The date was sometime in January 2008. Having just left work, I
decided to walk home. This time of day, walking was faster anyway. As I
climbed the stairs of the “Sixth of October Bridge” crossing the Nile
from Cairo into Giza, I passed cars stuck in traffic. I knew that had I
taken a taxi I would have arrived home in an hour or so, even though
I lived ten minutes away on foot! Halfway across the Nile I stopped to
catch my breath. The view on the bridge was pretty much the same: cars
stacked one after the other in ad hoc rows, honking at each
other for no apparent reason and their exhaust fumes adding to the
city's already sub-human pollution levels (Cairo had made the rank of
most polluted city in the world only last year). So instead, I turned
and stared at the river. It is difficult to visualize how this city had
ever been better. But there was a time, indeed there were many times,
when Egypt was a much nicer place to live in.
It all started some 5000 years ago. The rise of the Empire of “Kemet” that dominated the known world for almost twenty centuries! I thought about this number. The Roman Empire in all its glory only lasted a few centuries, and so did the Hellenic civilization in Greece. But before them, a stable and powerful society had thrived along the valley of the Nile for about 2000 years! These were times of glory and greatness, when the King was law and the law was good. The people breathed the clean dry air of the desert, cooled down by the pure water of the greatest river in the world. The King, or Per-‘a برعا (pharaoh - meaning the Great House) was the ruler of the world; the most powerful human being in the universe. When Pharaoh spoke, the Earth trembled and powerful rulers scurried to do his bidding; Egypt's bidding. The ancient Egyptians thrived and lived happily through many centuries, before the decline of the Empire.
Ages of darkness and oppression followed. Every once in a while there were brief periods of glory. The light that was gone with the fall of the Empire was never completely extinguished and did twinkle very faintly every now and then, never fully brightening into a full-fledged fire.
Then along came an Ottoman tobacco salesman.
The nineteenth century saw the rise to power of the Ottoman Mohammed Ali. He is known today as the founder of Modern Egypt. But his vision of Egypt was different from what it ended up being. He saw Egypt as it was thousands of years ago, a power to be reckoned with, militarily, economically and in every other way conceivable. He dreamed of an educated people, leading the nations in science, technology and the arts. He saw the ancient spark and dreamed of rekindling it.
A particularly loud honk startled me and distracted my thoughts for a second. Drivers behind me started shouting obscenities at each other. Mohammed Ali certainly didn't dream of this.
I took a deep breath of polluted air and went on daydreaming. My mind raced forward, through a series of Mohammed Ali's successors, finally resting on the last great King of Egypt: Farouk the First. Now here is a name that one doesn't usually hear accompanied with good things. For many years we were systematically trained to think of “Farouk the drunkard,” “Farouk the womanizer,” even “Farouk the traitor;” the man who sold his country for a few pounds Sterling. It was only recently that we started to learn the truth. He was none of those things. What he was is a man who wished to continue his great-great grandfather Mohammed Ali’s dream of reawakening the ancient glory. But the times were against his visions. And he fell.
I looked around me. The scene hasn't changed. So I proceeded to continue my walk home.
What if, I thought, things went differently? What if King Farouk had better advisers? What if he had managed to overcome the forces against him and had continued on the path of a democratic constitutional monarchy, that which was started in the time of his father, King Fouad the First?
What if, what if?
I sighed. The “what ifs” are always useless.
Finally I was home, and all I wanted to do was shut away the noises and smells of the city. Eventually I settled down in my favorite couch and put on a CD. My choice was Verdi's greatest opera; “Aida.” Cast in ancient Egypt, it told the love story between a dashing Egyptian general and a beautiful Ethiopian Princess, captured on the battlefield along with her father the King and driven to Egypt as prisoners. One of the most beautiful scenes in Verdi's masterpiece is the famous “Grand March,” where the chorus sings the praises of Egypt in preparation for a grand battle. I listened to the music and my eyes started to close. As I slowly dosed off, I had a strange but wonderful vision: The year was 1940. The location was the old Cairo Opera House, built by none other than Khedive Ismael, son of Mohammed Ali Pasha and grandfather of King Farouk, in his effort to continue his father's vision of a modern Egypt. I sat in a balcony, wearing a tuxedo and a red tarbush (also known as a fez), assuming the role of an Egyptian dignitary of the period. On stage, the “Grand March” from Aida was playing. The music filled the auditorium. The chorus sang loudly and proudly: “Gloria all’ Egitto, Gloria all’ Egitto” “All Glory to Egypt, All Glory to Egypt.” I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I gazed across the audience, and in the center, exactly across from the stage, was the royal box. In it sat a young King Farouk, surrounded by his sisters the Princesses Fawzia and Fayza. The King stared in awe towards the stage, breathless. As the Chorus thundered in praise of our beautiful country, I saw the King lean forward and grab the railing, eyes fixed on stage. His eyes were full of tears, his features trembling in pride.
His face told it all.
I woke up. The music had stopped, and all I could hear were the honks and shouts from the street.
Moataz Emam 2008
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