Egyptian culture | Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

Adam Henein

Posted on June 26, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

It was a Zamalek gallery and carpet shop owner who first put us on the track of an Egyptian sculptor called Adam Henein. We stopped by the gallery shop in question and the owner invited us to sit down with him and have some tea and chocolates. He was a sweet, cultured man; he talked to us about a bunch of contemporary Egyptian artists.

“But Henein is incredible,” he said. “You have to visit his museum in Giza. It’s where his house and his workshop is, and now there’s a museum with his work. He sold a large boat sculpture in Qatar a few years ago for hundreds of thousands of dollars and he used the money to build this museum. He’s very old, in his 90s, now he just sits in his garden, contemplating his life and his work. You have to visit this museum.”

And so we went to the Adam Henein Museum, which in fact is just down the road from the Wissa Wassef Centre, a place we’d been to before. This stretch of road, next to a trash-filled canal and behind a fresh slab of concrete and red-brick apartment blocks, is apparently turning into Giza’s artistic hub!

We fell in love with Henein’s work from our first moments inside his museum. The first thing we realized is that he’s an artist in the true sense, comfortable in almost every medium. Although his sculptures (in bronze, wood, stone, and clay) dominate the museum, also shown are his paintings, charcoal drawings, drawings on papyrus, and even weaving.

But it’s Henein’s sculptures that I find especially moving, because they almost always reinterpret motifs from ancient Egyptian statuary—birds, standing or seated figures, crowns, obelisks—although Henein gives them contemporary twist with pure forms and neat lines. His human figures, with their straight backs, blank faces, softened features, and long robes unfurling like sails, are extremely moving.

Outside there’s also a beautiful, grassy courtyard, dominated by a large granite boat, which recalls the gigantic wooden solar barge found buried near the pyramid of Khufu. Many of Henein’s works, especially animals such as donkeys and cats, huddle around it.

We came to this museum a few times, but the first time we visited we got to see the artist himself, who was being interviewed in the garden for a documentary. G. introduced herself and was lucky enough to shake his hand. He’s a monument of Egyptian art, and he deserves to be better known.

Canada Dry

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

Doing tourist things in Egypt with my parents the last couple of weeks, I’ve had more chances to study the strange social behaviours that arise from the tourist industry. From the humble camel tout (“good price”) to the more elaborate story (“I work at the hotel restaurant, I saw you yesterday…”), many people who live off tourism will say anything to provide you with wares or services you usually don’t need in exchange for some of your money. Taxis, calèches (horse-drawn carriages), and boat rides abound especially in Luxor, where walking along the corniche becomes something of a joke that we then repeated amongst ourselves to lighten the mood.

“Hey, mister! Madame! Where you going? Where you from? Taxi? Good price! Calèche? Need a boat? Five pound. Market this way, market this way.” Some will stop once you say no thank you, many will persist, making you feel even less like saying yes. The pestering is constant, but it’s all part of the tourist game.

Of course, one of the strategies these sellers employ is to try and start a conversation with you. The easiest way is to ask you where you’re from. Ignoring the question is a bit too impolite for our Western sensibilities, answering the truth will inevitably open up some kind of opportunity for further questions or conversation. Sometimes I lie and say Bhutan, which inevitably gets quizzical looks. Apparently not many Bhutanese make it to Upper Egypt.

Whenever we say we’re Canadian, we inevitably get the same response: “Canada? Canada Dry!” It was funny the first time, it got old really fast.

But in fact this ubiquitous response leads to more questions. Do other nationalities get their special response, or are we the only one? Also, how did camel tour sellers and site porters and taxi drivers all come to say the same thing from Giza to Aswan? Moreover, I don’t think I’ve ever seen ginger ale sold anywhere in Egypt. So what gives? How do they even know about this brand? Who started this thing and how did it spread?

Looking a bit online, it seems that many fellow Canadians got a similar response: “Canada Dry, Never Die!” It sounds like Canady Dry used to run some kind of successful marketing campaign in Egypt that caught on and worked too well.

Friday Morning Quiet

Posted on May 25, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

Since Egypt is a Muslim country, the weekend here is on Friday and Saturday in order to accommodate for the most important prayer of the week, on Friday at midday. As many Egyptians prepare for this prayer, or maybe cool off after staying up late Thursday night, most shops and restaurants are closed on Friday morning and the streets are almost deserted.

Cairo is known to be a chaotic city, and like anything else there are two sides to this reality. On the one hand, it makes for a lively urban atmosphere: there are always people around, it’s easy to find a taxi at any time, shops are open late, and you usually feel safe walking around at night because the streets are busy. On the other hand, traffic is pretty bad, streets are smelly and loud, sidewalks are like obstacle courses, the honking is incessant, and there’s always people, people, people, everywhere, walking, sitting around waiting for something to happen, standing, talking… It can be a little exhausting.

So, as you can imagine, Friday morning is a special time when the pulse of the city slows considerably. I love Friday mornings because there’s absolutely no guilt about staying at home—you can’t get much done outside the house anyway. It’s a great time to catch up on work, reading, cleaning, or just play a game. My gym is open on Fridays, but I’d rather wait until after midday prayer, when the city comes to life again, to go out.

Those who do venture out on Friday mornings are rewarded with an uncanny experience. The streets are quiet, there’s almost nobody about on the sidewalks—even most bawabs aren’t sitting around in front of their buildings. Cars are few and far between, and there are moments, sometimes very long moments that can last for minutes, during which you can’t hear any honking! When I went out earlier today, I actually heard bird song from the trees. Bliss.

As exhausting as the chaos can get, at least it makes you appreciate peace and quiet when they do come.

Baladi

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

One of the first Cairene words we learned when we moved to Cairo was “baladi,” which is an adjective that roughly translates to “local,” “traditional,” or “of the street.” We first started discussing this term with our hostess, M., whose B&B we stayed in during our first couple of weeks in Cairo. She has a crazy orange cat called Baladi that she picked up as a famished kitten in the street. The alley-cat genes remain strong: Baladi has been known to jump onto things where he doesn’t fit, like lamps.

In French, we were used to hearing baladi as a term for belly dancing, but as it turns out Egyptians also use it for anything that is local or traditional: cats, dogs, neighbourhoods, music, cafés… We most often hear it applied to food. The elastic, slightly spongy flatbread that is ubiquitous in Egypt and sold on so many street corners is known as “baladi bread,” while the traditional side salad of cucumber, tomato, and herbs that accompanies any Egyptian meal is also known as a “baladi salad.” You get the idea.

Of course, baladi can also be a pejorative term. In a novel I read set largely in the early 20^th century in Cairo, one upper-class character marries a young man from a lower class—he doesn’t wear the right clothes or go to the right beachside resort in the summer. The rich woman’s friends remark: “Isn’t he a little baladi?” But that, of course, is part of his charm.

The other day my parents were visiting me in Egypt and we headed out to one of the city’s baladi souqs, south of Bab Zuwailag, one of the old town’s most famous gates. It’s the kind of street where live chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons are on sale, where grinning men push in carts piled high with mint, and where old ladies wait in line for bread at the subsidized bakeries. We ogled and gasped and greeted back those who greeted us. My mother said her own mother used to talk about the ice vendor coming round the house, and she was delighted to find a man delivering blocks of ice from a horse-drawn cart.

As foreigners, we can do no better than look and try to understand; what is truly baladi will never be truly accessible to us. That, too, is part of its charm.