning with his choice of life partner.

“I first met her in the late 1940s, under her nom de guerre (‘Comrade Nabila’), when she was my superior in a clandestine cell. I was struck by the strength of her personality, her dedication, and her earnestness. Then time separated us for ten years, until we met again in the mid-1950s and pledged to become partners in life, as well as comrades in struggle. We married on June 29, 1958, but, time did not grant us long together. After only six months, the curse of separation struck us once more, when security forces stormed our home at dawn on January 1, 1959, to take me into detention, separating us for five more years.”

For El-Hilali, joining the Egyptian communist movement was a commitment to fairness and equality—one that would guide his professional life for decades. After graduating from law school in 1949, he carried that commitment into the courtroom, defending workers, students, farmers, and political figures across the spectrum—those he agreed with and those he didn’t, even those openly hostile to him. Justice, after all, does not discriminate; neither did he.

That same commitment led him to mentor generations of young lawyers, turning his office into a veritable training ground for leftist attorneys. For many newly minted law graduates seeking to deepen their understanding of justice, joining Nabil El-Hilali's office became the natural next step — just as his office became a refuge for workers, students, and politicians alike.

Comrade Bashir

Even before his death, Nabil El-Hilali had been cast in almost sacred terms. The title “Saint of the Left” was attached to him early on, and there is no doubt that his capacity for dedication, sacrifice, unwavering principle, and humility all helped shape that image.

But El-Hilali himself was never fond of such saintly portrayals: devoted lover and husband, leftist militant, lawyer whose voice echoed through courtrooms and who fought for the oppressed. He saw nothing extraordinary in what he did, only the choices of an ordinary human being rather than the heroics of an exceptional one.

Perhaps Comrade “Bashir”—his nom de guerre in the People’s Socialist Party, a small Egyptian leftist party El-Hilali helped found with several comrades in the late 1980s—expressed this best himself, in conversations with friends on the left:

“Giving up certain class privileges we did not choose and adopting ideas we did choose is not true sacrifice. True sacrifice is when a person abandons what they believe in—abandons themselves.”

Despite the violent upheavals he lived through, El-Hilali never abandoned his convictions. In meetings among comrades, he often expressed sorrow over the collapse of the Soviet Union and its effects on communist movements and the broader left in Egypt and beyond. He worked consistently with comrades across leftist factions to overcome that crisis.

Curtain call

El-Hilali’s last major initiative, undertaken in the spring of 2006, was the appeal: “Let us build a union of all leftist forces.” It was his final message, laying out his vision and ambitions for what needed to be done. In it, he set two dates: first, the convening of a preparatory body made up of those who answered and signed the call in the coming June; second, the organizing of the first general conference of the left that September.

The final stage of his life came before the final stage of his struggle. Until the very last moment, he still had work to do, despite the pain he endured after the death of his life partner, Fatma Zaki, in March 2004, just two years before his own. He continued to believe that, even in the darkest of times, there was always something that could be done.

El-Hilali lived for 84 years, but his legacy will endure far longer. Much can be said about his sacrifices, dedication, sincerity, and humility—the same humility that astonished me as a young man in my twenties, when El-Hilali asked to be addressed simply as “Comrade Ahmed” and no more. Among comrades, there was no room for any other title.

Twenty years after his death, after all that has passed since, it’s fair to say that El-Hilali lived and died on his own terms. For decades, he was able to choose—and remain faithful to those choices. This is what he chose to say two years before his death in his eulogy for his wife:

“The old departs and the new comes forward. Generations follow one another, and the banner of struggle never falls. What eases the burden of grief tearing at my heart is my certainty that you lived among us happy, and departed from us happy.”