Breaking Taboos
A leading historian’s memoirs, targeting the nation’s youth, spark debate about how national identity is constructed and about academic politics
By Manal El Jesri
DR. RAOUF ABBAS’S MEMOIRS, published under the title of Mashaynaha Khota (We Have Tread Its Ways), have stirred loud debate in the nation’s sometimes stagnant intellectual circles since their publication last December. Stripped of detail: The historian / history professor / renowned public intellectual / chairman of the Egyptian Society for Historical Studies has said what only few dare to say.
The list of taboos he managed to break is exceptionally long, starting with allegations of corruption in academic circles, moving on to prejudice against the nation’s Coptic Christian minority and even alleged corruption leading to a former first lady becoming a university professor.
Abbas brushes off his critics by insisting he merely said what had to be said. “The average life expectancy of an Egyptian male is 60-something. I have passed that age, so I have little to be afraid of. What I wrote is just a sample of what people know, but cannot say to get it off their chests,” he says.
Born in pre-revolution Cairo, Abbas and his entire generation were deeply moved by the turbulent politics of his youth.
“I lived through the end of the royal era,” he says. “As children, my colleagues and I used to go out to demonstrations, demanding independence and an end to imperialist oppression. We got hurt, but still insisted on marching with the others.” The point, he adds, in case the interviewer missed it, is that ever since his childhood, his generation has had something to fight for, while “youth today have nothing. Everything has been watered down,”
The average life expectancy of an Egyptian male is 60-something. I have passed that age, so I have little to be afraid of. What I wrote is just a sample of what people know.
Much of that has to do with a sense of national identity. “During the royal era, we were raised to think of ourselves as being Egyptians. History lessons, literature and just about everything else concentrated on an Egyptian identity. Then came the revolution. It emphasized an Egyptian identity for a while, something that, for example, saw the statue of Ramses I moved to what was once called Queen Nazli Square (Bab ElHadid), but which was renamed Ramses St. But after 1956, [former President Gamal Abdel] Nasser realized that what was actually happening in Egypt has actually resulted in the opening of new horizons for all Arabs. Thus we saw the spark for the idea of pan-Arabism and action to free the Arab world. Then came Anwar Sadat, who announced that ‘Egypt is for the Egyptians.’ The only problem is that Egypt turned out to be a haven for thieves. Young people are not to blame [for the loss of identity],” he says.
Although what was going on in Egypt during Abbas’ childhood and youth affected his entire generation, Abbas frankly discusses in his book the personal influences that shaped him into what he is today, including a very difficult childhood, in which poverty coupled with constant toil were the main characteristics.
“A lot of people were shocked because I spoke about my childhood in such detail,” the historian explains. “The norm is to either say a few words and move on, or pretend to have come from a rich family. But I wanted to reach out to young people and show them that no matter how difficult life may be, if one has hope, one can accomplish anything.”
Hoping to make his memoirs accessible to younger readers, Abbas made a clear decision to steer way from academic jargon when he wrote them. The stakes, he suggests, are so high that he couldn’t risk his message being ignored or misunderstood.
“The nation is torn like it has never been torn before,” he begins. “This is very dangerous. When national issues are absent, we tend to think in terms of Muslim, Christian and Jew. I tried to illustrate, in my book, that Egyptians dealt with each other as Egyptians, not as Christians or Muslims. It was as if there was an unwritten pact between all Egyptians that no one is to go near other people’s beliefs. This turned Egypt into a melting pot for all races,” Abbas says.
He still remembers what an old Englishman once told him: “I was looking at the Egyptian royal-era documents in London, and this man who worked there asked me why no two Egyptians looked alike. He noted that some are brown, some white, some have red hair, etc. I told him, ‘Because we never ask people about their origins. We just take them as they are’.”
Back to the memoirs: When Abbas finished his high school education, he wanted to go on to university. His father refused, saying he thought it was time for Abbas, as the eldest son, to work and share the family burden with him. “It was normal for people my age to insist on getting a good education. Education was the door to social advancement. Nowadays, education means nothing. Having money has replaced education as a value,” he says.
Abbas believes he was lucky to have had the chance to enroll at Ain Shams University. “The university was in its beginnings. My class was only the tenth to graduate. Professors at Ain Shams were trying to prove their competence,” he remembers. Some people, whom he says “just read one line of the book,” attacked him for speaking so favorably of Ain Shams, at the same time making grave allegations about corruption at Cairo University.
“They fail to understand that I speak about the past. Today, Ain Shams may be even worse. [Mediocrity and corruption] are part of the system. Look at university text books. They [the professors] write trashy books that they then force students to buy. They even tamper with students’ grades for the benefit of privileged students,” he points out.
After receiving a degree in modern history from Ain Shams, Abbas went on to do his master’s. At the time, he had started working at the Egyptian Financial and Industrial Company in Kafr ElZayat. Although his job had nothing to do with history, he was lucky in that he was introduced to the idea of workers’ syndicates and workers’ rights.
“I decided to do my master’s on the Egyptian workers’ movement. God was kind to me in leading me to my professor, Dr. Ahmed Ezzat Abdel Karim, who was broad-minded enough to accept my data-gathering methods,” Abbas remembers. For the first time in Egyptian history, a master’s thesis was completed based on oral reports of witnesses of a historical movement.
A few years after he received his master’s degree (he had started to teach at Cairo University in the meantime), Abbas was invited to join a research group to study social and economic development in Egypt and Japan during the 19th century. After what he says was a rich and moving experience, Abbas came back from Japan with many memories and a book he had translated and printed, but that no publisher wanted to distribute.
The book, Hiroshima Diaries, was the diary of the director of the Transportation Hospital in Hiroshima. Beginning on the day Hiroshima was bombed at the end of the Second World War and ending the day the hospital was turned over to the Americans, the book reveals some frightening facts.
“It shows that Japan was used to test the effect of the nuclear bomb. The United States hit Japan at a time when the Japanese were secretly negotiating a surrender. After they hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they sent in a team of American doctors who happened to speak and read Japanese fluently. This means that they had been preparing for this since the beginning of the war,” Abbas alleges. “In the man’s [the Japanese diarist’s] town, they had turned his home into a museum, and I saw 17 translations of the book. The Arabic translation was number 18,” Abbas says.
When Abbas took the book to Al-Ahram to have it distributed, the man in charge told him, “This is not the right time. The world is not ready for such a book opposing the United States.”
“I insisted, so he said, ‘Suit yourself.’ Weeks later, Al-Ahram received verbal orders to stop the book from circulating, so a truck delivered all copies to my home. When I took the book to bookshops, I was told: ‘Is this the Hiroshima book? It is banned.’” Abbas never saw any written orders banning his book.
“Even Libya, Algeria and Syria [who then formed a front against imperialism] refused to let the book in. They screamed about elimperialiyya wel mahalabiyya, but it was all a show,” he says.
Abbas believes regimes in developing nations often interfere with ‘what can be said.’
“Can you write today about the big lie of the constitutional amendments? Can you say it is nothing except an answer to external pressure? You probably can, but no one will dare publish it,” he says. “Of course, each regime has those who promote it. On the other hand, he who always says what his conscience dictates never attains great positions.” He cites the example of a historian from Andalusia, who spoke his mind and was hated by rulers. “Despite that, they were all afraid of him,” Abbas says.
If not everything can be told, should we trust what we find in the history books, especially when it comes to what students are taught in schools? According to Abbas, the answer is “Not all the time.”
“Take Islamic history, for example. It is presented in a way that relies on legends more than an analysis of culture. They talk about the Ptolemaic era in two lines, and then they jump to the Arab invasion of Egypt, leaving behind a very important period the Coptic era. Their excuse is that there was never a Coptic state, but rather a Byzantine one. History should be taken as a whole. They do not teach students, for example, that the Ancient Egyptians invented religion and that all divine religions came and said the same thing,” he says. “Gamal Hemdan said that if you find an Islamic Egyptian script, scratch its surface and you’ll find a Coptic script. Scratch some more and you’ll find a Pharaonic script.”
Despite the faults he finds with history school textbooks, Abbas believes it is imperative for students at all levels to study history. In fact, the Egyptian Society for Historical Studies had held a seminar last month on history curricula, and recommended that the study of history be mandatory.
The move came after the Ministry of Education proposed making history an optional subject in secondary schools, prompting vicious criticism from the Shura Council and a minor media firestorm.
“The United States would rather all Third World countries stopped teaching national history,” Abbas grumbles. “This is their way of achieving dominance in the age of globalization. They do not want us to form a national identity. At the same time, they foster national education in their own schools,” he says.
Unfortunately, the historian points out, the nation’s textbooks do nothing to help youth develop an awareness of history or national identity. “Take the battle of Hittin, for example. They give the students innumerable details, overlooking the essence. Muslims and Christians fought side-by-side for two and a half centuries against the Crusaders. Every regime comes with its own priorities and consequently the textbooks are changed accordingly. The result is textbooks devoid of meaning,” he says.
Abbas’ explosive memoirs have probably irked a lot of people. He remembers an old Egyptian motto, explaining why he decided to publish his memoirs today: “The Egyptian proverb tells you, ‘If you are afraid, don’t say, and if you say, don’t be afraid’.”
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Without A Trace
Without a Trace
While the authorities are doggedly tracking down disappearances associated with crime, thousands of missing person cases go unsolved each year as the law, the media and academia turn a blind eye to cases with scarce details or a missing motive. For families with missing children, just knowing would soothe years of mourning.
By Manal el-Jesri
MAHMOUD AHMED MOHAMED and Omm Ahmed live in Warraq, a low-income district near Mohandiseen packed with families, each with its own little joys and miseries. But Abu Ahmed’s home has seen little joy since Ahmed went missing almost four years ago. His younger brother, Moustafa, now 11, has written Ahmed’s name in large colored letters on the inside of the tiny flat’s front door.
“Ahmed, Akhuna, Habibna,” (Ahmed, Our Beloved Brother), the door reads. Ahmed, who would be 17 today if he is still alive, is believed to have been kidnapped, but police have not uncovered any new information about the case since he disappeared on July 20, 2001.
Although the Ministry of Interior is not in the habit of giving out figures, the problem of missing people is believed to be a significant one. Cases with scarce details are so common that journalist Mourad Sobhi, the editor of Al-Ahram’s crime page for the past 23 years, finds nothing to stir his curiosity when faced with another missing person report.
“We get them daily,” the seasoned journalist says. “In fact, we receive several reports of missing people every day. We cannot publish all of them; in fact, there would be no space left for the other stories. We choose one or two every few days.”
According to the annual report of the Ministry of Interior’s General Juvenile Affairs Administration, 2,686 reports of missing juveniles were filed in the year 2001, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Voices Loved, idealized voices Of those who have died, or of thosefor us as lost as the dead
As for adults? There are no figures to speak of, at least not publicly available ones. The figure for minor children emerged from the depths of the library of the National Center for Sociological and Criminological Research (NCSCR). The kindly librarian, Mme. Saneyya, pointed out that the issue of missing people has somehow slipped the minds of the center’s worthy researchers. Although she procured all kinds of indexes (in which the lonely figure was found) that might help develop these cases, there was not a single research paper available at the center, which usually covers everything that has to do with society and crime.
“You will find nothing here. I’m very sorry, darling,” she says.
The Al-Ahram archives shows signs of a similar lack of organization or urgency. Although the newspaper receives countless missing people reports, some of which it publishes, there is no unified file allowing convenient access to reports in the otherwise rich archives. The paper spends resources developing only those cases with enough information to classify as other crimes, including murder, theft, rape or kidnapping.
“We file none of the missing persons reports,” the archivist says, as, with a loud dusty thud, she deposits a huge file marked “Kidnapping in Egypt” on the visitors’ table.
Similarly, the Ministry of Interior’s media center likewise suggests it is not able to provide figures on missing people or dedicated missing people’s bureaus in the nation’s police stations.
What is it about missing people? Is it the sheer size of the country, packed with 72 million people, that makes it intimidating to even consider looking for someone who has been swallowed by the monster? Omm Ahmed and Abu Ahmed are not afraid. They are still looking for their lost boy.
The problem is, according to Abu Ahmed, no one has helped them find him, not even the police.
Following the clues
General Fady El-Habashy, one of the capital’s most prominent lawyers and a retired chief of the Ministry of Interior’s Cairo Criminological Unit, is quick to point out that “of course the Ministry of Interior has a missing people’s department. There is one in every station, and in every sector, and then there is a centralized department that the smaller departments report to.”
El-Habashy, who worked as an investigator for 28 years, points out that missing persons reports are standard forms. Detectives, he says, don’t fuss over them unless they catch the scent of a crime among the particulars.
Usually, a family files a report at the police station if someone has been missing for more than 24 hours, El-Habashy explains. “Be it a child, grown-up, or a mentally disabled person, the family gives the person’s physical description, what he or she was wearing, whether they had something of value on their person. The report is then sent to other departments,” he says.
Sobhi, the Al-Ahram crime page editor, explains that police stations often deal with missing children’s reports as a matter of course. “No investigation is possible when a child is lost. Who do you ask if a child is lost in a place like Ramses Square?” he asks. “You cannot ask the passersby. Children are often lost because of the carelessness of their parents, which is why when they are found, the government charges the mother with negligence.”
Most of these kids, according to Sobhi, belong to low-income families.
According to El-Habashy, missing person’s reports are of utmost importance in identifying anonymous bodies. “When the police find a body, someone who died of natural causes or was killed, they take a picture of this body,” he says. “The picture is then sent to all departments, with the body’s fingerprints. If we find a match, we ask the family to identify the body, and then forensic work starts to determine the cause of death. If the cause is criminal, we start our investigations.”
He remembers a perfect example: “A Bedouin woman found a decapitated body while herding her sheep in a desert area on the Cairo-Suez Road. It was a male’s body, and it was completely naked. We had nothing to identify him with.”
Using police dogs, El-Habashy’s team was able to find the head and neck, which were buried in the same area, albeit at some distance. “We picked up the head, washed it very well with water and then took it to the morgue, where the body was waiting. The doctors were able to sew the neck to the body. Afterwards, we photographed the body, and sent a report to all departments,” he says.
Right away, the body was identified. The man’s family had filed a missing person’s report some time ago and made a positive identification of the remains.
“That was the point where we moved from part one to part two of the [process]: finding out who had killed him. That was quite easy. After questioning the last person who had seen him alive, his best friend, we discovered that it was this friend who had killed him. He wanted to steal his ring, but then had taken the murdered man’s clothes off and separated his head from his body to [prevent] anyone [from] identifying him,” El-Habashy remembers.
He calls this case a model missing person’s case. “The missing person’s bureau [helped]; we used the missing person’s reports to find the family. If there hadn’t been a report, we would not have been able to notify the family or find the murderer,” he points out.
Ahmed’s missing report has graced the walls of Egypt’s police stations since July 2001. No one has had any luck in finding him yet.
“I want my son. Bring him to me dead or alive,” is his father’s mantra. He simply wants to know.
Into thin air
Journalist Mohamed Abdel-Bari, crime editor of Al-Ahram Al-Masaii newspaper since it first rolled off the presses in 1990, has seen many cases of missing people during his 15-year career covering crime.
“I am in a constant state of amazement at the intricacies of the human psyche,” Abdel-Bari says. “Each case brings something new, and each is a world apart. Hundreds of crimes take place everyday, but since each person is unique, so is each crime.”
He is quick to add, however, that not everyone who has gone missing is missing because a crime is involved. Like any good investigative reporter, Abdel-Bari can usually sense whether a crime is involved or not. He classifies missing persons into different categories.
“The first category includes those who disappear voluntarily,” he says. “This takes place a lot amongst teenagers, both male and female. Between the ages of 14 and 21, youths develop a heightened sense of self. If they feel unhappy or dissatisfied with their social surroundings, they decide to leave the house and go somewhere else.
“The second category involves people who go missing involuntarily. Many of these individuals are mentally disabled. According to the last figure released by the NCSCR, 1.5 percent of Egypt’s population is mentally disabled. Children also belong to this category,” he says.
Abdel-Bari remembers the case of a little girl who was found on the beach in Damietta. The chief of police took her in, and the newspaper’s Damietta correspondent sent the girl’s story and pictures in to the Cairo office.
“We were able to find her parents, who had been looking for her. The tragedy of a lost child is a great one, and is repeated daily. In Egypt, we have mulids [celebrations, which take place in every governorate]. And an inherent element in every mulid is the tragedy of lost children. Salah Jahine, the great poet, even wrote about it in his famous operetta El-Leila El-Kebeira (The Big Night),” he says.
A third category of cases, Abdel-Bari continues, are those who disappear because of coercion victims of kidnappings. Sobhi, Abdel-Bari’s colleague from the mother newspaper, points out that kidnapping children is not uncommon, although the issue cannot be called a phenomenon.
“Children are often kidnapped to join beggars’ bands, or to help traffic drugs or smuggle goods. These children are often terrorized into staying with their abductors,” he says.
Although the cases are relatively few in number, Abdel-Bari explains, “kidnapping, from what I see, is often just the beginning. It usually leads to other crimes, such as murder, rape or both. And because the cases are few, they cause a stir on the streets.”
This is why the police pay extra attention to cases of abduction, Sobhi explains.
“Such crimes make people fear the streets. They fear for their womenfolk, their honor. This is an oriental society, and honor is of the utmost importance. It is for this reason that the police do their utmost to solve these mysteries,” he says.
One of the most recent cases is that of Fatma Ali Hammouda, 21, who was kidnapped from a busy Nasr City street in January. On the twenty-first of that month, her mother, Zeinab El-Sayyed Abdel-Hamid, filed a report that her daughter had failed to return home and that she had received a phone call from someone asking for LE 200,000 in ransom in exchange for her daughter.
“The mother knew right away that her old driver was probably behind the case. Something in the phone call alerted her to the possibility, so when she told this to the police, they started investigating and were able to bring the girl back after three days,” Abdel-Bari says.
El-Habashy calls kidnapping for ransom a crime like any other. He is reluctant to give it too much attention and believes the media should stop making an issue of the infrequent cases that are often solved within days.
“Kidnapping is not a problem in Egypt,” El-Habashy says. “Our police are too clever. They are better than the biggest criminal investigation units in the world.”
Abdel-Bari agrees, and points out that the police often pay a lot more attention to cases of missing people when there is a possibility of criminal intent, and especially when the missing person is wealthy.
In such cases, the crime is summarily solved and the person is found.
Hanaa’s dilemma
Sometimes, though, only the murderer is found and never the missing person. Take the case of Hanaa Abdel-Naeim’s husband, for example. The wealthy contractor left his home one night in 1999 and hasn’t been heard from since. Hanaa is currently serving the fourth year of a life sentence, having been convicted of murdering him and hiding his body with the help of her lover, the downstairs greengrocer.
Hanaa, 40, used to be a well-off Nasr City physician. Today, she is a convicted murderess, despite the absence of a body. The social worker at the Qanatir Women’s Prison says that the popular belief is that Hanaa used her medical know-how to dispose of the body.
“She dissolved him in acid. This is why no trace of him was ever found,” she suggests.
Hanaa, on the other hand, denies the accusations hotly as her tears flow freely. A tall woman, Hanaa keeps her dark glasses on at all times, although they have become crooked. She wears her white scarf differently from the rest of the inmates, which gives her the look of a hospital matron. Despite the moving way she tells her story, Hanaa’s looks don’t help her. Despite the tears and the blotchy face, there is something hard as nails about this prisoner.
“I did not kill my husband,” Hanaa begins. “We had been married since ’88, and we have one son. My husband was a general manager in a cement company and he had many enemies. One day six years ago, he received a phone call and had to go out. He never came back. I looked for him everywhere, and when I lost hope I rented out our flat. I needed money to pay for my son’s private school. I also applied for an exceptional pension.”
“Three years and one month later, and eleven months before it was possible for my son to claim his inheritance, my in-laws accused me of having killed my husband,” she continues. “I was taken to Almaza [police] station, where I was kept for a few days. No one knew anything about me. They wanted me to confess to having poisoned and buried my husband.”
“They also questioned the guy from the fruit shop downstairs. They wanted him to confess to having been my lover,” she alleges. “They said they had tapes, but no one heard them. The guy was only 20, almost half my age, and they made him confess that I had asked him to bury my husband, but that he was too scared to do it.”
Hanaa’s bawwab told the police he had seen her help her husband, who was in great pain, into the car, and that she drove back without him.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams; Sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them.
Hanaa alleges that both the bawwab and the greengrocer were frightened into testifying against her. The grocer, she says, showed the police a place in the desert, where he says she told him to help her bury her husband’s body. “The police took me to the location and kept saying: ‘Just you wait, we’ll find a bone or some hair now.’ They could not find a thing. There was no body, none of the witnesses showed up at the trial and I did not confess to murder,” Hanaa continues.
The judge told her, she claims: “Hanaa, we sent your papers to the Mufti [for a ruling on whether capital punishment was warranted in the case] but the Mufti ruled against your execution. He says there is no proof that you killed your husband. We are giving you a life sentence.”
“I believe my husband’s family bribed a lot of people to get me here,” she alleges. “They want to get their hands on my husband’s LE 500,000 apartment in Nasr City. They do not care about him or about his son, who has had to [leave] his private school now that I’m here.”
Although El-Habashy cannot recall Hanaa’s case, he is amazed that she got a life sentence despite the fact that her husband’s body was never found.
“There must be a body for there to be a sentence. Without a body there is no crime,” he says. Hanaa, detained in the murderer’s ward at Al-Qanatir, is constantly hoping the prosecutor general will look into her case again and order a retrial.
Her husband is still missing.
Legal Lessons
Had Hanaa’s in-laws waited a few more months, she would have been able to obtain a judge’s decree declaring her husband legally dead. According to El-Habashy, a legally missing person is someone about whom “nothing is known He is someone whose whereabouts are unknown, and whose life or death cannot be determined.”
The lawyer explains that those who are lost in battle, or lost in plane crashes or shipwrecks belong to a different category.
“In this case, the person is considered dead after one year from the date he first went missing,” he says. “The Prime Minister or Minister of Defense issues a decree declaring the person officially dead. As a consequence, the person’s estate can be divided accordingly. His wife is considered a widow.”
A missing person, on the other hand, who disappeared under normal circumstances, is declared dead after four years.
“According to Article 22 (amended) of Law 103 for the year 1958, a judge, the Prime Minister or Minister of Defense can issue a decree declaring the person dead after sufficient investigations are carried out to ensure that this person has most probably perished,” El-Habashy says.
What Happened to Ahmed
In three months, Ahmed will have been missing for four years. But in this case, no one is in a hurry to declare him dead, his parents least of all.
“The police station once sent for us to look at a picture of a body they found. God rest his soul, his face was all gone. He was thin, and really tall. He was also very dark. It wasn’t Ahmed. Ahmed is short, like his father,” Omm Ahmed says. She points to a mirror, trying to show the real height of her missing boy. “Ahmed always complained about this mirror. It had a shelf, here, you can see the traces. He kept bumping his head on the shelf.” She bursts into tears as she says, “He would tell me ‘Remove this thing!’ as he jumped up and down in pain.”
Although Ahmed has been gone for years, his parents have not lost hope of one day finding him. “You don’t know what happens to me whenever it rains, or whenever it is too hot? I wonder how Ahmed is doing. He was sick, he had a chest allergy. I brought him chest medications every month. My son was kind, he never hurt anyone,” Omm Ahmed says.
Living in an area overlooked by the state, where streets are not paved and buildings have no numbers, leaning against each other like a scary set of dominoes, one more lost kid means nothing except to the people directly involved in the tragedy.
Ahmed’s parents, his brother Moustafa, his married sister Ghada, 19, and his new nephew Ahmed (his namesake) all live in a tiny two-room apartment, never giving up hope for any news of Ahmed. A section of the only closet in the house is kept for Ahmed’s things.
“I don’t wash his clothes. It is the only way I have of keeping his smell in the house. Once, his brother reached for Ahmed’s jeans suit. I screamed and snatched it out of his hands. His sister remonstrated that I should not do this. They are brothers after all. She does not understand. If I were to let him wear it, I would have to wash it. What will I have then? Nothing,” she says.
Omm Ahmed wears mourning clothes. “I know he is not dead. I am sure of it. If he were dead I would feel it. But I wear black because I’m sad. I am not able to fill my eyes with the sight of him, am I? For whom shall I wear colors?” she asks.
The last time she saw him was on July 20, 2001.
“It was the day right after his birthday. He had just turned 13. He went down to buy a bag of chips, and never came back,” Om Ahmed says.
And, with their sound, for a moment returnSounds from our life’s first poetry Like distant music fading away at night.
His father, Mahmoud Ahmed Mohamed Bayyoumi, picks up the story here. Abu Ahmed, as he prefers to be called, works as a car surugy (upholsterer) in Wekalet El-Balah. Short and thin, Abu Ahmed seems to survive on his anger, which he keeps fueled by remembering what happened to his son. Although he does not cry like his wife, whose eyes are seldom dry, Mahmoud’s eyes speak volumes. You can see the loss and pain he has gone through from the minute you set eyes on his tense frame. Obviously a gentle person, Abu Ahmed’s voice turns to shouting at times.
“I came back from work at 10pm on Friday, July 20th. Mostafa and Ghada were alone, I asked them where Ahmed and his mother were, and they said, ‘Mother is looking for Ahmed.’ They said he had not come back since the afternoon. A little later, Omm Ahmed came back. She was screaming and crying. I went out to look for him, and a kid’s neighbor said he had seen him with a boy called Hani.”
At this point, the story becomes too difficult for Abu Ahmed. “I hate saying this boy’s name. His name is Devil, Damned Devil,” he says. Om Ahmed agrees: “He is a bad kid. He sleeps on sidewalks.”
The family had never heard of the boy before. A newcomer to the area, he lived nearby with his mother. On going to ask him about Ahmed, Hani (14 at the time) denied he had seen him.
“We kept looking, and found nothing. The next day we went to Hani’s house again,” Abu Ahmed remembers. After much cajoling, Hani told the father and his neighbors that Ahmed had drowned in the Nile. It was then that Abu Ahmed went crazy, fainting and then waking up crying. “I slapped my own face like a woman. We went to the police and started looking for his body,” he remembers.
Ahmed’s mother cries as she remembers that difficult moment. “Ahmed never swam in the Nile. He never even strayed away from home. He and Moustafa used to play downstairs near the house. The boy [Hani] was lying,” she says.
For five days, police and the river authorities looked for Ahmed’s body, thinking he had drowned.
“On the fifth day, my wife’s nephew came running to us. He said he had received a call from Ahmed. He swore Ahmed had told him he had been kidnapped,” Mahmoud says. Omm Ahmed continues: “My nephew was in the last year of college, studying commerce. He is not a child. He refused to believe Ahmed at first, telling him that Ahmed is dead. Ahmed told him my name, and the name of Khaled’s [the nephew’s] mother. Nobody knows our names. They know me as Omm Ahmed.”
The family rushed to the telephone centrale, where they urged the person in charge to trace the number that had just called the uncle’s line. He refused, they allege, demanding an order from the Public Prosecutor’s Office before doing so.
Then they rushed to Hani’s house and took him to the Warraq Police Station.
“After many threats, the boy confessed he had sold Ahmed to a man called Mohamed Khalil for LE 20,” Abu Ahmed claims. According to them, Hani was asked by Khalil, who sold tissue paper boxes by the Imbaba railways, to get him a clean boy who went to school. He needed someone to help him, Hani claimed. It took Hani three days to befriend Ahmed and convince him to take that fateful walk.
“The man took Ahmed, and when Ahmed called out for help, asking Hani to stay with him, the man beat him up, threatening him with a pocket-knife,” Omm Ahmed says.
The idea was, obviously, to catch the man and find Ahmed.
“The police force went to look for him at 2 am. He was gone by then, so they told us to wait for him. The police officer said, ‘You are investigators now. When you see him, call me,’” Mahmoud remembers. At dawn, the accused came to assume his spot. “We called the station, but the officer said wait. I couldn’t wait. I went to the station to urge them to come, but they told me ‘No, we will go at night.’ It was as if they wanted him to escape. I couldn’t wait. My neighbors, relatives and I picked him up ourselves. We took him to the officer.”
Hani and Khalil were confronted with each other, but the man kept insisting he had nothing to do with Ahmed’s disappearance, and Hani kept insisting he was the right guy. “At that point, Hani broke down and said the man also used to do bad things to him for LE 5. I went crazy. Is this why they took my son?” Abu Ahmed says.
Khalil was kept in custody for four days, during which Ahmed’s parents talk of four lawyers driving expensive cars who kept visiting the prisoner, and of a rich lady wearing lots of gold who came to visit Khalil laden with a big bag of canned food and cigarettes.
“Nobody asked why this man, who sold tissues for a living, had such rich connections,” Abu Ahmed says. Omm Ahmed remembers how shocked she was that anyone would want to defend that criminal. “I went in and held each lawyer by his clothes, asking them ‘Did this man steal a television set? No, he stole my son. How can you defend him?’” she asked.
The man was released after four days, and the police officer told Abu Ahmed to follow him around.
His burial, the poorest possible, took place here.A few hours before dying he whispered somethingAbout ‘home’, about ‘very old parents.’But nobody knew who they were.
“He said that he may be able to get me my son back.” Mahmoud alleges. “So I stayed near him. I waited around as he worked, and noticed how he wore different expensive clothes every day. I bought him cigarettes and tea, and waited to see my son. When all failed, I went to the district police. They picked him up again, and they got that devil Hani too. But when questioning them, they did not lay a finger on the man. They then wrote their report, in which they said that, according to their investigations, Hani was a bad student who had escaped because he hated his job. They mentioned nothing about the man.”
The police officer, they allege, was later suspended when he was accused of accepting bribes, a case that has nothing with Ahmed. “We saw him with handcuffs around his wrists,” the mother remembers.
The parents say they were lucky because the case was turned over to the district prosecutor, Sherif Tawfik, whom they call a great man.
“He refused to take the police report for granted. He re-questioned Hani and Khalil,” Abu Ahmed remembers. Khalil was kept in custody for nine months, but was left to go free when the investigations led to nothing.
Abu Ahmed claims he has kept an eye on Khalil, although the man is not staying with his family in Rod El-Farag anymore. Three months ago, Abu Ahmed filed a complaint in the office of the Prosecutor General Maher Abdel-Wahed, who ordered a re-opening of the investigations.
“Two months ago the new district attorney told me to stop going to people in high places. I said, ‘Whom do you mean there is no one higher than God the almighty.’ He also told me to stop talking to the press. He asked, ‘What do you want?’ I said I want my son. I want him dead or alive. He said, ‘Wait for just one month.’ We’ll see, I am going to him this coming Tuesday,” Abu Ahmed says.
Abu Ahmed has lost faith in the system. This is why when some crooks pretended to be psychics and promised to show him Ahmed, he and his wife believed them.
“They wanted LE 7,000. I went to my brothers and asked for money. They said let them show us Ahmed first, and then we will give them his weight in gold. I sold my gold bracelets. They took Abu Ahmed to a café and told him to wait, then they said Ahmed ran away when he saw him,” the mother says.
Despite her black clothes, Omm Ahmed lives in the hope of seeing her son one last time.
“But I have a feeling I will not see him again. I believe he will be found after I die. Every time some of these crooks give us some hope, I change my clothes to colored ones. I say, ‘My life will be happy again.’ I wait for him. Once, my legs became paralyzed, because once again our only hope was crushed.”
Abu Ahmed is sure his son is alive, too. He vows he will not believe the crooks again.
“We believe in God, we really do. He alone can bring Ahmed back,” he says. The father believes his son to be a victim of some gang. “It is either drugs or human body parts,” he theorizes. He often dreams of his son too: “I get good signs; something to do with the number three. He will come back, maybe after three weeks, or three years. I just know he will come back. May God rest my mind!” he shouts.
While the authorities are doggedly tracking down disappearances associated with crime, thousands of missing person cases go unsolved each year as the law, the media and academia turn a blind eye to cases with scarce details or a missing motive. For families with missing children, just knowing would soothe years of mourning.
By Manal el-Jesri
MAHMOUD AHMED MOHAMED and Omm Ahmed live in Warraq, a low-income district near Mohandiseen packed with families, each with its own little joys and miseries. But Abu Ahmed’s home has seen little joy since Ahmed went missing almost four years ago. His younger brother, Moustafa, now 11, has written Ahmed’s name in large colored letters on the inside of the tiny flat’s front door.
“Ahmed, Akhuna, Habibna,” (Ahmed, Our Beloved Brother), the door reads. Ahmed, who would be 17 today if he is still alive, is believed to have been kidnapped, but police have not uncovered any new information about the case since he disappeared on July 20, 2001.
Although the Ministry of Interior is not in the habit of giving out figures, the problem of missing people is believed to be a significant one. Cases with scarce details are so common that journalist Mourad Sobhi, the editor of Al-Ahram’s crime page for the past 23 years, finds nothing to stir his curiosity when faced with another missing person report.
“We get them daily,” the seasoned journalist says. “In fact, we receive several reports of missing people every day. We cannot publish all of them; in fact, there would be no space left for the other stories. We choose one or two every few days.”
According to the annual report of the Ministry of Interior’s General Juvenile Affairs Administration, 2,686 reports of missing juveniles were filed in the year 2001, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Voices Loved, idealized voices Of those who have died, or of thosefor us as lost as the dead
As for adults? There are no figures to speak of, at least not publicly available ones. The figure for minor children emerged from the depths of the library of the National Center for Sociological and Criminological Research (NCSCR). The kindly librarian, Mme. Saneyya, pointed out that the issue of missing people has somehow slipped the minds of the center’s worthy researchers. Although she procured all kinds of indexes (in which the lonely figure was found) that might help develop these cases, there was not a single research paper available at the center, which usually covers everything that has to do with society and crime.
“You will find nothing here. I’m very sorry, darling,” she says.
The Al-Ahram archives shows signs of a similar lack of organization or urgency. Although the newspaper receives countless missing people reports, some of which it publishes, there is no unified file allowing convenient access to reports in the otherwise rich archives. The paper spends resources developing only those cases with enough information to classify as other crimes, including murder, theft, rape or kidnapping.
“We file none of the missing persons reports,” the archivist says, as, with a loud dusty thud, she deposits a huge file marked “Kidnapping in Egypt” on the visitors’ table.
Similarly, the Ministry of Interior’s media center likewise suggests it is not able to provide figures on missing people or dedicated missing people’s bureaus in the nation’s police stations.
What is it about missing people? Is it the sheer size of the country, packed with 72 million people, that makes it intimidating to even consider looking for someone who has been swallowed by the monster? Omm Ahmed and Abu Ahmed are not afraid. They are still looking for their lost boy.
The problem is, according to Abu Ahmed, no one has helped them find him, not even the police.
Following the clues
General Fady El-Habashy, one of the capital’s most prominent lawyers and a retired chief of the Ministry of Interior’s Cairo Criminological Unit, is quick to point out that “of course the Ministry of Interior has a missing people’s department. There is one in every station, and in every sector, and then there is a centralized department that the smaller departments report to.”
El-Habashy, who worked as an investigator for 28 years, points out that missing persons reports are standard forms. Detectives, he says, don’t fuss over them unless they catch the scent of a crime among the particulars.
Usually, a family files a report at the police station if someone has been missing for more than 24 hours, El-Habashy explains. “Be it a child, grown-up, or a mentally disabled person, the family gives the person’s physical description, what he or she was wearing, whether they had something of value on their person. The report is then sent to other departments,” he says.
Sobhi, the Al-Ahram crime page editor, explains that police stations often deal with missing children’s reports as a matter of course. “No investigation is possible when a child is lost. Who do you ask if a child is lost in a place like Ramses Square?” he asks. “You cannot ask the passersby. Children are often lost because of the carelessness of their parents, which is why when they are found, the government charges the mother with negligence.”
Most of these kids, according to Sobhi, belong to low-income families.
According to El-Habashy, missing person’s reports are of utmost importance in identifying anonymous bodies. “When the police find a body, someone who died of natural causes or was killed, they take a picture of this body,” he says. “The picture is then sent to all departments, with the body’s fingerprints. If we find a match, we ask the family to identify the body, and then forensic work starts to determine the cause of death. If the cause is criminal, we start our investigations.”
He remembers a perfect example: “A Bedouin woman found a decapitated body while herding her sheep in a desert area on the Cairo-Suez Road. It was a male’s body, and it was completely naked. We had nothing to identify him with.”
Using police dogs, El-Habashy’s team was able to find the head and neck, which were buried in the same area, albeit at some distance. “We picked up the head, washed it very well with water and then took it to the morgue, where the body was waiting. The doctors were able to sew the neck to the body. Afterwards, we photographed the body, and sent a report to all departments,” he says.
Right away, the body was identified. The man’s family had filed a missing person’s report some time ago and made a positive identification of the remains.
“That was the point where we moved from part one to part two of the [process]: finding out who had killed him. That was quite easy. After questioning the last person who had seen him alive, his best friend, we discovered that it was this friend who had killed him. He wanted to steal his ring, but then had taken the murdered man’s clothes off and separated his head from his body to [prevent] anyone [from] identifying him,” El-Habashy remembers.
He calls this case a model missing person’s case. “The missing person’s bureau [helped]; we used the missing person’s reports to find the family. If there hadn’t been a report, we would not have been able to notify the family or find the murderer,” he points out.
Ahmed’s missing report has graced the walls of Egypt’s police stations since July 2001. No one has had any luck in finding him yet.
“I want my son. Bring him to me dead or alive,” is his father’s mantra. He simply wants to know.
Into thin air
Journalist Mohamed Abdel-Bari, crime editor of Al-Ahram Al-Masaii newspaper since it first rolled off the presses in 1990, has seen many cases of missing people during his 15-year career covering crime.
“I am in a constant state of amazement at the intricacies of the human psyche,” Abdel-Bari says. “Each case brings something new, and each is a world apart. Hundreds of crimes take place everyday, but since each person is unique, so is each crime.”
He is quick to add, however, that not everyone who has gone missing is missing because a crime is involved. Like any good investigative reporter, Abdel-Bari can usually sense whether a crime is involved or not. He classifies missing persons into different categories.
“The first category includes those who disappear voluntarily,” he says. “This takes place a lot amongst teenagers, both male and female. Between the ages of 14 and 21, youths develop a heightened sense of self. If they feel unhappy or dissatisfied with their social surroundings, they decide to leave the house and go somewhere else.
“The second category involves people who go missing involuntarily. Many of these individuals are mentally disabled. According to the last figure released by the NCSCR, 1.5 percent of Egypt’s population is mentally disabled. Children also belong to this category,” he says.
Abdel-Bari remembers the case of a little girl who was found on the beach in Damietta. The chief of police took her in, and the newspaper’s Damietta correspondent sent the girl’s story and pictures in to the Cairo office.
“We were able to find her parents, who had been looking for her. The tragedy of a lost child is a great one, and is repeated daily. In Egypt, we have mulids [celebrations, which take place in every governorate]. And an inherent element in every mulid is the tragedy of lost children. Salah Jahine, the great poet, even wrote about it in his famous operetta El-Leila El-Kebeira (The Big Night),” he says.
A third category of cases, Abdel-Bari continues, are those who disappear because of coercion victims of kidnappings. Sobhi, Abdel-Bari’s colleague from the mother newspaper, points out that kidnapping children is not uncommon, although the issue cannot be called a phenomenon.
“Children are often kidnapped to join beggars’ bands, or to help traffic drugs or smuggle goods. These children are often terrorized into staying with their abductors,” he says.
Although the cases are relatively few in number, Abdel-Bari explains, “kidnapping, from what I see, is often just the beginning. It usually leads to other crimes, such as murder, rape or both. And because the cases are few, they cause a stir on the streets.”
This is why the police pay extra attention to cases of abduction, Sobhi explains.
“Such crimes make people fear the streets. They fear for their womenfolk, their honor. This is an oriental society, and honor is of the utmost importance. It is for this reason that the police do their utmost to solve these mysteries,” he says.
One of the most recent cases is that of Fatma Ali Hammouda, 21, who was kidnapped from a busy Nasr City street in January. On the twenty-first of that month, her mother, Zeinab El-Sayyed Abdel-Hamid, filed a report that her daughter had failed to return home and that she had received a phone call from someone asking for LE 200,000 in ransom in exchange for her daughter.
“The mother knew right away that her old driver was probably behind the case. Something in the phone call alerted her to the possibility, so when she told this to the police, they started investigating and were able to bring the girl back after three days,” Abdel-Bari says.
El-Habashy calls kidnapping for ransom a crime like any other. He is reluctant to give it too much attention and believes the media should stop making an issue of the infrequent cases that are often solved within days.
“Kidnapping is not a problem in Egypt,” El-Habashy says. “Our police are too clever. They are better than the biggest criminal investigation units in the world.”
Abdel-Bari agrees, and points out that the police often pay a lot more attention to cases of missing people when there is a possibility of criminal intent, and especially when the missing person is wealthy.
In such cases, the crime is summarily solved and the person is found.
Hanaa’s dilemma
Sometimes, though, only the murderer is found and never the missing person. Take the case of Hanaa Abdel-Naeim’s husband, for example. The wealthy contractor left his home one night in 1999 and hasn’t been heard from since. Hanaa is currently serving the fourth year of a life sentence, having been convicted of murdering him and hiding his body with the help of her lover, the downstairs greengrocer.
Hanaa, 40, used to be a well-off Nasr City physician. Today, she is a convicted murderess, despite the absence of a body. The social worker at the Qanatir Women’s Prison says that the popular belief is that Hanaa used her medical know-how to dispose of the body.
“She dissolved him in acid. This is why no trace of him was ever found,” she suggests.
Hanaa, on the other hand, denies the accusations hotly as her tears flow freely. A tall woman, Hanaa keeps her dark glasses on at all times, although they have become crooked. She wears her white scarf differently from the rest of the inmates, which gives her the look of a hospital matron. Despite the moving way she tells her story, Hanaa’s looks don’t help her. Despite the tears and the blotchy face, there is something hard as nails about this prisoner.
“I did not kill my husband,” Hanaa begins. “We had been married since ’88, and we have one son. My husband was a general manager in a cement company and he had many enemies. One day six years ago, he received a phone call and had to go out. He never came back. I looked for him everywhere, and when I lost hope I rented out our flat. I needed money to pay for my son’s private school. I also applied for an exceptional pension.”
“Three years and one month later, and eleven months before it was possible for my son to claim his inheritance, my in-laws accused me of having killed my husband,” she continues. “I was taken to Almaza [police] station, where I was kept for a few days. No one knew anything about me. They wanted me to confess to having poisoned and buried my husband.”
“They also questioned the guy from the fruit shop downstairs. They wanted him to confess to having been my lover,” she alleges. “They said they had tapes, but no one heard them. The guy was only 20, almost half my age, and they made him confess that I had asked him to bury my husband, but that he was too scared to do it.”
Hanaa’s bawwab told the police he had seen her help her husband, who was in great pain, into the car, and that she drove back without him.
Sometimes they speak to us in dreams; Sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them.
Hanaa alleges that both the bawwab and the greengrocer were frightened into testifying against her. The grocer, she says, showed the police a place in the desert, where he says she told him to help her bury her husband’s body. “The police took me to the location and kept saying: ‘Just you wait, we’ll find a bone or some hair now.’ They could not find a thing. There was no body, none of the witnesses showed up at the trial and I did not confess to murder,” Hanaa continues.
The judge told her, she claims: “Hanaa, we sent your papers to the Mufti [for a ruling on whether capital punishment was warranted in the case] but the Mufti ruled against your execution. He says there is no proof that you killed your husband. We are giving you a life sentence.”
“I believe my husband’s family bribed a lot of people to get me here,” she alleges. “They want to get their hands on my husband’s LE 500,000 apartment in Nasr City. They do not care about him or about his son, who has had to [leave] his private school now that I’m here.”
Although El-Habashy cannot recall Hanaa’s case, he is amazed that she got a life sentence despite the fact that her husband’s body was never found.
“There must be a body for there to be a sentence. Without a body there is no crime,” he says. Hanaa, detained in the murderer’s ward at Al-Qanatir, is constantly hoping the prosecutor general will look into her case again and order a retrial.
Her husband is still missing.
Legal Lessons
Had Hanaa’s in-laws waited a few more months, she would have been able to obtain a judge’s decree declaring her husband legally dead. According to El-Habashy, a legally missing person is someone about whom “nothing is known He is someone whose whereabouts are unknown, and whose life or death cannot be determined.”
The lawyer explains that those who are lost in battle, or lost in plane crashes or shipwrecks belong to a different category.
“In this case, the person is considered dead after one year from the date he first went missing,” he says. “The Prime Minister or Minister of Defense issues a decree declaring the person officially dead. As a consequence, the person’s estate can be divided accordingly. His wife is considered a widow.”
A missing person, on the other hand, who disappeared under normal circumstances, is declared dead after four years.
“According to Article 22 (amended) of Law 103 for the year 1958, a judge, the Prime Minister or Minister of Defense can issue a decree declaring the person dead after sufficient investigations are carried out to ensure that this person has most probably perished,” El-Habashy says.
What Happened to Ahmed
In three months, Ahmed will have been missing for four years. But in this case, no one is in a hurry to declare him dead, his parents least of all.
“The police station once sent for us to look at a picture of a body they found. God rest his soul, his face was all gone. He was thin, and really tall. He was also very dark. It wasn’t Ahmed. Ahmed is short, like his father,” Omm Ahmed says. She points to a mirror, trying to show the real height of her missing boy. “Ahmed always complained about this mirror. It had a shelf, here, you can see the traces. He kept bumping his head on the shelf.” She bursts into tears as she says, “He would tell me ‘Remove this thing!’ as he jumped up and down in pain.”
Although Ahmed has been gone for years, his parents have not lost hope of one day finding him. “You don’t know what happens to me whenever it rains, or whenever it is too hot? I wonder how Ahmed is doing. He was sick, he had a chest allergy. I brought him chest medications every month. My son was kind, he never hurt anyone,” Omm Ahmed says.
Living in an area overlooked by the state, where streets are not paved and buildings have no numbers, leaning against each other like a scary set of dominoes, one more lost kid means nothing except to the people directly involved in the tragedy.
Ahmed’s parents, his brother Moustafa, his married sister Ghada, 19, and his new nephew Ahmed (his namesake) all live in a tiny two-room apartment, never giving up hope for any news of Ahmed. A section of the only closet in the house is kept for Ahmed’s things.
“I don’t wash his clothes. It is the only way I have of keeping his smell in the house. Once, his brother reached for Ahmed’s jeans suit. I screamed and snatched it out of his hands. His sister remonstrated that I should not do this. They are brothers after all. She does not understand. If I were to let him wear it, I would have to wash it. What will I have then? Nothing,” she says.
Omm Ahmed wears mourning clothes. “I know he is not dead. I am sure of it. If he were dead I would feel it. But I wear black because I’m sad. I am not able to fill my eyes with the sight of him, am I? For whom shall I wear colors?” she asks.
The last time she saw him was on July 20, 2001.
“It was the day right after his birthday. He had just turned 13. He went down to buy a bag of chips, and never came back,” Om Ahmed says.
And, with their sound, for a moment returnSounds from our life’s first poetry Like distant music fading away at night.
His father, Mahmoud Ahmed Mohamed Bayyoumi, picks up the story here. Abu Ahmed, as he prefers to be called, works as a car surugy (upholsterer) in Wekalet El-Balah. Short and thin, Abu Ahmed seems to survive on his anger, which he keeps fueled by remembering what happened to his son. Although he does not cry like his wife, whose eyes are seldom dry, Mahmoud’s eyes speak volumes. You can see the loss and pain he has gone through from the minute you set eyes on his tense frame. Obviously a gentle person, Abu Ahmed’s voice turns to shouting at times.
“I came back from work at 10pm on Friday, July 20th. Mostafa and Ghada were alone, I asked them where Ahmed and his mother were, and they said, ‘Mother is looking for Ahmed.’ They said he had not come back since the afternoon. A little later, Omm Ahmed came back. She was screaming and crying. I went out to look for him, and a kid’s neighbor said he had seen him with a boy called Hani.”
At this point, the story becomes too difficult for Abu Ahmed. “I hate saying this boy’s name. His name is Devil, Damned Devil,” he says. Om Ahmed agrees: “He is a bad kid. He sleeps on sidewalks.”
The family had never heard of the boy before. A newcomer to the area, he lived nearby with his mother. On going to ask him about Ahmed, Hani (14 at the time) denied he had seen him.
“We kept looking, and found nothing. The next day we went to Hani’s house again,” Abu Ahmed remembers. After much cajoling, Hani told the father and his neighbors that Ahmed had drowned in the Nile. It was then that Abu Ahmed went crazy, fainting and then waking up crying. “I slapped my own face like a woman. We went to the police and started looking for his body,” he remembers.
Ahmed’s mother cries as she remembers that difficult moment. “Ahmed never swam in the Nile. He never even strayed away from home. He and Moustafa used to play downstairs near the house. The boy [Hani] was lying,” she says.
For five days, police and the river authorities looked for Ahmed’s body, thinking he had drowned.
“On the fifth day, my wife’s nephew came running to us. He said he had received a call from Ahmed. He swore Ahmed had told him he had been kidnapped,” Mahmoud says. Omm Ahmed continues: “My nephew was in the last year of college, studying commerce. He is not a child. He refused to believe Ahmed at first, telling him that Ahmed is dead. Ahmed told him my name, and the name of Khaled’s [the nephew’s] mother. Nobody knows our names. They know me as Omm Ahmed.”
The family rushed to the telephone centrale, where they urged the person in charge to trace the number that had just called the uncle’s line. He refused, they allege, demanding an order from the Public Prosecutor’s Office before doing so.
Then they rushed to Hani’s house and took him to the Warraq Police Station.
“After many threats, the boy confessed he had sold Ahmed to a man called Mohamed Khalil for LE 20,” Abu Ahmed claims. According to them, Hani was asked by Khalil, who sold tissue paper boxes by the Imbaba railways, to get him a clean boy who went to school. He needed someone to help him, Hani claimed. It took Hani three days to befriend Ahmed and convince him to take that fateful walk.
“The man took Ahmed, and when Ahmed called out for help, asking Hani to stay with him, the man beat him up, threatening him with a pocket-knife,” Omm Ahmed says.
The idea was, obviously, to catch the man and find Ahmed.
“The police force went to look for him at 2 am. He was gone by then, so they told us to wait for him. The police officer said, ‘You are investigators now. When you see him, call me,’” Mahmoud remembers. At dawn, the accused came to assume his spot. “We called the station, but the officer said wait. I couldn’t wait. I went to the station to urge them to come, but they told me ‘No, we will go at night.’ It was as if they wanted him to escape. I couldn’t wait. My neighbors, relatives and I picked him up ourselves. We took him to the officer.”
Hani and Khalil were confronted with each other, but the man kept insisting he had nothing to do with Ahmed’s disappearance, and Hani kept insisting he was the right guy. “At that point, Hani broke down and said the man also used to do bad things to him for LE 5. I went crazy. Is this why they took my son?” Abu Ahmed says.
Khalil was kept in custody for four days, during which Ahmed’s parents talk of four lawyers driving expensive cars who kept visiting the prisoner, and of a rich lady wearing lots of gold who came to visit Khalil laden with a big bag of canned food and cigarettes.
“Nobody asked why this man, who sold tissues for a living, had such rich connections,” Abu Ahmed says. Omm Ahmed remembers how shocked she was that anyone would want to defend that criminal. “I went in and held each lawyer by his clothes, asking them ‘Did this man steal a television set? No, he stole my son. How can you defend him?’” she asked.
The man was released after four days, and the police officer told Abu Ahmed to follow him around.
His burial, the poorest possible, took place here.A few hours before dying he whispered somethingAbout ‘home’, about ‘very old parents.’But nobody knew who they were.
“He said that he may be able to get me my son back.” Mahmoud alleges. “So I stayed near him. I waited around as he worked, and noticed how he wore different expensive clothes every day. I bought him cigarettes and tea, and waited to see my son. When all failed, I went to the district police. They picked him up again, and they got that devil Hani too. But when questioning them, they did not lay a finger on the man. They then wrote their report, in which they said that, according to their investigations, Hani was a bad student who had escaped because he hated his job. They mentioned nothing about the man.”
The police officer, they allege, was later suspended when he was accused of accepting bribes, a case that has nothing with Ahmed. “We saw him with handcuffs around his wrists,” the mother remembers.
The parents say they were lucky because the case was turned over to the district prosecutor, Sherif Tawfik, whom they call a great man.
“He refused to take the police report for granted. He re-questioned Hani and Khalil,” Abu Ahmed remembers. Khalil was kept in custody for nine months, but was left to go free when the investigations led to nothing.
Abu Ahmed claims he has kept an eye on Khalil, although the man is not staying with his family in Rod El-Farag anymore. Three months ago, Abu Ahmed filed a complaint in the office of the Prosecutor General Maher Abdel-Wahed, who ordered a re-opening of the investigations.
“Two months ago the new district attorney told me to stop going to people in high places. I said, ‘Whom do you mean there is no one higher than God the almighty.’ He also told me to stop talking to the press. He asked, ‘What do you want?’ I said I want my son. I want him dead or alive. He said, ‘Wait for just one month.’ We’ll see, I am going to him this coming Tuesday,” Abu Ahmed says.
Abu Ahmed has lost faith in the system. This is why when some crooks pretended to be psychics and promised to show him Ahmed, he and his wife believed them.
“They wanted LE 7,000. I went to my brothers and asked for money. They said let them show us Ahmed first, and then we will give them his weight in gold. I sold my gold bracelets. They took Abu Ahmed to a café and told him to wait, then they said Ahmed ran away when he saw him,” the mother says.
Despite her black clothes, Omm Ahmed lives in the hope of seeing her son one last time.
“But I have a feeling I will not see him again. I believe he will be found after I die. Every time some of these crooks give us some hope, I change my clothes to colored ones. I say, ‘My life will be happy again.’ I wait for him. Once, my legs became paralyzed, because once again our only hope was crushed.”
Abu Ahmed is sure his son is alive, too. He vows he will not believe the crooks again.
“We believe in God, we really do. He alone can bring Ahmed back,” he says. The father believes his son to be a victim of some gang. “It is either drugs or human body parts,” he theorizes. He often dreams of his son too: “I get good signs; something to do with the number three. He will come back, maybe after three weeks, or three years. I just know he will come back. May God rest my mind!” he shouts.
Fathy Salama
This is Not the Note
Fathy Salama overlooked locally despite Grammy
By Manal el-Jesri
YOU MAY HAVE heard about Fathy Salama whose album Egypt, which won the Recording Academy’s Best World Music Album for 2004 at the 47th annual Grammy awards. The disc features the vocal talents of the famous Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour and the musical talents of Salama in a massive collaboration between 60 Egyptian and 30 Senegalese musicians.
But have you heard the album itself? Probably not: It’s not only unavailable on the local market, but it hasn’t been released anywhere else in the Arab world, either.
Try going into a record shop anywhere in Egypt and asking for any album by Fathy Salama; you’ll most likely come out empty-handed.
“I think the big companies are more interested in the jumping girls [you see in videos]. Nobody approached me after the award. They tell you ‘Great, great, but I cannot sell this here.’ Everyone I know, even my bawab, comes and listens when I play this album. They really like it. Yes, they do not understand the language [wuluf, an ancient Senegalese language] of the lyrics, but they still love it,” says Salama.
It’s simply that no one seems willing to sell it.
What’s more, N’Dour and Salama’s work has received scant attention in the domestic press, even after the Grammy. But the artist, founder of the Sharqiat group and workshop, takes it all in stride after all, he works for the fun of it. And fun is the first impression one gets when listening to the album (we received our copy from Salama): You can sense the delight of people thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Although the lyrics contain references to Islam Sufi chantings that may have come from the distant past they are not composed to be didactic or controversial. It remains celebratory and at times ventures into the spiritual.
The collaboration between the two artists is relatively young, dating back only to 1999.
“[N’Dour] invited me to work with him,” Salama says, explaining that the idea was to represent the true message of Islam to the West, to paint a picture of faith that is rooted in peace and tolerance. “Back then, I would record Youssou’s voice [in Dakar] and come back here with just that recording and a click track, which goes pum pum pum. Here in Egypt, I worked with musicians to arrange the music and allot instruments. Then I would go back to Dakar for more work and to record African music,” he says.
A fan of West African music, Salama likes to point out that Egyptians often forget that Egypt is in Africa.
“They know very little about African culture. There is no connection somehow. They also forget that many African countries are Islamic countries. Senegal is predominantly Muslim over 90 percent of their population. Islam reached them through us. So there is a connection between the two peoples. In their language, you discover a lot of Arabic words, which must have come from the Qur’an,” he says.
Salama also discovered N’Dour is a fan of Omm Kulthoum. “Our musical forms are not alien to them. In two of the tracks, N’Dour sang in Bayati and Rast maqamat [Arabic musical forms]. The Egyptian musicians here were amazed. They told me, ‘You must have taught him this.’ I said, ‘No, I taught him nothing. They have this in their culture as well’,” Salama explains.
Although they finished Egypt in 2001, the September 11 terror attacks prompted the two artists to delay the album’s release.
“It was not the right moment,” Salama says. “Nobody would have believed us at the time. Now, I guess, is a good time. I think people are ready to listen, and I think the album helps the situation. It is currently the only spoken word of peace that the West knows of,” he says.
What about Mohamed Mounir’s attempt, a song entitled “Madad” (Supplication), which was released after Sept 11. Salama says the primary difference is in the size of the production. “Youssou N’Dour is a big man. He is a producer and has worked with big groups like the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He is well-known around the world,” he points out.
Egypt is an amazing mix of African and Egyptian musical traditions, a fact Salama believes is why the album won the Grammy. “It signals a meeting between two cultures. None of this has been done musically at least. Many may attempt to merge a mix between two musical traditions, cooking them together in the safety of a studio. But that’s not it. Just because two pieces are in the G or C keys doesn’t mean that they mix. The taste and the flavor may not fit. When the two forms fit, they lead, in the end, to a third thing. It’s like they say: the whole is larger than the sum of all parts,” he says.
This, he explains, is what Sharqiat, his musical group and workshop, has been about since its inception in 1989.
“What we aim for is a kind of ongoing education, an open workshop. It is intended for musicians from all over the world to learn from each other and to work together. This is how you sometimes find rural Egyptian musicians working with musicians from France, India or America. They teach each other, which is the whole idea. This is how people worked in the past, it’s how it should be. They had more time, and gave their work more time, not just presented the public with work from a fridge,” he says.
Sharqiat, popular with younger music fans, held its first concert in Berlin. It was years later that the group was invited to perform at the Opera House, where it has been amassing a steadily growing following since.
“We should not wait for youth to start accepting new forms of music [a notion with which production companies disagree]. What about creativity? I prefer to do something I like, and which people I work with like. If we’re passionate enough about it, then maybe others will like it too. If we think about [the market] first, we present a fake product,” Salama says.
Although he admits he was one of those behind the birth of modern pop music in Egypt with hits like Mohamed Mounir’s Shababik (Your Youth), Amr Diab’s Mayyal (Impressionable), Anoushka’s Habbeitak (I Loved You), and Ali El-Haggar’s Saleina El-Fagr Fein (Dawn Prayers) to his credit Salama explains that he bailed out when the scene had nothing new to offer.
“I refuse to make clones, even clones of my own work. Nowadays, all they want is to exactly emulate MTV. I have nothing against that, but if you like Britney so much, for example, learn from her and then do your own thing,” he says.
None of his pop-star acquaintances supported Salama when he decided to look for something new, he claims. Not that it bothers him he’ll keep working on what he started. And he won’t mind it when Egyptian TV uses his music in its programs, without any form of recognition or even permission.
“I don’t mind. Even though you cannot buy my records here, they are available everywhere else in the world. And in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt for people to listen to the music on television, even without the credit. It’s a good way to reach listeners,” he smiles.
Fathy Salama overlooked locally despite Grammy
By Manal el-Jesri
YOU MAY HAVE heard about Fathy Salama whose album Egypt, which won the Recording Academy’s Best World Music Album for 2004 at the 47th annual Grammy awards. The disc features the vocal talents of the famous Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour and the musical talents of Salama in a massive collaboration between 60 Egyptian and 30 Senegalese musicians.
But have you heard the album itself? Probably not: It’s not only unavailable on the local market, but it hasn’t been released anywhere else in the Arab world, either.
Try going into a record shop anywhere in Egypt and asking for any album by Fathy Salama; you’ll most likely come out empty-handed.
“I think the big companies are more interested in the jumping girls [you see in videos]. Nobody approached me after the award. They tell you ‘Great, great, but I cannot sell this here.’ Everyone I know, even my bawab, comes and listens when I play this album. They really like it. Yes, they do not understand the language [wuluf, an ancient Senegalese language] of the lyrics, but they still love it,” says Salama.
It’s simply that no one seems willing to sell it.
What’s more, N’Dour and Salama’s work has received scant attention in the domestic press, even after the Grammy. But the artist, founder of the Sharqiat group and workshop, takes it all in stride after all, he works for the fun of it. And fun is the first impression one gets when listening to the album (we received our copy from Salama): You can sense the delight of people thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Although the lyrics contain references to Islam Sufi chantings that may have come from the distant past they are not composed to be didactic or controversial. It remains celebratory and at times ventures into the spiritual.
The collaboration between the two artists is relatively young, dating back only to 1999.
“[N’Dour] invited me to work with him,” Salama says, explaining that the idea was to represent the true message of Islam to the West, to paint a picture of faith that is rooted in peace and tolerance. “Back then, I would record Youssou’s voice [in Dakar] and come back here with just that recording and a click track, which goes pum pum pum. Here in Egypt, I worked with musicians to arrange the music and allot instruments. Then I would go back to Dakar for more work and to record African music,” he says.
A fan of West African music, Salama likes to point out that Egyptians often forget that Egypt is in Africa.
“They know very little about African culture. There is no connection somehow. They also forget that many African countries are Islamic countries. Senegal is predominantly Muslim over 90 percent of their population. Islam reached them through us. So there is a connection between the two peoples. In their language, you discover a lot of Arabic words, which must have come from the Qur’an,” he says.
Salama also discovered N’Dour is a fan of Omm Kulthoum. “Our musical forms are not alien to them. In two of the tracks, N’Dour sang in Bayati and Rast maqamat [Arabic musical forms]. The Egyptian musicians here were amazed. They told me, ‘You must have taught him this.’ I said, ‘No, I taught him nothing. They have this in their culture as well’,” Salama explains.
Although they finished Egypt in 2001, the September 11 terror attacks prompted the two artists to delay the album’s release.
“It was not the right moment,” Salama says. “Nobody would have believed us at the time. Now, I guess, is a good time. I think people are ready to listen, and I think the album helps the situation. It is currently the only spoken word of peace that the West knows of,” he says.
What about Mohamed Mounir’s attempt, a song entitled “Madad” (Supplication), which was released after Sept 11. Salama says the primary difference is in the size of the production. “Youssou N’Dour is a big man. He is a producer and has worked with big groups like the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He is well-known around the world,” he points out.
Egypt is an amazing mix of African and Egyptian musical traditions, a fact Salama believes is why the album won the Grammy. “It signals a meeting between two cultures. None of this has been done musically at least. Many may attempt to merge a mix between two musical traditions, cooking them together in the safety of a studio. But that’s not it. Just because two pieces are in the G or C keys doesn’t mean that they mix. The taste and the flavor may not fit. When the two forms fit, they lead, in the end, to a third thing. It’s like they say: the whole is larger than the sum of all parts,” he says.
This, he explains, is what Sharqiat, his musical group and workshop, has been about since its inception in 1989.
“What we aim for is a kind of ongoing education, an open workshop. It is intended for musicians from all over the world to learn from each other and to work together. This is how you sometimes find rural Egyptian musicians working with musicians from France, India or America. They teach each other, which is the whole idea. This is how people worked in the past, it’s how it should be. They had more time, and gave their work more time, not just presented the public with work from a fridge,” he says.
Sharqiat, popular with younger music fans, held its first concert in Berlin. It was years later that the group was invited to perform at the Opera House, where it has been amassing a steadily growing following since.
“We should not wait for youth to start accepting new forms of music [a notion with which production companies disagree]. What about creativity? I prefer to do something I like, and which people I work with like. If we’re passionate enough about it, then maybe others will like it too. If we think about [the market] first, we present a fake product,” Salama says.
Although he admits he was one of those behind the birth of modern pop music in Egypt with hits like Mohamed Mounir’s Shababik (Your Youth), Amr Diab’s Mayyal (Impressionable), Anoushka’s Habbeitak (I Loved You), and Ali El-Haggar’s Saleina El-Fagr Fein (Dawn Prayers) to his credit Salama explains that he bailed out when the scene had nothing new to offer.
“I refuse to make clones, even clones of my own work. Nowadays, all they want is to exactly emulate MTV. I have nothing against that, but if you like Britney so much, for example, learn from her and then do your own thing,” he says.
None of his pop-star acquaintances supported Salama when he decided to look for something new, he claims. Not that it bothers him he’ll keep working on what he started. And he won’t mind it when Egyptian TV uses his music in its programs, without any form of recognition or even permission.
“I don’t mind. Even though you cannot buy my records here, they are available everywhere else in the world. And in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt for people to listen to the music on television, even without the credit. It’s a good way to reach listeners,” he smiles.
Atiyat el-Sayyed
Still Lives
Atiyat El-Sayyed’s latest exhibition at Khan El-Maghraby gallery brings still lifes to life
By Manal el-Jesri
EVER SEEN A chair that is not a chair? Or a duck that is not quite a duck; a garlic clove that is not a garlic clove, or a shisha that isn’t exactly a shisha? You may have seen all these creative manifestations in your imagination, or maybe in a dream. Try seeing them through the insightful eyes and caring brush of artist Atiyat El-Sayyed.
Working for years as an illustrator at Al-Gomhuriyya newspaper, El-Sayyed’s name was synonymous with her journalistic art. It was only a few years ago that a much more creative side of the artist was allowed to shine through to art lovers.
Joining her husband, son and daughter-in-law in a family group exhibition, El-Sayyed’s talents came as a revelation to many critics. Her ingenious representation of inanimate objects around her home, like her sewing machine, for example, was refreshing. After years of looking at post-modern representations in artworks that in many cases offered no connection to viewers or artists, the sheer simplicity and clarity of El-Sayyed’s works baffled and pleased.
Gentle and soft spoken, El-Sayyed exudes maternal charm. And like all good mothers, she loves her home, down to every little object in it. This is where her genius as an artist lies, and this is what is evident in her latest exhibition.
A perfect example is the collection of eid el-hone (mortars used for crushing garlic), which is probably some of the best works in this exhibition. In these works, the artist takes the mundane everyday object out of context. We see it through her special lens, which distorts the proportions and the lines, rendering them softer. They are more pronounced in some areas, and less so in others. And in so doing, the hone attains human qualities. Suddenly, you realize why this is so: The receptacle and the mortar are the archetypal male and female, receiving and giving in an endless dance of life.
The lines, on the other hand, belie the softness of the subject of male vs. female love. They are strong, sure lines. There is no hesitation there. El-Sayyed is part of the love-triangle; she becomes part of her artwork through her comfort and certainty. But then again, the colors come in to bring all El-Sayyed’s femininity and softness back into the work. In this set of paintings, El-Sayyed uses rich earth colors, with flashes of yellow or blue shining through.
In one particular work, the artist decides to play with two sets of hone. At a first glance, the viewer believes they are looking at an abstract representation of two human figures. The main color in this painting is red. You can see it in the background and in the set domineering the foreground of the painting. But another set, painted in steely cold blues and grays, is right there in the middle ground. Look at it again. It is a painting of two sets of lovers. One past and one present. One enjoying passion, the other has put passion behind. And somehow, you feel there is respect between the two, albeit some traces of animosity are felt.
Another favorite is El-Sayyed’s armchair series. Although less numerous than the hone works, the armchair paintings are just another example of this artist’s originality and familiarity with inanimate subjects. In one, there is that familiar tray that lies next to every mother’s favorite chair, replete with her cherished coffee cup. In another, here is that stack of books that she promises herself to get through next vacation.
These are not just cold depictions of an inanimate object: Her selections are soft, lived-in objects; they are loved and understood, and even respected. Her style shines through this collection, with the now familiar distorted proportions, strong lines and soft colors.
Again, a particular work takes the fancy. At the first glance, it is very difficult to tell whether this is a painting of a flower, or simply a strong and passionate abstract work. Look again. It is one of El-Sayyed’s favorite armchairs. Done in profile, the plush planes of the back and arm yearn to be used. You just want to step in and receive a hug from this magical chair. But despite the inviting lines, the colors here are strong, hot, passionate colors. We see vibrant reds and dark blues dominating the work, with the occasional flash of green or yellow.
El-Sayyed has also worked on ducks and roosters, a new subject for her. The works are interesting mainly due to her approach to lines and colors. She also tackles people, and does a few works in black and white. And time and again, she proves herself to be a master of tight composition and strong, sweeping lines. The exhibition is truly marvelous, and certainly worth a lingering visit.
Atiyat El-Sayyed’s latest exhibition at Khan El-Maghraby gallery brings still lifes to life
By Manal el-Jesri
EVER SEEN A chair that is not a chair? Or a duck that is not quite a duck; a garlic clove that is not a garlic clove, or a shisha that isn’t exactly a shisha? You may have seen all these creative manifestations in your imagination, or maybe in a dream. Try seeing them through the insightful eyes and caring brush of artist Atiyat El-Sayyed.
Working for years as an illustrator at Al-Gomhuriyya newspaper, El-Sayyed’s name was synonymous with her journalistic art. It was only a few years ago that a much more creative side of the artist was allowed to shine through to art lovers.
Joining her husband, son and daughter-in-law in a family group exhibition, El-Sayyed’s talents came as a revelation to many critics. Her ingenious representation of inanimate objects around her home, like her sewing machine, for example, was refreshing. After years of looking at post-modern representations in artworks that in many cases offered no connection to viewers or artists, the sheer simplicity and clarity of El-Sayyed’s works baffled and pleased.
Gentle and soft spoken, El-Sayyed exudes maternal charm. And like all good mothers, she loves her home, down to every little object in it. This is where her genius as an artist lies, and this is what is evident in her latest exhibition.
A perfect example is the collection of eid el-hone (mortars used for crushing garlic), which is probably some of the best works in this exhibition. In these works, the artist takes the mundane everyday object out of context. We see it through her special lens, which distorts the proportions and the lines, rendering them softer. They are more pronounced in some areas, and less so in others. And in so doing, the hone attains human qualities. Suddenly, you realize why this is so: The receptacle and the mortar are the archetypal male and female, receiving and giving in an endless dance of life.
The lines, on the other hand, belie the softness of the subject of male vs. female love. They are strong, sure lines. There is no hesitation there. El-Sayyed is part of the love-triangle; she becomes part of her artwork through her comfort and certainty. But then again, the colors come in to bring all El-Sayyed’s femininity and softness back into the work. In this set of paintings, El-Sayyed uses rich earth colors, with flashes of yellow or blue shining through.
In one particular work, the artist decides to play with two sets of hone. At a first glance, the viewer believes they are looking at an abstract representation of two human figures. The main color in this painting is red. You can see it in the background and in the set domineering the foreground of the painting. But another set, painted in steely cold blues and grays, is right there in the middle ground. Look at it again. It is a painting of two sets of lovers. One past and one present. One enjoying passion, the other has put passion behind. And somehow, you feel there is respect between the two, albeit some traces of animosity are felt.
Another favorite is El-Sayyed’s armchair series. Although less numerous than the hone works, the armchair paintings are just another example of this artist’s originality and familiarity with inanimate subjects. In one, there is that familiar tray that lies next to every mother’s favorite chair, replete with her cherished coffee cup. In another, here is that stack of books that she promises herself to get through next vacation.
These are not just cold depictions of an inanimate object: Her selections are soft, lived-in objects; they are loved and understood, and even respected. Her style shines through this collection, with the now familiar distorted proportions, strong lines and soft colors.
Again, a particular work takes the fancy. At the first glance, it is very difficult to tell whether this is a painting of a flower, or simply a strong and passionate abstract work. Look again. It is one of El-Sayyed’s favorite armchairs. Done in profile, the plush planes of the back and arm yearn to be used. You just want to step in and receive a hug from this magical chair. But despite the inviting lines, the colors here are strong, hot, passionate colors. We see vibrant reds and dark blues dominating the work, with the occasional flash of green or yellow.
El-Sayyed has also worked on ducks and roosters, a new subject for her. The works are interesting mainly due to her approach to lines and colors. She also tackles people, and does a few works in black and white. And time and again, she proves herself to be a master of tight composition and strong, sweeping lines. The exhibition is truly marvelous, and certainly worth a lingering visit.
The Art of Zar
Mazaher
Tired of misrepresentation and stereotypes, the Mazaher group redefine and explain the art of Zar as they know it
By Manal el-Jesri
HASSAN AND RAAFAT sit around a small table sipping their tea. Omm Sameh, also known as Madiha, sits next to them, enjoying a quick smoke and her afternoon Nescafé; she doesn’t want to begin the interview before she finishes her smoke.
It’s been a long ride to Saad Zaghloul Street; the traffic was moving at a snail’s pace, they all agree. They feel right at home here at Makan, Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby’s recently established space that houses the Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts.
A professor of Italian literature at Ain Shams University and former Egyptian cultural attaché in France, El-Maghraby has been actively promoting the revival of traditional Egyptian music and, in the case of Omm Sameh and her group, trying to save a form of expression from extinction.
Together with Hassan and Raafat, Omm Sameh now performs as part of Mazaher; together, they are among the last remaining Zar musicians practicing in Egypt, doing what they can to preserve their dying art form.
In its original form, Zar is a ritual where a small circle of people gather to communicate with unseen entities or spirits. It’s one of the few healing ceremonies performed mainly by women for women in an attempt to pacify the spirits and win some measure of inner harmony.
Traditional Zar music originated in Africa. Poly-rhythmic, rich and complex in melody, it is distinctively different from other Egyptian musical traditions. The underground culture was not originally intended to be a performance art and is shunned by the religious establishment, the state and the orthodox cultural elite.
The result: In recent decades, practice of the ritual has died out and ancient songs have been forgotten, helped along by the popular misconception that Zar is all about exorcisms.
For participants, it is most often a cathartic experience often leading to an altered state of consciousness, or in some cases, trance.
According to El-Maghraby, only 24 Zar performers exist today, although Madiha begs to differ: “If you count the Tamboura [musical tradition] and the sittat (women) performers, you will find there are only 14 or 15 of us. The Abul Gheit Zar is not like ours, so we don’t count them. They are more into zikr (a Sufi ‘remembrance’ tradition),” she tells me later on.
Zar music can be found all over the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and also in Kuwait, where they treat it like folk art. But here when people hear Zar, they say “ya sater ya rabb” (may God protect us).
Shrouded in mystique when they perform, the four artists behind Mazaher come across as average Egyptians, although all admit to Sudanese roots, as they sit sipping their hot drinks. Madiha is wearing a tarha (headscarf) around her head, but her shiny golden hoop earrings are visible through it. Her ample body is swathed in a dark dress, and her movements are smooth and fluid enough to give away her connection to the world of rhythm and music. Hassan and Raafat are more reserved in their movements, probably owing to an inherent shyness around strange women (this writer being the culprit).
Their apparent ordinariness is in stark contrast to three sets of ancient eyes that have seen other worlds.
Having finished her cigarette, Madiha signals we can start talking.
Madiha: I began working at the age of 11. We all began very young, and we all come from families that have Zar performers. Zar is like a bug that gets into your blood, so not everyone whose parents work in the Zar would want to do it. My mother was a rayyesah (leader), and I followed her around, while my sister was never really interested.
(A number of Hassan’s family were leaders and sangaa’s (male Zar leader), Madiha points out.)
Hassan: We used to have a hadra (Zar venue) every Saturday at home, and on each Saturday I would stay home. I loved to hold the tamboura (ancient lyre instrument), so my parents made me a special one my size. You see we come from Ismailia, where the semsemiyya (another lyre instrument) is famous. The tamboura is similar, but much bigger.
ET: What is the hadra? Is it what you call the performance itself?
Madiha: No, the hadra is a set place where you have Zar, say every week, for example. The performance is called leila (night).
(Taking their work and terminology for granted, the performers are finding this journalist a little ignorant. Madiha is explaining things slowly, as she would to a child.)
Raafat: My father used to be a sangaa too, and I was attracted to his work. It just enters one’s blood, and then it is difficult to get rid of it. It is not just a job. I learned the tamboura by watching my father, and then one day he was too tired to go. I was 19, and they asked me to go instead. It was a difficult first time, but then I got more interested, and started becoming professional.
ET: Can anyone learn the tamboura?
(The answer is emphatic. I seem to have asked another ignorant question.)
Raafat: You must have the talent.
Madiha: You must be talented because the tamboura echoes the words we say. You know, like when a singer sings, her band goes along with her.
Raafat: It is like the oud.
Madiha: Exactly. When the tamboura player begins, we know what he wants us to sing and we sing along.
(None of their respective children are interested in joining them either, although Hassan points out that “[his children] like it, and enjoy listening, but do not have the dedication [it takes].”)
Madiha: It is something that either takes your fancy or doesn’t. You cannot find it in books or papers. It is material we have inherited from our ancestors. It’s not something just anyone can do or say.
ET: Why does someone go to a Zar?
Madiha: If a woman is tired, or not feeling well.
Hassan: The family decides if someone needs Zar. They believe in it because their parents or grandparents did too.
Madiha (talking over them): Or if a woman had slept right after a fight and woke up upset or sick.
ET: What about women who cannot conceive?
Madiha: No, of course not. This is all in the hands of God.
Hassan: But when doctors decide a woman suffers from no physical condition stopping her from conceiving, they may tell her to come to us.
Madiha: It is mostly people with psychological problems who come for help.
ET: What about the stuff we see in films?
Madiha: That’s all a sham.
Hassan: I have been in films before. I do my work as I usually do it, but then the director adds material to make us look bad and backward. They do this behind our backs because if we had known what the directors were up to, we would not do [the scene].
Madiha: This is our livelihood, it is the job our ancestors left us, so do you think we would purposely show it up?
Raafat (joining in the debate): Films have not always misunderstood Zar. In a very old Ali El-Kassar film El-Saa Sabaa (It’s Seven O’Clock), there was a Zar and afterwards the visitors said, “What a lovely party.”
ET: So traditionally, is it only sick people who attend the Zar?
Hassan: No. A lot of people just love to come to the Zar and listen to us. We performed in Paris [through El-Maghraby’s efforts] three times, and people loved us even though they couldn’t understand what we were saying.
Madiha: Yes. They moved in their chairs and enjoyed themselves. Even here in Cairo, when we perform at Dr. Ahmed’s place, people enjoy our work, without being sick or anything.
ET: Have you traced your work, do you know where it comes from?
Hassan: No, it was here long before we were born.
ET: What are your main instruments?
Madiha: There is the tamboura, and its special drums, there are the mazaher [large, shallow drums], which are mainly held by women, and there are the finger cymbals, the rattles, and the mangour [jingly belt worn around the waist]. Each one specializes in one instrument, but we can use them all if needs be. Traditionally women do not wear the mangour, but if there is a leila where no men are allowed, or if the mangour-wearer is sick or away, I’d wear the mangour and shake to the music of the tamboura.
ET: In films, we see women falling down during the Zar, and everybody cheers because she’s been cured. Does this really happen?
Madiha: No, not in this sense. Some may feel dizzy, just because they are sick and through no fault of the Zar. We might spray her with some rosewater, and that’s that.
ET: What are your most famous adwar (songs)? (They do not use oghnia because they believe Zar to be functional, not just a performance.)
Madiha (who is more willing to answer questions): There is “Yawra” and “Rakash”. In Yawra we say: Yawra Beh, Ya Gamil Ya Beh (O Yawra beautiful Bek). We just speak of someone we love. You know this all is historical. We are not talking about djinn (spirits) or anything. Long ago they believed in djinn. You have to know our job has nothing bad in it.
Hassan: The movies make us look bad.
Madiha: People hold Zars to show hospitality. You prepare good food, and then you provide entertainment.
Hassan: That’s true, and you also provide good incense. Zar music can be found all over the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and also in Kuwait, where they treat it like folk art. But here when people hear Zar, they say “ya sater ya Rabb” (may God protect us).
ET: But now you’re a band. Did you agree to Dr. Maghraby’s proposal to form a band right away?
Hassan: We did. And he sent us to Paris.
ET: Do your performances at Makan differ from ones you give at a Zar party?
Madiha: The Zar is the same anywhere. But here it is better. It is not as crowded as in a hara (alley) or in a home. We have time to enjoy ourselves.
Hassan: We also get to remember adwar that we had not said in years.
(Omm Hassan, another Rayyesah, walks in at this point. She had been delayed by traffic. Darker-skinned than Madiha, she is also much thinner. She has an incredibly kind face, a charming huge smile and sparkling goldcaps. Tracing her roots back to Sudan and the Hijaz, Omm Hassan explains that she comes from a family of Zar artists, but is currently the only remaining performer, along with her younger niece.)
Omm Hassan: She is not that young, though. None of the young are interested in Zar anymore. They do not know how to say what we say.
ET: Are the words difficult? Tell me some more of your lyrics.
Madiha: There is “Rakash;” Rokousha hanem ya rokousha, shaila el-Arousa ya rokousha. It is like you’re cajoling a little child. Don’t you promise your children candy so they would do what you want?
ET: Is your job a difficult one?
Madiha: Here, touch my hand. Don’t be scared. (Her fingers are chapped, with thick corns from all the drumming. Omm Hassan shows her fingers too, which are swathed in band-aids.)
Hassan: People don’t understand our work. Although old people do. They either know us, or know our work, and can sometimes join our adwar.
ET: Do people still believe in the healing benefits of Zar? Can you tell me any good healing stories?
Omm Hassan: The stories are many. When my mother was still alive, a woman came to us on a stretcher. Men carried her in, and she could not move at all. As soon as we started, she started signaling that she wanted water. By the time we were finished, she was on her feet, and went home walking, using her mother as a crutch.
Madiha: I know someone too whose leg hurt; the doctors couldn’t tell what was wrong with her. After the Zar she was cured. She holds Zar every year, still walks on her two feet and frequently goes to Hajj.
ET: Is there anything special that should be prepared for the Zar, like a special food?
Madiha: No, it depends on your means. But if someone is sick, something must be slaughtered during the leila. Of course it is also a chance for all the poor to be fed.
ET: Apart from working here, do you still work as much as you once used to?
Hassan: No. Things are expensive today.
Madiha: Some people are apprehensive.
ET: Are you ever hassled?
Madiha: Not exactly. But neighbors may complain about the noise and call the police.
ET: Has working here changed things?
Madiha: We are happy that Dr. Ahmed is trying to compile our work. And we are also becoming known. People who attend our performances here like us. They move with us and enjoy themselves.
Hassan: And we’ve performed at the Opera House, the Italian and French cultural centers, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Madiha: And in turn, we enjoy ourselves too. We work from the heart. Once we start working, we forget everything else, even if we are tired or sick. We love what we do, even though when we die, Zar is going to die with us.
Tired of misrepresentation and stereotypes, the Mazaher group redefine and explain the art of Zar as they know it
By Manal el-Jesri
HASSAN AND RAAFAT sit around a small table sipping their tea. Omm Sameh, also known as Madiha, sits next to them, enjoying a quick smoke and her afternoon Nescafé; she doesn’t want to begin the interview before she finishes her smoke.
It’s been a long ride to Saad Zaghloul Street; the traffic was moving at a snail’s pace, they all agree. They feel right at home here at Makan, Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby’s recently established space that houses the Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts.
A professor of Italian literature at Ain Shams University and former Egyptian cultural attaché in France, El-Maghraby has been actively promoting the revival of traditional Egyptian music and, in the case of Omm Sameh and her group, trying to save a form of expression from extinction.
Together with Hassan and Raafat, Omm Sameh now performs as part of Mazaher; together, they are among the last remaining Zar musicians practicing in Egypt, doing what they can to preserve their dying art form.
In its original form, Zar is a ritual where a small circle of people gather to communicate with unseen entities or spirits. It’s one of the few healing ceremonies performed mainly by women for women in an attempt to pacify the spirits and win some measure of inner harmony.
Traditional Zar music originated in Africa. Poly-rhythmic, rich and complex in melody, it is distinctively different from other Egyptian musical traditions. The underground culture was not originally intended to be a performance art and is shunned by the religious establishment, the state and the orthodox cultural elite.
The result: In recent decades, practice of the ritual has died out and ancient songs have been forgotten, helped along by the popular misconception that Zar is all about exorcisms.
For participants, it is most often a cathartic experience often leading to an altered state of consciousness, or in some cases, trance.
According to El-Maghraby, only 24 Zar performers exist today, although Madiha begs to differ: “If you count the Tamboura [musical tradition] and the sittat (women) performers, you will find there are only 14 or 15 of us. The Abul Gheit Zar is not like ours, so we don’t count them. They are more into zikr (a Sufi ‘remembrance’ tradition),” she tells me later on.
Zar music can be found all over the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and also in Kuwait, where they treat it like folk art. But here when people hear Zar, they say “ya sater ya rabb” (may God protect us).
Shrouded in mystique when they perform, the four artists behind Mazaher come across as average Egyptians, although all admit to Sudanese roots, as they sit sipping their hot drinks. Madiha is wearing a tarha (headscarf) around her head, but her shiny golden hoop earrings are visible through it. Her ample body is swathed in a dark dress, and her movements are smooth and fluid enough to give away her connection to the world of rhythm and music. Hassan and Raafat are more reserved in their movements, probably owing to an inherent shyness around strange women (this writer being the culprit).
Their apparent ordinariness is in stark contrast to three sets of ancient eyes that have seen other worlds.
Having finished her cigarette, Madiha signals we can start talking.
Madiha: I began working at the age of 11. We all began very young, and we all come from families that have Zar performers. Zar is like a bug that gets into your blood, so not everyone whose parents work in the Zar would want to do it. My mother was a rayyesah (leader), and I followed her around, while my sister was never really interested.
(A number of Hassan’s family were leaders and sangaa’s (male Zar leader), Madiha points out.)
Hassan: We used to have a hadra (Zar venue) every Saturday at home, and on each Saturday I would stay home. I loved to hold the tamboura (ancient lyre instrument), so my parents made me a special one my size. You see we come from Ismailia, where the semsemiyya (another lyre instrument) is famous. The tamboura is similar, but much bigger.
ET: What is the hadra? Is it what you call the performance itself?
Madiha: No, the hadra is a set place where you have Zar, say every week, for example. The performance is called leila (night).
(Taking their work and terminology for granted, the performers are finding this journalist a little ignorant. Madiha is explaining things slowly, as she would to a child.)
Raafat: My father used to be a sangaa too, and I was attracted to his work. It just enters one’s blood, and then it is difficult to get rid of it. It is not just a job. I learned the tamboura by watching my father, and then one day he was too tired to go. I was 19, and they asked me to go instead. It was a difficult first time, but then I got more interested, and started becoming professional.
ET: Can anyone learn the tamboura?
(The answer is emphatic. I seem to have asked another ignorant question.)
Raafat: You must have the talent.
Madiha: You must be talented because the tamboura echoes the words we say. You know, like when a singer sings, her band goes along with her.
Raafat: It is like the oud.
Madiha: Exactly. When the tamboura player begins, we know what he wants us to sing and we sing along.
(None of their respective children are interested in joining them either, although Hassan points out that “[his children] like it, and enjoy listening, but do not have the dedication [it takes].”)
Madiha: It is something that either takes your fancy or doesn’t. You cannot find it in books or papers. It is material we have inherited from our ancestors. It’s not something just anyone can do or say.
ET: Why does someone go to a Zar?
Madiha: If a woman is tired, or not feeling well.
Hassan: The family decides if someone needs Zar. They believe in it because their parents or grandparents did too.
Madiha (talking over them): Or if a woman had slept right after a fight and woke up upset or sick.
ET: What about women who cannot conceive?
Madiha: No, of course not. This is all in the hands of God.
Hassan: But when doctors decide a woman suffers from no physical condition stopping her from conceiving, they may tell her to come to us.
Madiha: It is mostly people with psychological problems who come for help.
ET: What about the stuff we see in films?
Madiha: That’s all a sham.
Hassan: I have been in films before. I do my work as I usually do it, but then the director adds material to make us look bad and backward. They do this behind our backs because if we had known what the directors were up to, we would not do [the scene].
Madiha: This is our livelihood, it is the job our ancestors left us, so do you think we would purposely show it up?
Raafat (joining in the debate): Films have not always misunderstood Zar. In a very old Ali El-Kassar film El-Saa Sabaa (It’s Seven O’Clock), there was a Zar and afterwards the visitors said, “What a lovely party.”
ET: So traditionally, is it only sick people who attend the Zar?
Hassan: No. A lot of people just love to come to the Zar and listen to us. We performed in Paris [through El-Maghraby’s efforts] three times, and people loved us even though they couldn’t understand what we were saying.
Madiha: Yes. They moved in their chairs and enjoyed themselves. Even here in Cairo, when we perform at Dr. Ahmed’s place, people enjoy our work, without being sick or anything.
ET: Have you traced your work, do you know where it comes from?
Hassan: No, it was here long before we were born.
ET: What are your main instruments?
Madiha: There is the tamboura, and its special drums, there are the mazaher [large, shallow drums], which are mainly held by women, and there are the finger cymbals, the rattles, and the mangour [jingly belt worn around the waist]. Each one specializes in one instrument, but we can use them all if needs be. Traditionally women do not wear the mangour, but if there is a leila where no men are allowed, or if the mangour-wearer is sick or away, I’d wear the mangour and shake to the music of the tamboura.
ET: In films, we see women falling down during the Zar, and everybody cheers because she’s been cured. Does this really happen?
Madiha: No, not in this sense. Some may feel dizzy, just because they are sick and through no fault of the Zar. We might spray her with some rosewater, and that’s that.
ET: What are your most famous adwar (songs)? (They do not use oghnia because they believe Zar to be functional, not just a performance.)
Madiha (who is more willing to answer questions): There is “Yawra” and “Rakash”. In Yawra we say: Yawra Beh, Ya Gamil Ya Beh (O Yawra beautiful Bek). We just speak of someone we love. You know this all is historical. We are not talking about djinn (spirits) or anything. Long ago they believed in djinn. You have to know our job has nothing bad in it.
Hassan: The movies make us look bad.
Madiha: People hold Zars to show hospitality. You prepare good food, and then you provide entertainment.
Hassan: That’s true, and you also provide good incense. Zar music can be found all over the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and also in Kuwait, where they treat it like folk art. But here when people hear Zar, they say “ya sater ya Rabb” (may God protect us).
ET: But now you’re a band. Did you agree to Dr. Maghraby’s proposal to form a band right away?
Hassan: We did. And he sent us to Paris.
ET: Do your performances at Makan differ from ones you give at a Zar party?
Madiha: The Zar is the same anywhere. But here it is better. It is not as crowded as in a hara (alley) or in a home. We have time to enjoy ourselves.
Hassan: We also get to remember adwar that we had not said in years.
(Omm Hassan, another Rayyesah, walks in at this point. She had been delayed by traffic. Darker-skinned than Madiha, she is also much thinner. She has an incredibly kind face, a charming huge smile and sparkling goldcaps. Tracing her roots back to Sudan and the Hijaz, Omm Hassan explains that she comes from a family of Zar artists, but is currently the only remaining performer, along with her younger niece.)
Omm Hassan: She is not that young, though. None of the young are interested in Zar anymore. They do not know how to say what we say.
ET: Are the words difficult? Tell me some more of your lyrics.
Madiha: There is “Rakash;” Rokousha hanem ya rokousha, shaila el-Arousa ya rokousha. It is like you’re cajoling a little child. Don’t you promise your children candy so they would do what you want?
ET: Is your job a difficult one?
Madiha: Here, touch my hand. Don’t be scared. (Her fingers are chapped, with thick corns from all the drumming. Omm Hassan shows her fingers too, which are swathed in band-aids.)
Hassan: People don’t understand our work. Although old people do. They either know us, or know our work, and can sometimes join our adwar.
ET: Do people still believe in the healing benefits of Zar? Can you tell me any good healing stories?
Omm Hassan: The stories are many. When my mother was still alive, a woman came to us on a stretcher. Men carried her in, and she could not move at all. As soon as we started, she started signaling that she wanted water. By the time we were finished, she was on her feet, and went home walking, using her mother as a crutch.
Madiha: I know someone too whose leg hurt; the doctors couldn’t tell what was wrong with her. After the Zar she was cured. She holds Zar every year, still walks on her two feet and frequently goes to Hajj.
ET: Is there anything special that should be prepared for the Zar, like a special food?
Madiha: No, it depends on your means. But if someone is sick, something must be slaughtered during the leila. Of course it is also a chance for all the poor to be fed.
ET: Apart from working here, do you still work as much as you once used to?
Hassan: No. Things are expensive today.
Madiha: Some people are apprehensive.
ET: Are you ever hassled?
Madiha: Not exactly. But neighbors may complain about the noise and call the police.
ET: Has working here changed things?
Madiha: We are happy that Dr. Ahmed is trying to compile our work. And we are also becoming known. People who attend our performances here like us. They move with us and enjoy themselves.
Hassan: And we’ve performed at the Opera House, the Italian and French cultural centers, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Madiha: And in turn, we enjoy ourselves too. We work from the heart. Once we start working, we forget everything else, even if we are tired or sick. We love what we do, even though when we die, Zar is going to die with us.
Syndicate Syndromes
SYNDICATE SYNDROMES
Does the government’s new plan to put a lid on in-fighting and partisan politics in the nation’s professional syndicates fit the bill? Or is it a blatant attempt to undermine democracy, as Nasserist and Muslim Brotherhood union leaders claim?
By Manal el-Jesri
Some eras are remembered for the laws that are passed in them. Take Sadat’s era, for example. Qanoon El-Eib (the Law of Shame, outlawing all criticism “disrespectful” of presidential authority) will be remembered for generations despite its abolition many years ago. And so will Law 100 of 1993, which safeguards the guarantees of democratization of the syndical organization most pertinently the regularization of election traffic in Egyptian professional syndicates perhaps traffic jam is more appropriate in this case.
In over a decade, most of Egypt’s 24 professional syndicates, whose members number millions of highly educated men and women, have been inactive. Elections in the Medical Syndicate, one of the largest, have not taken place in 12 years. For five years from 1994 to 1999 the government had frozen the activities of the Lawyers’ Syndicate. The Engineers’ Syndicate has been actively suspended since 1995 because of financial corruption, and the matter deteriorated so much for the Traders’ and the Agricultural Workers’ Syndicates, that members no longer receive their pensions.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) regards these transgressions against professional syndicates as transgressions against civil rights: “There are 12 professional syndicates whose boards’ time in office has ended and no elections have been held to form new boards,” posted the EOHR on its website. “These include the Syndicates for Scientific Professions, Agricultural Professions, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Pharmacology, Trade, Applied Arts, Dentistry and Qur’an Learners.”
But who is responsible for the suspension of elections in these syndicates? The judicial committee entrusted with supervising elections did oversee elections in 11 other syndicates, so why not all of them?
The reason traces back to the inefficiency of the paperwork. According to Law 100, a government committee is responsible for informing the syndicates that they need to make preparations to hold elections. This judicial committee has continuously failed to send the necessary notification. The problem is compounded as a result of disagreements inside the individual syndicates over who to include on the syndicates’ board. The diverse affiliations of the members whether Muslim Brotherhood, Nasserist or leftist have made it difficult for the general assembly to agree on who they want as a representative in the first place.
EOHR regards all attempts by the government to impose any form of guardianship on professional syndicates as directly responsible for the delay in holding elections, and thereby the marginalization of the role of syndicates as one of the foundations of Egyptian civil society.
The government responded a few months ago by announcing that it was working on a new draft law to regulate the elections. Minister of State for the Shura Council Mufid Shehab, who heads the professionals’ committee at the NDP, said that the new draft aims to redress the problems created by Law 100. “We respect the internal laws of each syndicate. The new law is merely going to regulate elections,” he stated. Yet despite Shehab’s reassuring proclamation, the syndicates unanimously objected to the new draft, mainly because no syndicate members were invited to be part of the committee drafting the law.
Last December, lawyers staged a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court on Ramses street, which merely served to buy them some time. Shehab responded again with another conciliatory statement: “It’s difficult to imagine that the NDP would ever impose any legislation upon members of professional syndicates, without consulting them,” Shehab announced. “That’s why we decided to subject the new draft to an extensive dialogue with the various syndicates and NGOs before referring it to the concerned bodies for endorsement.”
The Lawyers’ Syndicate’s stance against the suggested amendments to Law 100 also succeeded in securing a promise from the government that the syndicate’s upcoming March elections will not be postponed under the pretext that they should wait until the new law was passed. But despite official promises, skeptics doubt the elections will ever take place, although the government has assured Chairman Sameh Ashour that they will be held subject to the existing draft of Law 100. At press time, candidates had started to submit applications.
But why object to a new law when the existing one has proved its failure? “The new draft law is riddled with errors, which makes it unconstitutional,” says lawyer Hamdi Khalifa, chairman of the Syndicate of Giza Lawyers. “It was drafted by the NDP without approval from the 19 existing parties, and without even referring to members of professional syndicates, which clashes with articles three and five of the constitution [on the people as the source of government and the multiparty system, respectively]. Furthermore, the draft limits the formation of the general assembly to a committee of council members from district and governorate syndicate branches. This fact clashes with articles eight and 40 of the constitution [on equal opportunity and equality before the law] and also violates the rights of the members of the general assembly,” Khalifa explains.
According to the chairman, the new law makes it even more difficult for elections to take place because it allows more room for government interference; and if they actually do take place, it makes it conducive for members of certain parties (i.e. the ruling NDP) to take precedence over members from the opposition. Control has been the main challenge ever since the Muslim Brotherhood members started significantly ascending to the governing councils of most professional syndicates. In 1992, at the height of the most violent clashes between the government and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan were able to take over the Medical Syndicate’s council. According to many analysts, Law 100 was tailored purposely to thwart this “invasion.”
“I have worked on legislation before, when I was a member of the People’s Assembly. In respectable countries, each law is preceded by years of preparation. But in disrespectable countries, none of this preparation is deemed necessary. Law 100 was issued in the absence of the general assemblies of all syndicates and in the presence of strong objections from the governing party itself. The aim was obvious: to control activities of Islamists and to ban the Muslim Brotherhood from winning top seats in professional syndicates,” says Essam El-Erian, assistant secretary-general of the Medical Syndicate and a member of the banned group.
According to El-Erian, the government was and still is worried that the Brotherhood would prove their effectiveness in providing direly needed services it has failed to provide. Amr El-Shobaky, analyst at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) elaborates on this point further in his book The Medical Syndicate (2004). “Professional syndicates in Egypt,” he writes, “form a middle ground between direct political work and social and service work. And despite some syndicates’ attempts (mainly the Medical Syndicate) to play a political role which has replaced the role of political parties, it would be difficult to look at them as purely political groups. Professional syndicates have played important economic, professional and social roles.”
“In a country like Egypt,” he continues, “there is no direct system for providing services to citizens, such as European medical plans or the loan plans available in more advanced nations, where services are doled out to people simply because they are citizens, not because they are important professionals. But since Egypt is suspicious of the individual or the citizen, syndicates have become a form of moral and material reassurance for their members when seeking any form of aid.”
El-Erian believes that this justifies the suspicion the government feels towards the Brotherhood. “They want to stop [us] from presenting an example of effectuality and from reaching a strong podium to air our political views in the absence of political life. But our success was obvious from 1984 and 1985 when we first appeared. The syndicate here was nothing but two rooms where very little work was done. Today our activities have reached all corners of the globe. Wherever we go, from Afghanistan to Iraq, we show the true face of Egypt. They fear our success, and they don’t want us to show our abilities. The Brotherhood was able to gain the trust of a broad section of the Egyptian people. Despite the campaigns against Islam, and against Islamic movements, the Brotherhood continues to win any elections because of this trust,” he says.
El-Erian repeatedly describes the Muslim Brotherhood as the most organized of all groups to explain its success. “We are banned and hounded wherever we go. How does this make us organized?” he questions. “They are the ones who are organized. They have parties and newspapers. But they are weak because their message carries no conviction.”
For five consecutive years, the government effectively froze all activities at the Lawyer’s Syndicate.
Hussein Abdel Razek, secretary-general of the leftist Tagammua Party is incredulous that the government did not see anything wrong with the NDP taking over syndicate councils, but objected when the opposition attempted to do the same thing. “If it had been the NDP that was gaining more seats, Law 100 would not have been issued,” he says.
But despite the limitations posed by Law 100, El-Erian points out that the government’s efforts to curb the success of the Brotherhood in professional syndicates has been futile. “The law failed in its first test and the Brotherhood was able to succeed in the Pharmacists’ Syndicate. This has led the government to take dangerous steps like freezing the lawyers’, engineers’ and medical syndicates. The lawyers were later able to shirk the chains. But in 2001, although a Nasserist chairman won the elections, his board was mostly Brotherhood. And the same took place in the Press Syndicate,” he says.
Law 100’s most challenging clause stipulated that half of the members of any syndicate must be present for elections to take place, which was physically impossible since some syndicates number millions. El-Erian, however, believes that this clause has only proven the Brotherhood’s strength. “The more members attended, the more votes the Brotherhood received. It only showed the government the amount of support the Brotherhood engenders,” he says.
Hence the new draft, which limits voting for the main council to representatives. “This is going to make [the government’s] image even worse in front of the rest of the world,” explains El-Erian. “All reform initiatives talk about civil society and the importance of encouraging civil work. Professional and labor syndicates are the backbone of civil society. And what has the government done? It has nationalized labor syndicates, frozen professional syndicates and paralyzed the actions of NGOs. It looks very bad,” he says. “Now the government wants to beautify itself with nominal changes. It’s ridiculous. Our stance as professionals is clear: Law 100 must be cancelled and syndicates should be left to their members, to be run according to their own internal laws,” he says.
Abdel Razek agrees, despite the political disparity between his position as a confirmed leftist and El-Erian’s position as a declared Islamist. “All professional syndicates have their own laws, which were approved by the legislative authorities, and which had been amended several times to suit the inner workings of each profession. The strange thing about Law 100 is that it attempted to unify the workings of professional syndicates where elections are concerned, handing this job to what they term a judicial committee,” he says.
It is this judicial committee which decides to call for elections on a whim. “We have won several cases against the committee, mandating that it call for elections in the Medical Syndicate. But it has ignored all of these verdicts for the past 12 years,” El-Erian says.
Abdel Razek, on the other hand, is reluctant to refer to the committee as “judicial”. He says, “It is a misleading term. A judge is someone who sits in court and looks into a case presented to him or her. What this committee of judges does is look into administrative issues. It is not doing legal work, so it should be called an administrative committee.”
Although Abdel Razek is cautious about claiming that the existence of the committee is unconstitutional, he does accede that several cases were heard in the Higher Constitutional Court to that effect. “Still, this committee has the right to run the inner workings of syndicates in case elections are not held. Can you believe that a judge currently runs the Engineers’ Syndicate? As a result of the work of this committee, the councils of most syndicates have lost their legitimacy. The committee works solely according to political criteria, disregarding the professional need for the existence of syndicates in the first place,” Abdel Razek says. “Syndicates are there to fend for members’ rights. But today, the main thing syndicates do is provide services. Candidates use these services as leverage to gain votes.”
Khalifa of Giza Lawyers’ Syndicate disagrees. He believes members must ensure that their candidate can provide these services, which he believes is as important as the political considerations. “A man is judged by his deeds. And I am glad to say that the past period has been a time of accomplishments. We built new headquarters, a river club, a social and sporting club, and a residential project over an area of 88 feddans. When you step forward to occupy a certain position, you must work on all axes. Professional criteria are as important as the services we are able to provide to voters,” he says.
Abdel Razek, on the other hand, believes that this high demand for services has led some candidates to abuse the situation. Take the Press Syndicate elections as an example. “Voters have been divided according to the institution to which they belong, be it Al-Ahram or Al-Akhbar, etc. Chairmen of institutions can now find out who voted against them and begin to hound or coerce them. The services provided by each chairman have become the determining criteria for their election. During the past elections, we had banners saying ‘No to the control of Al-Ahram’. But the fact remains that the existing council includes four or five members who work for Al-Ahram,” he says.
Abdel Razek explains that the power of the chairmen is derived from the government, which appoints them as representatives, giving them access to endless funds and projects to provide to their members. Political conflicts still exist, however, where the formation of the governing councils of syndicates is concerned. Mohamed El-Sayed Said, deputy director of the ACPSS is amazed at how the political conflicts inside syndicates mirror those existing outside. “The existing conflict between the Nasserist chairman of the Lawyers’ Syndicate Sameh Ashour and his Brotherhood-domineered council is very similar to the conflict that existed between Nasser and the Brotherhood in the past,” he says. But despite the conflict, which has led Ashour to file and win a case against his deputy Mohammed Tousson, banning the latter from signing any syndicate checks, Said observes a great degree of political suaveness in these conflicts. “Professionals have learnt a good lesson. They have decided that no matter what the conflicts are, the syndicates must continue to exist. So despite the viciousness of the battles at the Lawyers’ Syndicate, it is a much more civilized conflict that in no way resembles the violent clashes of the mid 1980s, in which white weapons were used by candidates and members,” he points out.
Another issue, which Said believes has splintered from the amendment of Law 100, is a “strange” mix of alliances. “It is very difficult now to find a pure camp with specific political affiliations. The government allies with the Nasserites or with the Brotherhood,” he says. This is baffling considering why Law 100 appeared in the first place, namely to curb the Brotherhood.
Abdel Razek notes these contradictions with a laugh, claiming that today these rumored alliances are sometimes used to weaken the position of certain candidates. “They say Ashour is allying with the government this time, and that NDP member Ragaii Attiyya is allying with the Brotherhood. Of course, you shouldn’t believe all you hear. Nobody is willing to show their cards this early on, but it leaves a lot of material for the rumor mill,” he says.
But no matter what the political affiliations are, the chaos surrounding syndicate life in Egypt is serving no one, especially the professions represented in the syndicates, remarks Said. “The idea of professional control and guidelines has been completely ignored. In the quagmire of political conflicts, no candidate dares to talk about professional guidelines or ethics. They must only talk about how much more money or services they are going to bring members,” he says.
El-Erian agrees. “There are several professional issues that we need to address, but we don’t because we lack the stamina. We need elections, we need a new council with enough energy to look at many problems that have come up either because of the growing numbers of doctors or because of the free trade agreements that will definitely affect the profession,” he says. El-Erian also complains of boredom, which is very limiting to the creativity of the council. “Can you imagine doing the same thing for 16 years? The council has not changed, four of our members have passed away, and four have left the country. The remaining members have to do all the work. I’ve had to take unpaid leave from my job because the government has refused to grant me my salary with permission to work solely in the syndicate,” he says.
Another problem threatening the profession, says El-Erian, is that the last 12 classes of medical school graduates have lost all contact with the syndicate due to the absence of elections. They only come to the headquarters to renew their IDs, but other than that, they’re not aware of the role of the syndicate. “We have 12 classes that have not practiced democracy, and who do not know how to vote,” he says.
Said is amazed at the government’s sangfroid regarding the situation of professional life in Egypt. “The government still deals with the issue in its usual conspiratorial way. It disregards the fact that these professionals are its partners in leading the nation to prosperity. It uses cannon-arms to force laws, which no one is allowed to discuss with it. In doing so it misses the point: that the issue of professional syndicates transcends politics. Of course there are political sides to it, but there is a national necessity for syndicates to work properly. If Egypt is to grow, the idea of professional control becomes of utmost importance. There must be clear criteria for professional work. The basic idea in modern society is the idea of rights, i.e. a physician has rights and so does the patient. Doctors must not be allowed to deal with their patients with disgust, and journalists must not be allowed to invade the public’s privacy. It is the only way for society to develop. It is an economic necessity. There must be professional guidelines clear to all if we are to deal with the open markets,” he says.
Abdel Razek points out that not only are professional guidelines not implemented, but the right to conduct sit-ins and strikes is not allowed either, which is an important part of syndicate life. “Although Egypt has signed international declarations that grant citizens the right to strike, and although international declarations must overpass national laws, strikes are almost criminalized by Egyptian laws. And I do not see another way for syndicate laws to change. Professionals must take a strong unified stand, which does not seem possible in the coming period. Law 100 must be abolished. And it does not look like the government is planning to do anything of the sort. All it is suggesting are some amendments, and in view of what I have read about these amendments, they are even worse than the law itself,” he says.
El-Erian agrees, pointing out that “the law must be abolished, and professionals must be allowed to run their own syndicates. All of this must take place in a free atmosphere. But the reality shows us that what we have is emergency laws, government terrorism and restrictions on freedoms.”
“Professionals must be party to any laws governing syndicate work,” Said concludes. “Syndicates are civil entities and must only be managed by their own civil laws. Politics are important by default, but the idea of professional work is much bigger. Professional syndicates should stand united to make this happen.” et
The government would prefer that syndicates focus on professional standards and development than on organizing demonstrations like those pictured protesting against the war in Iraq last year.
Does the government’s new plan to put a lid on in-fighting and partisan politics in the nation’s professional syndicates fit the bill? Or is it a blatant attempt to undermine democracy, as Nasserist and Muslim Brotherhood union leaders claim?
By Manal el-Jesri
Some eras are remembered for the laws that are passed in them. Take Sadat’s era, for example. Qanoon El-Eib (the Law of Shame, outlawing all criticism “disrespectful” of presidential authority) will be remembered for generations despite its abolition many years ago. And so will Law 100 of 1993, which safeguards the guarantees of democratization of the syndical organization most pertinently the regularization of election traffic in Egyptian professional syndicates perhaps traffic jam is more appropriate in this case.
In over a decade, most of Egypt’s 24 professional syndicates, whose members number millions of highly educated men and women, have been inactive. Elections in the Medical Syndicate, one of the largest, have not taken place in 12 years. For five years from 1994 to 1999 the government had frozen the activities of the Lawyers’ Syndicate. The Engineers’ Syndicate has been actively suspended since 1995 because of financial corruption, and the matter deteriorated so much for the Traders’ and the Agricultural Workers’ Syndicates, that members no longer receive their pensions.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) regards these transgressions against professional syndicates as transgressions against civil rights: “There are 12 professional syndicates whose boards’ time in office has ended and no elections have been held to form new boards,” posted the EOHR on its website. “These include the Syndicates for Scientific Professions, Agricultural Professions, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Pharmacology, Trade, Applied Arts, Dentistry and Qur’an Learners.”
But who is responsible for the suspension of elections in these syndicates? The judicial committee entrusted with supervising elections did oversee elections in 11 other syndicates, so why not all of them?
The reason traces back to the inefficiency of the paperwork. According to Law 100, a government committee is responsible for informing the syndicates that they need to make preparations to hold elections. This judicial committee has continuously failed to send the necessary notification. The problem is compounded as a result of disagreements inside the individual syndicates over who to include on the syndicates’ board. The diverse affiliations of the members whether Muslim Brotherhood, Nasserist or leftist have made it difficult for the general assembly to agree on who they want as a representative in the first place.
EOHR regards all attempts by the government to impose any form of guardianship on professional syndicates as directly responsible for the delay in holding elections, and thereby the marginalization of the role of syndicates as one of the foundations of Egyptian civil society.
The government responded a few months ago by announcing that it was working on a new draft law to regulate the elections. Minister of State for the Shura Council Mufid Shehab, who heads the professionals’ committee at the NDP, said that the new draft aims to redress the problems created by Law 100. “We respect the internal laws of each syndicate. The new law is merely going to regulate elections,” he stated. Yet despite Shehab’s reassuring proclamation, the syndicates unanimously objected to the new draft, mainly because no syndicate members were invited to be part of the committee drafting the law.
Last December, lawyers staged a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court on Ramses street, which merely served to buy them some time. Shehab responded again with another conciliatory statement: “It’s difficult to imagine that the NDP would ever impose any legislation upon members of professional syndicates, without consulting them,” Shehab announced. “That’s why we decided to subject the new draft to an extensive dialogue with the various syndicates and NGOs before referring it to the concerned bodies for endorsement.”
The Lawyers’ Syndicate’s stance against the suggested amendments to Law 100 also succeeded in securing a promise from the government that the syndicate’s upcoming March elections will not be postponed under the pretext that they should wait until the new law was passed. But despite official promises, skeptics doubt the elections will ever take place, although the government has assured Chairman Sameh Ashour that they will be held subject to the existing draft of Law 100. At press time, candidates had started to submit applications.
But why object to a new law when the existing one has proved its failure? “The new draft law is riddled with errors, which makes it unconstitutional,” says lawyer Hamdi Khalifa, chairman of the Syndicate of Giza Lawyers. “It was drafted by the NDP without approval from the 19 existing parties, and without even referring to members of professional syndicates, which clashes with articles three and five of the constitution [on the people as the source of government and the multiparty system, respectively]. Furthermore, the draft limits the formation of the general assembly to a committee of council members from district and governorate syndicate branches. This fact clashes with articles eight and 40 of the constitution [on equal opportunity and equality before the law] and also violates the rights of the members of the general assembly,” Khalifa explains.
According to the chairman, the new law makes it even more difficult for elections to take place because it allows more room for government interference; and if they actually do take place, it makes it conducive for members of certain parties (i.e. the ruling NDP) to take precedence over members from the opposition. Control has been the main challenge ever since the Muslim Brotherhood members started significantly ascending to the governing councils of most professional syndicates. In 1992, at the height of the most violent clashes between the government and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan were able to take over the Medical Syndicate’s council. According to many analysts, Law 100 was tailored purposely to thwart this “invasion.”
“I have worked on legislation before, when I was a member of the People’s Assembly. In respectable countries, each law is preceded by years of preparation. But in disrespectable countries, none of this preparation is deemed necessary. Law 100 was issued in the absence of the general assemblies of all syndicates and in the presence of strong objections from the governing party itself. The aim was obvious: to control activities of Islamists and to ban the Muslim Brotherhood from winning top seats in professional syndicates,” says Essam El-Erian, assistant secretary-general of the Medical Syndicate and a member of the banned group.
According to El-Erian, the government was and still is worried that the Brotherhood would prove their effectiveness in providing direly needed services it has failed to provide. Amr El-Shobaky, analyst at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) elaborates on this point further in his book The Medical Syndicate (2004). “Professional syndicates in Egypt,” he writes, “form a middle ground between direct political work and social and service work. And despite some syndicates’ attempts (mainly the Medical Syndicate) to play a political role which has replaced the role of political parties, it would be difficult to look at them as purely political groups. Professional syndicates have played important economic, professional and social roles.”
“In a country like Egypt,” he continues, “there is no direct system for providing services to citizens, such as European medical plans or the loan plans available in more advanced nations, where services are doled out to people simply because they are citizens, not because they are important professionals. But since Egypt is suspicious of the individual or the citizen, syndicates have become a form of moral and material reassurance for their members when seeking any form of aid.”
El-Erian believes that this justifies the suspicion the government feels towards the Brotherhood. “They want to stop [us] from presenting an example of effectuality and from reaching a strong podium to air our political views in the absence of political life. But our success was obvious from 1984 and 1985 when we first appeared. The syndicate here was nothing but two rooms where very little work was done. Today our activities have reached all corners of the globe. Wherever we go, from Afghanistan to Iraq, we show the true face of Egypt. They fear our success, and they don’t want us to show our abilities. The Brotherhood was able to gain the trust of a broad section of the Egyptian people. Despite the campaigns against Islam, and against Islamic movements, the Brotherhood continues to win any elections because of this trust,” he says.
El-Erian repeatedly describes the Muslim Brotherhood as the most organized of all groups to explain its success. “We are banned and hounded wherever we go. How does this make us organized?” he questions. “They are the ones who are organized. They have parties and newspapers. But they are weak because their message carries no conviction.”
For five consecutive years, the government effectively froze all activities at the Lawyer’s Syndicate.
Hussein Abdel Razek, secretary-general of the leftist Tagammua Party is incredulous that the government did not see anything wrong with the NDP taking over syndicate councils, but objected when the opposition attempted to do the same thing. “If it had been the NDP that was gaining more seats, Law 100 would not have been issued,” he says.
But despite the limitations posed by Law 100, El-Erian points out that the government’s efforts to curb the success of the Brotherhood in professional syndicates has been futile. “The law failed in its first test and the Brotherhood was able to succeed in the Pharmacists’ Syndicate. This has led the government to take dangerous steps like freezing the lawyers’, engineers’ and medical syndicates. The lawyers were later able to shirk the chains. But in 2001, although a Nasserist chairman won the elections, his board was mostly Brotherhood. And the same took place in the Press Syndicate,” he says.
Law 100’s most challenging clause stipulated that half of the members of any syndicate must be present for elections to take place, which was physically impossible since some syndicates number millions. El-Erian, however, believes that this clause has only proven the Brotherhood’s strength. “The more members attended, the more votes the Brotherhood received. It only showed the government the amount of support the Brotherhood engenders,” he says.
Hence the new draft, which limits voting for the main council to representatives. “This is going to make [the government’s] image even worse in front of the rest of the world,” explains El-Erian. “All reform initiatives talk about civil society and the importance of encouraging civil work. Professional and labor syndicates are the backbone of civil society. And what has the government done? It has nationalized labor syndicates, frozen professional syndicates and paralyzed the actions of NGOs. It looks very bad,” he says. “Now the government wants to beautify itself with nominal changes. It’s ridiculous. Our stance as professionals is clear: Law 100 must be cancelled and syndicates should be left to their members, to be run according to their own internal laws,” he says.
Abdel Razek agrees, despite the political disparity between his position as a confirmed leftist and El-Erian’s position as a declared Islamist. “All professional syndicates have their own laws, which were approved by the legislative authorities, and which had been amended several times to suit the inner workings of each profession. The strange thing about Law 100 is that it attempted to unify the workings of professional syndicates where elections are concerned, handing this job to what they term a judicial committee,” he says.
It is this judicial committee which decides to call for elections on a whim. “We have won several cases against the committee, mandating that it call for elections in the Medical Syndicate. But it has ignored all of these verdicts for the past 12 years,” El-Erian says.
Abdel Razek, on the other hand, is reluctant to refer to the committee as “judicial”. He says, “It is a misleading term. A judge is someone who sits in court and looks into a case presented to him or her. What this committee of judges does is look into administrative issues. It is not doing legal work, so it should be called an administrative committee.”
Although Abdel Razek is cautious about claiming that the existence of the committee is unconstitutional, he does accede that several cases were heard in the Higher Constitutional Court to that effect. “Still, this committee has the right to run the inner workings of syndicates in case elections are not held. Can you believe that a judge currently runs the Engineers’ Syndicate? As a result of the work of this committee, the councils of most syndicates have lost their legitimacy. The committee works solely according to political criteria, disregarding the professional need for the existence of syndicates in the first place,” Abdel Razek says. “Syndicates are there to fend for members’ rights. But today, the main thing syndicates do is provide services. Candidates use these services as leverage to gain votes.”
Khalifa of Giza Lawyers’ Syndicate disagrees. He believes members must ensure that their candidate can provide these services, which he believes is as important as the political considerations. “A man is judged by his deeds. And I am glad to say that the past period has been a time of accomplishments. We built new headquarters, a river club, a social and sporting club, and a residential project over an area of 88 feddans. When you step forward to occupy a certain position, you must work on all axes. Professional criteria are as important as the services we are able to provide to voters,” he says.
Abdel Razek, on the other hand, believes that this high demand for services has led some candidates to abuse the situation. Take the Press Syndicate elections as an example. “Voters have been divided according to the institution to which they belong, be it Al-Ahram or Al-Akhbar, etc. Chairmen of institutions can now find out who voted against them and begin to hound or coerce them. The services provided by each chairman have become the determining criteria for their election. During the past elections, we had banners saying ‘No to the control of Al-Ahram’. But the fact remains that the existing council includes four or five members who work for Al-Ahram,” he says.
Abdel Razek explains that the power of the chairmen is derived from the government, which appoints them as representatives, giving them access to endless funds and projects to provide to their members. Political conflicts still exist, however, where the formation of the governing councils of syndicates is concerned. Mohamed El-Sayed Said, deputy director of the ACPSS is amazed at how the political conflicts inside syndicates mirror those existing outside. “The existing conflict between the Nasserist chairman of the Lawyers’ Syndicate Sameh Ashour and his Brotherhood-domineered council is very similar to the conflict that existed between Nasser and the Brotherhood in the past,” he says. But despite the conflict, which has led Ashour to file and win a case against his deputy Mohammed Tousson, banning the latter from signing any syndicate checks, Said observes a great degree of political suaveness in these conflicts. “Professionals have learnt a good lesson. They have decided that no matter what the conflicts are, the syndicates must continue to exist. So despite the viciousness of the battles at the Lawyers’ Syndicate, it is a much more civilized conflict that in no way resembles the violent clashes of the mid 1980s, in which white weapons were used by candidates and members,” he points out.
Another issue, which Said believes has splintered from the amendment of Law 100, is a “strange” mix of alliances. “It is very difficult now to find a pure camp with specific political affiliations. The government allies with the Nasserites or with the Brotherhood,” he says. This is baffling considering why Law 100 appeared in the first place, namely to curb the Brotherhood.
Abdel Razek notes these contradictions with a laugh, claiming that today these rumored alliances are sometimes used to weaken the position of certain candidates. “They say Ashour is allying with the government this time, and that NDP member Ragaii Attiyya is allying with the Brotherhood. Of course, you shouldn’t believe all you hear. Nobody is willing to show their cards this early on, but it leaves a lot of material for the rumor mill,” he says.
But no matter what the political affiliations are, the chaos surrounding syndicate life in Egypt is serving no one, especially the professions represented in the syndicates, remarks Said. “The idea of professional control and guidelines has been completely ignored. In the quagmire of political conflicts, no candidate dares to talk about professional guidelines or ethics. They must only talk about how much more money or services they are going to bring members,” he says.
El-Erian agrees. “There are several professional issues that we need to address, but we don’t because we lack the stamina. We need elections, we need a new council with enough energy to look at many problems that have come up either because of the growing numbers of doctors or because of the free trade agreements that will definitely affect the profession,” he says. El-Erian also complains of boredom, which is very limiting to the creativity of the council. “Can you imagine doing the same thing for 16 years? The council has not changed, four of our members have passed away, and four have left the country. The remaining members have to do all the work. I’ve had to take unpaid leave from my job because the government has refused to grant me my salary with permission to work solely in the syndicate,” he says.
Another problem threatening the profession, says El-Erian, is that the last 12 classes of medical school graduates have lost all contact with the syndicate due to the absence of elections. They only come to the headquarters to renew their IDs, but other than that, they’re not aware of the role of the syndicate. “We have 12 classes that have not practiced democracy, and who do not know how to vote,” he says.
Said is amazed at the government’s sangfroid regarding the situation of professional life in Egypt. “The government still deals with the issue in its usual conspiratorial way. It disregards the fact that these professionals are its partners in leading the nation to prosperity. It uses cannon-arms to force laws, which no one is allowed to discuss with it. In doing so it misses the point: that the issue of professional syndicates transcends politics. Of course there are political sides to it, but there is a national necessity for syndicates to work properly. If Egypt is to grow, the idea of professional control becomes of utmost importance. There must be clear criteria for professional work. The basic idea in modern society is the idea of rights, i.e. a physician has rights and so does the patient. Doctors must not be allowed to deal with their patients with disgust, and journalists must not be allowed to invade the public’s privacy. It is the only way for society to develop. It is an economic necessity. There must be professional guidelines clear to all if we are to deal with the open markets,” he says.
Abdel Razek points out that not only are professional guidelines not implemented, but the right to conduct sit-ins and strikes is not allowed either, which is an important part of syndicate life. “Although Egypt has signed international declarations that grant citizens the right to strike, and although international declarations must overpass national laws, strikes are almost criminalized by Egyptian laws. And I do not see another way for syndicate laws to change. Professionals must take a strong unified stand, which does not seem possible in the coming period. Law 100 must be abolished. And it does not look like the government is planning to do anything of the sort. All it is suggesting are some amendments, and in view of what I have read about these amendments, they are even worse than the law itself,” he says.
El-Erian agrees, pointing out that “the law must be abolished, and professionals must be allowed to run their own syndicates. All of this must take place in a free atmosphere. But the reality shows us that what we have is emergency laws, government terrorism and restrictions on freedoms.”
“Professionals must be party to any laws governing syndicate work,” Said concludes. “Syndicates are civil entities and must only be managed by their own civil laws. Politics are important by default, but the idea of professional work is much bigger. Professional syndicates should stand united to make this happen.” et
The government would prefer that syndicates focus on professional standards and development than on organizing demonstrations like those pictured protesting against the war in Iraq last year.
Ahmed el-Maghraby
Ahmed El-Maghraby
Actively nurturing the revival of traditional Egyptian music, Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby elaborates on his latest project.
By Manal el-Jesri
IN EGYPT, STONES and bricks have become much more important than people,” begins Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby, professor of Italian Literature at Ain Shams University. “This is why traditional artists, those who still wear galabeyas, are looked down upon. They are treated like servants or suspects by the police and on the streets, which is why they either give up on their art or they get rid of their traditional attire. But this is all part of a culture where citizens are considered servants to the government, the students servants working for their teachers, and the artists are servants working for employees at the Ministry of Culture, when the opposite is true,” he says.
Chagrined at this state of affairs, El-Maghraby has set out to re-acquaint the world with traditional Egyptian musicians. This month his new venue Makan opens (on Saad Zaghloul St.), offering music lovers a unique chance to listen to neglected musical traditions such as Zar music, Nubian music, Sufi and Coptic chanting and traditional peasant mawawil (improvised singing) and music.
We change our deep, profound cultural heritage into light songs, like video clips. It all goes back to the complex we have had since the turn of the last century.
Another fact that causes El-Maghraby some frustration is that one of his best-known contributions to music is Mozart the Egyptian, a hugely successful CD incorporating the talents of classical European musicians and traditional Egyptian musicians, including the now famous violinist Abdo Dagher. El-Maghraby, the dynamo behind the production of the CD (which was released in 1997 by Virgin Productions), is certainly gratified by the unexpected success of the work. However, he insists that some of the smaller experiments that have taken place between the Nubian group Ganoub and some European groups have been more academically gratifying but much less publicized. This is where Makan comes in, to help shed light on El-Maghraby’s protégés.
Makan means ‘place,’ a very generic name to give to the area housing the Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts. Once you go in, it is difficult to think of a more appropriate name for it. The converted printing house was built by Abdel Qader Pasha Hamza at the turn of the last century. In the future, it will be a place where traditional music performers and lovers meet. No formal seating is provided cushions and baladi wooden chairs line the walls. “This is how performers traditionally worked. There was never a stage, but a wanasa or a sahra [companionable gathering] got together and everybody would interact,” El-Maghraby explains.
The director of Makan first became actively interested in music in 1990. “I was asked by the Ministry of Culture to head the music and singing center in Bashtac Palace. Unfortunately, and due to many bureaucratic reasons, the place never came to be, but a businessman friend suggested that I start something on my own,” he remembers.
In 1992 he set up a place much like Makan, through which he was able to introduce France to Egyptian music a year later, during the festival Les Allumes. “It is an annual festival which takes place in the city of Nantes, where for six days the whole city turns into a visiting country. We did 47 performances, and even the people at the Ministry of Culture here were surprised to discover that people like Abdo Dagher and Fathy Salama even existed. The traditional singer Abdel Baset Hammouda, for example, had rarely stepped out of Mohamed Ali Street, but he went straight to France,” El-Maghraby says.
Unfortunately, the civil company laws under which his cultural center existed at the time changed, and his activities were brought to a standstill. Soon afterwards, in 1998, he went to the Egyptian Embassy in Paris to become their cultural attaché. “This was one of the richest times in my life. I was lucky to work with a great ambassador and a great cultural councilor, and for three years the Egyptian Cultural Center in Paris was one of the most active in the city. We presented an average of 260 nights of performances per year. These three years helped me greatly in understanding what I really want to do.”
His aims are simply to find traditional performers, present them to people, and find a way of helping them interact with other musicians be they Egyptians or foreigners to help nurture their art. Preservation is at the top of his agenda: “Take al-arghool (a long reed wind instrument), for example. This is the oldest musical instrument in history, played by the Egyptian peasant. It exists nowhere else in the world, although a similar instrument exists in Sardinia. You can see it on temple walls, and if you take it out of the Egyptian Museum it will look and sound just as it does today. Unfortunately, the last professional player of this instrument died three years ago, amm [uncle] Mostafa Abdel Aziz.”
Through Ganoub group, which has since disbanded, El-Maghraby was able to bring back the ancient instrument. “The instrument had almost died, become nothing but a temple etching,” he notes. “Nowadays, I have convinced a young player of the kawala [another Egyptian wind instrument] to go back to arghool, and the most famous kawala player, Ibrahim kawala, is considering taking up arghool as well.”
El-Maghraby frets that “there is no interest in preserving the living breathing history although, at the same time, we spend money on inflated forms such as classical Western orchestras to prove that Egypt is big. This makes the West laugh at us. We will never be able to compete [if we choose to play Western music],” he says. On the other hand, a group like Ganoub was able to rock the European cities it visited, he points out.
Touring villages and governorates, El-Maghraby has brought many musicians out of retirement, such as the Nubian singer Sayed Gayer. “I found out that in churches, the chanters had stopped chanting the traditional Coptic music, but have opted for modern ones which, through the use of electronic organ, come out sounding like everything else, light and bad. We change our deep, profound cultural heritage into light songs, like video clips. It all goes back to the complex we have had since the turn of the last century. We want to be like the West, so we look down upon our heritage,” he says.
Take the galabeya, for example. “We are probably the only nation in Africa that is ashamed of its national dress. We are also ashamed of our traditional instruments, which are not taught in academies. But long ago Sheikh Amin El-Kholi said ‘the beginning of the new starts when we take the old apart and understand it.’ How can I develop my music if I cannot listen to the old?” he asks.
For four years now, El-Maghraby has been trying to get into the national center for traditional arts. “They are either renewing it, spraying it, cleaning it or something. The employees there are in a very bad state, and the music is stored on old tapes. A great treasure is strewn around without anyone caring, except for those who had enough dedication to go around the villages and record it in the past,” he laments.
Seeking out authentic music and performers all over Egypt, El-Maghbraby was able to work with five groups: Aragide (Nubian), Mazaher (Zar), David Chanters (Coptic), Sheikh Mohamed El-Helbawi and his group (Sufis), in addition to the peasant mawwal performers. “We try to weed out any modern interference from their work, and to present them to people without much formal intervention. These performers are used to working in a wanasa or a hadra, and the audience sits around them, singing along or asking for particular works, barring Amr Diab of course,” he laughs. “What we want to do is take this music out of the museum and help the performers exist naturally. We do not dress them in archaic outfits, but encourage them to be themselves. Many of them have left their galabeyas behind because they think they must look modern since they are playing in Europe. We encourage them to wear them again. The women leave behind their peasant headscarf and opt for Filipino hijab. I asked the Zar Sheikha what happened to her beautiful scarf, and she said ‘we have become modern, khalas.’”
Performances by various groups will start taking place next month at Makan. Tickets will probably be LE 10 or 15, although well-to-do visitors are encouraged to buy more than one ticket, as this is the only form of funding the center has to rely on so far. “I cannot set a high price for the ticket. I want real listeners to come in, and these may be either rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. But I want the average people to be able to come in, too. People are not to expect Burgers and Nescafé. We will be serving tea and tammeya,” he says. With time, El-Maghraby is hoping to create a following of young listeners and cultural administrators who appreciate traditional Egyptian performers
Actively nurturing the revival of traditional Egyptian music, Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby elaborates on his latest project.
By Manal el-Jesri
IN EGYPT, STONES and bricks have become much more important than people,” begins Dr. Ahmed El-Maghraby, professor of Italian Literature at Ain Shams University. “This is why traditional artists, those who still wear galabeyas, are looked down upon. They are treated like servants or suspects by the police and on the streets, which is why they either give up on their art or they get rid of their traditional attire. But this is all part of a culture where citizens are considered servants to the government, the students servants working for their teachers, and the artists are servants working for employees at the Ministry of Culture, when the opposite is true,” he says.
Chagrined at this state of affairs, El-Maghraby has set out to re-acquaint the world with traditional Egyptian musicians. This month his new venue Makan opens (on Saad Zaghloul St.), offering music lovers a unique chance to listen to neglected musical traditions such as Zar music, Nubian music, Sufi and Coptic chanting and traditional peasant mawawil (improvised singing) and music.
We change our deep, profound cultural heritage into light songs, like video clips. It all goes back to the complex we have had since the turn of the last century.
Another fact that causes El-Maghraby some frustration is that one of his best-known contributions to music is Mozart the Egyptian, a hugely successful CD incorporating the talents of classical European musicians and traditional Egyptian musicians, including the now famous violinist Abdo Dagher. El-Maghraby, the dynamo behind the production of the CD (which was released in 1997 by Virgin Productions), is certainly gratified by the unexpected success of the work. However, he insists that some of the smaller experiments that have taken place between the Nubian group Ganoub and some European groups have been more academically gratifying but much less publicized. This is where Makan comes in, to help shed light on El-Maghraby’s protégés.
Makan means ‘place,’ a very generic name to give to the area housing the Egyptian Center for Culture and Arts. Once you go in, it is difficult to think of a more appropriate name for it. The converted printing house was built by Abdel Qader Pasha Hamza at the turn of the last century. In the future, it will be a place where traditional music performers and lovers meet. No formal seating is provided cushions and baladi wooden chairs line the walls. “This is how performers traditionally worked. There was never a stage, but a wanasa or a sahra [companionable gathering] got together and everybody would interact,” El-Maghraby explains.
The director of Makan first became actively interested in music in 1990. “I was asked by the Ministry of Culture to head the music and singing center in Bashtac Palace. Unfortunately, and due to many bureaucratic reasons, the place never came to be, but a businessman friend suggested that I start something on my own,” he remembers.
In 1992 he set up a place much like Makan, through which he was able to introduce France to Egyptian music a year later, during the festival Les Allumes. “It is an annual festival which takes place in the city of Nantes, where for six days the whole city turns into a visiting country. We did 47 performances, and even the people at the Ministry of Culture here were surprised to discover that people like Abdo Dagher and Fathy Salama even existed. The traditional singer Abdel Baset Hammouda, for example, had rarely stepped out of Mohamed Ali Street, but he went straight to France,” El-Maghraby says.
Unfortunately, the civil company laws under which his cultural center existed at the time changed, and his activities were brought to a standstill. Soon afterwards, in 1998, he went to the Egyptian Embassy in Paris to become their cultural attaché. “This was one of the richest times in my life. I was lucky to work with a great ambassador and a great cultural councilor, and for three years the Egyptian Cultural Center in Paris was one of the most active in the city. We presented an average of 260 nights of performances per year. These three years helped me greatly in understanding what I really want to do.”
His aims are simply to find traditional performers, present them to people, and find a way of helping them interact with other musicians be they Egyptians or foreigners to help nurture their art. Preservation is at the top of his agenda: “Take al-arghool (a long reed wind instrument), for example. This is the oldest musical instrument in history, played by the Egyptian peasant. It exists nowhere else in the world, although a similar instrument exists in Sardinia. You can see it on temple walls, and if you take it out of the Egyptian Museum it will look and sound just as it does today. Unfortunately, the last professional player of this instrument died three years ago, amm [uncle] Mostafa Abdel Aziz.”
Through Ganoub group, which has since disbanded, El-Maghraby was able to bring back the ancient instrument. “The instrument had almost died, become nothing but a temple etching,” he notes. “Nowadays, I have convinced a young player of the kawala [another Egyptian wind instrument] to go back to arghool, and the most famous kawala player, Ibrahim kawala, is considering taking up arghool as well.”
El-Maghraby frets that “there is no interest in preserving the living breathing history although, at the same time, we spend money on inflated forms such as classical Western orchestras to prove that Egypt is big. This makes the West laugh at us. We will never be able to compete [if we choose to play Western music],” he says. On the other hand, a group like Ganoub was able to rock the European cities it visited, he points out.
Touring villages and governorates, El-Maghraby has brought many musicians out of retirement, such as the Nubian singer Sayed Gayer. “I found out that in churches, the chanters had stopped chanting the traditional Coptic music, but have opted for modern ones which, through the use of electronic organ, come out sounding like everything else, light and bad. We change our deep, profound cultural heritage into light songs, like video clips. It all goes back to the complex we have had since the turn of the last century. We want to be like the West, so we look down upon our heritage,” he says.
Take the galabeya, for example. “We are probably the only nation in Africa that is ashamed of its national dress. We are also ashamed of our traditional instruments, which are not taught in academies. But long ago Sheikh Amin El-Kholi said ‘the beginning of the new starts when we take the old apart and understand it.’ How can I develop my music if I cannot listen to the old?” he asks.
For four years now, El-Maghraby has been trying to get into the national center for traditional arts. “They are either renewing it, spraying it, cleaning it or something. The employees there are in a very bad state, and the music is stored on old tapes. A great treasure is strewn around without anyone caring, except for those who had enough dedication to go around the villages and record it in the past,” he laments.
Seeking out authentic music and performers all over Egypt, El-Maghbraby was able to work with five groups: Aragide (Nubian), Mazaher (Zar), David Chanters (Coptic), Sheikh Mohamed El-Helbawi and his group (Sufis), in addition to the peasant mawwal performers. “We try to weed out any modern interference from their work, and to present them to people without much formal intervention. These performers are used to working in a wanasa or a hadra, and the audience sits around them, singing along or asking for particular works, barring Amr Diab of course,” he laughs. “What we want to do is take this music out of the museum and help the performers exist naturally. We do not dress them in archaic outfits, but encourage them to be themselves. Many of them have left their galabeyas behind because they think they must look modern since they are playing in Europe. We encourage them to wear them again. The women leave behind their peasant headscarf and opt for Filipino hijab. I asked the Zar Sheikha what happened to her beautiful scarf, and she said ‘we have become modern, khalas.’”
Performances by various groups will start taking place next month at Makan. Tickets will probably be LE 10 or 15, although well-to-do visitors are encouraged to buy more than one ticket, as this is the only form of funding the center has to rely on so far. “I cannot set a high price for the ticket. I want real listeners to come in, and these may be either rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. But I want the average people to be able to come in, too. People are not to expect Burgers and Nescafé. We will be serving tea and tammeya,” he says. With time, El-Maghraby is hoping to create a following of young listeners and cultural administrators who appreciate traditional Egyptian performers
Drop the Mummy
Drop the Mummy, and Nobody Gets Hurt
Recent controversy over moving King Tut puts Egyptologists in the spotlight
By Manal el-Jesri
DR. ZAHI HAWASS, Egypt’s most publicized Egyptologist and the secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA), is renowned for the number of controversies he can stir. Brushing the controversies aside as nuisances “begun by backward people who are jealous,” as he told Egypt Today, Dr. Hawass keeps on working regardless of any setbacks.
Last month, in the midst of the controversy around the removal of King Tut-Ankh-Amon’s mummy from its resting place in Luxor, Hawass went to the Bahareya Oasis. Egyptians and Brits watched a live coverage transmitted by the television cameras of both countries as Hawass, holding his axe, opened a newly discovered tomb. “We had made a number of discoveries here years ago, but in 2002, I had decided to stop all work. We had found 234 mummies, which is quite enough. The Valley [of the Golden Mummies] is huge, and encompasses around 10,000 mummies. It is Egypt’s biggest burial area, and was used by Egyptians from all classes. I believe mummies should remain underground. But then I decided to start work again,” Hawass says.
Opening seven tombs that had already been pillaged in Roman times, Hawass and his entourage were hoping to discover something about the lives of average Egyptians from ancient times. “We had x-ray machines, through which we discovered that three of the mummies we studied had died of chronic headache. Many of the people had injuries on their arms and legs. A seven-year-old boy we found was wearing a golden cobra on his forehead to protect him in the next life. The people here had died at a young age, and the reason was probably the water, which we found to be too rich in iron,” Hawass explains.
A website set up by retired archeology professor Dr. Nasr Eskandar tries to belittle the importance of the Valley of the Golden Mummies, explaining that the importance of the mummification processes in the area is minimal. “This is ridiculous of course,” Hawass says. “This area was one of the richest in the country. They made the greatest date wine, which was exported to Rome and France. It is also the hugest burial area discovered so far, which means that it can give us complete information about the lifestyle of the time,” he points out.
Ahmed Saleh, the director of SCA’s Abu Simbel antiquities department watched with the rest of the world as Hawass made his discoveries in Bahareya on December 13th, 2004. “That was a real joke. How can a scientist hold an axe and just hack at a tomb on air? All scientists know that a lot of processes should precede the opening of a tomb. If you just hack away at it you lose important historical evidence. I am sad that this is what Egyptology has come to,” Saleh says.
With a masters degree in biomedical and forensic studies in Egyptology from Manchester, Saleh is one of the first Egyptians to specialize in the field. Over the years, Saleh has initiated a number of media campaigns, not afraid to question Hawass’ decisions and ideas. His last but one skirmish with Hawass took place over the remains of the Atlanta mummy, which came back from the United States about a year ago. At the time, Hawass had announced that the mummy belonged to King Ramses I, and was preparing a royal welcome for the returning king. “I sent him my official opinion. This could not have been the mummy of Ramses I, because it had been lost in ancient times. He just ignored me, so I wrote to Akhbar al-Adab,” Saleh remembers. The result, he says, was two days’ deduction from his salary.
Nowadays, Saleh is awaiting his new penalty. It is because of the stir he started that the mummy of King Tut didn’t come to the Egyptian Museum. “When journalists called to ask my opinion I said the mummy should not be moved. The SCA had no clear plan of how it was going to move the mummy, which is in an already dilapidated state. In the past, the mummy was treated roughly and unscientifically, and any more handling may lead to more damage,” Saleh says.
Hawass brushed aside Saleh’s opinion. In a six-page article prepared by Hawass to clear the King Tut issue, he writes: “The aim from the study was to find a better way to preserve the mummy At the SCA, no single person has a say on things. There is a committee made up of 60 scientists, which had made the decision [to move the mummy].
“But despite the scientific method that was to be applied, a person who loves to say no just for the sake of objecting tried to stir public opinion with lies. Unfortunately, some journalists listened to him. He claims to have a masters degree in mummification, but even if he does, no single person can know all there is to know about this issue.”
Despite the difference in opinion, both scientists agree on one fact. The mummy is currently in bad condition, and was handled roughly in the past. In 1925, a year after its discovery, a team of professors including Howard Carter tried to examine the mummy. On finding it stuck to the sarcophagus, they put it out in the sun to melt the materials keeping it together. They later used hot knifes to pry the golden mask off the face, the golden bracelets off the arms and toes. As a result, the head was separated from the body, the pelvis from the midriff and so were the arms, hands, legs and feet.
In 1968 and 1978, the mummy was first analyzed and x-rayed by R.G. Harrison from Liverpool University, and second by James Harries from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. According to Saleh, the results of the studies were never published in their complete form anywhere, so why do another study? “Enough handling of an already suffering mummy! Why not seek the studies that took place in the past? We must first know their discoveries were so as to know what to look for,” he argues.
Hawass points out that the 1968 study was in fact published. In this study, Harrison had made the assumption that the king had died around the age of 1822. But in the past, CT technology was not available. “We were going to get 1,700 images telling us all we need to know about the mummy,” he says. According to Hawass, a German company has agreed to present Egypt with a CT scanner to help in The Egyptian Project for the Study of Mummies. “All of the members of this study are Egyptians, except for Dewolfe Miller, who hails from Hawaii University,” Hawass writes.
Saleh, a scientist himself, is not totally against the idea of more studies carried out on the mummy. He just shudders to think what may have happened had the mummy traveled to Cairo in a car, or even an airplane. “What if there was an accident, and the mummy was lost forever? We would have lost our most famous mummy. Visitors to Luxor view King Tut as the central attraction,” he says.
Although Saleh points out that the government paid thousands of dollars to provide him with a degree in mummification that no one has asked him to use so far, he is quick to point out it was not because he wanted to be included in the team that he rose against the notion of moving the king. “Preserving ancient remains at this stage is much more important than studying them. We should think of preservation first and foremost. Besides, there are already 55 royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum. Why not do work on them?” he asks.
Saleh refers to Ahmed Youssef, Egypt’s most well-known expert on mummies, who is called upon all over England to help in the preservation of human remains. “Why not call on our internationally famed expert, have him look at the mummy and tell us where to go from there?”
Saleh fears that any handling of information by foreigners may lead to a twisting of history. He refers to the findings of Scott Woodward, an American microbiologist, who tried to find resemblance between Egyptian kings and prophets from the Talmud. “They are trying to say that our Egyptian history belongs to them,” Saleh accuses.
Hawass is quick to refute this idea. “There is no Jewish conspiracy, and we will not be carrying out DNA tests. We are proud to be Egyptians, and we work to protect our great monuments. I do not know why we insist on listening to a young man and disregarding the expertise of more seasoned scientists,” Hawass says.
The renowned Egyptologist insists that the work on King Tut is still going to happen, but will take place inside his burial chamber in Luxor. “We just do this out of respect for the people of Luxor, who do not want their king to move,” he says. But why King Tut? “King Tut, together with the Pyramids and the Sphinx, is synonymous with Egypt. He represents gold, greatness, the curse of the Pharaohs. Besides, his time was rich with mysteries how did he die, who could have killed him. ACT may show us something.
“What I am trying to do is bring archaeology into this century. We have to do something. Why should we leave the foreigners to study Egyptology on their own. If we do not wake up we will find ourselves khaddameen (servants) for them. I am trying to make Egyptology Egyptian. But we insist on staying backward. We will restore the mummy, study it, keep it where it is but create a more suitable environment for it.”
Recent controversy over moving King Tut puts Egyptologists in the spotlight
By Manal el-Jesri
DR. ZAHI HAWASS, Egypt’s most publicized Egyptologist and the secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA), is renowned for the number of controversies he can stir. Brushing the controversies aside as nuisances “begun by backward people who are jealous,” as he told Egypt Today, Dr. Hawass keeps on working regardless of any setbacks.
Last month, in the midst of the controversy around the removal of King Tut-Ankh-Amon’s mummy from its resting place in Luxor, Hawass went to the Bahareya Oasis. Egyptians and Brits watched a live coverage transmitted by the television cameras of both countries as Hawass, holding his axe, opened a newly discovered tomb. “We had made a number of discoveries here years ago, but in 2002, I had decided to stop all work. We had found 234 mummies, which is quite enough. The Valley [of the Golden Mummies] is huge, and encompasses around 10,000 mummies. It is Egypt’s biggest burial area, and was used by Egyptians from all classes. I believe mummies should remain underground. But then I decided to start work again,” Hawass says.
Opening seven tombs that had already been pillaged in Roman times, Hawass and his entourage were hoping to discover something about the lives of average Egyptians from ancient times. “We had x-ray machines, through which we discovered that three of the mummies we studied had died of chronic headache. Many of the people had injuries on their arms and legs. A seven-year-old boy we found was wearing a golden cobra on his forehead to protect him in the next life. The people here had died at a young age, and the reason was probably the water, which we found to be too rich in iron,” Hawass explains.
A website set up by retired archeology professor Dr. Nasr Eskandar tries to belittle the importance of the Valley of the Golden Mummies, explaining that the importance of the mummification processes in the area is minimal. “This is ridiculous of course,” Hawass says. “This area was one of the richest in the country. They made the greatest date wine, which was exported to Rome and France. It is also the hugest burial area discovered so far, which means that it can give us complete information about the lifestyle of the time,” he points out.
Ahmed Saleh, the director of SCA’s Abu Simbel antiquities department watched with the rest of the world as Hawass made his discoveries in Bahareya on December 13th, 2004. “That was a real joke. How can a scientist hold an axe and just hack at a tomb on air? All scientists know that a lot of processes should precede the opening of a tomb. If you just hack away at it you lose important historical evidence. I am sad that this is what Egyptology has come to,” Saleh says.
With a masters degree in biomedical and forensic studies in Egyptology from Manchester, Saleh is one of the first Egyptians to specialize in the field. Over the years, Saleh has initiated a number of media campaigns, not afraid to question Hawass’ decisions and ideas. His last but one skirmish with Hawass took place over the remains of the Atlanta mummy, which came back from the United States about a year ago. At the time, Hawass had announced that the mummy belonged to King Ramses I, and was preparing a royal welcome for the returning king. “I sent him my official opinion. This could not have been the mummy of Ramses I, because it had been lost in ancient times. He just ignored me, so I wrote to Akhbar al-Adab,” Saleh remembers. The result, he says, was two days’ deduction from his salary.
Nowadays, Saleh is awaiting his new penalty. It is because of the stir he started that the mummy of King Tut didn’t come to the Egyptian Museum. “When journalists called to ask my opinion I said the mummy should not be moved. The SCA had no clear plan of how it was going to move the mummy, which is in an already dilapidated state. In the past, the mummy was treated roughly and unscientifically, and any more handling may lead to more damage,” Saleh says.
Hawass brushed aside Saleh’s opinion. In a six-page article prepared by Hawass to clear the King Tut issue, he writes: “The aim from the study was to find a better way to preserve the mummy At the SCA, no single person has a say on things. There is a committee made up of 60 scientists, which had made the decision [to move the mummy].
“But despite the scientific method that was to be applied, a person who loves to say no just for the sake of objecting tried to stir public opinion with lies. Unfortunately, some journalists listened to him. He claims to have a masters degree in mummification, but even if he does, no single person can know all there is to know about this issue.”
Despite the difference in opinion, both scientists agree on one fact. The mummy is currently in bad condition, and was handled roughly in the past. In 1925, a year after its discovery, a team of professors including Howard Carter tried to examine the mummy. On finding it stuck to the sarcophagus, they put it out in the sun to melt the materials keeping it together. They later used hot knifes to pry the golden mask off the face, the golden bracelets off the arms and toes. As a result, the head was separated from the body, the pelvis from the midriff and so were the arms, hands, legs and feet.
In 1968 and 1978, the mummy was first analyzed and x-rayed by R.G. Harrison from Liverpool University, and second by James Harries from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. According to Saleh, the results of the studies were never published in their complete form anywhere, so why do another study? “Enough handling of an already suffering mummy! Why not seek the studies that took place in the past? We must first know their discoveries were so as to know what to look for,” he argues.
Hawass points out that the 1968 study was in fact published. In this study, Harrison had made the assumption that the king had died around the age of 1822. But in the past, CT technology was not available. “We were going to get 1,700 images telling us all we need to know about the mummy,” he says. According to Hawass, a German company has agreed to present Egypt with a CT scanner to help in The Egyptian Project for the Study of Mummies. “All of the members of this study are Egyptians, except for Dewolfe Miller, who hails from Hawaii University,” Hawass writes.
Saleh, a scientist himself, is not totally against the idea of more studies carried out on the mummy. He just shudders to think what may have happened had the mummy traveled to Cairo in a car, or even an airplane. “What if there was an accident, and the mummy was lost forever? We would have lost our most famous mummy. Visitors to Luxor view King Tut as the central attraction,” he says.
Although Saleh points out that the government paid thousands of dollars to provide him with a degree in mummification that no one has asked him to use so far, he is quick to point out it was not because he wanted to be included in the team that he rose against the notion of moving the king. “Preserving ancient remains at this stage is much more important than studying them. We should think of preservation first and foremost. Besides, there are already 55 royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum. Why not do work on them?” he asks.
Saleh refers to Ahmed Youssef, Egypt’s most well-known expert on mummies, who is called upon all over England to help in the preservation of human remains. “Why not call on our internationally famed expert, have him look at the mummy and tell us where to go from there?”
Saleh fears that any handling of information by foreigners may lead to a twisting of history. He refers to the findings of Scott Woodward, an American microbiologist, who tried to find resemblance between Egyptian kings and prophets from the Talmud. “They are trying to say that our Egyptian history belongs to them,” Saleh accuses.
Hawass is quick to refute this idea. “There is no Jewish conspiracy, and we will not be carrying out DNA tests. We are proud to be Egyptians, and we work to protect our great monuments. I do not know why we insist on listening to a young man and disregarding the expertise of more seasoned scientists,” Hawass says.
The renowned Egyptologist insists that the work on King Tut is still going to happen, but will take place inside his burial chamber in Luxor. “We just do this out of respect for the people of Luxor, who do not want their king to move,” he says. But why King Tut? “King Tut, together with the Pyramids and the Sphinx, is synonymous with Egypt. He represents gold, greatness, the curse of the Pharaohs. Besides, his time was rich with mysteries how did he die, who could have killed him. ACT may show us something.
“What I am trying to do is bring archaeology into this century. We have to do something. Why should we leave the foreigners to study Egyptology on their own. If we do not wake up we will find ourselves khaddameen (servants) for them. I am trying to make Egyptology Egyptian. But we insist on staying backward. We will restore the mummy, study it, keep it where it is but create a more suitable environment for it.”
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