WATANI International
19 December 2010
At the BA
Nothing dates faster than an innovation, and new technology produces the most rapidly expendable items in history. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) recently collaborated with the Memory of Modern Egypt Project to hold a special exhibition named Min fat adeemuh taah, a popular colloquial proverb which literally translates as: “He who abandons his old things is lost”.
The proverb is meant to stress that the modernity is rooted in the past, and that this past should be cherished. The exhibition displayed several everyday items from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Among the exhibits were the first telephones used in Egypt; gramophones; old radios; fezzes or tarboushes; street signs; old coins and personal items such as stamp collections.
The exhibition aimed at linking members of the current generation with their past, giving them the opportunity to familiarise themselves with old products in order to collect and display their own old photographs and items.
As a link with the present, a special pavilion was allocated to the public authority for cultural palaces to show its ‘traditional’ products including rugs, carpets, ceramics, stained glass and calligraphy, as well as tent making and sculpture. There were several workshops to allow members of the public to see them first-hand being manufactured. The association of businesswomen of the future, which does active community work in Fuwah in the northern Delta, also displayed rugs carpets, and textiles made by its members.
Second-hand books
The BA and the Memory of Modern Egypt Project also collaborated in organising the Second-hand Book Festival, held from 28 November to 3 December.
The aim was to provide readers with second-hand books amidst the increase in book prices and the rising demand for rare books. The festival featured out-of-print books, in addition to religious, cultural, and university books, novels, poetry and periodicals in Arabic and in English. A special pavilion was dedicated to sellers of used books, whose stalls famously occupy Soor al-Azbakiya (the Azbakiya Wall) in Downtown Cairo. It also featured rare and valuable books to meet the need of collectors.
Members of the public were allowed to put up their own books for sale or exchange, thereby opening new markets for used books and book circulation.
The Egyptian Folk Dance Ensemble directed by Mohamed Mursi performed some of their dances, including Bedouin Girl and Saeedi (Upper Egyptian). Khaled Azab, supervisor of the Memory of Modern Egypt project, said they planned to hold the two events in Alexandria annually, as well as in Sayida Zeinab, Cairo, during the coming summer.