9 - 15 May 2002
Issue No.585
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 May 2002 Issue No.585 |
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Plain talk
I have always claimed that we owe the orientalists a great deal, especially where periods of our own history that would have otherwise been unknown to us are concerned. This, of course, does not embrace unfair, colonialist accounts of Egypt.
Modern Egypt has suffered greatly from two types of books: one written by the hasty traveller who does not bother to record more than what he sees in the Mouski Street bazaar; the other, by the patronising, if well-meaning, European once in the service of the Egyptian administration. It is difficult to say which of the two has done Egypt more harm; certainly neither has done her justice.
One book that does not fall in either of these two categories is E W Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. In my introduction to the 1954 Everyman's Library edition I wrote that Lane's book had become a classic on 19th century Egypt. Many of the manners and customs Lane wrote about back in the 1830s when he lived in Egypt still linger in our lives, and most of the festivities he describes are still celebrated.
Take, for example, Sham El-Nessim, which we celebrated last Monday. "It is remarkable," he writes, "that the Muslims of Egypt observe certain customs of a religious and superstitious nature at particular periods of the almanac of the Copts, and even according to the same system, calculate the times of certain changes of the weather. Thus they calculate the period of the 'khamaseen' when hot southerly winds are of frequent occurrence to commence on the day immediately following the Coptic festival of Easter Sunday, and to terminate on the Day of the Pentecost (or Whitsunday), an interval of forty-nine days."
Then Lane goes on describe the celebration of Arbaa Ayyoub or Job's Wednesday, which marks the day of Job's recovery as well as Sabt El-Noor (Saturday of Light) which follows -- both Coptic celebrations. Finally comes Sham El-Nessim which, as Lane writes, means the "smelling of the Zephyr." Early in the morning of this day many persons, especially women, break an onion and smell it. Until this day I can still smell the onion my mother used to put near my nose to wake me up early on Sham El-Nessim.
"In the course of the afternoon," Lane goes on in his description of this festival, "many of the citizens of Cairo ride or walk a little way into the country, or go in boats, generally northwards, to take the air or, as they term it, smell the air which, on that day, they believe to have a wonderfully beneficial effect. The greater number dine in the country or on the river."
Lane then goes on to describe how Muslims celebrate Coptic feasts. "The night of the 17th of June, which corresponds with the 11th of the Coptic month of Baa-ooneh, is called 'Leylet en Nukta,' 'the Night of the Drop,' as it is believed that a miraculous drop then falls into the Nile, and causes it to rise. Astrologers calculate the precise moment when the 'drop' is to fall, which is always in the course of the night mentioned above. Many of the inhabitants of Cairo and its neighbourhood, and of other parts of Egypt, spend this night on the banks of the Nile, some in houses of their friends, others in the open air."
This kind of description, attentive to minute details, is what characterises Lane's book. What gave his book credibility is the fact that Lane lived as an Egyptian, donning Egyptian attire and speaking in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. He was, to borrow a term from modern sociological jargon, a "participant observer." In many ways his approach would have satisfied the most up-to- date ideas of social research!
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