A tense placidity
Youssef Rakha spotlights major cultural events in 2003
An anti-war demonstration outside the Lawyers' Syndicate, the location of many such protests through the year
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The cultural year opened with January's round of the Cairo Book Fair, the 35th. Among those decorated by the president at the outset were novelist Khairi Shalabi and vernacular poet Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi. The usual seminar topics were addressed, as usual, with both high- and low-profile writers and artists making appearances. The fair was to be the first in the annual series of large-scale events. Another, busy round of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre took place in September, while Egypt's entry in the official competition, Khaled El-Haggar's Hobb Al-Banat (Girls' Love), brought controversy to the 27th Cairo International Film Festival in October, which ended with something of a whimper. Later in the same month, by contrast, the Higher Council for Culture's second Novelists' Conference ended with a resounding bang, when novelist Sonalla Ibrahim, who had remained silent after hearing that he would receive the event's grand prix, attended the award-giving ceremony only to disparage the establishment and reject the LE100,000 award.
As an involuntary counterpoint to the serenity of the Aswan Sculpture Symposium, which drew to a successful close in March, midsummer in Cairo was full of tension. While the masses took to Midan Tahrir in protest of the American invasion of Iraq, debates heated among Cairo's so called intellectuals in the cafés surrounding Midan Soliman Pasha; anti-American and radical statements were issued in abundance. The long-awaited reopening of the Mahmoud Mokhtar Museum -- a high-key event that was nonetheless overshadowed by regional turmoil -- took place towards the end of the month, preceded by a remarkable show by Walid Aouni in which the Lebanese-born choreographer brought Mokhtar's statues to life. This was one among many large-scale concerts and festivals, including the 20th-century Music Festival, an ongoing series of concerts that presented highlights from the music of the last century, organised by the Cairo Opera House throughout the year. Edward Said's last visit to Cairo, which featured, as well as several lectures, a round table with staff members at Al- Ahram Weekly, also took place in March.
The Higher Council for Culture's conference towards a new religious discourse, to which numerous if predominantly right-wing Arab intellectuals contributed, gave rise to a major statement in July. Novelists Gamal El-Ghitani, Sonalla Ibrahim, Radwa Ashour and Mohamed El-Bosati as well as senior cultural figures Abdel-Azim Anis and Tareq El-Bishri, though they would not normally object to the conference's professed goal, thought it a direct response on the part of the cultural establishment to Washington's call on Arab governments to curb religious sentiments in the wake of the fall of Baghdad; they summarily boycotted the event. In the absence of serious cinema, filmmaker Hani Khalifa's debut Sahar Al-Layali (Staying Up), a well-made social drama that accurately reflects the tenor of contemporary life, proved a media sensation hailed by critics and film- goers alike as the cinematic event of the decade. The opening of Egypt's first private-sector FM radio channels, Nile FM and Nugoum FM (FM Stars) also took place in July, while the death of composer Kamal El-Tawil made the first in a series of obituaries that would keep appearing in the newspapers, with alarming regularity, well into December.
Prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, the atmosphere grew somewhat calmer in Cairo. September brought another round of the Alexandria film festival, newly refurbished under the directorship of filmmaker Mohamed El- Qalyoubi. Italian novelist Umberto Eco delivered an extended lecture on varieties of literary and cultural memory at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in November -- the month that brought news of Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri's death.
The presence in Beirut of Syrian poet Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said) and Mahmoud Darwish, poet laureate of the Palestinian resistance, enlivened the city's cultural scene in late November and December. The former disparaged the newly rebuilt city in the course of a lecture he gave as part of the Askhal Alwan Festival, while the latter professed his abiding love for the city even as it has witnessed such transformation. Darwish's last collection of poems, La Ta'tazer Amma Fa'alt (Don't Apologise for What You Did), a Dar Riyad Al- Rais publication, was launched only weeks afterwards, again while Adonis was there. Both members of the board of the UNESCO Kitab fi Jarida (Newspaper Book) project, to be relaunched shortly following an extended hiatus, the poets were there to attend the project's conference. Also with UNESCO support, the displaced Lebanese composer Marcel Khalife gave three concerts of his earliest and best loved songs, accompanied by former members the band of the Lebanese Communist Parties -- artists with whom Khalife had not worked for years.
