Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000 Issue No. 505
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Aya Wassef: The dream life of things Do glass and wood have souls? Unequivocally, she says yes Profile by Fayza Hassan

"My first memory is of the sun filtering through the shutters on the parquet floor of our house," says Aya Wassef. "I can't remember the house clearly, nor my age at the time, but I know that we were living in Egypt then, that it was an Egyptian sun, and that I will always remember the feeling of elation that came over me at that instant." She has another childhood memory, which she cherishes almost as much. She is standing in the bathroom. The basin is encased in a light blue lacquered cabinet. The paint is slightly chipped on one of the corners. She runs her finger across the tiny scar and is fascinated by the difference between the smooth painted wood and the roughness of the chip. "When it was time to forge my own path and I was not sure of the way, I closed my eyes and conjured up these two very private reminiscences. I knew that they must have meaning. After all, there are whole chunks of my childhood that escape me: faces that I have forgotten, places that are so vague I could have dreamed them up... but I never forgot what I felt then."

We are sitting in the Wassefs' garden on the Alexandria road, facing the Pyramids, which Aya says have been a constant inspiration. "One cannot wake up and see the Pyramids first thing in the morning and remain unaffected. I mean, these are the Pyramids, and they have loomed over my life like the sun..."

The garden, too, has played a major role in her life, with its citrus and mango trees and the small pool in which she used to bathe as a child with her brother and sister and which has now been transformed into a gigantic flower pot. There were other houses: the one on the Nile, where she was born, an old villa in Zamalek, which she had loved, and maybe a flat downtown, she is not sure. At first the family used to come here on weekends. The children played and the parents pottered in the garden, stopping to order fish for lunch from Christo at the corner. Then one day, the house was finished and they moved in. It was like living in another city, with the desert, the silence and the Pyramids watching over them.

At the farthest end of the garden stands a strange dovecote, not unlike a Mayan totem, the irregular shapes of the large rounded blocks smoothed by what one can only surmise was a loving hand. Sculptor Adam Henein, a good friend of her father's, built it. "In fact, I overheard my father telling one of the workmen that he should smooth the stone as if he was caressing a woman's skin," says Aya.

At this point her mother arrives, carrying a tray: "lemonade made with lemons from our garden," she tells us. It is delicious. "Is your mother also an artist?" I ask. "She is a physician," says Aya, "but she certainly has artistic tendencies. I have known her to design beautiful clothes." Like her daughter, Aya's mother seems to delight in her surroundings, although the quaint little house, built according to plans painstakingly drawn up by her late husband, is now beleaguered by a major inconvenience. "When we moved in here we were surrounded by fields," recounts Aya. "There was a man who had a small kiosk, outside on the footpath. Fortune smiled upon him and he built a larger one. He set up a parasol, then another. One day, we woke up and he had occupied one of the adjoining alleys with his crates of soft drinks. Before we knew it, he had built a two-storey cafeteria right there on the footpath and completely blocked our view. He took the Pyramids away. Now when I wake up in the morning, I no longer open my window, because all I see is a blind wall." They went to court, won the case, but the order to pull down the structure barring their façade was never enforced.

Aya however still loves the house. "It has so many endearing features," she explains, like the rooms that her father had built to the children's size. "Maybe it was wishful thinking -- as if we were never going to grow up." Grow they did, however; and, when Aya was 14 and her older sister went off to university in Paris, her father encouraged her to go along. She left the French Lycée in Maadi and her sheltered life and, barely a teenager, sallied forth practically on her own. Moving away was not an unfamiliar event to Aya. Her mother, as a paediatrician with the World Health Organisation, was posted to different countries, as far as the Fiji Island and India; the family followed her on her travels. Still, this was Paris, la ville lumière, a whole new world opening up before her. Aya considered herself incredibly lucky. "This was freedom," she says. "I had been protected, almost cooped up, going from home to school and then home again. Now I had the most beautiful city in the world at my doorstep and I intended to enjoy every bit of it."

She studied communications and eventually specialised in textiles. She loved the feel of fabric between her fingers, so satisfyingly sensual; she loved the various textures and the rich expanses of colours. Hired by famous designer Joseph, Aya was involved in haute couture and fashion for a few years; but, although she really liked the job and appreciated the experience she was acquiring, there was something missing -- a vision beckoning in the distance, toward which she struggled but never managed to reach.

She quit her secure position and indulged in some introspection. She needed to make an inventory of her assets before she decided to venture out on her own. There was her love of Egypt at the centre of things, with the Pyramids, the blue sky and the round, scorching sun. There were also the simple huts of the Fijians, with their typical thatched roofs; and the sumptuous colours of Indian silks. There was the stark beauty of Upper Egypt, the desert, the fields and the Nile, necessary and eternal, and the way the mud houses fitted into the landscape, complementing and enhancing it, the smell of clay and the joy of creating a small pot under the vigilant eye of Antoinette Henein. There was, too, the way the sun had filtered through the shutters and the sensation of painted wood on the tip of her finger. These were her possessions; they were all connected, she felt, and she intended to find out how. She packed her bags and came to Egypt, to the garden of her childhood, to the light summer breeze from the desert at dusk, the quaint little house with the wall now blocking her window, the Pyramids and Adam Henein's dovecote. The pigeons were gone, having disappeared once when her mother was on a trip, eaten by the caretaker and his family probably; but there were plump cats in the garden and the old trees still yielded the tastiest lemons one could find.

"One cannot wake up and see the Pyramids first thing in the morning and remain unaffected. I mean, these are the Pyramids, and they have loomed over my life like the sun..."

She stayed a year, visiting artisans and traveling to every little village and town where artisans still worked alabaster, glass or cloth by hand. Her dream had grown bigger, matured. She still loved textiles, of course: the incredible hues that can be woven on old-fashioned looms, the raw silks of Akhmim and the roughness of pure wool in the popular checked blankets. Other objects summoned her attention, however: she watched attentively as glass was blown into lovely green and blue shapes, and learned which would withstand use and which would shatter at a simple touch; she journeyed to faraway locations to see how a large stone was placed in a deep hole and slowly hollowed out, then wrapped in shrouds of linen and left to dry in the sun -- "like a mummy," she exclaims in delight. She picked and chose the best: one piece here, one there, out of hundreds of items produced by Egyptian artisans, promising them more orders for the future if her intuition turned out right. "Each object has a soul," she explains. "Sometimes it is an old object and it has a history as well; it speaks of the people it has belonged to, the way they touched it, how they used it. When it is a new object, it has to impart the artisan's love for the raw matter he is working with, the special rapport he has established with his creation. If this is absent, then the object is worthless."

At the end of her Egyptian expedition, she had a whole collection ready to be shown in Paris. She packed several glass items; vases of unpolished alabaster; thick cubes of glass in shades of sea-blue and foam-green, to be strung on leather flexes; strangely shaped clay containers; fat bunches of subou' candles, vibrant shawls and scarves from Luxor, huge cotton pillows and a small Pharaonic-looking stool. Thus loaded, she flew to Paris, where her collection was shown at one of the most prestigious design exhibitions, Maisons et Objets. Her arrangement won first prize, awarded unanimously. She became instantly famous. That was last year, and Aya has not looked back since.

She commutes between Paris and Cairo every two months and then on to Luxor, Qena, or a small village in the Delta. She comes bearing orders and stays with the craftsmen until she is satisfied that the work has been produced to her specifications. She has honed her style, "purified" it, drawing on inspirations as wide-ranging as feng shui and Mexican adobe architecture -- inspirations, she says, that must spring from a common source. "Minimalist, uncluttered," she calls this vision. "One needs very few items to create an atmosphere; I want people to feel that the object I am presenting is necessary, that no other would do in its place. At the same time, I need to impart feelings of warmth, comfort, harmony and serenity. Only lovingly crafted objects can live up to my dream. Think of a perfectly handcrafted fluted glass vase with a single flower, standing alone: if the proportions are right, one needs nothing else. The light plays on the vase, showing the grain of the glass, the wood gleams, the flower has just been picked. Wouldn't that sight make your heart skip a beat?"

Although Aya makes it sound easy and pleasurable, doing what she does is hard work. Many artisans do not keep to deadlines, or the quality of workmanship falls suddenly for no reason that she can fathom. A few think that they know better and present her with their own interpretation of the object she ordered. She has to cajole, sometimes threaten and generally be patient. "One must remain serene," she says with the wide smile that makes her eyes almost disappear. Furthermore, she takes care of the packing herself, spreading her wares in the garden and packing one item at a time according to a method she has perfected. "People tend to assume that Egyptian products are cheap," she says; "they forget that there is no such thing as a water glass for LE3. By the time it leaves the country it costs over LE50. So packing correctly is only sensible." Besides, she enjoys it: setting the objects out on the lawn, hosing them down and watching the sun play in the bright drops of water, then wrapping each individual item in tissue paper and bubble wrap before setting it carefully in its box. On the bright side, once the shipment has reached its destination she can relax, that is until the following order. Aya seems unruffled, happy to be here, and equally happy to be on her way to Paris, tomorrow maybe, or the day after, when the blankets she has ordered finally materialise.

Listening to her joyful voice, one would think that she does not have a care in the world. How does she do it? "Well," she says, "one needs to be a little Zen."

The sun has gone down and small lamps hidden in the shrubs draw the shadows out into long shapes. The empty dovecote, illuminated by a reflector, rises mysteriously over our heads. On the table, between the empty glasses of lemonade, a few interior design magazines -- among the most prestigious in the field -- show full-page glossy spreads of Aya's arrangements. Even in the semi-darkness, her ingenious use of space still attracts the eye. Where to from here, Aya? "I may work with Georgio Armani this year; he is interested in the glass. Or maybe with someone in London or New York. I would like to start writing a book about the sensual quality of objects, who knows?" she says, dreamily. She is still so young; I can't help wondering if she has reached her aim. "Yes" she says promptly, "because when I look at my objects, I see the sun filtering through the shutters."

photos: Sherif Sonbol

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