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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Pack of Cards
By Madame Sosostris* From Lebanon to Spain, and on 9 May, I'll make sure to be at the Cervantes Institute (Spanish Cultural Centre) to attend a lecture on the development of the Spanish theatre by Mar’a Delgado, a professor of English and drama at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London University. Delgado, currently the counselor of the London Film Festival, is due to release an impatiently awaited book on the Spanish theatre in the 20th century.
* As I may have told you already, I am a typical product of cross-cultural encounters, and feel at home either everywhere or nowhere, according to the mood of the moment. This is why I will feel quite French tonight, listening to Jeffrey Grice and Laurent Cabasso's piano recital at the French Centre for Culture and Cooperation. The duo will perform at the French Centre, the main hall of Cairo Opera House and Alexandria's Fine Arts Museum. The show, "Piano duet on a piano, four hands on two pianos," will include the masterpieces of Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann and Ravel.
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* Did you enjoy Sham Al-Nessim, my sweets? You may have noticed that the weather could not have been nicer and I hope that you did not go and spoil your delicate digestive systems with an excess of green onions, nor overdo the salty fish in all its different shapes and forms. I personally like to toast the spring with much more refined fare. The very idea of dead fish doing time in a bin is really not my cup of tea. Besides, so much salt is sure to play havoc with one's blood pressure. Anyway, to each his/her own. I personally started the day with a nice cup of coffee, which according to me is the only civilised way of slowly waking up, whether one is in the process of smelling the breeze or just the usual polluted air. Later, I decided to go to work in a taxi, for fear of running over one or two of those enthusiastic holidaymakers who, on festive occasions, are in the habit of confusing the middle of a busy thoroughfare with the soccer field of the Ahli Club. What a good idea that was! Like me, my taxi driver had to labour on Labour Day, but this did not faze him a bit. With the taxi windows down and the best of Abdel-Halim Hafez blaring on his old cassette player, he gave me a complete tour of the old city, pointing at monuments as we passed them. In between landmarks, he joined Abdel-Halim in the refrain or hailed passersby to wish them a happy Sham Al-Nessim. When we finally reached the Corniche, he insisted that we stop to watch the sailboats on the Nile. Quite an enjoyable ride, dears, though I must say I was rather late getting to work.
* For the past two days, I have been wallowing in nostalgia and have wished you were all here to share with me the three-day cultural programme organised by the Lebanese Embassy in Cairo at the Opera's small hall, celebrating the Lebanese presence in Egypt, past and present of course. It is really amazing, dears, to think how close we Arabs can be sometimes.
After our Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Lebanese Ambassador Hisham Damashqieh gave their opening speeches, the many pages of our common history were presented and discussed by prominent Egyptian and Lebanese historians, writers and journalists. On the first day, the panel included Nicola Ziyada, professor of history at the American University of Beirut; Tallal Salman, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Lebanese publication Al-Safir; Massoud Zaher, professor of history at the Lebanese University; our own Dr Yunan Labib Rizk, of Diwan fame (among other things) and Al-Hilal Editor-in-Chief Mustafa Nabil. The topic was "The circumstances of the Shawam [Levantine] immigration and the part they played in the press." It was just thrilling, dears. Nor was that all: the audience was treated in the evening to the rare pleasure of viewing the 1957 Lebanese film Where to?, directed by George Nasr and starring Nozha Younis and Shakib Khoury. It is the story of a man who emigrates to Brazil to seek his fortune and returns 20 years later to Lebanon. I won't tell you how it ends, of course; it is your own fault if you did not attend this most fascinating first day of Egyptian-Lebanese solidarity.
The second day was devoted to Lebanese contributions to Egyptian literature and art, and featured in the evening a wonderful concert by renowned Lebanese singer Abdel-Karim Al-Shaer. If I have whetted your appetite for Lebanese culture, and if you hurry tonight, you are still in time to catch the last day of debates as well as Beirut, O Beirut, scripted and directed by Maroun Baghdadi.
* Some of my dear (well, not so dear, really) friends, who are not as exquisitely sensitive as I am, even if I say so myself, often deride me for loving the opera, my darlings. They draw their musical line at Mozart's Magic Flute and believe that they are purists. I have tried to tell them that Italian opera with all its mise en scène is an acquired taste and that they, unlike me, have not had the benefit of a cosmopolitan education. Why, I drank the overture of Cavalleria Rusticana with mother's milk and the grand Caruso was a household name in our abode. This is why it is all alone that I will show up at the main hall of the Opera House for the presentation of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera by the Cairo Opera Company, chorus and orchestra, on 10 May. With conductor Ivan Filev, chorus master Aldo Magnato and director Gehane Mursi, I am sure that this is one evening I will not have wasted.
* If you are in the mood for something a teensy bit more academic, on 6 and 7 May AUC will organise its 9th Annual Symposium of the Cairo Papers in Social Science, entitled The New Arab Family, in collaboration with the New Arab Demography Project at the Blue Room, Greek Campus. A selection of crucial issues, involving radical changes in the Arab family, will be tackled. Among other things, you will be able to listen to Hoda Rashad and Maged Osman, from AUC's Social Research Centre (SRC), speaking about the nuptiality transition in the Arab world and its implications. Another lecture entitled, "The New Couple: The Changing Nature of Family Ties in the Modern Tunisian Family," will be delivered by Lilia Labidi from University of Tunis.
Zeinab Khadr and Laila El-Zeini, from the SRC, will give a lecture titled "Families and Households: Headship and Co-residence."
* Another academic exercise that may live up to your expectations is a lecture titled "The New Geopolitics." It will be presented by Richard Falk, professor of international law and practice at Princeton University, on 9 May. Falk, who is also a visiting professor at the department of political science at AUC, will give his lecture at the Oriental Hall.
* Ali Abu Shadi, head of the General Organisation of Cultural Palaces, is having his own spring festival by giving the go-ahead to the establishment of a museum perpetuating Port Said's remarkable celebrations of Sham Al-Nessim. The most distinctive feature of this festival, dating back to 1923, is the burning of General Allenby's effigy. The general's infamous role in quelling the resistance of the people of Port Said is actively remembered there to this day. Today, the celebrations of his departure from the city are as alive as ever, and involve the surrounding towns and villages. Abu Shadi also approved the production of a documentary film on the celebrations.
