Maadi by Annalise J.K. DeVries

Author:Annalise J.K. DeVries [DeVries, Annalise J.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, International, Economics & Trade, History, Middle East, Egypt, Political Science, Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development
ISBN: 9789774169786
Google: UJZSzQEACAAJ
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:47:12+00:00

8

A WAR OF TWO VILLAS

On 2 April 1940, al-Ahram reported on Egypt’s precarious position at the beginning of the Second World War. “Egypt is not at war, but prepares for war,” the headline read. The newspaper went on to report that the Egyptian economy had thus far profited from the European conflict, with cotton prices on the rise and land values likewise increasing. As for whether or not Egypt would go to war, the paper reported that according to one political official, Egypt would not enter the war unless its borders were threatened, or its ally England was targeted. That last condition proved critical to Egypt’s war experience, as alliance came to look more and more like the reimposition of imperial control.1

The al-Ahram story described how officials anticipated that the fire of war in Europe would “spark” a similar conflict in the Near East but had yet to do so.2 Because of the particulars of its society, however, Maadi had already seen conflicts over European racial ideologies smoldering in Egypt. Beginning in 1933, a court battle over German antisemitism unfolded, indicating how the conflicts of the Second World War would fracture the town. That August, Umberto Jabes charged Wilhelm Van Meeteren, a Maadi resident and president of Cairo’s German Club, with libel for publishing an inflammatory pamphlet based on Nazi antisemitism.3 Van Meeteren was well connected to Egypt’s elite, entertaining Dr. Hafiz ‘Afifi Pasha, Ahmad Kamal Pasha, and Cairo’s governor Shazli Pasha at his Maadi home.4 Jabes’s lawyer, Leon Castro, emphasized Egypt’s identity as a cosmopolitan nation in his condemnation of the pamphlet, arguing, “If some Germans in this country were allowed to say, in effect, that Jews were bad people, it was a very serious thing because it might lead to some persecution of a minority, which in a country containing many minorities is very dangerous.”5 The pamphlet, titled “The Extension of Judaism in Germany,” claimed that “Jews did not participate in productive work but preferred to make the work of others the object of their commerce.”6 In Van Meeteren’s defense, his lawyer, German barrister Friedrich Grimm, claimed that the club published the pamphlet in response to growing anti-German demonstrations among Egypt’s Jews following Adolf Hitler’s appointment as German chancellor. Grimm additionally claimed that Cairo’s German community “wished to be more moderate than their compatriots ‘at home,’ and wished to omit all matters of internal German policy.”7 Two days after the initial hearing, the Cairo Civil Chambers of the Mixed Tribunals tossed out the case and ordered Jabes to pay for the action.8 The ruling served as an early indicator of the space Nazi antisemitism would find in Egypt, not only among the country’s German community but also among some members of its ruling class.9

By 1938, this line of antisemitic reasoning specifically identified Maadi’s founders on the floor of the Egyptian senate. An item addressed to the minister of the interior stated that “Jewish usurers” had acquired land on the outskirts of Cairo, Helwan, and Alexandria and, “by their

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