Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

---

A romantic? Perhaps. But one with the means to make her dreams come true	Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
Nawal El-Messiri: A place and a culture Profile by Yasmine El-Rashidi

Had someone in the '40s said that the little girl who lived on the tree-lined street in Mahalla Al-Kubra would achieve as much as she has today, they would have been called crazy -- a dreamer with a rebellious mind. A woman born in 1936 in the industrial Delta province, Nawal El-Messiri's line of thought and path of life evolved in striking contrast to her time. Not to her, though. And certainly, she says, not to her town.

"It is a special town," she begins, in her mellow voice. "It was one of the earliest agglomerations in the Middle East -- a fact that had an effect on its residents," she continues. "To be brought up by a family living in Mahalla; a family working in the textile industry -- this in itself has a dynamic aspect to it. To be dynamic does not come from a vacuum -- it's a whole set-up, a whole atmosphere."

Indeed, she portrays a town that worked by the hour -- a Delta province, which, even through a little girl's window, was ticking with energy and drive and commitment.

"You would see workers by the thousands and thousands in the streets at exactly the same time -- all of them conscientious about abiding by the rules and being at work a bit before 8.00, or 7.00. It was like a Charlie Chaplin movie. Some of them came from surrounding villages, and they were all learning what it meant to work by the hour -- which, at the time, was something very novel to Egyptian life."

And so, the first founding block of her character was put in place -- and it drove her to move on; to the American Missionary boarding school in Tanta, when she was just five; to obtain her bachelor's and master's degrees at the American University in Cairo; then to Nubia, where she and her husband, Asaad Nadim, worked on the American University Social Research Centre's study of the Nubian community before resettlement. And then, the Nadims themselves resettled, in Indiana -- two of an exclusive few the SRC sent to the US for their PhDs.

It was a modest life by their Cairo standards-- the graduate student's life of endless studying, stupendous dollar stretching, and, in their case, rearing their two children, Adham and Hend.

It was another place and another time -- one more cultural insight to add to her anthropological bibliography. It was different. But then, so was she. She was, she stresses, a woman of Mahalla. "The women of Mahalla had that drive that is lacking in Egyptian culture," she says. "I was no exception."

She wasn't, but nevertheless, her entry into the research arena was not merely a reflection of her goal-oriented drive but, rather, of life and fate.

"It started with a sociology paper I wrote," she says of her undergraduate look at rural-urban migration. "There was someone doing research on the topic in affiliation with the SRC, so my professor gave them the paper, and they asked me to work with them."

She did. Then she worked with anthropologist Laila El-Hamamsy, and then at the SRC itself. "I entered the centre just like that," she says, snapping her fingers. "One thing led to the other, and it just happened."

Things rolled on from there, but upon the couple's return from the US they decided to try to mold their own future for themselves -- an attempt to foresee at least the long-term career paths they would take.

It began with the making of basic mashrabiya chairs and tables in the basement of their Doqqi home, then evolved into the arabesque furnishing of a tourist ship, and then homes and hotels and institutions.

"My husband's dissertation focused on traditional woodwork," she says of their field of choice. "He was concerned about craft culture and wanted to do something applied." And she was concerned about cultures, values, ways of life -- preserving traditions.

They were an interesting duo -- a couple of academics who left behind university departments, UNICEF jobs, programme-officer posts, and even opportunities in the "promised land". It sounds strange, but it worked.

"The fact that we were from academic backgrounds -- my husband from an artistic family, and myself from an industrial one -- made us the perfect business combination. That diverse mix was essential for the direction we've taken -- the plan we've had right from the start."

Essential indeed, and perfect they were. They moved from their Doqqi basement workshop to a huge complex at the end of Tahrir Street. In 1997, they finally reached the first major milestone in "the plan" -- winning a grant to restore Beit Al-Suhaymi.

Sitting on a carved wood sofa in her huge first-floor office, El-Messiri reflects on her field, her experiences, and what it means to look at the world through an anthropologist's eyes.

"Anthropology, as a field, is very special in terms of allowing you to know how to deal with people who are different from you -- to deal with people in general," she says. "It makes you more tolerant."

It is this tolerance and sensitivity that has made El-Messiri a central supporting pillar in the NADIM mashrabiya empire -- an empire whose key players all bear the same family name.

"Asaad and Adham and Hend do the design work," she says, "and I'm more involved with the workers and the work situation. I know where they're coming from and have a feel for their problems."

That "feel" played a crucial role in the family's restoration of four monuents, including Beit Al-Suhaymi, the 16th-17th century house in Islamic Cairo's Darb Al-Asfar quarter, for the project required that the inhabitants of the rooms, hallways and courtyards (totalling 30 families) be removed from their lifelong abodes.

To El-Messiri, though, it was like going home. It was a reentry into world of systematic anthropological work, her own sphere. Literally, it was a return to the haras (quarters) where she had done research on family relations 25 years earlier. To both husband and wife, it was the first step in the realisation of a lifelong dream.

"From the beginning, our plan was to go into restoration work," she says, her voice beginning to crackle with passion. "Asaad was interested in preserving the craft culture, and I was interested in the social aspect of the restoration. It was nice to go back to Fatimid Cairo after so long."

Nice, but disheartening.

What used to be a hara bubbling with activity and social life was now a 150m alleyway buzzing with tools and machinery and workers. It was still alive and vibrant -- but no longer a people's place.

In her 1970s research paper, El-Messiri wrote: "The hara is an ecologically complete social unit with which the people have strong identification... Today, the passage is considered private property in the sense that is an extension of the lodging unit itself... it is used for socialising with neighbours, playing games, raising poultry, cleaning household utensils as well as washing the laundry."

Today, she says, that life is gone; the tea gatherings have ceased and the children have disappeared.

"The hara used to be an extension of the house," she says. "People living there used to think of each other with the kind of familiarity that they would reserve for family members. You would just sit in the street and talk to your neighbour. It was like a big family."

That was in the past, though -- during the times when the alley was a craft area. Today, like the nation as a whole, it is still reeling after its scramble into modernity. As the profitability of hand-made crafts dwindled, mass production became the norm. The social ties that had characterised hara life began to disintegrate.

"With a craft, there is a tradition. Tradition of the craft, tradition of relationship. The people of the craft are generally people of the same place. There are rules of apprenticeship, rules for how to treat each other."

The tradition has been flattened by the aluminium works and car-repair shops. Where a grocer, a carpenter and a mender once plied their trade, 66 workshops now spew fumes and sparks.

"This change has repercussions on people's attitudes, behaviour, way of life," El-Messiri explains softly.

"Now, the first floors of the buildings are all workshops," she says. "The people on the second floor won't let their children play downstairs because there are workers who are not necessarily from the area -- who come from outside."

And so, El-Messiri reflects, "the street life which was very essential in the hara of the 1970s became the street life of the workers -- not the family. You no longer saw women sitting on the doorstep. Not many children played in the street."

It is a change that has taken the whole city by storm. What used to be a city in which everything was familiar, is now bustling with people, places, cars and concrete, flashing lights, honking horns, big signs and bright colours.

To many, it is a deterioration that has brought only nostalgia and heartache. But for the new generation, reviving any traces of the archaic and obsolete is just wistful thinking.

In some places, that is.

"What we really need to preserve is the traditional way of life," she says. "This is the thing that is really disappearing. A building: you can build another one like it. But once you lose the traditional way of life and the traditional values, it's very difficult to return."

In the alleys, El-Messiri believes, there still is hope. To her mind, the traditional way of life is in critical condition -- but the disease is not yet terminal.

"The social aspect of restoration is crucial," she says. "In restoring Beit Al-Suhaymi, we are also restoring the area around it. Bids for [restoring] a monument should have a social component requiring you to develop the surrounding area too."

El-Messiri has taken up the cause, working to form an association with the people of the alley to help them tackle the problems they may face.

"We needed to clean the place up first, though," she says. "Once we put in sewage, water and electricity, paved the area and cleaned it up, then we could say 'don't throw garbage out of the window.' Before that, it had no meaning."

They did all that, and more. The Al-Suhaymi project -- one in a series of efforts to restore and preserve Cairo's Islamic heritage -- has addressed the cultural aspect of restoration, too. The workers know that their workshops will have to go. They can either take their heavy machinery elsewhere, or shift to more environmentally-safe and family-friendly professions.

While some of them may not be too happy about their options, El-Messiri says that they are lucky to have a choices at all.

"It was simply a matter of months. Part of the structure would have collapsed," she says of her pet project. "When we excavated, we found that the lateral beams were eaten away at the joints -- which means that essentially, the floors were hanging on nothing!"

Just to be alive, she says, is a value in itself.

While the soon-to-be-reopened area will no longer house the hara's families, its rebirth will witness the dawn of a more prosperous era.

Nawal El-Messiri and Asaad Nadim have worked to preserve both architecture and culture -- monuments and values. But what of all the other listed monuments? What will become of the area, its inhabitants and their culture?

"Fatimid Cairo is the most difficult project facing the government," she says sternly. "It deals with people, tradition, monuments. And the thing is, they are so closely intertwined. It is a project which needs a great deal of time and effort from all directions. It has to be a campaign -- going all the way to the level of schools."

In distinct Mahalla-driven style, El-Messiri has that covered too. The release next month of her first children's book, A Trip to Beit Al-Suhaymi, is the first step towards instilling in the young generation the architectural and cultural awareness and appreciation that is so lacking today.

"I wondered where to start raising people's awareness of their monuments, the alleys they live in, the garbage, how they look at themselves. I said, OK, the adults -- it's very hard to change them. Let's start with the children."

Children mean schools. But her initial plan -- to give classes to both the children and their teachers -- was hampered by legalities and paperwork.

"So I thought of writing a book."

With the same compassion she has displayed not just in her other projects, but in life in general, the book is the first of a planned series -- a campaign to raise awareness among young children.

"Each book is about a grandfather taking his three grandchildren on a day trip to a monument," she says. "They ask him questions about it and about why it's important. And it's alive with colourful pictures to lure them in."

The three children in the book are El-Messiri's own grandchildren: Karim, Farida and Habiba. Like their grandmother, they are learning about the importance of cultural familial values. Their grandparents' home is just across the courtyard from them, in the three-villa complex on the NADIM grounds in Mansouriya. And they are also being exposed to the drive and determination that is so characteristic of Nawal El-Messiri's world view.

Chances are, they will grow up like her -- understanding the importance of people, cultures and values: especially the value of tolerance for those different from themselves. And of course, they will know all about perseverance, intensity and commitment.

But what are their friends learning? Are their parents or grandparents teaching them the importance of heritage and continuity? Do they know the relationship between the words 'environment' and 'friendly'? Or the meaning of 'preservation'? Do they know that they can dream about things beyond their social, cultural, or economic realm?

Perhaps not.

"Change won't come today or tomorrow," she says. "It will take time -- maybe this generation won't see it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't help."

Some believe that such effort and commitment are simply a waste of time and money. To them, the notion of preserving a monument -- let alone the culture surrounding it -- is simply an indication of mental imbalance.

For El-Messiri, though, it is about her grandchildren and their future -- the world that they will live in 20 or 30 years from now. What will they learn from it and what will it propel them to do? After all, she is a woman who invented her own life -- made it happen for herself. It all stemmed, one must remember, from the culture of a place.

(photo: Sherif Sonbol)

	weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg