A new weekly series about Egypt 

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spentthe first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (8 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (8): The Khawagah Who Escaped.

He was born at the Italian Hospital in al-'Abbasiyyah on the day Vladimir Illitch Ulianov saw the light of day. His father, an admirer of Hitler, had expected him two days earlier and would surely have named him Adolf. Six days after his birth, King Fouad 1st (1868-1936) died. His paternal grandmother was a proud Italian. They named him Andrea after the Genoese Admiral and Condottiere, Andrea Doria, who had defeated Kupudan Pasha, Khayr ad-Din Baba Awrush (Barbarossa) and his Moors and Ottomans in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Bad omen? Only time would tell.

Khawagah Andariyyah went to Miss Purvis' Kinder Garden in Ma’adi where he and his friend of previous lives, Adham Safwat, held hands and cried while their mothers walked away from them on their first day at preschool. A few years later Andareh and Adham would board the train towards Bal al-Luq Station. Adham would get off at al-Sayyidah Zaynab to go to Madrasat al-Ibrahimiyyah while he disembarked at the terminal with other Meadi boys and girls who frequented the Lycée Français du Caire. These boys and girls were mainly Jewish. In his class, only he and the Helmy brothers were Christian. There were also a few Christians and Muslims in other classes. 

Andre

The question of religious and national identity was never brought up in those days. In fact, one was taught to never speak religion, discuss nationality and dissect family in public. That was until André was moved against his wish to the Jesuit Collège de la Sainte Famille, in Faggalah. In that school there were Christians, to mean more precisely Catholics, and non-Christians. We the Catholics, of course, were bound to go to Heaven in spite of the Original Sin; not the others. Very original indeed.

Thank Sweet Jesus, Andre's mother was Lebanese Arab and a Protestant. His maternal grandparents, his uncles and his mother were close to the majority of Egyptians. His great grandmother who raised him would listen to the Qur'an over the radio every morning when she drank her first cup of coffee. His grandfather sold life insurance to Egyptians and befriended many of his clients. André followed in their footsteps. And, yet, he looked like a Khawagah, he felt comfortable amongst the Khawagat, he partook in the culture which had impregnated their world. Whenever the radio played Arabic music he changed the band to Western music. He loved accompanying his parents to the opera. The Khedivial Opera House, he had learnt, was built by Pietro Avoscani and inaugurated at the same time as the Suez Canal in 1869. Isma'il Pasha had commandeered Giuseppe Verdi to compose Aida for the opening night. André, knew Verdi as his paternal grandmother would sit at the piano, his father accompanying her at the cello, and she would sing areas from his and Puccini's after Sunday lunch. In fact, Il Trovatore was performed instead in 1869 and one had to wait until 1871 for Egyptians and the world to hook on to the Victorious March of Radamès.

Cairo Opera house

The lyrical season attracted most Caireen Italians each year. Some even came from as far as Alexandria and the Suez Canal. There were a few Egyptian courtiers. Italy had been close to the Pashas since Muhammad 'Ali's time. Their expertise in preserving Antiquities, in mapping the Nile Delta, in mineral exploitation, in teaching the Arts of drawing and sculpture, had brought scores of Italians from the Kingdoms of Savoïa and of Naples. André's Italian great grandfather had escaped the Austrian secret police in his native Turin. He called his daughter who was born in Cairo Italia-Libera. He had been member of the Carbonari. He manufactured horse carriages in Cairo. When André rode his first bicycle to school he invariably borrowed the longest way to get there and back. Shubra stood behind the central train station. Italians, Greeks and Shawam dwelled in that neighbourhood. Close by, in Sabtiyyah, workshops had sprung where Italians cast iron and operated machine tools to manufacture parts of all kinds. They had proven skills with drafting and with crafting. They reproduced automobile parts which were missing on the market. Near 'Abidin were the ablest cabinet makers in Cairo: witness Pontremoli who displayed his wares on Shari' Sulayman Basha. Around the Italian artisans stood Egyptian apprentices who, one day, would replace them and carry on the tradition.

According to the 1928 Census, there had settled 24.000 Italians in Egypt. Their role in conceiving and building, in manufacturing and in tailoring gave one the impressions they were the majority among the Khawagat. At the eve of the war, in 1939, their presence was being made felt as they rallied in favour of the occupation of Libya and Abyssinia by Mussolini. Their newspapers invited the Duce to occupy Egypt as well. André's father who had been orphaned early on as a boy having lost his father, originally from the Caucasus, had been raised as an Italian by an Italian mother and grandmother. He was a member of the Fasci and displayed his card and uniform proudly. Barely, however, before the British and Egyptian authorities rounded up the Italians and the Germans and interned them in Fayid, on the Suez Canal, he bartered his Turkish citizenship for an Egyptian one and was spared. Like his father whose mother tongue was Turkish, he spoke little Arabic. He did not need to in his daily activities, as the Lingua Franca of the Khawagat had become French.

When the Comédie Française came to town, in the winter of every year, boys and girls from the numerous French schools in the city boarded busses to the Opera House to enjoy plays by Molière, Racine and Corneille which they had memorized in class. It is remarkable that Bonaparte's short expedition into Egypt in 1798 would have caused such a cultural impact on that country. Muhammad 'Ali, of course, was the first francophile. It is suggested that, in Kavalla where he was born, Frenchmen traded tobacco with his father and he befriended a few in his youth. At the opening of the Suez Canal, Empress Eugénie, spouse to Napoléon III, was guest of honour and congratulated Ferdinand de Lesseps for his grandiose achievement. 

 Empress Eugénie

Isma'il who had gone to military academy in Versailles, spoke fluent French, and so on and so forth. In spite of British occupation, French schools mushroomed throughout the major cities. Jews, Greeks, Italians, Shawam and all other ethnic minorities sent their children to them. Even Edward Said, who was American-born and went with his four sisters to the English School, had to speak French at the Maadi Sporting Club to feel he belonged. It is amazing, when one considers the Shawam, descendants of Lebanese and Syrian Christians whose great grandfathers had emigrated to Egypt, that they would cease to speak the language of their ancestry, even forget it. In Egypt, this cost them dearly the day nationalist fervour took them by surprise. They discovered the hard way they could become francophones but not French.

Meanwhile, they partook like every other Khawagah in the economic adventure of their time. Wherever French was Langue de Travail, in the Suez Canal, banks like the Comptoire d'Éscompte de Paris or Crédit Lyonnais, the French-owned Compagnie du Gaz, French Import-Export establishments and French Engineering firms, or in the Belgium-owned Tramways, Sugar Refineries, Compagnie d'Héliopolis, a satellite city which Baron Empain had conceived and built in partnership with the Armenian, Boghos Nubar in 1905, and in which many Shawan chose to live, Shawam were employed. They were also involved in running two dailies, Le Progrés Égyptien and La Bourse Égyptienne which shaped and reinforced the visions of all Khawagat, whatever their origins and affiliations. The Shawam got into textile weaving, soap manufacturing, perfumes, oil pressing and, later, light industries. Trade in lumber, pharmaceuticals, cinemas, anything that earned money was, also, of interest to them. They even made Tarabish, plural of Tarbouche, according to Robert Solé.

The Khawagat were impervious of all that was happening around them both in Egypt itself and around the world. When the Second World War erupted half a million troops from the British Empire came to beef up the 10.000 men and 400 airmen which the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty allowed. Martial Law was imposed. The conflict was far away.

Ahmed Shawki

Prosperity was at hand. Restaurants and bars were full. So were the cinemas. Life at the Sporting Clubs, which the British has erected for themselves at first then for others, now catered to the moneyed class. Andre's maternal grandmother, meanwhile, insisted that her family accompany her at Kishkish out of loyalty to her past: Naguib al-Rihani, a Lebanese-Egyptian was referred to as the Molière of the Arabs. His humour was biting, à l'Égyptienne. He spared no one. While he entertained in Arabic, his sketches were forewarning: he may have foretold of the Ides of March. No one listened.

Time had been ticking for al-Khawagat. Ask your Armenian watchmaker. The bulk of the Armenians who reached Egypt had survived a genocide no one ever heard of. That batch of Armenians was very poor. It was also very skillfull. Watchmakers, jewellers, mechanics, photographers, hard working and thorough. Norton pharmacies employed Armenians because they spoke Turkish and because they were reliable. Armenians were artistic and fine sportsmen and Nubar, the accountant at the main pharmacy, often took André to witness his team, the Homenetmen, beat Maccabi and other teams at basket ball or foot ball. In 1945, at the end of the war, two Soviet ships docked in Alexandria: they had come to carry those Armenians who had not done well to Soviet Armenia. Nubar the accountant was amongst them. Baron Matossian, the cigarette manufacturer, was not.

Andre's mother was a close friend to the one he called Tante Khadigah. Khadigah was the niece of Ahmed Shawqi (1868-1932), the one all Egyptian literati named the Prince of Poets. Both ladies would read Shawqi's poems loud and marvel at the feelings which were expressed so exquisitely and poignantly. Shawqi lived partly in Alexandria and was a contemporary of Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933). They never met nor were they aware of one another. 

Constantine Kavafis 

Kavafis is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the Twentieth Century. He was born and died in Alexandria. His soul belonged to Byzantine Constantinople and his language was that of Homer. Marguerite Yourcenar, in her preface to his poems, wrote: "c'est un des plus grands, le plus subtil en tout cas, le plus nourri pourtant de l'inépuisable substance du passé. Il redonne vie à des mots à jamais péris. Il nous entretient des thèmes les plus marginaux. Il offre des détails que l'Histoire laisse de côté. Sa pensée est d'une intimité fugitive et il porte des regards attendris et émus sur la réalité".

No doubt, the ethos of the Khawagat had burgeoned in the fertile land of Egypt, a land in which the bright sun is welcome in the open air as well as behind shutters in the afternoon. And the clean breeze from the desert blows all bad dreams away. And, the environment is nonchalant and, at the same time, charged with challenges and opportunities. And, Muslim and Arab Egypt which lurk in the surroundings increases the sense of belonging to something particularly pleasing because it was unique in structure and kind. Like in a frescoe by Diego Riveira, the eye and the mind will tell of different stories, all epic, whether one stares from afar or is close, from an angle or from the front, from the right to the left and vice versa. One constantly has to remember how it was and how it became, why it was and why it should not have lasted. It is then that one is able to escape from there and from oneself.