Plain Talk
By
Mursi Saad El-Din
I find special charm in old buildings, and am deeply chagrined when I see any in a sorrowful state of dilapidation. Often when I stroll from Al-Ahram building to the Automobile club in Kasr El- Nil street, I pass by one of the most beautiful palaces with friezes and colonnades, and lovely lattice work, but, alas, it is in such deplorable condition that one can shed tears over them.
It is a landmark of a period of pomp and circumstance in Egypt's history; the era of Khedive Ismail.
Mena House, Oberoi, stands sentinel at the feet of the Pyramids as an example of one old building that was preserved and renovated.
Mena House was built at Khedive Ismail's behest in 1869 on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal. The building had already existed as a royal desert lodge. To accommodate his European guests, a number of royalties among them, several rooms were added.
The guest of honour was Empress Eugenie who officially inaugurated the opening of the Canal. During her stay in Cairo the Empress lived in the Gezirah Palace -- another jewel of a building. It is said that the palace was an exact copy of her suite at the Toiletries in Paris.
To make the Empress's visit to the Pyramids easier, the Khedive ordered a special road built leading from the heart of Cairo to Giza. This new road facilitated the erstwhile rough trek to reach the Pyramids and, as a result, more tourists went to see them.
Among the visitors were a certain Frederick Head and his wife who bought the lodge and used it as their residence. They added several rooms and built a second floor. In keeping with the old English habit the Heads chose a name for their newly acquired house -- "Mena House"; Mena, of course, being the Pharaoh who united upper and lower Egypt.
With successive owners new additions were introduced to the building: Mashrabia work, blue tiles, mosaics and medieval brass- embossed and carved-wood doors. With the arrival of Thomas Cook, tourism took a more planned turn, and it was then that Mena House appeared on the list of Cook's hotels. On 22 December 1890 the first advertisement for Mena House Hotel appeared in the Egyptian Gazette.
Mena House became some kind of a winter resort for royalties and millionaires. A list of guests who stayed there at Christmas time in 1890 included Prince and Princes of Sweden and Norway and a number of counts, countesses, barons and baronesses as well as sirs and ladies. Mena House always attracted the wealthy.
Going through Nina Nelson's book on Mena House I was surprised to note that in the early 1920's Aida was performed at the foot of the Great Pyramid. The New York Herald reviewed it with the title "Aida Performed at the Foot of the Great Pyramid. Attracts Herge Crowds." The most impressive sight came "when the Bedouin and their camels, and hundreds of picturesque horsemen, swarmed over the hills and galloped on to the scene."
Mena House is managed now by the Indian Oberoi hotel chain. The hotel where world figures -- Churchill, Roosevelt, Chiang Kai Chek, Montgomery and dozens of kings and queens stayed -- has stood up to its reputation as a place which is not only historic but where history is made.
It was there that delegates from Israel, Egypt, USA and UN observers met to start the first phase of peace negotiations. I had the difficult assignment of official Egyptian spokesman. The meeting began with raising the flags of Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Israel, USA and the Soviet Union, the two major powers responsible for convening the peace talks. When it was known that neither the Soviet Union nor the confrontation states and PLO were participating, their flags were removed. It was not, as rumour had it, the PLO flag alone that was removed after the objection of the Israeli delegations. But this is another story.
