Osama Kamal explores Egypt's past in the company of one of Port Said's best-known antique dealers and collectors Sometimes chance leads you to things you know very little about, only to delight you with startling details. This is what happens when meeting Ashraf El-Sayyad. Coming from a family that has specialised in buying and selling oriental products, Pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic, for generations, El-Sayyad today runs an antique shop in Port Said not far from the Canal. Many of his clients are foreigners who stop by as they pass through the Suez Canal. What makes El-Sayyad unique in his family is that he sells other relics of the past besides oriental items. Ever since childhood he has been fond of collecting old things, including antiques, stamps, old envelopes, letters, postcards and coins from all over the world. El-Sayyad does not know why he is so infatuated with the material culture of the past, only that he is. His profession, he says, has become a way of communicating with the world. As a result, El-Sayyad's love for old things nears the kind of obsession one sees in top athletes or award-winning scientists. Collecting such materials is just what he does, and it is the only way he knows how to live. He is the only man in the city as well-versed as he is in the trade, and he has become something of an icon in Port Said. Customers in search of antiques all go to El-Sayyad, even though, as he is the first to admit, there are also other dealers in the city, even if some of these are amateurs with little experience or training, he says. Potential buyers are sometimes better off in Cairo, where there are specialised shops known to amateurs and serious collectors alike that set aside days for customers to examine items from their inventories. What originally started as a hobby later became a career for El-Sayyad. "My income goes up and down," he explains, "almost like in a game of chance. Sometimes I buy something and sell it at a modest profit. Later on someone might come in and offer a much higher price. In my business there are happy coincidences and unhappy coincidences. It all depends on how passionate a buyer is to acquire a given item." Among El-Sayyad's own personal collections is a complete collection of stamps issued under Egypt's former ruling Mohamed Ali dynasty. The first Egyptian stamp was issued in 1866 during the reign of the Khedive Ismail, coming only 26 years after England had issued its first stamp in 1840, which bore an image of Queen Victoria. While talking with El-Sayyad I notice a thick catalogue of valuable stamps from all over the world, showing pictures of different stamps and their dates of issue. "A tool of the trade," El-Sayyad explains. As I leaf through his collection of rare stamps, El-Sayyad is eager to point out certain prize issues to me. He has stamps issued in Palestine before the 1948 War, for example, some of these going back to the 1920s and 1930s and bearing a familiar, yet evocative word, on them: Palestine. These stamps, El-Sayyad says, are treasures now. They are also a reminder that a country called Palestine once existed, and they help this country to live, even if only in memory. El-Sayyad collects donation slips for the 1948 war for similar reasons, their value starting at 50 piastres and going up to LE100. El-Sayyad also has stamps in his collection that were issued specially for collectors. He shows me a stamp showing a seven-year-old Princess Feryal, King Farouk's sister, on her birthday and another showing Farouk himself at age six. A stamp for salt export, El-Sayyad explains, was particularly expensive because the price included export taxes. Of all the post-revolutionary stamps issued after the 1952 Revolution, the most memorable is probably the double-sized High Dam stamp issued in 1959, he says, with another memorable issue being one marking the Israeli bombing of the Bahr Al-Baqar school. However, El-Sayyad also collects other items besides stamps. Postal services still sometimes issue first-day covers, envelopes bearing new stamps to mark historical events, and he has envelopes marking sea, land and air travel in various US states, for example, one such issue showing the date of the journey and the route taken. "The envelope's value comes from the date franked on the postage stamp," El-Sayyad explains. "This is like a scent of the past that creates value." Another envelope marks the crowning of Farouk as king of Egypt. El-Sayyad shows me commemorative stamps marking the 1952 Revolution, as well as an envelope recording the assassination of president Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 and another marking the death of singer Umm Kolthoum in 1975. El-Sayyad has other envelopes marking events in the development of Egypt's professional syndicates, as well as ones honouring Nobel laureates. Elsewhere in his collection, he has a letter from Egypt's former Senate to pre-revolutionary minister of the interior Fouad Serageddin, later leader of the New Wafd Party, part of a wider collection of historical letters offering job positions and mentioning salaries. There are also letters from now sometimes forgotten writers from across the Arab world. Among El-Sayyad's collection of vintage postcards are items signed by Hollywood stars including Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn and Richard Burton. He has a large collection of cards exchanged among members of Egypt's beau monde at a time when travelling was by sea only, and people would send cards from every port they visited, including Marseilles, Genoa and Venice. Before showing me his coin collection, El-Sayyad produces a catalogue showing the world's most valuable coins. A coin for one milleme, one tenth of a piastre, was once wrongly minted under the Egyptian monarchy, for example, only four examples of which now exist anywhere in the world. "Scarcity is what makes a rare coin valuable," El-Sayyad comments, adding that commemorative coins can accrue greatly in value. On the walls of the shop are frames containing pictures of coins, along with their current values and the number of coins in each issue. Much pre-revolutionary coinage is now quite valuable, he says. "The value of post-revolutionary coins is as nothing when compared to those issued under the monarchy, with almost anything dating from before the revolution now being eagerly sought after by collectors." One of El-Sayyad's own most prized coins was minted during the US civil war and bears the image of a Native American. "This coin is important not just because it was issued in special circumstances, but also because it was later much loved by Sinai Bedouin, who used it to make amulets," he says. The coin he shows me has been pierced, suggesting that it was once part of a Bedouin necklace or other form of jewellery. Old cameras, clock cases, coffee grinders, make-up accessories, and pieces of antique furniture are scattered around El-Sayyad's shop, with some of the best items being displayed in the window like relics of the past living on in the collector's world.
