Al-Ahram Weekly | Living | A twist of soul

		17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Living	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

A twist of soul
Youssef Rakha speaks to a man who finds brushes too soft and jobs a bit hard to keep

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TIME WARP: The many-sided champion of a strange and visceral lifestyle, the very existence of Ayman Ramadan (shown here with his sculptures) proves a point. "You are alone, with yourself," he says. "You spend time with yourself in this place. You can't go anywhere all night, you can't invite your friends in, you don't even have the space to work. You just have to wait."
Is Ayman there? When the phone rings beyond a certain hour of the night, the people at the Townhouse Gallery know what to expect. If Ayman doesn't answer, the person at the other end of the line simply hangs up. "Hookers," I was once told. And in the vaguely resentful tone of the girl in question, I could sense a certain, paradoxical admiration; a quality that seems to envelop the slim, embattled-looking figure who occupies such a significant portion of the building's psychic as well as physical space. Instantly recognisable as a street character, perhaps even a specifically downtown Cairo street character, he gives off a peculiar, slightly intimidating charm. What does he do, exactly? Beyond "absolutely indispensable," William Wells, the man in charge, could not give me a straight answer. Later that day I was to discover that, besides his many-sided if as yet unspecified role, Ayman just happened to be a spontaneous sculptor.
On the way to the Estoril, the Townhouse Gallery's unofficial cafeteria-bar, Wells began to tell the story of the German curator who, on seeing Ayman's exhibition, practically fell to his knees, swooning, "Wundervoll, wundervoll..." It was an awkward moment, Wells recalled; but such is the disarming impact of Ayman's presence. The encounter was to give rise to an ultimately abortive plan to transfer Ayman and his work to Germany (where the tendency to swoon would have undoubtedly proved more widespread), an opportunity Ayman still resents being deprived of, even despite his life-loving capacity to survive against the odds. Of all the fixtures of the space -- itself, increasingly, a fixture of the downtown cultural scene -- this omnipresent, if somewhat equivocal persona must indeed be the most interesting, I end up thinking. "Ayman, are you interested in appearing in newspapers?" Initially he is more suspicious than pleased; he responds with incredulous eagerness. Willingly, he obliges.
Ayman Ramadan Mohamed: 24-hour security guard, self-made professional heartthrob, former car mechanic, tabba' (microbus driver's assistant), ahwagi (traditional café waiter), fellah, thief. "You could say I am the fetewwa (strongman) of this place," he laughs. "Who cares what I do?" Three years ago he arrived, I subsequently ascertain, through the agency of Care Service, the security company at which he sought employment. "I used to work nights. I did the Meridian; I ended up fighting with them and walking out. I did the Goethe Institute, I fought there too. Then I did the National Development Bank. People had it in for me as they always do; they said you had to work mornings. I had to be there at like seven. I can't do a morning job, it's just not in me to do it. I would arrive at 10 or 12. Which made them think, eventually, the only place for me was here."
Ayman was to be dismissed irrevocably from Care Service, but the connection he forged with Wells had already paid off. "Mr William, he asked me to stay. Which is convenient because I can't afford a place to live. I drag the mattress out into the balcony to sleep. There were problems at first, of course, the way there always are problems." What problems? "I get angry easily, you could say I am slightly bad tempered. Because I don't like anyone to tell me what to do. This business of control just makes it impossible for me. And I end up losing my temper, fighting and walking out. So far, here in the gallery, it's been more or less okay." Ayman flirts momentarily with another of the curatorial girls, who walks in in search of a seat. With subversive gallantry, he lets her have it and makes do with the tiny table in the adjoining bookshop, where this conversation takes place. Frequently, friends of his come in and feign an exaggerated formal respect, addressing him as Ustaz Ayman; he ends up running after one of them, the Lipton ahwagi, all the way out of the building. "Shall we go upstairs to look at the work?" Ustaz Ayman suggests on coming back a few minutes later; we are almost done.
Why sculpture? "The brush is too soft, the paints too flexible for me. I work with the scrap metal of cars because it is like me. It doesn't do what you tell it to do very easily. The only way to really force it to do anything is to put it through fire. Otherwise you persuade it, you coax it, you beat it with a hammer -- and still it does its own thing; what comes out is what it wants, not what you want. That's me." Simplistic, almost two- dimensional life-size figures, Ayman's sculptures are autobiographically inspired, he explains. He has had two exhibitions: "Mythical Imaginings" (2001), based on the female, pseudoreligious folk culture in which he was immersed while growing up in Sharqiya; and "Waiting Room" (2002), a more focused comment on existential despair.
Born in a small village near Minya Al- Qamh, Sharqiya, he attended school in Banha until the age of 16. "I wasn't allowed to take the exam because I beat up the teacher with a birch. My father (a driver who worked only part of the month, spending the rest of his time at home tyrannising the family) gave me 25 piastres a day, which was never enough for anything. He too is very bad tempered and he was always yelling at me and beating me up and telling me I would never succeed, which made me all the more eager to fail my exams and do badly at school. At the same time, he spoiled my younger brother (now a Cairo University student), who got everything he wanted. Nothing for me. I just didn't have the discipline to go on at school. And before too long I felt I had to provide for myself."
People took Ayman in: first the microbus driver, then a relation of his who helped him settle in Cairo and procure the job with Care Service, and finally the Townhouse community. "I know people may well care about me, but sometimes I feel that none of these people, not a single one of them loves or cares about me. I would've liked to have someone by my side, a place of my own where I can sleep when I want to. I believe God exists, yes, but I don't know why He doesn't just release me, get me out of here?"

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