01.16.10
Ray Levy prays in the Cairo Fish Garden
I met Ray Levy for the first time when I was invited to speak at the Cairo Cosmopolitan Rotary Club earlier this week. An octogenarian psychiatrist from London, Levy was on the last day of a nostalgic trip to Cairo to revisit the scenes of his childhood; when a relative of mine told him about my talk, he decided to attend. I picked him out immediately as soon as I walked into the 20th floor restaurant of the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek: he stood out, by his age and his bright tangerine running suit, among the forty or so elegantly attired Rotarians- slightly more men than women, more Egyptians than Europeans, more middle-aged than young- scattered around the large room and enjoying a gourmet breakfast buffet. One of the Rotarians was an old classmate of mine, an immunologist who told me that her daughter was married to an American-born Chinese and lived in Jakarta- there’s globalization for you!- but I digress.
Ray Levy immediately introduced himself and in the few minutes that I sat at the head table before it was time to give my presentation, he started to tell me about his adventure in the Zamalek Jardin des Poissons or Fish Garden. We were interrupted but he promised to finish the story after my talk.
I was introduced by the secretary, Tilly Mulder, and launched into a twenty-minute presentation, in English of course, on Controversies Contemporary and Historical, touching on the mixed legacies of the 1952 Revolution and of Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt. This was followed by a question and answer session, and after that I was free to mingle with the various Rotarians who lingered for one-on-one conversations. And that was when Ray Levy related to me his Fish Garden experience.
The Jardin des Poissons, in my day, let alone back in his, was mostly frequented by nannies and their charges from the surrounding elegant homes on the upscale island of Zamalek; toddlers pressed their noses against the glass apertures in the rocky grottos, fascinated by the fish gliding by, while the nannies, often Europeans, chatted amongst themselves. Today in the Fish Garden you are more likely to find courting couples from some of the schools and academies to which students are bussed from other neighborhoods off the island. When Ray visited on the day before the last day of his nostalgic trip to Cairo, he found the same grottos, but with glass so grimy it was hard to see the fish through it. A group of idle adolescent boys, probably playing hooky, approached the elderly foreigner in his tangerine running suit and struck up a conversation in English, as such curious boys invariably try to do.
Hello! You American? You English?
They were surprised when Ray answered in heavily-accented but intelligible Arabic. They immediately plied him with questions. Where are you from? Where do you live? When did you leave Egypt? Why did you leave? And then: Who do you pray to?
Ray Levy answered noncommittally that he didn’t pray.
Not ever? The boys were disconcerted.
Well, perhaps once in a great while, I might pray for my football team to win.
Ah! The boys, rabid football (soccer) fans, could identify with that. Which team do you pray for?
The National, of course. A safe choice, as Levy knew, since the National is Egypt’s most popular football team.
Let’s pray for the National then! The boys lined up, except for one who refused to participate because, as the other boys explained, he was the lone fan of the rival team.
And that is how Ray Levy, on the day before the last of his nostalgic trip to Cairo, found himself leading an ecumenical prayer with some teenagers in the Fish Garden for a win for a football team. There was no time for more of his impressions of Egypt before we parted at the Marriott, but he left me his contact information in London; perhaps I’ll look him up next time I’m there.
I met Ray Levy for the first time when I was invited to speak at the Cairo Cosmopolitan Rotary Club earlier this week. An octogenarian psychiatrist from London, Levy was on the last day of a nostalgic trip to Cairo to revisit the scenes of his childhood; when a relative of mine told him about my talk, he decided to attend. I picked him out immediately as soon as I walked into the 20th floor restaurant of the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek: he stood out, by his age and his bright tangerine running suit, among the forty or so elegantly attired Rotarians- slightly more men than women, more Egyptians than Europeans, more middle-aged than young- scattered around the large room and enjoying a gourmet breakfast buffet. One of the Rotarians was an old classmate of mine, an immunologist who told me that her daughter was married to an American-born Chinese and lived in Jakarta- there’s globalization for you!- but I digress.
Ray Levy immediately introduced himself and in the few minutes that I sat at the head table before it was time to give my presentation, he started to tell me about his adventure in the Zamalek Jardin des Poissons or Fish Garden. We were interrupted but he promised to finish the story after my talk.
I was introduced by the secretary, Tilly Mulder, and launched into a twenty-minute presentation, in English of course, on Controversies Contemporary and Historical, touching on the mixed legacies of the 1952 Revolution and of Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt. This was followed by a question and answer session, and after that I was free to mingle with the various Rotarians who lingered for one-on-one conversations. And that was when Ray Levy related to me his Fish Garden experience.
The Jardin des Poissons, in my day, let alone back in his, was mostly frequented by nannies and their charges from the surrounding elegant homes on the upscale island of Zamalek; toddlers pressed their noses against the glass apertures in the rocky grottos, fascinated by the fish gliding by, while the nannies, often Europeans, chatted amongst themselves. Today in the Fish Garden you are more likely to find courting couples from some of the schools and academies to which students are bussed from other neighborhoods off the island. When Ray visited on the day before the last day of his nostalgic trip to Cairo, he found the same grottos, but with glass so grimy it was hard to see the fish through it. A group of idle adolescent boys, probably playing hooky, approached the elderly foreigner in his tangerine running suit and struck up a conversation in English, as such curious boys invariably try to do.
Hello! You American? You English?
They were surprised when Ray answered in heavily-accented but intelligible Arabic. They immediately plied him with questions. Where are you from? Where do you live? When did you leave Egypt? Why did you leave? And then: Who do you pray to?
Ray Levy answered noncommittally that he didn’t pray.
Not ever? The boys were disconcerted.
Well, perhaps once in a great while, I might pray for my football team to win.
Ah! The boys, rabid football (soccer) fans, could identify with that. Which team do you pray for?
The National, of course. A safe choice, as Levy knew, since the National is Egypt’s most popular football team.
Let’s pray for the National then! The boys lined up, except for one who refused to participate because, as the other boys explained, he was the lone fan of the rival team.
And that is how Ray Levy, on the day before the last of his nostalgic trip to Cairo, found himself leading an ecumenical prayer with some teenagers in the Fish Garden for a win for a football team. There was no time for more of his impressions of Egypt before we parted at the Marriott, but he left me his contact information in London; perhaps I’ll look him up next time I’m there.
01.14.10
Coincidences in Cairo: Clyde Edgerton at the Gezira Club [General] -
samia - samia@thecairohouse.com @ 07:46:29
Clyde Edgerton Walking Across Egypt- literally
I have to share this eerie coincidence. Here I am in Cairo walking around the venerable Gezira Sporting Club- so named by its British founders because it sits on Zamalek, an island, or gezira, in the middle of the Nile. My family have been members since I can remember, but there was a period in the sixties when we, and others like us, were banned from all clubs and associations by presidential decree; the monitors at the four gates- known as the Stables, the Children’s Garden, the Clubhouse and the Nile- knew us, and turned a blind eye for years.
That was a long time ago, but I still need to show my card sometimes today, since I am abroad so much the monitors don’t always recognize me. Today, though, I sail through the Stables gate and walk along the track toward the old Clubhouse, with a destination in mind: the new Reading Room. The Clubhouse itself is shabby and rather grim, but the relocated Reading Room is spanking new, a wood-paneled space behind gleaming glass doors, guarded by a categorical sign: “Absolutely no members under 16 allowed. Pleased observe silence.â€
Inside, the three grizzled gentlemen slumped in their club chairs barely raise their heads from their newspapers. On the shelves of one wall are the foreign-language books, and on the far wall are the Arabic books. I look over the modest selection of English and French titles. The collection is random, relying as it does entirely on donations, and ranging from leather-bound series inscribed “from the estate of member such-and-such†to dog-eared paperbacks, many of them generations-old copies familiar to me from the shelves in the old reading room back by the stables: Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, George Sand, Thackeray, and- Clyde Edgerton:Walking Across Egypt.
How did it come to be here, in the Gezira Sporting Club of all places? Who could have brought it here? Someone who ordered it, misled by the title into thinking it actually had to do with Egypt? An American tourist, perhaps from North Carolina, who finished reading it and left it behind? How very odd. And what a coincidence that the thin volume should have caught my eye, as out of place and as much a memento of my hometown of Chapel Hill as a Tar Heel poster?
I pick it up; it is missing the front cover, and there is no inscription in it. I feel as if I should take the ragged, thin little book home, as Miss Mattie might do with a scrawny stray dog or orphan. I take it over to the “librarianâ€, a bored young man sitting at a desk in the corner. Books can be borrowed from the Reading Room, strictly on the honor system; let’s just say that the librarians look very surprised when anyone actually returns a book.
But then I think better of it, and put the book back on the shelf. Never mind how it got there. Clyde Edgerton would be pleased, I’m sure, to know that his Mattie and her friends are walking across Egypt, literally.
I have to share this eerie coincidence. Here I am in Cairo walking around the venerable Gezira Sporting Club- so named by its British founders because it sits on Zamalek, an island, or gezira, in the middle of the Nile. My family have been members since I can remember, but there was a period in the sixties when we, and others like us, were banned from all clubs and associations by presidential decree; the monitors at the four gates- known as the Stables, the Children’s Garden, the Clubhouse and the Nile- knew us, and turned a blind eye for years.
That was a long time ago, but I still need to show my card sometimes today, since I am abroad so much the monitors don’t always recognize me. Today, though, I sail through the Stables gate and walk along the track toward the old Clubhouse, with a destination in mind: the new Reading Room. The Clubhouse itself is shabby and rather grim, but the relocated Reading Room is spanking new, a wood-paneled space behind gleaming glass doors, guarded by a categorical sign: “Absolutely no members under 16 allowed. Pleased observe silence.â€
Inside, the three grizzled gentlemen slumped in their club chairs barely raise their heads from their newspapers. On the shelves of one wall are the foreign-language books, and on the far wall are the Arabic books. I look over the modest selection of English and French titles. The collection is random, relying as it does entirely on donations, and ranging from leather-bound series inscribed “from the estate of member such-and-such†to dog-eared paperbacks, many of them generations-old copies familiar to me from the shelves in the old reading room back by the stables: Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, George Sand, Thackeray, and- Clyde Edgerton:Walking Across Egypt.
How did it come to be here, in the Gezira Sporting Club of all places? Who could have brought it here? Someone who ordered it, misled by the title into thinking it actually had to do with Egypt? An American tourist, perhaps from North Carolina, who finished reading it and left it behind? How very odd. And what a coincidence that the thin volume should have caught my eye, as out of place and as much a memento of my hometown of Chapel Hill as a Tar Heel poster?
I pick it up; it is missing the front cover, and there is no inscription in it. I feel as if I should take the ragged, thin little book home, as Miss Mattie might do with a scrawny stray dog or orphan. I take it over to the “librarianâ€, a bored young man sitting at a desk in the corner. Books can be borrowed from the Reading Room, strictly on the honor system; let’s just say that the librarians look very surprised when anyone actually returns a book.
But then I think better of it, and put the book back on the shelf. Never mind how it got there. Clyde Edgerton would be pleased, I’m sure, to know that his Mattie and her friends are walking across Egypt, literally.
01.12.10
Cairo 2010:
Giving a talk on "Controversies Contemporary and Historical" to the Cairo Cosmopolitan Rotary Club on the 20th floor of the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek, Cairo, I looked around at the mix of Egyptians and Europeans, an elegant, courteous group of professionals, who turned out in double the usual number for the Monday breakfast meeting, according to the organizer. There were some guests as well, including London-based octagenarian Raymond Levy, on the last day of a nostalgic pilgrimage to revisit the scenes of his childhood in Zamalek.
Looking out from the 20th floor of the Marriott restaurant, you could see a haze of fog, or more likely smog, over the city. But pollution not withstanding, this year, in marked contrast to last year, Cairenes who had bought and built dream villas in the pristine new suburbs are now turning back to central Cairo and desperately trying to sell their McMansions. The downturn in the economy is not the main factor: rather it is the realization that living in the exurbs means being stuck for hours commuting, but even more, that Cairenes by their very gregarious and restless nature feel cut off and depressed when they cannot be bustling around the hub of central Cairo neighborhoods. So, in the same lemming-like fashion that saw the exodus to the new suburbs over the past decade, there is now a reverse flow back into the scarce choice real estate in town, and the real estate market is a roller-coaster.
Giving a talk on "Controversies Contemporary and Historical" to the Cairo Cosmopolitan Rotary Club on the 20th floor of the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek, Cairo, I looked around at the mix of Egyptians and Europeans, an elegant, courteous group of professionals, who turned out in double the usual number for the Monday breakfast meeting, according to the organizer. There were some guests as well, including London-based octagenarian Raymond Levy, on the last day of a nostalgic pilgrimage to revisit the scenes of his childhood in Zamalek.
Looking out from the 20th floor of the Marriott restaurant, you could see a haze of fog, or more likely smog, over the city. But pollution not withstanding, this year, in marked contrast to last year, Cairenes who had bought and built dream villas in the pristine new suburbs are now turning back to central Cairo and desperately trying to sell their McMansions. The downturn in the economy is not the main factor: rather it is the realization that living in the exurbs means being stuck for hours commuting, but even more, that Cairenes by their very gregarious and restless nature feel cut off and depressed when they cannot be bustling around the hub of central Cairo neighborhoods. So, in the same lemming-like fashion that saw the exodus to the new suburbs over the past decade, there is now a reverse flow back into the scarce choice real estate in town, and the real estate market is a roller-coaster.
