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| The Derelict Palace, Cairo |
Excerpt from 'They Call Him Light' by Katherine Boland
Somehow the polite young man from the Egyptian Cultural Development Foundation managed to find me, sitting on my suitcase slightly dazed after a twenty five hour flight from Melbourne, as I watched the engrossing scene. After weaving our way on foot through the mayhem to his car he drove me skilfully through the treacherous traffic to the city centre and dropped me off at my hotel. I'd wanted to spend some time by myself in Cairo before I met up with the other artists participating in the Symposium at the end of the week. I‘d booked the hotel because of its location just off the now infamous Tahrir Square and also because of its name, ‘The Cairo Downtown Hotel’. It had reminded me for some reason of the 70’s rock band, The Eagles and their famous song,’ Hotel California’. That’s as good enough reason as any in the ‘lucky dip’ world of hotel booking to book cheap and cheerful accommodation online. ‘This could be Heaven or this could be Hell’, I mused. But my intuition paid off. The hotel and the staff rocked.
For the next few days I did the things that most tourists do, the Egyptian Museum, the mosques, the souqs, culminating in the obligatory camel ride around the Pyramids. One day I was walking down Champollion Street past the line of outdoor motor mechanic workshops trying to catch a glimpse of the rows of gleaming, immaculately detailed early model Rolls Royce’s and Bently’s in the garages behind when I came across a secret jewel. A huge 19th century edifice, spectacularly run-down like Havisham Hall in Dicken’s Great Expectations. When I arrived back at the hotel I asked Wahid on reception about it. He told me it was Prince Said Halim’s Palace and then for many years a school, until after years of abuse it fell into total disrepair and has remained that way ever since.
‘I heard that a rich guy from Alexandria has bought it and is going to turn it into a big hotel’, he said.
I asked if I, as a visiting artist to Egypt on invitation by the Egyptian government, could possibly get permission from the Ministry of Culture to take photographs of the interior.
‘Of course’, he said. ‘It will not be a problem. Leave it with me. I will arrange everything’.
I raced upstairs to my room to Google the palace on my laptop and found this intriguing reference:‘Halim was obsessed with Rome -- the city in which, ironically, he would eventually be assassinated by Arshavir Shiragian, an American agent, in December 1921. It was only natural that he should commission Antonio Lasciac, the Italian who designed, among other regal downtown buildings, the palace of Princess Neamat Kamaleddin and the headquarters of Bank Misr, to build his Cairo residence in 1896. In line with the extravagant tastes of the house of Mohamed Ali, materials were imported all the way from Italy. And despite his wife's preference for the Bosporus, where she eventually died, Halim spent much time in this, the envy of his blue-blooded cousins.The palace was confiscated by the British in the wake of WWI, in which Halim had sided with the Ottomans, and later transformed into Al-Nassiriyah secondary school for boys -- many a deputy and cabinet minister would receive their education there -- before the latter's gardens, once the site of marble fountains and unique species of tree, were cordoned off and occupied by apartment buildings. It was then, too, that the street was named after Champollion and the rumour spread that the Egyptologist was living there while he deciphered the Rosetta Stone, unlocking a limitless cache of ancient mystery. Early in 2000, the palace was finally included in the register of the Institut Français d'Archaeologie Orientale, which seeks to document all monuments.’
The next morning after breakfast Wahid told me to be ready to leave at 2pm. I had permission to access the derelict palace. He would take me there. I was so excited by the prospect and felt like I was about to step into a wardrobe to find Narnia on the other side.
As we approached the grounds of the palace I asked about the written permission I assumed Wahid had obtained in order for us to enter.
‘I am giving you permission', he declared.
'What if we get caught?' I asked. 'Won’t we get into trouble’?
‘Do not worry’, he said. ‘Come’.
He veered abruptly into a side street and suddenly we were at the entrance to the palace. My partner in crime pushed open the large wrought iron gates and I followed him stealthily into the grounds. I could see the guard with his back to us in the distance. Like a couple of characters from a Bond movie we made a dash to the ornate portico and slipped through the front door and inside. As I caught my breath I took in my surroundings. To my eyes it was breathtakingly beautiful. In Australia we rarely have the opportunity to experience this kind of crumbling grandeur, pouncing on old buildings and restoring them to immaculate perfection the minute they look like even slightly deteriorating. But fading beauty and decay in architecture has always made me reflect on the fleeting nature of things, a theme that has consistently inspired my artwork over the years.
The interior was wonderfully ramshackle. A thick layer of the pale grey dust covered the bare wood floor, not a footprint marring the powdered surface. No one had been in here for a very long time. At the far end of the once grand entrance hall a magnificent, branching wrought iron staircase sat before a vast panel of murky lead light windows. Walking from room to room, soaking up the hushed atmosphere, I took photographs and mused about the things that must have taken place in the ‘belle epoch’ of the building. I climbed the ever narrowing stairs until I surfaced onto the large, flat expanse of rooftop and looked over the parapet wall to the tree lined streets below. There was more to discover. Beneath the disintegrating palace I found a labyrinth of passages and dim, dungeon like rooms where the servants must have lived and worked. But the light was beginning to fade and it was time to leave.
Wahid checked to see that the coast was clear. We stepped outside and ran furtively towards the gates. But half way across the forecourt the guard spotted us and like some kind of angry, bald, Egyptian giant he began striding thunderously in our direction. He was wearing a billowing galabeya which seemed to emphasize his enormous bulk. I glanced sideways at Wahid’s svelte frame and thought -‘we're fucked’. Surprisingly my feather weight guardian appeared unfazed. On the other side of the grounds I could see the guard’s wife locking the gates, blocking our escape. Wahid and the guard began arguing with each other in Arabic. I stood back but I soon realised the quarrel wasn’t malicious. There seemed to be no venom in the men's animated exchange. After a few minutes Wahid asked me if I had any money. I gave him ten Egyptian pounds. The guard became even angrier, crying out like he'd been stabbed in the chest,throwing his arms up in horror as if what I had given him was an insult to Allah Himself. The two men resumed their argument with greater intensity. They were really making a meal of it. But it was like watching an over acted pantomime rather than any real life drama. Wahid asked for another ten pounds and again he handed the bribe to the guard. Instantly the Middle Eastern monster’s fury evaporated. Wahid had obviously met his foe's expectations. The former adversaries shook hands and beaming as if they were the best of friends clapped each other heartily on the back. Now the giant turned his attention to me. Materializing into the most congenial tour guide in Egypt he smiled ecstatically exposing two mouldy front teeth and with a flourish of his brown dinner plate sized hand and a slight and charming bow he beckoned me back inside to continue my tour, even making polite and helpful recommendations about things of which I should take note. So concluded a successful business deal.
‘Welcome to Egypt’, Wahid said smiling dryly. ‘Baksheesh. That is how it is done’.
At the end of my stay at the Cairo Downtown Hotel I thanked my guide for his assistance and tried to give him a modest tip which he repeatedly refused to accept. ‘No worries mate’, he said to me with a perfect Australian accent and a wide grin as he turned his attention to the Japanese tourist at the reception.
Outside
the airport I was greeted by bedlam. Families struggling
with piles of luggage navigated their way precariously to or
from the exits and entrances to the terminal through a
gridlocked sea of cars. Taxi drivers yelled and gesticulated
wildly to each other from the wound down windows of their battered
vehicles. Horns blared insistently, it seemed to no avail, while the
sounds of Egyptian pop music and verses from the
Qu'ran drifted from the idling cabs and mingled in the
sulphurous air. Boys with coarse, matted hair and skinny men in
long robes and turbans begged Westerners for a few piasters in
exchange for carrying bags or minding cars and lined and worn
weary women in dusty veils and sandals, babies bound to
their backs, roamed the crammed car park trying to sell packets of
tissues or biscuits, their plaintive pleas to prospective customers
lost in the din.
Somehow the polite young man from the Egyptian Cultural Development Foundation managed to find me, sitting on my suitcase slightly dazed after a twenty five hour flight from Melbourne, as I watched the engrossing scene. After weaving our way on foot through the mayhem to his car he drove me skilfully through the treacherous traffic to the city centre and dropped me off at my hotel. I'd wanted to spend some time by myself in Cairo before I met up with the other artists participating in the Symposium at the end of the week. I‘d booked the hotel because of its location just off the now infamous Tahrir Square and also because of its name, ‘The Cairo Downtown Hotel’. It had reminded me for some reason of the 70’s rock band, The Eagles and their famous song,’ Hotel California’. That’s as good enough reason as any in the ‘lucky dip’ world of hotel booking to book cheap and cheerful accommodation online. ‘This could be Heaven or this could be Hell’, I mused. But my intuition paid off. The hotel and the staff rocked.
For the next few days I did the things that most tourists do, the Egyptian Museum, the mosques, the souqs, culminating in the obligatory camel ride around the Pyramids. One day I was walking down Champollion Street past the line of outdoor motor mechanic workshops trying to catch a glimpse of the rows of gleaming, immaculately detailed early model Rolls Royce’s and Bently’s in the garages behind when I came across a secret jewel. A huge 19th century edifice, spectacularly run-down like Havisham Hall in Dicken’s Great Expectations. When I arrived back at the hotel I asked Wahid on reception about it. He told me it was Prince Said Halim’s Palace and then for many years a school, until after years of abuse it fell into total disrepair and has remained that way ever since.
‘I heard that a rich guy from Alexandria has bought it and is going to turn it into a big hotel’, he said.
I asked if I, as a visiting artist to Egypt on invitation by the Egyptian government, could possibly get permission from the Ministry of Culture to take photographs of the interior.
‘Of course’, he said. ‘It will not be a problem. Leave it with me. I will arrange everything’.
I raced upstairs to my room to Google the palace on my laptop and found this intriguing reference:‘Halim was obsessed with Rome -- the city in which, ironically, he would eventually be assassinated by Arshavir Shiragian, an American agent, in December 1921. It was only natural that he should commission Antonio Lasciac, the Italian who designed, among other regal downtown buildings, the palace of Princess Neamat Kamaleddin and the headquarters of Bank Misr, to build his Cairo residence in 1896. In line with the extravagant tastes of the house of Mohamed Ali, materials were imported all the way from Italy. And despite his wife's preference for the Bosporus, where she eventually died, Halim spent much time in this, the envy of his blue-blooded cousins.The palace was confiscated by the British in the wake of WWI, in which Halim had sided with the Ottomans, and later transformed into Al-Nassiriyah secondary school for boys -- many a deputy and cabinet minister would receive their education there -- before the latter's gardens, once the site of marble fountains and unique species of tree, were cordoned off and occupied by apartment buildings. It was then, too, that the street was named after Champollion and the rumour spread that the Egyptologist was living there while he deciphered the Rosetta Stone, unlocking a limitless cache of ancient mystery. Early in 2000, the palace was finally included in the register of the Institut Français d'Archaeologie Orientale, which seeks to document all monuments.’
The next morning after breakfast Wahid told me to be ready to leave at 2pm. I had permission to access the derelict palace. He would take me there. I was so excited by the prospect and felt like I was about to step into a wardrobe to find Narnia on the other side.
As we approached the grounds of the palace I asked about the written permission I assumed Wahid had obtained in order for us to enter.
‘I am giving you permission', he declared.
'What if we get caught?' I asked. 'Won’t we get into trouble’?
‘Do not worry’, he said. ‘Come’.
He veered abruptly into a side street and suddenly we were at the entrance to the palace. My partner in crime pushed open the large wrought iron gates and I followed him stealthily into the grounds. I could see the guard with his back to us in the distance. Like a couple of characters from a Bond movie we made a dash to the ornate portico and slipped through the front door and inside. As I caught my breath I took in my surroundings. To my eyes it was breathtakingly beautiful. In Australia we rarely have the opportunity to experience this kind of crumbling grandeur, pouncing on old buildings and restoring them to immaculate perfection the minute they look like even slightly deteriorating. But fading beauty and decay in architecture has always made me reflect on the fleeting nature of things, a theme that has consistently inspired my artwork over the years.
The interior was wonderfully ramshackle. A thick layer of the pale grey dust covered the bare wood floor, not a footprint marring the powdered surface. No one had been in here for a very long time. At the far end of the once grand entrance hall a magnificent, branching wrought iron staircase sat before a vast panel of murky lead light windows. Walking from room to room, soaking up the hushed atmosphere, I took photographs and mused about the things that must have taken place in the ‘belle epoch’ of the building. I climbed the ever narrowing stairs until I surfaced onto the large, flat expanse of rooftop and looked over the parapet wall to the tree lined streets below. There was more to discover. Beneath the disintegrating palace I found a labyrinth of passages and dim, dungeon like rooms where the servants must have lived and worked. But the light was beginning to fade and it was time to leave.
Wahid checked to see that the coast was clear. We stepped outside and ran furtively towards the gates. But half way across the forecourt the guard spotted us and like some kind of angry, bald, Egyptian giant he began striding thunderously in our direction. He was wearing a billowing galabeya which seemed to emphasize his enormous bulk. I glanced sideways at Wahid’s svelte frame and thought -‘we're fucked’. Surprisingly my feather weight guardian appeared unfazed. On the other side of the grounds I could see the guard’s wife locking the gates, blocking our escape. Wahid and the guard began arguing with each other in Arabic. I stood back but I soon realised the quarrel wasn’t malicious. There seemed to be no venom in the men's animated exchange. After a few minutes Wahid asked me if I had any money. I gave him ten Egyptian pounds. The guard became even angrier, crying out like he'd been stabbed in the chest,throwing his arms up in horror as if what I had given him was an insult to Allah Himself. The two men resumed their argument with greater intensity. They were really making a meal of it. But it was like watching an over acted pantomime rather than any real life drama. Wahid asked for another ten pounds and again he handed the bribe to the guard. Instantly the Middle Eastern monster’s fury evaporated. Wahid had obviously met his foe's expectations. The former adversaries shook hands and beaming as if they were the best of friends clapped each other heartily on the back. Now the giant turned his attention to me. Materializing into the most congenial tour guide in Egypt he smiled ecstatically exposing two mouldy front teeth and with a flourish of his brown dinner plate sized hand and a slight and charming bow he beckoned me back inside to continue my tour, even making polite and helpful recommendations about things of which I should take note. So concluded a successful business deal.
‘Welcome to Egypt’, Wahid said smiling dryly. ‘Baksheesh. That is how it is done’.
At the end of my stay at the Cairo Downtown Hotel I thanked my guide for his assistance and tried to give him a modest tip which he repeatedly refused to accept. ‘No worries mate’, he said to me with a perfect Australian accent and a wide grin as he turned his attention to the Japanese tourist at the reception.
To see images of the Derelict Palace click link below
https://www.facebook.com/katherine.boland.3/media_set?set=a.10150093103424343.300116.650769342&type=3
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