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Cheers to our "talented" literature prize awardee. Your pain his gain !!!
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EGY.COM - GARDEN CITY
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Our Lady of Kasr al-Nil |
Cairo Times, 3 March 2000 |
Villa Youssef Cattaui Pasha up to 1923 when it became the residence of Kout El Koloub El Demerdashia
(also spelt Qut al-Qulub al Dimirdashia).
replaced in 1965 by Kamal Salah El Dine ramp leading onto Kasr el Nil Bridge
view from Arab League Building on Tahrir Street.
OF COURSE, you say, how could anyone be a pessimist in these days of fraudulent opulence. Well, I am. And this is why. Last week I conducted a random quiz covering local history. The result: ignorance on ALL counts. So what's the message here? Very simple: Lack of proper education combined with a noxious lack of civic pride will act like the law of gravity, ultimately pulling down any real or wished-for economic growth rates.
I asked a mid-level diplomat slotted for a posting in a major Western capital, whose palace it was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs occupied (and still does) for half a century opposite the Arab League Building. He didn't know and behaved like he couldn't care less.
A senior civil servant responsible for parks and squares at the Cairo Governorate could not tell me the names of the countries liberated by Simon Bolivar. Neither was he sure of the existence of a Bolivar statue in Cairo for that matter. Well, then, who was Kamal al-Din Salah after whom the nearby ramp leading onto Kasr al-Nil Bridge was named? Awed silence.
My next easy mark was a bunch of schoolgirls and their vapid teacher. As they frothed out of the so-called playground overlooking Simon Bolivar Square, I asked them where was Kasr el Dubara? Unspoken analphabetism. They didn't know. Ok, who was the martyr Ali Abdelatif? "All we know is that our school is named after him" they giggled in chorus and ran off.
Later in the day, I called a cultural page editor of a leading daily for information on Kout al-Kouloub al-Demerdashia (1892-1968). I felt I'd just solicited a void the size of the Sahara.
For the erudite who couldn't answer any of the above questions let me try to share what should have been taught in General Knowledge 101.
Long before Garden City was created, the inhabited area overlooking the Nile between Midan al-Tahrir and Kasr el Aini was referred to as Kasr al-Dubara. There, the haute bourgeoisie lived two centuries ago, and it was there that the then-British rulers of Egypt moved their headquarters in 1895-6. Up until 1979 the square we know today as Midan Simon Bolivar was called Midan Kasr al-Dubara. With time the name was dropped out of our urban lexicon, remembered only by some town elders.
Overlooking ex-Midan Kasr al-Dubara is a century-old villa designed by Austrian architect Edward Matasek It belonged to the Casdaglis, a Greco-Levant merchant family, who leased it before WW-II to the American Legation in Cairo. Today, it is the al-Shahid Ali Abdelatif School for girls. Alas, no one knows why Abdelatif was famous save that he was a martyr--shaheed in a land where anyone who dies in a railway crash will invariably earn that epithet.
To get onto Kasr al-Nil Bridge from Midan Simon Bolivar you have to take the Kamal al-Din Salah circular ramp. This is when you espy a large palace concealed behind a row of Ficus trees. Designed by Antoine Lasciac for Princess Nimetallah, a daughter of Khedive Mohammed Tewfik, the palace changed names three times. Known as Palais Tousson in honor of the princess's first husband Prince Mohammed Gamil Toussoun, it was renamed kasr Kamal al-Dine (Hussein) when she re-married another cousin. Widowed in 1932, Princess Nimetallah donated her home to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so it could set up its headquarters there up until the 1990s.
Kasr El Nil Bridge ramp bearing name of Kamal el Dine Salah
But the ramp was not always there. Completed in 1966 it replaced Midan Elhamy Pasha which was then flanked by the old Semiramis Hotel (now Intercontinental) and a singular neo-gothic villa built for minister Youssef Cattaui Pasha. In the 1920s the pasha sold it to al-Sit Kout al-Kouloub al-Demerdashia, undoubtedly a remarkable woman.
The daughter of a leader of a sufi religious order who died on 8 February 1930, the bejeweled Kout al-Kouloub (victuals or sustenance of the hearts) was a self-styled feminist who, among other things, wrote wooing prose in French (Au Hazard de la Pensée, Zanouba, Ramza, Harem). A philanphropist she created a literary award named after her whose recepient in 1943 was Naguib Mahfouz who four decades later would become a Nobel Laureate. Indeed, no visiting French author, poet or writer (Jules Romains, Georges Duhamel...) dared visit Cairo without calling on the self-styled queen of the literary salons and after whom a literary prize was named. Moreover, our ample lady of Kasr al-Nil Bridge was known to entertain with a difference. If her infrequent dinners were described as extravagant, they were in fact catered from Azouz al-Ashi the most famous food purveyor in Cairo's popular districts. And in case anyone thought he could take early leave of her son's society wedding, the quixotic hostess had barricaded the doors so that none of her guests departed without her say so.
By the time the ramp replaced the neo-gothic villa by the Nile, al-Sit Kout al-Kouloub had abandoned Nasser's Egypt for Switzerland. There, by the shores of Lake Geneva she continued to write romantic novels so that latter day cultural page editors (sic) could continue to ignore their existence.
Ok, fine, but will someone tell me who was Kamal al-Din Salah?
MORE ABOUT KOUT AL KOULOUB (QUT Al-QULUB)
Born in 189? and raised in the large conservative Demerdash family homestead near Abbassia, Kout al-Kouloub spent part of her adult life in Europe. In fact, she was buried in Italy in November 1968 following a month-long catalepsy sustained by a suspect fall a month earlier at Badgastein, Austria. With her at the time of the accident was her second son Mustafa, a former Egyptian diplomat whose career had been cut short when Nasser decreed all highborn civil servants were no longer persona grata! Even before Kout went into luxury exile, she had been a frequent guest at Austria's chic spa resorts. Her annual European pilgrimages, with handmaid, valet, chauffeur, Rolls Royce et. al., took her to Paris, London, Geneva and Rome. Although she kept an all-year suite at the Intercontinental on Rue de Rivoli, Paris, it was in Rome that Kout hitched up her tent, which was actually the luxury residence of "La Mondiale" off Via Apia. Among her devoted assistants up until she died were Rafaela, her handmaid who reportedly had once served the queen of Italy, and Albert Levi, her private secretary imported from Egypt. Among other things, Levi was also responsible for the production of Kout's literary works. Worth mentioning against the background of the much talked about Islamic veil today, is Kout's novel Ramza (1958), which discusses the plight of the oriental woman symbolized by the Islamic mantilla. In itself, "Ramza" (translated in several languages) evidences the paradoxical life Kout led. Contrary to a liberal exterior and her renown locker-room vocabulary, plus her preference for the company of men to that of the submissive Egyptian woman, Kout was in fact quite traditional in certain (albeit sometime eccentric) aspects. For instance, she strongly resisted the removal of the "mashrabeya" from her Cairo opera loge when these became obsolete in the 1920s. And when her European-educated youngest son took a French Christian wife, she refused to acknowledge her. One therefore wonders if the formidable woman who was once head of an Islamo-Suffi sect, is turning in her grave. All of her eight grandchildren live in the west and have little to do with their Egypto-Islamic heritage except that they still carry the once-revered family name, albeit with a new variation in its conventional spelling. On the other hand she would be pleased to know how her three Canadian granddaughters made out for themselves. Hamida (named after Kout's sister) Demirdache is a world linguistic expert. And while Laila Demirdache Kinnear occupies a senior post at the Canadian department of justice, Ikbal Demirdache, until recently, was senior trade commissioner with Canada's foreign affairs. Raised by a variety of foreign governesses, Kout's four sons and only daughter were to be seen but not heard. Once of age, the boys were sent to the Cairo Jesuit school as opposed to the Kuttab (Islamic religious school) where Kout's own father and forefathers had received their education. Kout's sons never lived with their father, a judge in the Mixed Courts (legal system in Egypt that ended in 1947) nor did they take his surname of Mokhtar. Instead, and following Kout's prescription, they were all known as Demerdash. As far as she was concerned, her husband had fulfilled his duties as a stud. He was therefore free to go off, remarry and create his own new family, which he ultimately did. In their adulthood all four sons occupied prominent positions in their respective fields. Abdelrehim, the eldest son made it to the post of senior arms procurement officer in the federal government of Canada. Mustafa, the second son, was a diplomat but his career shortened for political reasons. Later he would become a manic-depressive. The third son, an engineer, is today Sheik Tarika El Demerdashia, which he took over from his elder brother when the latter died in Canada a few years ago. The youngest son Professor Mohsen El-Demerdash joined the Paris-based Pasteur Institute in 1961 eventually to become a reputable endocrinologist. As for Zeinab, she leads an indolent existence out of her base at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Cairo. Kout's remains lie almost forgotten in Italy. Exiled during her latter years, she is also estranged in death. For more on Kout's ancestors click on al-Ahram Weekly article
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