The saying "Denial is a river in Egypt" is a common expression used to point out that someone is in denial, or that they're ignoring the truth about something. It is a play on words, since “denial” sounds like “the Nile,” which actually is a river that runs through Egypt. The expression actually started out as “denial isn’t just a river in Egypt,” but over time, different variations, like “denial is a river in Egypt,” have become popular.
Let’s delve into the origins of this intriguing phrase and explore its multifaceted implications.
Origin of the Phrase
In 1931, an American newspaper competition asked its readers to submit the best use of the word denial in a sentence. The winner was “Denial ain’t (just) a river in Egypt” (Quote Investigator 2012). A play on the words the Nile and denial, the pun jokingly suggests that someone is in denial.
The phrase gained further popularity through its usage in popular culture. On her TV show The Wendy Williams Experience in 2006, host Wendy Williams said, “Denial is a river in Egypt-your husband is gay!” to a caller who suspected her husband may be interested in men. The Wendy Williams Experience ran on VH1 for eight episodes between October 20th, 2006, to December 9th, 2006. The show featured a segment where Williams gives advice to callers.
Like “denial is a river,” it’s usually used to point out that someone is ignoring the truth about something, but it has more of a positive connotation.
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The sound is largely used in lip dub videos to either jokingly call someone out as being gay or to call someone out for denying a fact, presented through a caption.
The Nile River, a prominent feature of Egypt's geography.
The Linguistic Enigma of Denial
The saying is ensnaring. If the Nile (denial) were only a place in Egypt, denial as a social phenomenon would not exist. There is no way out of the statement without either denying the existence of denial or admitting its presence. Illustrating the convoluted nature of denial, the linguistic enigma presumably never intended to say anything about denial in Egypt. When analyzed as a statement about the world, however, it is spot on.
Denial as a Psychological Defense
Last week's post, "Is Ignorance Bliss?" generated some heated discussion among readers. It is so tempting to pit one extreme against the other as if to say that either utter ignorance or utter knowledge is bliss. As several readers pointed out, perhaps it is not an either-or issue. The comments got me thinking about one of our most popular and favorite psychological defenses: denial. Actually, denial is probably essential for psychological survival. If we were aware of everything, the mind couldn't process it all. By everything, I mean all of the complex and often contradictory thoughts, feelings, and impulses that are in us and around us at any given time. Some of these experiences are too much to bear-too painful, too frightening, too overwhelming. So the mind has developed an elegant kind of self-security system, where defenses like denial can be used to keep us from going crazy and to help us cope with the many demands of internal and external reality.
By way of denial, we put unwanted and frightening impulses on the shelf; we turn a blind eye to them. To use a popular psychological term, we "compartmentalize." We unconsciously place them out of awareness so we can deal. In this limited way, denial is helpful. But problems in life come when we use denial too extensively, too rigidly, too intensely. It is one thing when we bury our head in the sand for a day or two because we feel overwhelmed, but it is another thing if we make a lifestyle out of it-denying awareness of important things for too long. Often, such things resolve themselves; no harm, no foul. A lifestyle of "not-knowing" requires that we subscribe to the old adage that what we don't know won't hurt us. But the evidence of life shows that this just isn't true.
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As a way of life, hear no evil-see no evil-speak no evil is a recipe for disaster. Denial may offer the appeal of short-term bliss, but it prevents us from taking responsibility for things that really do matter, things we could do something about. On an individual level, denial can prevent us from doing all we can do to protect our health, safety, and all that we really value in life. Those things don't protect themselves. Our lives need our oversight, our care, our conscientious maintenance. Without our awareness of responsibility for ourselves, psychological forces-just like the natural force of entropy-pull us toward an infantile state of mind that is ultimately self-destructive.
One aspect of mature psychological life is flexibility. It is helpful to see the big picture and to keep life in perspective. We cannot function well if we worry over and take responsibility for every little thing. It is safe and helpful to put some things on the shelf, to let them pass by. But if we make denial a way of life, then we turn a blind eye to important matters about which we could do and need to do something constructive. As individuals and as a society, we need to discern what is essential and bring our best selves to it.
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Public Denials and Absurdity in Egypt
Public denials are infamous for creating bizarre situations. In 2014, a stork ended up in jail in Upper Egypt. The bird, called Menez, was arrested on suspicion of espionage after a farmer spotted an electronic device on its upper body as it rested by the Nile. Soon, Egyptian and international media started to circulate images of the bird behind bars. The comic drama got more surreal when local authorities denied any wrong doing. The refusal to admit that arresting a bird-spy was an embarrassing mistake prompted satirical commentators to conclude that detaining animals in prisons was standard practice or that the Egyptian authorities made no difference between human and non-human prisoners.
The story of the stork is just one example of surreal events involving ridiculous public denials. Why then are denials so common in Egypt? What functions do they perform in social and political life?
According to dictionary definitions, “denying” means “declaring something untrue” or “refusing to admit or acknowledge it.” Hence, a speaker can deny a claim because they believe it to be false, but they might just as well deny the claim because they think it is correct. They may have reasons for not acknowledging this - only the speaker knows. In this context, denials offer a semantic shield for the speaker who does not have to disclose what they know or think.
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Decades of misrule and impunity in Egypt have nurtured a social and public climate of fear, secrecy and mistrust. Dysfunctional legal procedures and institutions have eroded citizens’ expectations when it comes to processes that seek to establish truth, justice or demand accountability (Mbembé 2001, Navaro-Yashin 2002, Cherstich 2014). In this atmosphere, where information is potentially dangerous, telling the truth is not a prime concern. On the contrary, social actors often avoid pinning down another speaker’s inner position or revealing their own.
A depiction of prison conditions in Egypt.
If denials in everyday life emerge from the need to conceal potentially dangerous information/truths, public denials tend to generate absurd or surreal situations due to their blatant disregard for truth. Public denials often mock the truths and undermine people’s sense of sanity. They signal a fantastical side to authoritarian politics, in which, for instance, storks can be considered spies.
In the summer of 2023, Moushira Mahmoud Khattab, the President of Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), spoke to the media following allegations of mistreatment and deplorable conditions in the Wadi al-Natrun prison. Khattab refuted the accusations by arguing that the high-security prison was like a five-star hotel (Aladam 2023). Given the regime’s record on human rights abuses, the comparison came across as tragi-comic to many observers.
In a context where citizens’ expectation to hold public actors accountable for their actions or words are low, no-one expected her to speak the truth. Still, her statement was not just empty talk. As a rhetorical device, her denial served to remodel the playing field. Writing an official narrative according to which the standard of the country’s prisons is impeccable per default means that accusations of substandard conditions can be written off without further investigation. Through this circular argumentation, institutional responsibility is not only evaded: the burden of proof shifts back to those presenting the allegations - now with a “slightly” more difficult task: to prove that prisons are not hotels.
This audacious disregard for truth is also what makes Khattab’s denial eerily absurd. Put simply, the fact that the President of Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights can liken prisons to hotels in conversation with the media in the first place is a cruel display of a power. While the public denial related to the bird behind bars exacerbated an already absurd situation, Khattab’s denial instead ensnared the public in a twisted reality that undermined further conversation.
In Egypt, as in other authoritarian states, reality can be unbelievable and still be part of ordinary life. It is both normal and hilarious that a bird ends up in a human prison. It is dark yet ordinary that authorities equate prisons to hotels.
The Absurd as a Reflection of Social Reality
Albert Camus (1942) wrote that states of absurdity reveal a crack in social reality. People experiencing absurd situations of this kind can inhabit a dual position: they are both social protagonists in the event and spectators removed from the taken-for-granted reality. As social protagonists, people are often primarily pragmatic, constrained to navigating life within current norms, conditions and limitations. As spectators, however, social actors can also analyse a situation from an outsider’s perspective, using as analytical tools the social and ethical predispositions that tell them how things ought to unfold.
If feelings of absurdity emerge from a rupture in the social fabric, one might assume that such states are exceptional. But as several contributions in this Thematic thread highlight, absurd events can be integral to everyday life, incorporated in “the order of things,” (Bourdieu 1990) without losing their generative power to indicate that something is not “quite right.” Understood in this way, the presence of the absurd indicates a mismatch between “what is” and “what ought to be.” This dissonance is also reflected in the ambivalent meaning attached to the concept of “normality” in Egyptian Arabic.
We can now begin to understand why denial and absurdity frequently go hand in hand in Egyptian public life. Both denial and absurdity can be used as tools of oppression, but feelings of absurdity also signal sanity in skewed realities. Denials, on the other hand, offer semantic ambiguity to speakers who can thereby concomitantly indicate one thing, its opposite, or something in-between. Because of this capacity, they allow actors in power and citizens alike to navigate the opaque arbitrariness created by impunity and misrule while trying to evade trouble.
Denial Is A River: The Song
"Denial Is a River" is a song by American rapper Doechii from her second mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024). It was released to pop and rhythmic contemporary radio as the mixtape's third single on January 14, 2025. It was produced by Ian James, Joey Hamhock and Banser.
Doechii released two trailers for the official music video in December 2024,[12][13] the first of which used the theme song of the sitcom Family Matters, "As Days Go By".[12] The video premiered on January 2, 2025. Co-directed by Carlos Acosta and James Mackel, it stars Doechii in her own autobiographical sitcom.[14] It opens with a title sequence parodying that of Family Matters as Doechii enters the house.
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