Issue No.588
Culture
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Culture |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Smile, and don't blink
There+are+remarkably+few+constants+in+Tahrir+Square:+for+the+best+part+of+a+decade+it+has+been+in+process,+the+traffic+islands+mutating+like+amoebas+on+amphetamines,+bus+stations+coming+and+going,+hoardings+that+surround+the+moveable+building+sites+up+today+and+gone+tomorrow,+or+so,+sometimes,+it+seems.+In+the+midst+of+this+moveable+feast,+though,+some+landmarks+remain,+most+venerable+among+them+is+the+Egyptian+Museum,+the+square's+dowager+empress,+squat,+dowdy,+and+more+than+a+match+for+its+parvenu+consort,+the+Mugamma.+They+stare+at+each+other+across+the+battleground,+a+marriage+that+may+not+have+been+made+in+heaven+but+at+least+has+had+the+virtue+of+longevity.+They+have+been+together+for+more+than+half+a+century+now,+have+passed+their+golden+jubilee,+though+no+celebration+marked+the+event.
The Museum will soon be undergoing its own transformations: plans are afoot for a new institution, far from the city centre and its dangerous pollutants. The treasures will be moved to a new building, somewhere along the Fayoum Road, while the old dowager receives an internal overhaul. The new museum, if we are to believe its pre-publicity, will be determinedly state-of-the art. (What else could it be?) The old museum, renovated, will become a showcase for selected exhibitions. All of which sounds perfectly fine if some way into the future.
For a time at least, then, the poor old Mugamma will be left without its functioning partner. Which might not cause many tears to be shed. Yet despite the appalling press it has received over the decades I have to confess a sly affection for the place. If any building is in need of an innovative PR strategy, it is the Mugamma, a building few hold to their hearts, a place for which no one seems keen to display even an ounce of pity.
Its architecture is variously denounced: a slice of Mussolini's Rome, of bland authoritarianism, the perfect home for an Orwellian Ministry of Misinformation. Kafkaesque is whispered beneath the breath. Yet all of these castigations seem slightly unfair. It is far better, I find, to think of the hapless construction in confectionery terms, as the architectural equivalent of the kind of cake that might be served to mark the coronation of some Prussian princeling. Stodgy, solid, coated in that peculiarly inedible armour- plating icing reserved for the most august of ceremonial cakes.
There is, I suppose, no sufficiently thrusting PR consultancy willing to take responsibility for the image makeover, and so it has gone unnoticed that the Mugamma has been slowly sprucing up its act. Those bits with which I am familiar, the ground and first floors, if not cheery (Prussians never smile, least of all when they are baked into their own birthday cakes) have now assumed a veneer of clean-swept respectability. The first floor residence section is now marble clad, and if the corridors are not quite the echoing marmoreal halls of the imagination they have for some time now been traversable without the slightest danger of tripping over crouched figures busily brewing tea over small stoves.
In the visa and residence section business is positively brisk. Gone are the days when the sad petitioner was shunted from window to window, told to queue for forms that will eventually prove unnecessary, to queue for stamps that should not have been bought. The instructions are clear and they are issued, if not yet with a smile, then at least in a voice that does not speak of absolute hostility. You are no longer the child caught telling some huge, outrageous lie; you have killed nobody's grandmother; you have not asked the late, lamented Queen Mother to scrub your kitchen floor. Windows 39 and 50 are now only pit stops on the greater journey of residence extension, and if it is not quite Formula One it is no longer a slow boat to China with a crew intent on harassing the passengers. You can be in and out within half an hour with your faith in the kindness of your fellows unscathed.
Some things, though, remain unchanged. Even in the worst days of the Mugamma there was always a place of refuge, a serene corner tucked in a tiny room on the ground floor. The photographic studio: it is, I suppose, a franchised piece of the institution, a cramped space given over to the lucrative business of taking snapshots of the endless stream of petitioners. You enter, pay your money, wait your turn. It is the first thing you do, and you do it in the sure knowledge that it is never possible to have too many passport-sized mug shots of yourself. And having paid your money, waited your turn, you are seated in restful shadow at the back of the room.
It was there, in days of yore, that you would be confronted with the only smiling face you were ever likely to encounter, a face that would admonish you not to blink, a face that would encourage you to smile, chiefly by smiling at you... and then, flash, it was done.
Last week I was pleased to discover that this oasis remains. Despite the changes that have gone on above and around the photographer, who for many years I considered my only friend in the place and its absolute heroine, she remains in place and has altered her techniques not one jot.
It is she, I think, who should front any image makeover. The campaign, though, would have to contain a great many other elements. Perhaps, Christo-like, the building could be wrapped, in something bright and cheery, polka-dotted or peppermint-striped, and then tied with the most enormous, pink, satin bow. Only for a week or so. That should be enough.
|
 |
| |||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
