Along with its world-famous monuments, Egypt also has an extremely rich intangible heritage that includes songs, music, drama, skills, crafts, dialects, customs, traditions, festivals, oral epics, ways of life and other parts of culture that are considered to be intangible because they cannot be physically touched or preserved. Such intangible heritage is transmitted from one generation to the next in an often oral form, and it provides communities with their unique sense of their own identities. While today's rapidly developing world has been putting such heritage at risk, there have been efforts to protect and promote it. In 2003, UNESCO drafted an international Convention on the Protection of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity to do just this, and Egypt was one of its first signatories. Upper Egypt is particularly rich in intangible heritage. Among the heritage associated with the region's cuisine is weika (okra) and al-eish al-shamsy (sun bread), just two examples of Upper Egyptian culinary heritage that many people, even many other Egyptians, do not know about. Many people have had the experience of travelling to foreign countries and tasting new foods unacceptable to foreign tastes. Some visitors to Egypt do not care for our national dish of foul (beans), though they do love falafel, which is simply made of ground foul. Something similar may be the case with weika. While all Egyptians know okra, often called “lady's fingers” by tourists and cooked in a tomato sauce, even many Cairenes do not know weika, which is simply okra cooked in a different way as a green soup. The recipe is simple. After slicing the okra, boil it in chicken or meat stock using a mofraak, a wooden tool held between the hands and spun, to stir it constantly. The meal is cooked in a pottery pan called a malaz placed on top of a kanoon, a mud-brick oven. Like all the appliances still used in villages, mud is used to make traditional ovens, making this material part of Egypt's heritage. Shehtah, an Upper Egyptian acquaintance, explains that a malaz is itself made of mud covered with black honey that is cooked inside a Shamsi-style bread oven. A rudimentary malaz can be bought in the marketplace, and its manufacture completed at home. Traditionally, okra was stored in Upper Egypt by making “okra necklaces”, made by joining the vegetables together in a kind of rope and hanging it on the wall. Something similar is done with red paprika in Hungary. Perhaps there are ties between Upper Egyptians and Hungarian gypsies? Besides okra, al-eish al-shamsy is a famous type of bread well-known in the south of the country. In Luxor, it used to be eaten at the royal palace during the monarchy, but today it is most often baked in people's houses. Most of the houses of the farmers in the south of the country have reception rooms at the entrance where visitors can sit out of sight of the women's quarters. On a recent visit to Upper Egypt, I was honoured to be invited beyond this entrance territory to the large reception yard within. Here is the working area of the women, and also where the farmers keep their precious animals. Almost everything is done using equipment made of mud. In order to make al-eish al-shamsy, a woman will sit on the ground to mix flour with warm water and brewer's yeast. (It is strange that in Egypt, where alcohol is mostly not allowed, this yeast is still associated with brewing.) She mixes everything together and then starts kneading the resulting dough. Later, she brings several tabateeb, flat surfaces made of mud as well, and then the shaping process begins. Instead of cutting and shaping the dough with both hands, she simply cuts a piece of the dough with her right hand and starts to shape it in the air and finally spread it on the tabateeb in order to flatten it. This is called tabateeb-ha, and kneading the bread is called tetabtab, expressions which will be new to many Egyptians. Following this, she moves to a sunny area where she drives away any flies, chickens or animals, and then the decoration of the bread takes place. A metal tool appears for a change, which is used to cut the bread's edges. The next step is to bake the bread in a mud-brick oven. The oven is large, and she sits in front of it. One might have expected to see her feed the oven with wood, but in fact the oven is always “on”, and she simply cleans the inside with a piece of wet cloth, waits for a minute or two before testing the temperature, and then puts the bread in to bake. Khairy, the head of the household, has his own views on how one ought to live. He has never bought anything in his life. He and his family grow wheat with their own hands, grind it for flour, and then make bread with it. The mud equipment they use is also home-made, and they eat their delicious meals surrounded by the chickens with which they share their house. Perhaps modern life has destroyed our economy. 3,000 years ago, when Egypt ruled the world, its name was “Kemt”, which means black, or derived from mud.
