More on Egypt, Mother of the World

BELOW: Checking the View: Supreme Egyptian Military Headquarters, Heliopolis (Cairo):

BELOW: “Meanwhile, the rich get…”: U.S.-favored former Tunisian ruler Habib Bourguiba, 1965.

All of above photographs © William Carter.  Below photographs uncredited, via William Carter courtesy Camera Press (London).

Meanwhile, fundamentalists of every stripe have always liked to impress with “shock and awe”:

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Egypt, Mother of of the World

I landed in Beirut in 1964 knowing nothing of the region. I was there to represent a New York photo agency — when such outfits had their people stationed around the world doing photojournalistic assignments.

One of the first people I met was the New York Times’ Middle East bureau chief, Dana Adams Schmidt. A seasoned writer, he was just leaving for Egypt, Yemen, South Arabia and Yemen: did I want to go with him? I jumped at the chance.

In Cairo I accompanied Dana on some of his political interviews. Nasser was in power trumpeting his anti-colonialist, pro-socialist, Arab-nationalist agenda. Since time immemorial the Egyptians, with their proud history, had considered themselves the cultural and political leaders of the Arab community.

The term for this outlook was — and is — Masr, Um al-Dunia: “Egypt, mother of the world.”

I had time to explore the  teeming, wonderful streets. The following year I would return to the Nile Delta photographing for a UN agricultural development agency. The country’s problems were deep — seemingly intractable — yet the faces were joyous. I can only hope some of that spirit survives the latest crisis. Half a century seems less long inside a seedbed of civilization.

All photos © William Carter 1965

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Egypt Update 12/3/2013

Text: Another dispatch from our friend and correspondent, Virginia Papadopoulo, living and teaching in Egypt.

Photographs: © William Carter 1964: Amid profound changes, has Egypt’s inner spirit survived?

I wish I had good news for you from Cairo, but things just keep getting worse. The word is that the American School in Maadi, where I live, had  a number of students leave [see below]. Most of the U.S. Embassy families had to leave and they are closing the U.S. Consulate in Alexandria. Our school out in Sheikh Zayed did not suffer much of a loss, because most of the families are very wealthy Egyptians. Out by our school life goes on as usual – shopping malls are popping up like mushrooms, and the restaurants are open and full. The reason I left the desert [see below] after my first year was because It was not Egypt. Could have been any wealthy neighborhood I have visited in the world.

What does worry me is the incidence of attacks on fellow teachers. One wonderful Dutch couple were mugged twice in the last several months. They are now looking to leave, and they love Cairo.  Local Egyptian friends were stopped at check points  during the curfew and harassed, threatened, and taken to jail. Two teachers went through very humiliating luggage searches coming from the airport. Small incidents, but they end up being the topic of conversation. There are more demonstrations in my town, but I don’t usually go out on Friday. The town of Mohandiseen where a lot of teachers live is becoming unbearable for many because of the constant demonstrations, and they are moving out near the school and not returning next year.

I am sitting here in my apartment and there are horns blaring, gun shots, and packs of dogs barking, but it could be from a wedding — it is hard to tell.

I am not out and about at night unless with friends, and even that is pretty local. I walk to and from my bus on the same route every day and I know my neighborhood. I greet and am greeted every day and feel perfectly safe – maybe being 70 has something to do with that. Or, maybe I just want to believe everything is ok, to give me another reason to keep doing what I love so much, and to stay here.

later:

Just spoke to a colleague whose husband works at the American Embassy. She was told not to come back in September, but her husband stayed in Egypt. She had to put her three children into schools in the US, but finally returned this week. Her children go to CAC. Her words to me were, “The school had approximately 1,400 students before the first revolution, and they are down to about 900 after the 2nd revolution.” So somewhere between 1-2 hundred have not returned this year. There are several other international schools that have shut down completely, but to be fair, people are returning. Who they are I don’t know. The important thing is that these returns do not significantly improve the tourist trade—it is dying a slow death. It is absolutely the perfect time to “See Egypt” —no crowds.

When I say the desert, I am talking about an area called Sheikh Zayed, and it is in the larger area of 6 October. It is southwest of the pyramids, (which we see twice a day, and still bring tears to my eyes) and probably 25 miles out. Initially the drive was through farmland—beautiful. There were compounds near the school, but mostly sand four years ago. The view from the front of my school was truly nothing but desert. There were no restaurants in our area and only one huge grocery store to shop in a few miles from where we lived, which you had to take a taxi to. That was four years ago, and the reason why I wanted to get out of the desert and move into the life of Cairo proper. Today the sand is gone and all you see for miles and miles are huge walled compounds and shopping malls. The beautiful farmland is vanishing, and it seem the reason is because there is no control on building. I should have invested in cement and construction equipment four years ago!

Above: Pharaoh-like statue of dictator General Gamal Nasser outside Supreme Military Headquarters, 1964: in six decades of change, does a need for strong-armed authority persist?

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Crossing Party Lines – Creatively

When angry goons with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders banged on the door, the man who later married us opened with a big grin and invited them in for tea.

Such was the spirit — and cross-cultural savvy — of John Markarian, the founding President of the Armenian-American College of Beirut, a post in which he served for three decades. The date was October 26, 1975 — in the depths of the terrible civil wars that destroyed Lebanon’s old image as the Switzerland of the Middle East.

John’s invitation to the goons was the first of several similar incidents in which he effectively saved the college. A devout Presbyterian minister with a Ph.D. from Princeton, he knew Muslim society almost as well as he knew the Bible. His actions at the college door — and later the title of his autobiography — came to him from the Book of Proverbs, and Paul’s Letters to the Romans: “When your enemy is thirsty, give him a drink.”

Leaving their weapons near the door, the would-be assailants happily sat down and sipped Arab-style cups of tea with John and his wife Inge — then departed, leaving the college alone.

Not that a similar strategy would necessarily work in Cairo today. Still, it’s worth remembering that fixed positions often lead to fixed bayonets.

I am glad the U.S. State Department is no longer led by Condoleezza Rice. In Cairo, near the beginning of her term, she announced very publicly to Hosni Mubarak and the listening Arab world that the U.S. was about to confer democracy on the Middle East.

I did work out of Beirut as a photojournalist in the 1960s. For many more years I have worked as a fine-art photographer, and for even more years I’ve been a semi-professional jazz clarinetist.

But some of my richest experiences were as a devotee of spiritual master Baba Muktananda in India. The rules in his traditional Hindu ashram were strict. More broadly, that experience freed me  to more fully appreciate, later, the achievements of many other deep masters, such the Dalai Lama.

Now pushing 80, I have been assembling my jazz pictures and memories spanning six decades. Crossing – or not crossing – party lines can have consequences in this field as well. Originally a fierce traditional-jazz purist, I gradually modified that position. For one thing, I noticed that the jazz masters were less often purists than many of their fans. They played as they played — and were cordial with their colleagues across the aisles of nightclubs and recording studios.

Twenty-five years ago, in Mendota, Minnesota, I had dinner with famous bassist Milt Hinton before working a gig with him. Showing me layouts of his new photo book, Milt told me how he had transitioned through every style of jazz, from the 1920s, through years on the road with swing bands, to studio gigs in the “golden age” of modernism and after.

Later, I met other major musicians of today, like Dick Hyman, Shelly Berg, and Arturo Sandoval — all of whom continue to cross over, easily, among jazz styles.

As for me, I still just play funky New Orleans clarinet from the earliest period of jazz. The other night we played a Lindy Hop swing dance with Clint Baker’s band: not even a bandstand, and the light I could see in the dancers’ eyes and feet had no name or form.

And Egypt?

The politics appear far from hopeful for the foreseeable future.

That wonderful land, with its vast plurality of peoples,  has a long habit of being governed by pharaohs.

We can only hope Egypt, with its sophisticated depth, soon finds its way back to a sense of unity in diversity — a vision of its own stillness at the core.

Above: Pastor John Markarian officiating at Ulla’s and Bill’s wedding, March 23, 1985.

Below: Dick Hyman at Filoli, near San Francisco: the fleet, versatile jazz pianist is known for his expertise across the “party lines” of many styles and periods, from  ragtime to swing to contemporary.

Photograph of Dick Hyman © William Carter 2010

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