Sherif Effat: In the past lies our future. without it we are stuck A passion to collect Profile by Yasmine El-Rashidi

photos: Ayman Ibrahim

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'I decided not to learn how to use a computer and instead focus on the past. To fully understand history you have to really live it. That is what I have chosen to do. To immerse myself in it'

The nondescript street and equally nondescript building offer few clues. Both are dull, fading, part of the concrete maze that comprises Cairo's dishevelled urban expanse. What lies beyond the walls of an average building on an equally average side-street, however, is the home of historian and collector Sherif Effat. It is a home within which the making of a nation is preserved, however selectively.

"I had to make a choice in my life," Effat begins, taking a moment to light a cigarette and bring order to the papers on the desk. "I had to choose between yesterday, and tomorrow," he says, pausing -- his contemplative mind reflected in his tilted head, upward glance and the precise release of smoke rings from his mouth.

Effat sits at an old oak desk. Behind him the wall is bejewelled with valuables of another kind. Framed documents dating back a century, a lithograph family tree of Egypt's royal family, a poster-sized portrait of the nation's so-called last Pharaoh, King Farouk, and an assortment of old pictures and prints.

"I made a choice," he smiles, knowingly. "I chose yesterday: the past," he continues, his intonation accentuated with the hints of what appears to be a British education.

"I'm a historian," he elaborates. "I decided not to learn how to use a computer and instead focus on the past. To fully understand history you have to really live it. That is what I have chosen to do. To immerse myself in it."

The immersion is evident in every corner of his house.

"Of course," he laughs, "whoever focusses on the past is in essence escaping from the present. But let me say something," he adds, leaning forward on his desk. "It's impossible to have a future -- a prosperous one -- unless you look back and see what has happened in the past. And we, after all, are the creators of history. First came geography, the land, water, air. But it was only when man was created and put on this earth that history began. Geography without man is really nothing."

"Man is an incredible creature," he adds as an afterthought. "Man is the inventor of history."

"It is a platitude, perhaps, that other people's mistakes furnish lessons from which we should learn," Effat says. "The lessons of history must be taken and studied by the leaders of today. Let me give you an example," he offers, pausing, delving for the anecdote. "In 1939 Hitler had entered Paris in a week, and crossed Europe, but when he came to Russia -- if he had studied history well, he would have known that Napoleon was defeated there and how."

He pauses.

"That's not to say you can't take the same path and not end up with different results," he adds quickly. "But when you look back and say 'history has proven this won't work' you should think twice, three times, four. We see things like this happening every day around the world, leaders making mistakes that have already been made, often, in the past."

Effat stops and points to the glass on the table.

"Your tea will get cold," he says. "I'll stop talking until you drink it."

He ventures from the room.

Returning a few minutes later he repositions himself at his desk and turns to a glimmering, ivory-coloured statue of the Buddha.

"Look closely at the statue," he says, pointing to the child-size figure. "Look at its chest. You see that emblem, what is it?"

"A swastika," he replies "That is what everyone thinks. How many people know that the swastika's origin is in a Buddhist sign of wisdom? When Hitler came, he admired the sign but reversed it. How many people know that? It's not a piece of information that will change your life but it is a reflection of how much we know about the history of the world, and how aware we are of things around us."

Around him in the cupboards, on the walls and shelves are hundreds, and thousands of documents of times long gone. Books, stamps, bank notes, letters, magazines, newspapers, statuettes, postcards and documents, old objects -- some quotidian, like radios, typewriters, a cigarette-rolling box, others less so.

"Let's take a look at something," he says, getting up again. He rummages through one of many piles of cellophane-wrapped albums.

"Like this and this and this," he says, putting a pile of albums on the table. "And what about this," he says, taking a framed document off the wall. "Look. It's a share certificate." He points to the Palestine Hotels Ltd, 1921 headed document, in both English and Hebrew.

"This hotel was registered in Palestine on 26 February, 1929. What's special about it? Aha," he smiles, taking a moment to allow the suspense to build.

"This hotel was co-owned by the King David Hotel in Jerusalem," he continues, his intonation rising.

He resumes matter-of-factly. "The only reason I know this information is because I did research. Every document or picture or item that comes my way, I look into its background. Anyone else would look at this and put it aside. It would mean nothing to them. But having done the research, the symbolic value of this certificate is...is," he stutters, looking up at the ceiling looking for the word. "It is just invaluable," he settles.

"Every document one comes across tells a story. And every bank note issued and stamp printed has a story."

And it is through these stories that Effat tells his own.

Among the collection on the table are albums documenting the nation's history through banknotes and stamps.

"Need I explain?" he mumbles as he turns the pages. The question is rhetorical. The faces and depictions on the numerous paper notes, and on coins, reflect their own chronology. They chronicle the building of a nation, the evolution of a system and the aging of its leaders.

Stamps commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal, the building of a mosque, the inauguration of a library, the opening of a hospital. On coins the face of King Farouk transform as he ages, evolving, in time, into that of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.

"Look at that, look at that," he exclaims. "What a gem, what a treasure. This is rare, very rare," he tells me, pointing to a stamp before him.

We are looking through the royal wedding stamp collection.

"That's one way of looking at history, through marriages and births," he says. "This album is dedicated to that."

What is unusual about Effat's collection is that he has not only individual stamps but entire sheets of the things, and in the case of limited edition commemoratives the framed decorative borders of the sheets.

"Look at this," he says of the wedding of Farouk to Queen Farida. "This is the envelope issued from Abdin with the stamp to mark the occasion."

Effat has a vast number of things to share.

"Those," he says, "pointing to the untouched piles of books on the table, are rare, rare, rare."

The first book, published in 1888, is From Pharaoh to Fellah, embossed with a dedication to "His Highness Mohamed Tawfik Khedive, successor to the Pharaohs and friend to the fellah."

Pictorial Palestine: Ancient and Modern, published in 1900 is next. The pictures and pages depict a time and land and period in history that is now long gone.

"And look at this." He picks up The Reign of George V, Representative Subjects of the King.

The vast volume, the pictures, text and inlaid and embossed names and titles reflect the grandeur of that period of British history. "Amazing,: he declaims."

Among other amazing things are a bust of Marie Antoinette, first editions of newspapers and magazines from around the world, photographs, menus and documents from within the walls of Egypt's great palaces, and coins from the collection of King Farouk.

"How do these things come to me? It's part of a big network, around the country, around the world. Also part of the energy of the universe," he smiles.

"Let me tell you something about life. When you're passionate about something it somehow finds you. When you're not passionate about something, you can look and look and look but you won't find it. A lot of the things in my collection have come to me just like that." He snaps his fingers by way of illustration.

"And then of course other things, well, I've made it known what I want and one person passes that information on to another and another, and eventually, somewhere in the network someone has that thing, or knows where it is, and it finds its way to me."

For a price, of course.

"By profession I'm an agricultural engineer. This is something that is actually a hobby. But it grew and grew, and now I spend 85 per cent of the money available to me each day on my hobby, and 15 per cent on the necessities in life."

It is an equation that began to unfold early in his life.

"Your development is tied to society, childhood, norms, environment," he says. "I had three siblings. We were raised in a home with music. We drew. There was a library. My father's library had everything. But first, are you warm enough? More tea? Or perhaps it's time for coffee. I have spoken a lot."

He gets up and returns with a banana.

"For energy," he says. "All this thinking and writing is draining."

"My father was a cardiologist, one of the most famous of the first half of the 20th century. In his salon, every Thursday in the 1930s and 1940s, those in the medical world would come and talk and debate. Share ideas and readings. That," he says, getting up once again and crossing the room, "is the environment in which I was raised. This is my father," he says, pointing to a picture on the wall. "An entire university department was named after him. Yes, because he was a good doctor, and also because he was cultured. It takes work to culture oneself."

It takes reading and research and listening.

"Not enough people give these things importance," Effat says. "Egypt has lots of educated, but not cultured, people. Anything your eye falls on you should read. I've been a reader since I was 10, and my knowledge grew and grew, and my historic knowledge transformed me, and from an amateur I am now considered a professional."

Indeed, Effat has become a fixture on the pages of the local media -- consulted, interviewed and profiled.

"But that doesn't mean I stop and it doesn't mean I know enough. It will never be enough because there is no such thing as enough knowledge."

"I'm a big believer in science. But there are some questions that science simply does not answer. And science will never be able to answer all the questions in our head. So many things in life pass us by unnoticed, because we don't open our eyes, we don't look at the world around us. To recognise the non-scientific coincidences in life we must open our eyes. And we must read."

If we read, Effat believes, the world would evolve in a very different way.

"How do we learn and grow? From past experiences, from mistakes, from the people around us. As human beings we pay very little attention to that growth process. We think if we just live day-to-day things will happen. The wise don't become wise by sitting around and following a routine."

"The new generation watches television, and think the picture gives them all the information they need. That is why, I believe, imagination has become so weak. Imagination is very important."

"Behind every invention," he tells me, elaborating on the little sermon, "is imagination."

"We have stopped thinking," he says. "Which is why, as a country, we are in the situation we are in today. As an Arab nation, as Egyptians, as Muslims, we are headed for disaster. We are at the bottom, and to get out we have to be honest with ourselves, and history has shown that nothing will change unless democracy comes to the area. Lack of democracy has brought us to where we are. Democracy in Europe created the Europe of today. Democracy in the US has propelled it to where it is today. We need to look back," he says, slowing down and lowering his tone, "and through that assess how to move forward."

"And then you need to study history more closely, and look at the countries that were once at the top and look at where they are now. The Roman Empire was once the superpower. Where did it go? And what happened after that? Where is this story taking us?"

"Life is a question," Effat resumes after a puff of his cigarette. "All our dialogue in life, across all borders and periods of time, are questions. We live in a question. From the mundane ones, like how are you and where are you and what are you going to wear today, to the significant and life-changing, everything is a question."

"We all know that five people witnessing the same event will record it differently," Effat says. "What is the truth? Is there any such thing? Does absolute objectivity exist? They are all questions."

Like life. And of course, like history.