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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Blurred flash-back
Youssef Rakha discovers Cairo's greatest music caféTawfiqiya Square and the surrounding precincts exude an aura of mid-century quietude. If not for the noise of traffic, peddlers and pop music that increasingly overtakes the soundtrack, the area could still serve as the elegant setting for a slow-paced 1950s film. The original soundtrack, needless to say, was sung by Umm Kulthoum, whose carefully thought-out lyrics and intensely wrought tunes have graced the area since 1952 -- or so claims the aging and somewhat flighty head waiter of the Umm Kulthoum Café, Said Wassil. Related to the family that founded the café (the current owner is Hagg Mustafa Abdel-Halim), he has been there since the beginning; despite his frivolity and lack of concentration, he is probably the person who knows the most about the café.
The Umm Kulthoum Café
"This is the first casino in Egypt to record and broadcast the music of the Sitt ["the Lady", as she is popularly known]. People would come to listen and consequently there was a lot of demand. No, not records. The songs were recorded on radio tape [spools of recording tape like those used for radio broadcasts], and we imported the equipment especially. And it was played with the permission of the Lady herself. Of course she used to come here, she was ordinary, a country lady at heart. She said hello to everyone and hung about, sipping drinks. But nothing was ever broadcast anywhere without her explicit permission."
At times, Wassil seems to confuse the past with the present; it is certainly a difficult task, inducing him to talk about the differences between the two. "From 6.00 to 7.00pm, there are Qur'an recitations by Abdel-Basset Abdel-Samad, then we begin to prepare for the evening; and the Sitt starts singing at 8.00pm. We stay open till 1.00am, but on the night of the concert we used to stay open all night. Upheavals never affected us, no. People still came at the worst of times, except when we were forced to put out the lights.
"We've developed with the times, of course, but the three floors remain as they used to be, though the third doesn't open till the evening -- the main thing, you know, is Umm Kulthoum's music, and the attention we pay to our customers, the kind of service we offer them, that's what's kept us going for so long. Yes, yes, they all came, but it's hard to pinpoint the names really: [famous journalists] Mustafa and Ali Amin, [movie stars] Fatma Rushdi, Farid Shawqi, Huda Sultan, [novelist] Youssef El-Siba'i, all those who liked to listen to the Sitt. Yes, yes, and tourists and intellectuals. Of course." Besides, "women have always come here, because we've always had a family section."
Located on the main thoroughfare near Ahmed Orabi Square, the original café, founded in 1948, is as vibrant as ever. The interior decorations are touristy but in good taste, paintings and photos of the diva are rare, and the general atmosphere denotes middle-class respectability, even though the café remains in essence a qahwa, a traditional, normally exclusively male venue serving shisha and providing mainly hot drinks. Since the café was rebuilt and the interior refurbished in the early 1990s, though, the clientele has changed very significantly: During the daytime, amorous couples, groups of tourists and families lounge on the top floor, while downstairs the slightly older and grumpier qahwa-goers puff on their shishas. Television has been introduced, yet the evening routine continues, although naturally with less pomp. And Wassil has nothing at all to say about the relentless transformations that have been taking place around him for all these years.
(photos: Randa Shaath)
In 1992, the Kawkab Al-Sharq Corner opened within the area enclosed by Tawfiqiya Square, "not with the aim of competing with the Umm Kulthoum Café," according to its young owner, Emad William, "but as a way of attracting customers through something we all really like, as both a commercially- and mood-driven enterprise; it is well known that people like Umm Kulthoum's voice, just as we do, and so we thought it was a good way of attracting people". The café, alas, is a glaring example of kitsch, one of the tasteless cafeterias that have recently proliferated downtown. Despite William's claim that "we normally play only Umm Kulthoum," pop music -- the diva's very antithesis -- blares almost continuously, and the atmosphere is shamelessly theme-oriented, as if the sole function of Umm Kulthoum was to furnish the "corner" with a justification for its gaudy mauve interior.
Which brings us to the final point that ought to be made in this connection: while once a venue was created in order for people to listen to Umm Kulthoum, now she serves as an interior decoration motif in venues that seldom play her music. Once an idol, she has become an emblem -- or, worse, simply a theme.
