Cairo Int’l Book Fair: Publishers’ Picks (V)

Dina Ezzat , Wednesday 22 Jan 2025

Ahead of the Cairo International Book Fair (23 January - 5 February), Ahram Online publishes a sequel to many reviews of new volumes that will be available during the top annual cultural event. The publishers themselves offered and shared these titles.

Book

 

Sawt Al-Makan: Sayran a’la Al-Akdam fi Goghrafia Masr (The Sound of the Place: Strolling across the Geography of Egypt) by Atef Moa’atamad, Al-Shorouk, pp 270

This book’s author is a geography professor who is certainly very well-versed in his subject. However, academic merit is not the only reason that a volume bearing his name is worth reading. Atef Moa’atmed has also been working very hard to share information on far and remote spots in the country.

In this 270-page volume, Moa’atmed takes the reader across the country to share impressions, information, and reflections on the places he chose to delve into.

This, however, is not a travel book — just as it is not strictly a geography text. It is rather a volume that tries to explain how the place influences the people — or rather, “the identity of the place” and its impact on the people who live in a particular place, including Alexandria, right on the Mediterranean Sea, the Oasis in the western deserts of the country, or elsewhere in Egypt.

Equally, the book examines the impact of changes in urban nature and social makeup on places in a way that indeed changes their  'identity.'

The book is a very smooth and pleasant read. The author takes the reader to specific places to recall his strolls and share his stories. He writes about Beir Massoud, Sidi Bishr, and Ezzbit Mohssen. He reflects on the cemeteries of Al-Shatbi, which are much less depressive than the average cemetery in most Egyptian governorates.

The Alexandria strolls reflect on city sites, including the statues that dot the city, the churches, the mosques, and some leading hotels.

However, these strolls are not entirely free of critical observations. He expresses his dismay at the loss of architectural heritage in a city like Alexandria. He also discusses the degeneration of access to public beaches and the subsequent absence of “the geography of equity and justice” that would have otherwise been confined to discrepancies in services and quality of life.

Moa’atmed applies the same approach with the other walks. In the case of Nubia, for example, he talks about the people who live in Egypt’s deep south, with an ethnic extension into the very north of Sudan. He touches upon the names of places, the urban evolution, the agricultural profile, and the association between the people and the Nile River. He also talks about the impact of the construction of the High Dam on the people who used to live in villages that ended up being eliminated and how people have developed a firm trait of loyalty to the river.

History is also part of Moa’atmed’s story. For example, in his account of the Cairo walks, the references to places come with precise accounts of their historical background — from the Pharaonic to the Coptic and Islamic.

On every stroll, Moa’atmed must comment on the sounds of the places he goes to. In the case of Alexandria, there is the sound of the sea; in Aswan and Nubia, the sound of the river, and so on.

Moa’atmed’s narration is quite ‘visual’ in nature. He leaves his reader with ideas about places to explore and sufficient background.

 

Mozakerat Cicurel (Cicurel’s Memoirs), Translated from the original French: The Cairo Memoirs – a Childhood Recollection of a Jewish Grandfather from Egypt) by Ronald Cicurel, Translated by Abdel-Meguid Al-Mehemily, Diwan, pp 207

 

This is not exactly a memoir. It is the closest thing to being what the original French title indicates “souvenirs d’enfance” (A childhood keepsake). It is a tribute from the son of Salvator Cicurel, a Jewish-Egyptian financer who was a major shareholder of one of the top department stores in the country in the first half of the 20th century. He was also head of the Jewish community in Egypt between 1946 and 1957 before he departed from Egypt in the wake of the Suez War and the subsequent tension between the Egyptian government and the Jewish community.

According to the introduction of the book, it was upon the request of Ronald Cicurel’s daughter, Valerie, to write about the Cicurel family history to her son Ben that he started to pen this brief text, which is mostly about the peaceful and joyful childhood days that he had in the financially privileged and relatively cosmopolitan side of Cairo.

The book's most significant part is dedicated to drawing a very romantic picture of a highly integrated Jewish family whose descent came to Egypt from Izmir and Italy in the late 19th century and was wholly committed to Egypt.

“My father was not a Zionist and never thought about Israel as a destination for our family,” Ronald Cicurel wrote in what is supposed to be a long and open letter to his grandchild.

He also wrote, “My uncle Joseph joined Talaat Harb in launching Banque Misr in 1920.”

Ronald Cicurel’s text reads like a little fairy tale interrupted by the Tripartite Aggression of France, England, and Israel against Egypt in the wake of the nationalization of the Suez Canal. The family had to rush to board a Swiss Air flight that Salvator Cicurel could not join as he was stopped by security for interrogation.

Later, Ronald’s father joined the family that moved from Switzerland to Italy and then back to Switzerland, where most of the family stayed – with Ronald’s sister later moving to Latin America.

In 1986, Ronald Cicurel’s nostalgia got him to visit Egypt for the first time in three decades. The visit was a bit of a shock because the Egypt he found was very different from the one he had left. This first ‘return’ trip did not prohibit Ronald from subsequent trips to the country he held very special memories of.

In her introduction to the Arabic edition, Magda Shehata Haroun, the chair of a highly dwindling Jewish community, wrote that this book is important because it tells the truth about Salvator Cicurel's case.

“We need to learn about what happened rather than what has been propagated to have happened. We need to learn about the reality of our past because we owe it to future generations for this reality to be shared and because without knowing our past we would simply be lost.”

According to Haroun, the daughter of Chehata Haroune, an Egyptian-Jewish lawyer who declined to leave Egypt until he died in 2001, the Cicurel book shows the financial ‘difficulties’ the family had upon leaving Egypt, contrary to the claims that the family had illicitly obtained large sums of money out of Egypt.

The book has photos of the Cicurel family and photocopies of the family members’ identification cards.

Short link: