15 - 21 March 2001
Issue No.525
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 15 - 21 March 2001 Issue No.525 |
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Trays and trays of canapés
The Cairo International Biennale has brought with it a plethora of invitations to meet the various artists who will be visiting Cairo to participate in the event. From the garden of the Swiss Club in Imbaba, to any number of ambassadorial residences around town, the drinks will be flowing, the canapés in steady circulation. And the guest list at any one event is unlikely to be very different from the guest list at any other: the usual reception rent-a-crowd will be in attendance (many of whom -- and this may account for the standard of copy you, poor reader, are expected to peruse -- are members of the press) with a sprinkling of relevant nationals, this latter group determined by the artist's place of origin.
It is, generally, an identikit crowd that one finds in attendance, though a crowd offering some strategic depth, comprising several clearly identifiable types.
The most adeptly professional diplomats will be able to strike at least a half note of sincerity, will be able to hide the sheer tedium of the chore the evening ahead represents. They will smile with a semblance of sincerity, will not glance at their watches too often and will show interest in whatever their interlocutor is saying before moving off for five minutes' small talk with someone else. They will, in short, work the room without letting it become too obvious that it is work. Not that this should be overly difficult: the fact that the reason for the gatherings linked to the Biennale purports to be art means that it is not, after all, really work. Were it trade, things would be different. But there is really nothing to be gained from the two yearly import of an installation artist. There are no spin-offs, no contracts to be signed. And this fact is likely to be reflected on the canapé trays. No delicately baked tartlets topped with a sprinkling of caviar here but rather a lot of tuna mousse, its tinned origins hardly disguised by the sliver of olive, spread on salted biscuits.
There are, too, those semi-diplomats who cannot quite resist the urge to be patronising: these, generally, are the administrative employees of first world embassies, perfectly aware of the fact they have been invited to pad out numbers, equally aware that they are in no position not to attend, and consequently eager to assert themselves at the expense of the poor guests. They can be identified, more often than not, by being a little too carefully turned out, and commonly mistake being superior with actually having something to say.
Among the non-host embassy invitees, on the other hand, is the small group that assumes that something significant might be going on. Members of this tiny minority smile earnestly at one another, and at any one else whose eye they happen to catch. They are keen, desperately so, to network, and assume always that something important is happening just out of earshot. If they occupy centre stage, they are convinced the real action is taking place in the wings. It is just that when they get to the wings everyone else has moved back on stage. The truth is that most of the other guests are trying their best not to be drawn into conversation with this particular group for fear they stick, limpet-like, for the rest of the evening.
There are, too, the professional reception goers, those whose life has reached that sad point at which their sense of self is intimately bound up with the number of invitations that pop through their letter boxes. Quite why they look so harassed, given that they have nothing better to do than cram as many of these functions into one evening as possible, is anyone's guess. They can be identified mostly because they stand around with a pinched expression and announce at regular intervals, to anyone within earshot, that they really have to be going in five minutes to the French/Italian/German ambassadors.
Then there are those who have only come because they wanted something to eat, or, more usually, to drink. Their hands stretch distractedly towards every tray that passes by. They glance as if not quite sure that they could manage... no, not another dry cracker topped by a single prawn curled around a sprig of parsley... before, with a determined swoop, a sleight of hand worthy of a professional card trickster, they skim three or four off the tray. Or else they stare disconsolately into their seemingly always empty glass, moving as discreetly as possible between bars -- a multi-bar function is this guest's idea of heaven. They order a drink, gulp it, head off in the direction of the other bar, if possible collecting another drink from a passing waiter, gulp that, and then order the same again. Theirs is a circular progression, from bar to bar, a route that can be traced by following the trail of empty tumblers they leave in their wake.
The saddest of those who make up the numbers at such receptions, though, are perhaps the ones who are sufficiently deluded to assume that they are "going out in society," a quaint phrase that is still actually used. Dressed to kill, they teeter across lawns in impossibly high stilettos, their movements restricted by impossibly tight skirts, stalking the poor guest of honour as an ivory poacher might stalk an elephant with a particularly impressive pair of tusks. They hang around nonchalantly in the near vicinity of their victim pretending not to notice until finally sensing an opening and making an improbably athletic pounce. The greatest ambition of this particular group is to see their photograph in one of the many publications that for want of anything better to fill the pages that separate the ads cover this kind of thing assiduously. Amazonian to the core, these women give the overwhelming impression that their husbands exist as no more than accessories, an extension of handbag, shoes and brazen jewellery. Though tribal through and through, among their number they have admitted a few honorary members, men who share similar interests and who are most easily identified by the luridness of the handkerchiefs that spill with abandon from the breast pockets of their jackets. They, too, can pounce.
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