Osama Kamal views a photographic archive of an area that is famous for more than radishes Imagine five people who have spent their whole lives in one section of Cairo, not necessarily being well acquainted but perhaps running into each other in the street, perhaps sitting side by side in the same cafe. Then imagine their lives photographed and documented, then juxtaposed in an unusual attempt to enlighten us about the life, luck and tribulations of this particular district. This is exactly what Adel Wasili's recent exhibition of photography "More on Faggala" is about. Faggala comes from fegl (radish), and is so named because until two centuries ago this was an immense agricultural farm specialising in the growing of radishes. References to Faggala in the work of Arab chronologists go back a thousand years or more. From humble radish fields, the area rose in stature in the mid-19th century when Khedive Ismail extended the diagonal road, known alternatively as Clot Bey, Qalaa, or Mohamed Ali to connect Bab Al-Hadid, the venue of Egypt's brand new train station, with the citadel. From that point Faggala became a hotbed of culture, burgeoning with hotels, restaurants and theatres. If you take a walk in Faggala today, you will see the numerous printing houses founded a hundred years or so ago, a testimony to the district's golden days. Five residents of Faggala feature in Wasili's collection about the district. Through their personal tales we learn much about the way that Faggala has changed over the past 50 years or so, and we discover a lot more about this country and about ourselves. The first character in Wasili's photographic tales is Father William Sidhom, a Jesuit monk who was born in the village of Garagos in Qena in 1947. Sidhom, who studied philosophy at Cairo University, was a political activist in his college days and took part in student protests in the early 1970s. In the mid 1970s Sidhom lived in Paris, where he got together with Latin American revolutionaries to produce what they referred to as "liberation theology". Back in Cairo, he tried to propagate his revolutionary ideas, but the State and the Church were both opposed to it, and he had more summons from the State Security Service than he wishes to remember. So imagine his joy when he could finally take part in the 25 January Revolution. Sidhom is now a coordinator of the Jesuit Cultural Society and for the past 13 years has been coaching students in the arts of cinema, painting, music, and photography. The second figure is Fathi Ramadan, a 55-year-old coffeehouse owner who has worked as a film extra at Studio Nasibian, a film production company that no longer exists. Ramadan has many stories to tell about famous Egyptian actors such as Mahmoud El-Miligi and Abdel-Moneim Madbouli. His wife, who works with him in the coffeehouse, is also a part-time actress, and many of their film pictures hang on the coffeehouse walls. The third character is Hesham El-Lell, a 40-something carpenter who designs and makes pushcarts. Lell has been making cart covered in decorations, known in Egyptian slang as carro, ever since he dropped out of school as a teenager. He says that Faggala used to be home to many carro-makers, but only a handful remains today. The fourth character is Amm Awad, in his 60s and also a carro-maker, who says it is too late to change his profession at this point in life. The fifth is Amir El-Sahhar, co-owner of the famous Masr Bookshop set up in 1932by his father, the novelist Said Gouda El-Sahhar. The Masr Bookshop published works by such immanent authors as Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, Youssef Idries, Youssef El-Sebaei, and Ehsan Abdel-Qoddous. Masr Bookshop now prints literary works on the side, but its main business is school textbooks and religious works. Sahhar laments the fact that Egyptians do not seem to be interested in literature any more. His business is struggling to survive in a district that has been taken over by suppliers of plumbing appliances and ceramic tiles. Comparing the new photographs of these five characters with their old ones, Wasili says, one learns a lot, and not just about the socio-economic changes in the country. The exhibition, he says, sheds light on the changes in colour, garment fashion, life style and the public mood. Wasili says that the five characters are just a taste of what the old district is all about. He intends to do more work on the different nationalities that lived in this district once popular among Syrians, Armenians, Italians, and Greeks. Born in 1963, Wasili is a civil engineer and a left-wing political activist. A founding member of the Socialist People's Alliance, he dedicates much of his work to the underprivileged classes. Wasili has been photographing various parts of the country since 1996, producing an average of one or two exhibitions per year. Among his photographic collections are ones on graffiti, village festivals, doors and windows, and coffeehouses. Most of Wasili's exhibitions are unnamed because he prefers to let his work speak for itself. His snippets of daily life are often mesmerising in their simplicity, and the way he captures every detail, every popular whim, and every eccentricity of the common man is nothing short of exhilarating. "More on Faggala" was shown from 20 October to 19 November as part of the seventh cultural programme of the Jesuit Society for Cultural and Scientific Revival.
