21 - 27 December 2000
Issue No.513
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 December 2000 Issue No.513 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
The awfultruth
By Nigel Ryan
It is a perennial problem, this Christmas tree decoration thing. Several years ago I was silly enough to think I had the whole thing solved: a friend had foolishly agreed to make papier maché balls, papier maché being, at the time, his medium of choice. A series of painting parties was duly organised, different guests on different nights, paints supplied, and the baubles transformed from newsprint into objects possessed of (an admittedly eccentric) beauty. And so I had my box of baubles, to be kept at the back of a cupboard for 51 weeks of the year and brought out when the occasion demanded. But alas, such was my sentimental attachment to the baubles -- combined, perhaps, with the vague hope that those made by artists on the rise might someday furnish a welcome nest egg -- that when I decided to pack my bags and leave Cairo, they were duly shipped to London, where they have remained, a year after my return. And so last week I found myself once again facing the great question I had thought, with hubris, to have finally escaped: what to hang on the Christmas tree?
The options might seem, at first glance, limited, or so those who have never given the matter much thought are mistakenly inclined to believe. There is glitz, shiny tinselly things that shimmer, and there is good taste which is, if anything, often more ghastly than glitter. And so I began my treck across town, in search of an elusive, but hopefully happy, compromise between the two. Beginning at Bab Zuweila, I scoured the road that leads towards Port Said Street, which used to be dominated, during Ramadan, by the makers of fanous. Stall upon stall upon stall with star-shaped lanterns, blue, green and amethyst glass, lanterns the height of a donkey or small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, hanging from the rafters, crammed onto every shelf, knee deep on the floor. But Al-Muayyad mosque has been restored and the minarets over the gate are shrouded in scaffolding. The area is being cleaned up, a radical sanitising that has sadly resulted in a clampdown on the stalls that once furnished the street with its overwhelming character. They are gone now: presumably thought too untidy by those who plan such clean-ups. Between Bab Zuweila and Port Said only two stalls selling lanterns remain -- a ghostly shadow of Ramadan past, their stock reduced, the lanterns lost among the aluminium barbecue trays and jugs, pots and pans. Between the two remaining shops I was able to find 25 tiny brass lanterns, the jewel-like windows enamelled midnight blue, emerald, red -- an inch and a half in height and each, conveniently, hanging on a chain. For the princely sum of LE25 I snapped them up.
Crossing to the tackier, Khan El-Khalili side of the souk provided glass balls, blue and amethyst, beautifully fragile, brittle and unlikely to survive a single festive season, though that, in the end, is part of their charm. Everlasting baubles, I'm afraid, have all the romance of a plastic carnation.
And then what? I had, perhaps, been a little over ambitious with my tree but if a tree you will have in the corner of your sitting room, it might as well reach up to the ceiling. But I had done good taste -- there was nothing left but a stroll down Muski, which as it approaches Attaba turns into Christmas decorationville. Or at least used to. Tinsel in Muski has gone the same way as the Bab Zuweila fanous -- sadly depleted, a thin showing of glitter almost lost (a difficult thing to do with tinsel) among the boxes of plastic toys, the piles of machine guns and tanks small boys are purported to covet, the squashy, grotesque little dolls dressed in fuschia latex reputedly demanded by girls.
Gone are the painted plaster nativity sets, some with a cast of thousands, the kings in naively painted primary-coloured gowns, one several years ago sporting a tiara small enough to fit on the end of a finger, the donkeys and sheep, occasional goats, shepherds and goatherds to crowd around the manger. Nativity scenes, it seems, are no longer fashionable, and the stalls that used to sell them have moved onto other, less seasonal stock. At last, though, a shop with tell tale hints of glitter, a shop with gloomy interior catching points of red and gold, a shop devoted to packets of baubles, in anything but good taste, shining in the dark. Boxes of a dozen, two dozen, three dozen, from sparrow egg size to ostrich, coated in glitter, piled on top of golden stars, silver crescents and garlands of tinkling bells. Half an hour of frenzy, of delving into dazzling piles, proves quite sufficient to emerge from the gloom with a carrier bag full to bursting. Unpacking them at home, I confront the awful truth: a temperamental attachment to tack.
A whole day, then, criss-crossing town in search of the necessary good taste and glitter, of agonising over lanterns, of declaring this yellow too acid, that red too orange, this star too bright, those bells too tinny. And hours, precariously perched on a ladder next to a newly felled tree, remembering that 70 per cent of fatal accidents take place in the home, stretching to reach the branch just out of reach, where yes, this purple glass bauble, tied with fiddle-faddle thread, looks perfect.
In the cold light of day, though, the following morning, waking up, showering, rushing out to the office, it takes only a glance to confirm what is yearly confirmed. The tree is a disaster. It looks like a bomb has gone off. Somehow it has contrived to slump dangerously to the right in the wee small hours, dragged into a drunken lurch, perhaps, by all those carefully placed ornaments. And there is simply nothing that can be done to salvage the thing but drape it with coloured lights. The more the merrier.
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