FOLLOWING years of negligence, restoration work has started on the house of the Egyptian nationalist leader Colonel Ahmed Orabi in Hreyya Razna in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig with a view to turning it into a museum. Orabi was a colonel in the Egyptian army when he led a revolt against the Khedive Tawfik in 1879 over the increasing European domination of Egypt. The revolt failed, and in 1882 Tawfik asked Britain to intervene to put down Orabi and his collaborators. The 40-year-long British occupation of Egypt then began. The house is a typical two-floor rural dwelling built of mud brick. It includes a central courtyard surrounded with three guest rooms. It has a long corridor, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen with a large mud brick oven. The walls are plain except for some important historical and political documents from the then defence minister Mahmoud Sami Al-Baroudi. Time has taken its toll on the house. Its wooden doors and walls are cracked, and some parts of the ceiling have collapsed and been replaced with wooden planks. The area behind the house is being used as a rubbish dump. Mustafa Amin, secretary-general of the SCA, explained that the restoration of Orabi's house was being undertaken within the framework of the MSA project to restore Egypt's important historical sites and turn them into tourist destinations. The restoration work will fix the cracks and consolidate the walls and ceiling, he said. Wooden doors, windows and decorative items would be restored, and damaged parts would be replaced. After restoration, the house will be used to display historical documents, as well as some of Orabi's personal belongings, including his gun, military uniform and fez, together with the documents and photographs that presently hang on the walls.
