Volume 42, Issue 4

THIS SPECIAL ISSUE devoted to Egypt—the worlds most charismatic, yet confounding, country—was the brainchild of Jules Chametzky, MR's recently retired founder and eminence grise. We all owe him, plus his initial collaborator, photographer Robert Lyons, along with new editor David Lenson, Managing Editor Corwin Ericson and the rest of the staff of the magazine a great deal of gratitude. But most of all, we should thank Egypt, the glamorous, poverty-stricken, sometimes neglected and often misunderstood raison d'etre for what you are reading right now. It is a land that, despite enormous fascination in America (and the planet) for centuries, has remained stubbornly—and most often pleasurably—mysterious.

Certainly, the horrendous events of the past few months have brought Egypt and the Middle East more into the public eye in the U.S. and elsewhere, while focusing enormous attention on its current political and religious feelings. But what really inspires this issue is an eternal fascination and affection for the country, its monuments, its history, and its people. This fascination has transcended all crises since the ancient Greeks invented Egyptomania nearly three thousand years ago.

It was Jules, sometime in 1997, who proposed to Robert Lyons, an experienced Egypt hand, that he try to put together images and articles about the country for an issue dedicated wholly to this oldest and most absorbing of the world's civilizations. Jules and Robert had known each other for many years through Robert s mentor from his days at Hampshire College, Jerome Liebling. Robert enthusiastically agreed to help assemble images (which he did most ably), and he turned to me to gather the written material for the issue. Though it took some time, due to conflicting schedules and the fact that we dwell on different continents (Robert was and is based in Seattle, while I had already lived in Cairo for about a decade), to make a plan of action, and even more to carry it out, I was more than glad to oblige. Happily, in the end, so were numerous fine contributors, as well. They are, without exception, among the most distinguished, talented, and unselfish people who could be found to write and photograph for this labor of love devoted to what so many feel is the most compelling place on earth.

I have known Robert (who relinquished his role as guest co-editor for photography due to pressing personal business as the issue was nearing completion), since the day in July 1990 when he came into the office where I then worked at the American University in Cairo Press, with an unusual book project in mind. Robert hoped to persuade Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's Nobel laureate in literature, to contribute a yet-untranslated story of his own to accompany some of Robert s photos from throughout the country. Both Mahfouz and the AUC Press (Mahfouz's literary agents) agreed, and the book appeared in 1992 as Egyptian Time, published by Mahfouz's own editor at Doubleday/Anchor Books in New York, the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

As Robert sought a translator for that project, I suggested Peter Theroux, whose translation of Abdel-Rahman Munif's Cities of Salt trilogy (later quintet) had greatly impressed me. Peter—whom I didn't then know, but who, like Robert, later became a close friend—duly signed on. Egyptian Time was so visually stunning that its legendarily reclusive editor, in one of her very few public appearances in later years, came to its official launch at the International Center for Photography-Midtown in October 1992. And the text was so sensitively rendered that JKO apparently suggested to the AUC Press that Peter undertake a new translation of Mahfouz's controversial novel, Awlad haratina (Children of the Alley)—which appeared in 1996. The rest is explained in Peter's equally expressive essay in this issue on that novel—for which its author was stabbed almost fatally 35 years after it first appeared.

Every day, and for thousands of years, Egypt has created and creates such eclectic connections among its millions of admirers, from every nationality, color and creed. The issue now in your hand aims not only to please those who have already developed a taste for things Egyptian, or have Egypt in their blood (much as Jeffrey Hammond, in his wonderful essay "Egypt Land," had grown up in America hopelessly enamored with the land of the Pharaohs). It also seeks to mint new Egyptomaniacs—though Egypt herself has managed to do this without much help since the days of Herodotus, and long before.

We have tried to do this by covering as many aspects of the nation's history and culture as possible. And, given the budgetary limits of a non-profit literary/arts magazine, and the largely voluntary nature of this work, it has come close to achieving this very ambitious goal. Our list of contributors (besides the already-cited Hammond, Lyons, and Theroux), as well as their subjects, illustrates this well.

Starting alphabetically, they include Brooke Comer, whose short story blends the eye of the travel writer with a touching, eccentric empathy for Peter Warg, a dying expat friend, while her poetry here is an oblique critique of the Egyptologist's art; Linda Connor, like Robert Lyons, one of a half a handful of photographers who have captured part of Egypt's soul though not resident in the country; Zahi Hawass, Egypt's most famous archaeologist; Barry Iverson, one of half a handful of photographers who have captured part of Egypt's soul while long resident in the country; Christoph Kapeller, who, among other things, contributed the most striking feature to the outstanding design of the new library of Alexandria (its roof); M. Akif Kirecci, a native of Turkey who is one of the most promising scholars of Arabic literature in the U.S.; Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's most revered writer, period; Peter Marin, authority on sand, sex and literature; Bojana Mojsov, a Macedonian historian of ancient Egyptian art blessed with an exceptional literary sensibility, as shown by her essay on the tomb of Sety I; Julian Reilly, whose verse combines the superior diction of the Anglo-Irish diplomat (which he is) with the rich but austere reverie of the Coptic monk (which he is not); John Rodenbeck, perhaps the foremost expert on the cultural history of Alexandria; Ali Salem, Egypt's most controversial humorist; Ahdaf Soueif, arguably the most respected Egyptian expatriate writer in English, and one of the most gifted in any language; and Caroline Williams, among the best-known advocates for preserving Egypt's stunning but ever-endangered Islamic architectural heritage.

In the end, we managed to cover a lot of ground—from Pharaonic to modern Egypt, in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and even the idea of Egypt to someone who has never been there. One of our omissions has been one of the most basic, however—the Coptic side of Egyptian life. Though serious effort was made to include it, along with works on countless other subjects innate to Egypt, we can only hope that our readers will forgive this lamentable lacuna.

There was nearly another monumental absence, as well—the day that changed the world, just two and a half months before we were to go to press. Most of our material was solicited long before 9/11—the issue was essentially closed by the time the World Trade Towers fell, a fifth of the Pentagon burned, and a handful of heroes diverted the fourth plane from another national target to an empty field in Pennsylvania. To our rescue came Mohamed Saleh, one of Egypt's finest concert pianists, who works at the Cairo Opera House. Mohamed had sent a letter to Brooke Comer expressing his horror at what happened in that dreadful morning on a golden day last September—whose weather had begun like a fair day in Egypt. He has allowed us to print it here. We are proud to do so, with our thanks. While, for a variety of reasons, his views are not necessarily typical among his compatriots, we have found them refreshing, and deeply kind.

And there are other, more personal absences, to observe. This issue is dedicated to one person who fortunately is still very much with us—Naguib Mahfouz, who turned 90 on December 10, 2001.The ongoing traumas is the U.S., Afghanistan, and the Middle East, however, have prevented the expected mass celebrations of this historic event. Yet it is also dedicated not only to the victims of all those horrors, but to five other persons as well, all close to one or another of our editors and contributors, who are no longer among us. Each is an individual whose passing deserves special attention here—some because they have not received their due elsewhere.

One of them, Ruth Ketler, was the partner of Robert Dow, one of MR's fiction editors, who lost her life in the WTC on September 11. The others, besides the already-mentioned Peter Warg, include Dr. Ragheb Moftah, the famous Coptic musicologist, who died in Alexandria at midnight on June 16/17, 2001 at the age of 102. Born in Cairo's Faggalah district on December 21, 1898, as a boy Ragheb became enamored of the traditional music of the Coptic Orthodox Church. After studying agricultural science in Germany, he met the colorful English ethnomusicologist, Ernest Newlandsmith in Cairo in 1926. Financed by Moftah, the two men spent months on a Nile houseboat together, recording the chants of the Coptic liturgy, some of which are thought to have their origins in hymns to Isis and Osiris per formed in ancient Egyptian temples. For the next seven decades, Moftah pioneered the taping and transcription of these timeless songs, as head of the music department of the Higher Institute of Coptic Studies in Cairo. I had the honor of interviewing 'Amm Ragheb (Uncle Ragheb) and his niece, Laurence Moftah (an AUC librarian and the keeper of his flame), on videotape for a Library of Congress oral history project as part of its World Heritage series, the LOC's first such undertaking in the Middle East. To mark his 100th birthday, Coptic Pope Shenouda III celebrated a mass attended by roughly a thousand persons at the Abbasiyah Cathedral. A gentle, indefatigable, and ingenious soul who worked until his final illness a few weeks before his death, Ragheb will be greatly missed by many in Egypt and around the world. (You can read more about him on a variety of websites by searching the Internet under "Coptic Music," or under his name.)

Compounding this tragedy, Ragheb s second cousin, 84 year old Abdullah Moftah, his distinguished family's unofficial historian, was struck by a car while leaving Ragheb s also-crowded funeral at the cathedral. He died the following day, on June 19. His loss seems especially cruel.

But the cruelty doesn't end there. Asa Nichols Hale, a graduate of Yale who had spent roughly a decade studying Arabic and Kaswahili language and literature in Egypt and East Africa toward a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, died an apparent suicide in Cairo on March 28, 2001, aged 36. A regular at Mahfouz's former weekly nadwah (literary salon) at the Casino Qasr el-Nil in Cairo, and a brilliant linguist, Asa developed a special admiration for the wit of Ali Salem, another stalwart of these gatherings. For most of his time abroad, Asa was disciplined, gregarious, and a model of strength. A series of setbacks in his private life, however, led to his gradual withdrawal from the world in the two years or so before his death. He was buried without public notice by a small group of his own stalwarts in the lovely but little-visited American Cemetery on Abu Sayfayn Street in Old Cairo on April 9, 2001.

Though one of his friends, Tony Burgess, has created a web site in his memory (www.tonyburgess.com/asa/asa_home.html), and he was recently eulogized in the Yale Alumni Magazine, there is still no marker on his sandy grave. For months there was nothing on the mound but a dwindling shroud of mummified flowers. But now, a sapling kharwa' tree has sprouted sponta neously at its head. Perhaps this sheltering spirit will shade the soul who rests beneath—forever a part of Egypt Land.

Raymond Stock
Guest Editor
Cairo
December 18,2001

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