CAIRO - The renovation and restoration project at Ramses Station is nearing completion. After months and months of great inconvenience to travellers, all the disruption has been more than worthwhile. The result is nothing less than marvellous, and Cairo has a railway station of world class standard. The interior is magnificent, more resembling the standard of a five-star hotel than a travel terminus.The new Egypt has a railway station to be proud of. The idea of a railway for Egypt was first put to its ruler Mohamed Ali by the British in 1834. It would have linked Suez and Ain Shams to provide a link between Europe and India. However, rival French plans for a canal to serve the same purpose meant that Mohamed Ali chose neither and it was left to his nephew and successor, Abbas I, to initiate a railway project. The first railway in Africa, then, was built between Alexandria and Kafr Eissa, and it reached Cairo in 1856. Another route linking Cairo and Suez was built in 1858, but this was dismantled in 1878 after the building of the Suez Canal. A further route linking Cairo to Upper Egypt was built in 1867 and a bridge at Imbaba enabled trains to pass across the Nile in 1891. Ramses Station is now the hub of all this activity and the departure point for many an adventure today, just as it was in days gone by. Covered on the outside in arabesques and blue tiles and welcoming many people for the first time to Egypt, the interior is now even more impressive, incorporating Pharaonic and Islamic themes. The station was first built in 1856, but was reconstructed in an Arab style in 1892. This same style, familiar to us today, was used when the station was last refurbished in 1955. It was in that same year that president Gamal Abdul Nasser brought the massive statue of Ramses II to the esplanade outside the station, replacing the statue Egypt awakening by Mahmoud Mokhtar, which now stands at the approach to Cairo University. Ramses II statue has itself now been removed, at great cost, to the purer air of the Giza plateau, where it will stand welcoming visitors to the greatly anticipated Greater Cairo Museum. Having undergone yet another major refurbishment, Ramses station still looks out onto the noise and the chaos of Ramses Square. Pure air there may not be, but all of life is here in Midan Ramses. Millions of Egyptians pass through Ramses Station every year. What they now see on arrival is quite breathtaking. On any given day you will see thousands of commuters coming into Cairo in the morning for work or setting off home again in the evening, rushing past you as they descend the steps outside the station into the Metro network. In the afternoon you will see the university students, their studies over for the day, hanging around to chat for as long as they can, before they have to go home to their families and their books. You will see galabeya-clad workers from Upper Egypt coming out of the station into the Cairo sunshine for the first time, amazed at the buildings and the noise. You will see fellaheen, or farming people, rosy-cheeked from the Delta, clutching boxes and bags, and maybe even a duck or two! And you will see military conscripts from each of the Armed Services, lingering for as long as possible as they wave goodbye to sweethearts or have one last cigarette with friends from home before they set off once more to defend the nation. Most of these travellers will never even have heard of the Egyptian National Railways Museum, let alone have visited it, but this delightful museum of locomotives will also be part of the new Ramses Station. If they could just put down their ducks or their sweethearts for an hour or so, they would discover a real gem. We wait for the unveiling of the new museum with as much enthusiasm as we have awaited the station itself. The idea of a railway museum was first mooted in the early 1930s. It was opened to the public on 15th January 1933, the same year in which an international railway conference was held in Cairo, and it thrilled children and those young at heart ever since. The new museum shows great promise. The great thing about the Egyptian National Railways Museum so far has been that it has been a hands-on experience. We have been able to clamber all over the trains and everything associated with them. There are buttons to push and wheels to turn, as well as very informative displays, maps and statistical documents about the development of transportation. One of the museum's highlights was the very train used by Empress Eugenie when she visited Egypt for the opening of the Suez Canal. Even this could be climbed into. In fact, the royal carriage makes a very unusual place to stop and eat one's sandwiches! Outside the newly restored station one of these steam trains is on public view, enticing visitors within. Muslims read in the holy Qur'an in Surat Al-An'am: Say: “travel through the Earth And see what was the end Of those who rejected Truth.” 6:11 There is no doubt that the new railway museum will make a welcome break from the deafening noise of the station and the square. An even more wonderful sight, though, than the museum with all its artifacts, or the magnificent new station with its passengers, or the square itself with its cars and chaos, is what happens five times a day and what makes Egypt such a blessed land. Five times a day the muezzin in the station, or his fellow from the minaret of the enormous Al-Fath mosque nearby, calls the faithful to prayer. “Allahu Akhbar,” he cries, and for a few precious moments some calm and some sanity descends upon the station forecourt as rows and rows of worshippers forget their frantic rushing from this place to that and, instead, fix their thoughts on Allah, the One who gives the very gift of movement. For all its problems, a nation that stops for a few moments to pause and to pray does not have too much to worry about. Inshallah, this is good news for Egypt's future. Enjoy your next visit to Ramses Station. But, when the time comes, spare a thought for the Almighty as well. British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, is a lecturer at Al-Azhar University. The author of eight books about Islam, he divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com.
