The suburb of Heliopolis was the outcome of one man's vision and many hours of backbreaking work. Amidst rumours of restoration involving the famous baron's descendants, Fayza Hassan recreates the dream In Les barons Empain (Paris, Fayard, 1996), Yvon Toussain relates an imaginary, but not implausible, conversation -- a conversation that "could well have taken place," he writes, between the baron Edouard Empain and a successful young Belgian architect, Marcel-Henri Jaspar, who was introduced to him by Prince Mahmoud. Jaspar was holidaying in Egypt at the time, staying at the Shepheard's Hotel. The two men must have liked each other instantly, because a deal was struck on the spot, the outcome of which would be the emergence of the suburb of Heliopolis -- once called the city of On -- only a couple of years later. "What are you doing here?" asked Empain. "Nothing," said Jaspar. "Can you ride a horse?" "Yes." "Come here early tomorrow morning. I want to show you a corner of the desert in which I am interested." The next morning, as the sun was rising, the two men rode up to a stretch of desert. There was nothing but an expanse of sand on the horizon. "I want to build a city here," said Empain. It will be called Heliopolis, the city of the sun, and first of all I will build a palace...a huge one. I want it to be magnificent. Furthermore, I want the architecture to conform to this country's traditions. I need a specialist in Arab art...You love mosques, you are an architect, can you give me a proposal? Travelling outside Europe for the first time, Edouard Empain had arrived in Cairo in January 1904, intending to rescue one of his Belgian company's overseas projects -- the construction of a railway line linking Matariya to Port Said -- that had run afoul of British interests, and which he ended up losing to the Britons. Beaten in the railway department, Empain lingered, however, instead of cutting his losses and going back home. Those who knew him claimed then that he had fallen madly in love with the desert and, from that moment on, had laboured at putting together the pieces of a gigantic puzzle. Others murmured that, despite a long-standing affair in Belgium, which had been blessed with two illegitimate children, he had succumbed to the charms of Yvette Boghdadli, one of Cairo's most beautiful socialites. Be that as it may, the Societé des travaux publics du Caire (Cairo Public Works Company), established in Brussels in 1905, opened its Cairo offices at the Shepheard's Hotel the same year. During the previous few months, Empain had been actively courting his indispensable future allies. Putting his hard feelings behind him, he had secured England's good will by naming Sir Reginald Oakes to the board of his company, then acquired another formidable partner, the powerful Boghos Nubar Pasha, with whom, in May 1905, he purchased all the land of the "oasis" of Abbasiya: 5, 952 feddans, sold to them for a pound per feddan, on the express condition that one sixth of the land only be used for buildings. The partners were also granted a 70-year monopoly on an electric train and two tram lines that would eventually link Heliopolis to the city centre. Thus equipped, the Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oasis Society was duly established under Egyptian law by a decree ratified on14 February 1906. The society was headquartered momentarily at the Shepheard's Hotel. Its declared capital was of 15 million Belgian francs, comprising 60,000 preferential shares at 250 francs a piece (of which Empain owned 33,000) and 60,000 ordinary shares divided among 22,000 subscribers. The company board members were Lord Armstrong, from Northumberland; Sir Alfred Curphey, a London banker; colonel Augustus Fitzgerald, also from London; Sir John Rogers Pasha; Sir George Simon, another Londoner; His Excellency Yacoub Artin Pasha -- the only Egyptian on the board; François Empain, Edouard's younger brother; Jules Jacob, a Belgian; Léon Carton de Wiart, a Cairo lawyer; and André Berthelot, a French landowner: in total, five Britons, three Belgians, one Frenchman and one Egyptian. Empain was the president of the company and Boghos Nubar its vice-president. If the company managed to build 100 villas, an option for the purchase of an equal stretch of desert was to be made available at the same conditions. From the start, Empain, having a priori and whole-heartedly subscribed to the modern ideas applied to the creation of satellite cities, such as improved infrastructure, better layout of living units and a faultless transport system, was able to give free rein to his imagination. He wanted an enormous hotel, "the largest in the world", he had told Jaspar, a race course, a casino, endless sports fields, an amusement park and an airport, to begin with. Empain, who was not a trained urbanist, did not mind learning the rules of the game on the ground, though he was always prompt to point out to his associates that he had known it all long before the professionals formulated their suggestions. He made it quite clear, however, that he would go along with the recommendations of the company only if they did not compromise the fairytale aspect of his project, his vision of a magic city rising from the heart of the desert -- not unlike the city of Oz -- which had been steadily growing in his mind and was now at the root of all the fuss. Empain's ideas were basically European. He lacked an Egyptian perspective, and was wise enough to know it. He was prompt to recognise that Habib Ayrout, a young contractor whom he had befriended, was more amply versed in this domain and would therefore represent an invaluable asset as an "Egyptian" adviser to his team, which now comprised Jaspar, Marcel Alexandre, a young French architect who had distinguished himself at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, and his friend and partner, decorator Georges-Louis Claude. It was Ayrout who was called upon to change the Western layout of the houses, adding outdoors brick ovens for the baking of bread, extra balconies, larger windows decorated with mashrabiya, spacious terraces and inside courtyards. Meanwhile, Jaspar was busy building, mixing styles, adding Orientalist touches to pure Art Déco, personalising the neo-Mauresque, all the time borrowing his propensity for the gigantic from a well-known Belgian tradition. Alexandre Marcel, on the other hand, owed his fame to the Cambodian pavilion and to an anthology of south Asian architecture, comprising a Japanese pagoda, a Chinese pavilion and an Indian temple as well as several other exotic pieces, all decorated by Georges-Louis Claude and presented at the Exposition Universelle in 1900. King Leopold II had ordered the complete set for his palace at Laeken, and Empain had also been able to admire Marcel's Japanese tower, with decorations by Claude, inaugurated in Brussels in 1902. It had bowled him over. He did not hesitate, therefore, to entrust the architect and the decorator with the building of his own palace, which was to represent, once completed, a sort of synthesis of the architectural bravura displayed by the pair at the Exposition. Even more important than his "villa", was the huge palace ordered by Empain and worthy of the Thousand and One Nights: 150 metres long, flanked by two wings of 64 metres each, constructed on 6,500 square metres and comprising 300 suites surrounded by 54,000 square metres of exquisitely landscaped gardens, liberally sprinkled with stone fauns and damsels gamboling in the shrubbery. The main ballroom, the largest in the world at the time, was covered with a huge dome 35 metres from the floor. Galleries, arcades, stalactites and trompe l'oeil abounded, vying for attention. The mixture of a hundred different styles and techniques was united in a unique composition concocted by Jaspar, Marcel and Claude working closely together under the baron's clear instructions. The famous Heliopolis Palace Hotel was to become the true -- and monumental -- testimony to Empain's flamboyant eclecticism. The third noteworthy building of Empain's Heliopolis was the basilica in which he was eventually buried. He had wanted "his" basilica to resemble St Sophie but, he told Alexandre Marcel, he would dedicate it to Our Lady of Tongres, in memory of a small basilica in Belgium where he had served mass as a child. This building was obviously a more tedious task to accomplish and when it was finished critics often compared it to "a fat, crouching old Belgian woman." Within two years of Empain's arrival, the suburb had started extending, its large avenues traced out, the imposing palaces and lovely villas constructed amidst the flourishing greenery and colourful flowering trees. The palace of Prince Hussein, with its dome resembling a mosque's, or the immense villa built for Boghos Nubar were among the landmarks that attracted more clients every day. The "madman's fantasy" had not only taken root in a relatively short time, it had prospered beyond the most audacious dreams, despite serious teething difficulties aggravated by the crash of 1907, which Empain, as dapper as ever, managed to weather with his customary panache. By 1909, the success was total and, with the small electric train -- dubbed Metro -- running, dwellers and visitors who crammed the wagons every day had no need to follow the yellow brick road to reach the fabulous city of Heliopolis in just a few minutes.
