Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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I was surprised to receive a letter with a New Zealand stamp, since I have no connections with this far-away country. The letter is addressed to me with my right address, in which Sharia (the Arabic word for street), is used. This implies that the sender is someone who knows Arabic or who has lived in Egypt.

My question was soon answered when I read the sad letter. It was signed by Moira Feeney to inform me that John Feeney (who must be a close relative if not a brother) had passed away "quite suddenly" in Wellington, on 6 December 2006. The letter says "It would appear that John was more ready for his demise than we were in that he left a list of names and addresses 'to advise' of his death."

Mine was one of those addresses in which Moira poses the question of whether the connection was professional or personal or both. I've written to her that it was indeed both. It brings back memories of 1967. Feeney came to meet Dr Tharwat Okasha who was, at that time, minister of culture, with his film on the Nile: Fountains of the Sun. I was adviser to the minister and Feeney began to explain to me the story -- rather the epic -- of the film.

It was in 1964 that Feeney, with an four-man Egyptian film crew, set out to Cairo "to capture the very last flood that would come to Egypt".

In an article in Aramco World, published by the eponymous Oil Company, Feeney described their hair-raising adventure along 3,200 kilometres (2000 miles), starting in Ethiopia. This had never been done before and the cinemascope feature documentary they produced became the only filmed record ever made of this momentous event. Feeney describes the sultry heat of Aswan where thousands of sweating workers toiled day and night, hurrying to complete six giant tunnels in time to carry the coming flood safely past the then unfinished Aswan High Dam. The crew moved to Ethiopia where they experienced, in Feeney's words, "the big rain"; for three weeks on end they worked in the drenching rain, diving across mountain plateaus, heading up further still to the source of the Blue Nile, which was anything but blue, plunging from its source in lake Tana above, "down into the deep, dark abyss that was the beginning of its great journey to Egypt".

Dr Okasha, myself and members of the Minister's Bureau, watched that breathtaking film in the presence of its maker. The film ended with these words: "The waters of the Nile have known Aristotle and Alexander, Anthony, Cleopatra, and great Caesar; Joseph and Moses were found beside the river and the Christ child brought into Egypt. Saladin and the Crusades; the Arab princes and pharaohs of ancient Egypt. All have drunk from the stream, for water is everlasting. Water cannot be created. Water cannot be destroyed. A great river flows from sky to sky, eternally from ocean to ocean." The film was a masterpiece, and was shown in many a festival of documentary films. It was even pirated at one time and John and I had to get it back for, if I remember rightly, a festival in France. But Feeney was more than a film creator, both producer and director. He was an excellent photographer and a great discoverer of new dishes, all based on Egyptian products. As a photographer the AUC Press published his Photographic Egypt: Forty Years Behind the Lens. It had 36 photographs and an exhibition of those photographs was organised at the AUC. John invited me and insisted on taking me around, explaining the background of each photograph. As, shall I say a cook, the AUC, again, published his book Egyptian Soups Hot and Cold, with 35 colour illustrations. I must own up that John and I, sometimes with friends, enjoyed his varied tasteful recipes.

Feeney drank the waters of the Nile for 40 years, during which he lived in Egypt, which became his home away from home. I very often visited him in his ground floor flat at a walking distance from mine in Heliopolis. He had a large back garden in which he grew tropical plants as a memento of his Nile adventure. When I last saw him it was by chance on the steps of the Canadian Embassy. He was, I should have mentioned, a Canadian citizen, of New Zealand descent. But he became almost an Egyptian by heart. I shall certainly miss our meetings together and shall always feel that though he left for his motherland, Egypt was always with him.