Casting off the Veil by Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi

Author:Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

7

The game of politics

When Huda returned from Paris with Céza in July 1926, she called a meeting of the editorial board of L’Égyptienne to talk over how to redress the dearth of information about Egypt abroad that Huda had observed during her various foreign trips. They felt sure this ignorance contributed to the difficulty of persuading other countries to bring pressure to bear on Britain finally to relinquish its domination over Egypt and the rights Britain arrogated to itself. The decision was that L’Égyptienne should redouble its efforts to inform the West about the oriental world. Articles would be written about the dynasty of Muhammad Ali, the founder of the present Egyptian state and the ancestor of King Fuad. French translations of Egyptian poems would be published. Huda’s protégé, the poet Foulad Yeghen, would do new translations of writers not previously available in Western languages. Prince Haydar Fazil, the King’s cousin, who wrote excellent French poetry himself, agreed to translate passages of the Qur’an into the French language.

Huda also turned her attention to the management and marketing of the pottery and carpet workshops. Her plan was to establish a local school of arts and crafts that would consolidate artistic creation as a way of life in Egypt. Louis Marcerou, Director of the Librairie Française, later wrote an article for L’Égyptienne about the ancient art of pottery and its recent revival in the Nur al-Huda factory of Rod al-Farag. ‘Nothing is so dead that it cannot be brought back to life again, and nothing so alive that it will not soon die,’ he wrote.1 Marcerou recalled the metaphor of Omar Khayyam, who said that men are themselves made of dust, and therefore thrive on creating objects made out of the same material. With the capable help of James Alfred Coulon, Huda was now successfully reviving this ancient art in Egypt. It was Huda’s enthusiasm for this project that kept ablaze the kilns which fired the pottery made by Egyptian hands in Rod al-Farag. The workshop’s products were to be sold in Cairo and Paris, as well as in Constantinople, Washington and New York. Coulon came to be a key member of Huda’s little court.

Another contribution to renewed creative activity in Egypt had just been made by Badrawi Ashur Pasha, who put up 150,000 Egyptian pounds of his own money to help fund the construction of a textile factory. After the cotton crisis of 1927, the factories of Manchester had failed to buy Egypt’s cotton crop. Talaat Harb’s Banque Misr also helped fund the new factory, but Badrawi Ashur Pasha’s initiative greatly contributed to the revitalisation of the Egyptian economy. Huda reported his gesture in L’Égyptienne. ‘We are convinced,’ she said, ‘that this great patriot’s fine gesture will be followed by similar initiatives on the part of all Egyptians, without exception.’ Everyone in the country, she reaffirmed, would want to subscribe to this great project, in order to rescue Egypt from the perilous economic situation that had resulted from the total absence of local industry.

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