Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Ihab Shafik: Arbiter of elegance Profile by Fayza Hassan He will surround you with things of beauty, and throw Grandmama's chiffonnière out the window. Implacable, impeccable, and even dictatorial? No -- simply an aesthete with a passion for interiors and a talent for beauty who calls himself a creator of atmosphere

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"I think a lot of it is hereditary," says Ihab Shafik, talking about his passion for handsome interiors and beautiful objects, which started in his early childhood and eventually led to his choice of a career in interior decoration. "When my parents went to a reception, I often waited up to hear them describe their hosts' house. I wanted to know every detail: the colour of the fabrics, the width of the rooms, the place of the furniture, the number of windows, so that I could recreate the décor accurately in my own mind."

His mother provided him with precise information, and never failed to add an aesthetic evaluation. "My mother loved things of beauty and seemed to have inherited her interest from her own father, who was an art connoisseur. He was the overseer of the khedivial domains and many of the pieces of furniture in our house had been given to my grandfather by the khedive."

We are sitting in Shafik's study, in his apartment off 26 July Street in Zamalek. The proportions of the rooms in this 1920s building are impressive, the ceilings high, and the bare, old fashioned parquet floors, deprived of their oriental carpets for the summer, shine with real wax. The sofas and chairs are wearing their summer white slip covers, carefully tied with little bows. Art books crowd the shelves against one of the dark green walls, magnificently weighty curtains are drawn over white mashrabiya shutters, and the A/C is humming quietly, barely disturbing the strains of the Bach concerto coming from concealed loudspeakers.

There are several photo albums and scrap books on the elegant coffee table and Shafik thumbs through them, showing us several photos of his mother, a tall, slim, striking woman, her dark hair pulled back in a neat coil pinned at the nape of a regal neck, and always wearing the most stupendous evening gowns. Other photos of her are set on the little side tables, again showing her impeccably dressed and groomed. There are also a number of yellowing newspaper clippings describing her toilettes at various functions: once a gorgeous silver lamé column for the Semiramis New Year ball, another time a black taffeta gown for the opening of the Opera season.

"My mother was very critical of appearances. There was a right and a wrong way to do things and from the very beginning I knew that a social gaffe was akin to a capital sin. She gave me an unfailing sense of decorum," comments Shafik. "Being appropriately dressed for every occasion was part of it." Having said that, he suddenly realises that his picture is being taken and he begins to fret. He is not suitably dressed, he says: he does not want to be seen in baggies and a simple sports shirt, elegant as they may be. "I never let anyone take my picture unless I am wearing a suit," he protests, "and it is too hot to wear one."

We finally convince him to put on a jacket and a tie for a few minutes. "My feet, what about my feet? I am wearing sandals, it will not do," he assures us. The photographer promises not to direct his lens toward the offending footwear. We seem to have assuaged his worries, but Shafik is observing the photographer and for a moment we lose our drift. "Watch him," he whispers suspiciously. "He is looking at my feet, he is aiming at them, I know I will appear in the photo with a suit and sandals, it is disgraceful," he laments. We promise him that no such faux pas will be committed and he finally accepts to let the photographer do his job.

I have known Shafik all my life, but I have no memories of him playing with us when we were children. I remember him as a serious boy, not very talkative and rather aloof, forever telling his younger and rowdier brother that it was time to go home. "I liked to play alone," he says. "I was not the sportive type. Once, my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told them I wanted a construction game, a Bayco. I played with it for a while, but soon discovered that it did not give me the pleasure I had anticipated. I disliked the fact that it was made of plastic pieces and that my buildings looked cheap and garish with loud colours. I wanted genuine building materials, and the following Christmas my parents bought me a huge box of miniature bricks which could be put together with a sort of light cement. I kept the box for a very long time, I may actually still have it here somewhere. My houses began to look real; I could place small fixtures and fittings in them, and that made me immensely happy."

At school, he enjoyed history, geography, literature and art classes. He liked drawing, cutting and pasting, and stencils. "These were my first steps as an artist, I guess," he muses. Unfortunately he hated maths, which he says was a pity, because his inability to deal with things scientific eventually came between him and his dream of becoming an architect. He had wanted to attend the School of Fine Arts nevertheless, but that made his parents angry, although they recognised that artistic endeavours could make for a pleasant hobby. Shafik was talked into enrolling at the Faculty of Commerce instead, where he spent "four nightmarish years".

Ambience is everything: Ihab Shafik is equally at home rolling up his sleeves and getting down to work at the Diplomatic Club (top right, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa follows the restoration process), selecting fabric swatches and hunting down rare pieces, or saving the former Maison des Arts for Sadreddin Agha Khan (above, photo by Inge Miller)

Meanwhile, he was allowed to indulge in artistic pursuits in his spare time and he also studied Italian at the Dante Allighieri (the Italian Cultural Centre in Cairo). Italian had been his first language, taught to him by his Italian nanny who also gave him his nickname. "She could not say Ihab, so she called me Coco, and it stuck. I have always hated people to call me that," he says, shrugging with displeasure. Despite the nickname, his nanny did him a good turn, because with his prior knowledge of the language he was able to excel and was soon given a scholarship to further his studies in Perugia.

"That is when my love story with Italy began," says Shafik. "I could not get over the beauty of the architecture, the art, the museums. This was the life I had been born for. I wanted to take it all in, and did my utmost to stay in this unbelievably artistic country."

He worked for Fiat for two and a half years, then managed to obtain a scholarship from the Egyptian government to study economic development. Once this was over, he began looking for a job which would allow him to spend time in Europe, preferably in Italy. He discovered with delight that his studies at the Faculty of Commerce had not been in vain. They were coming in handy now and, moreover, seemed to be paying handsome dividends: He found a job without much difficulty in the marketing department of a telephone company in Venice, carried out marketing research for a private company on the Adriatic coast then worked for a bank in Milan. Having left Egypt for a six-month stay in Perugia, he ended up touring Italy for the following six years. One night, however, he had a bad dream and in the morning, on a whim, took a plane ticket to Cairo. On his arrival, he found out that his mother was terminally ill. The family had kept it a secret so as not to disturb him in his new life. She was to die three weeks later. Shafik, who had been very close to her, was shattered.

He did not go back to Italy but kept good connections with the firms he had worked for. Through them he found employment in Egypt, but this time in more artistic projects. He was involved in the salvage operations of the Abu Simbel monuments and more closely in those of the Temple of Philae, effected jointly by the Egyptian government, UNESCO and an Italian firm. He also worked for Tharwat Okasha, who introduced him to Roberto Rossellini; he assisted the great director in his research for the production of The Mummy. Three months after Rossellini's arrival in Egypt, however, the 1967 war broke out and, since the producer's insurance did not cover countries engaged in armed conflict, he had to pack his bags in a hurry. Although he had promised to return, Rossellini never came back; Shadi Abdel-Salam took over the direction of the film. Shafik stayed with Shadi for a while, then went to work as Magdi Wahba's assistant, organising the first exhibition of French tapestry in Egypt and participating in the preparation of the famous millennium book on Cairo, which appeared in 1969.

In 1979, with the work at Philae almost finished, he felt that 20 years of formal employment were more than enough. He cashed an early retirement from his Italian employers and, at the age of 40, bought an antique shop in Zamalek.

His first commission to decorate an apartment came at this point. Omar Khorshed was getting married, had just bought a new apartment and wanted his friend Shafik to do it up for him. Not too sure of himself to start with, Shafik nevertheless decided to give it a try. "This got the ball rolling more or less, and friends, then friends of friends who had seen my work and liked it asked me to do their homes. One day, I realised that I had become established as an interior decorator." Besides "doing" the homes of some of Egypt's most eminent personalities, he has been entrusted with the restoration and decoration of the Diplomatic (formerly the Mohamed Ali) Club, which is nearing completion. There could hardly be better proof of Shafik's success.

Shafik insists that part of his success is due to the able help of his assistant Mahmoud, who understands his instructions exactly and takes care of the difficult public relations aspect of the work. "Sometimes, I get really mad at my craftsmen and at this point I am not always able to control my temper. Mahmoud never fails to placate them after I have had my say. He also knows how to handle some of my difficult clients with whom I lose patience. He is very good with people."

Another advantage Shafik has had from the beginning, he says, is the excellent team of craftsmen that he has formed over the years. "I stick to my childhood friends, my faithful workmen and my antique furniture," he declares, "and I am seldom disappointed. Old is beautiful." He is not adverse to modern trends in architecture and decoration, however, and he delights in mixing ancient and modern. His dislikes encompass people who are tardy, Art Déco furniture, ("not the objects; they, on the other hand, are very beautiful") Sèvres porcelains, cluttered lives and fussiness in interiors. He emphatically denies any suggestion that he is audacious and flamboyant in his style. "Look at the decoration magazines, you will see at a glance that I am almost tame in comparison." He "needs" order, space -- vertical and horizontal -- and mathematical exactitude in boundaries. He may have failed arithmetic at school, but his eye detects the slightest difference in levels, the minutest imperfection on a surface. Lack of precision makes him cringe.

"I am a tidy person at heart," says Shafik. "I keep my books, my life and my cupboards in perfect order." In his bedroom, one side of the built-in wardrobe looks like a filing cabinet. It is filled to the brim with hundreds of fabric samples, neatly classified, labeled and stacked. "I keep an inventory of these samples and ruthlessly discard what has become outmoded. I also keep a special drawer for each one of my clients in which I store all the relevant data. Only in that way can I keep a free mind to attend to serious matters," he confides.

For someone who has the reputation of dictating to the taste of aesthetically-minded homeowners (many of whom have lost countless nights of sleep pondering his comments and wondering how to win his approval), Shafik is inherently modest. He admits to often having doubts. "When I am not sure, I sleep on it," he says, "or I go for a jog around the track at the club, then return and take a second look. I always trust this second impression, and at this point I know exactly what has been bothering me."

He enjoys listening to his clients and always asks them to show him a corner of their house they like, a room or even an object they favour, before submitting his plan. He is known to have advised both customers and friends to throw grandma's cherished commode or faux Louis XV sofa out of the window. He acknowledges the accusation -- "but only if I genuinely like the person do I take this liberty." And if he doesn't? "Why, I throw these things out myself, of course," he says with a broad smile.

(photo: Sherif Sonbol)

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