Issue No. 604
Culture
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19 - 25 September 2002 Issue No. 604 Culture |
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Plain Talk
Port Said can be regarded as the black sheep of Egypt, at least in literary terms. The significance of Port Said cannot be denied, despite it being founded in 1870. It is a new comer which until now had failed to inspire literary endeavour.
I have pleasant memories of the city, having spent many youthful summers enjoying its European atmosphere and azure sea. And now I have found someone else who has equally fond memories of the place.
Sylvia Modelski writes about Port Said as her "hometown". Her book, Port Said Revisited is, as far as I know, the only book-length treatment of the city in English.
The volume combines history, physical description and memoir. In the first part, "Genesis of a Global City", the author follows the events leading up to the creation of the Suez Canal and the early days of Port Said. The city, the author writes, is intimately bound to the canal by which it stands. In fact the city rose from the sea on a bed of earth excavated from the isthmus of Suez.
The first part of the book foregrounds the history of the canal, the French British confrontation over it, and how their contest was resolved. We are given a detailed description of the pomp and circumstance which accompanied the opening during Khedive Ismail's reign, the important guests, including the French Empress Eugenie, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, the Dutch Crown Prince Hendrik, the Prussian Crown Prince Fredrick and Grand Duke Michael of Russia.
Apart from royalty there were many press reporters and, to my surprise, such famous writers as Theophile Gautier, Henrik Ibsen, Louise Colet and Emile Zola. The journalists and writers brought back reports about the opening "that were suffused with enthusiasm and runaway optimism". Yet, the author writes, "no serious literary work ever emerged", prompting one more recent historian, D D Farnie, to remark that "the intellectual elite failed to produce a single worthy memorial of the occasion."
I was even more enthusiastic about the section "A Port Said Childhood" which is, really, the backbone of the book. It describes life in a city that has changed beyond recognition. Having spent all my summer holidays in Port Said during the late 1930s and early 1940s (the same years the author spent there) the section brings back very real memories of the houses, the tree-lined streets, the light house, the beaches, the port and the large liners, the bougainvillea, the flower that could easily have been the city's emblem. Her book evokes everything that, to my mind, made Port Said a memorable city.
The French Company gave a big party on 14 July, the French National Day. And I, like the author, used to attend the celebrations with the music, the dancing, the games.
Then comes the sadder part of the book, "Port Said Revisited", in which Sylvia describes her two visits in 1966 and 1981. Those two visits made her realise "that the town I knew some decades ago is gone forever and soon will be forgotten".
But will Port Said ever regain the bustling atmosphere of the 1930s and 1940s? Has it, as the author says, turned its back on its past experiment in international living, and re-invented itself instead as an Egyptian provincial town?
"It is hard to believe," she writes, "that a free port running a global public utility can long remain unaffected by the changes that are quickly overtaking the rest of the world." Which perhaps provides an answer to the question.
Leaving Port Said after her 1981 visit, she was intent on producing a testimonial of the city. "For it would be a shame if future generations had nothing to remind them of Port Said except the aphorisms put about decades ago by unsympathetic yet influential critics. I hope with this book to have left a record."
She certainly has.
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