CAIRO – It is twelve noon and Ramadan Sebai is totally unmindful of the burning heat of the Egyptian capital. Sebai, in his late sixties, stands patiently in front of the oven in his shop in the famous Khan el-Khalili bazaar in the heart of Fatimid Cairo, waiting for the copper to melt in a mould. Seconds later, the dark-skinned Sebai takes up the mould and presses it against a piece of pink material. When he takes the mould away, the material has become a fully fledged fez; something that takes the onlooker back to the days of King Farouk, when the tarboosh was Egypt's official headgear. As Sebai holds the beautiful fez, you see regret in his eyes. "The fezzes' glory days were long ago," he told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. "Tell me in God's name, who wears them nowadays?" Sebai produces a fez every five minutes, even though he is well aware that the prospects for his products are dim, now that Egypt has broken away from its monarchic and dictatorial past. A military coup that ended the monarchy in 1952 also put an end to the fez as Egypt's official headgear. When the January 25 revolution happened nearly 60 years later, it stifled the hopes of people like Sebai that the tarboosh might make a comeback. To him, the revolution was the kiss of death. He puts the pink products in order inside his shop and waits for hours for the kind of people who used to frequent his shop over many decades. But they are no longer around. Sebai's most illustrious client was King Farouk himself, while his elite customers also included famous artists, singers and cinema stars. "Where are they now?" Sebai asks. "Fashions have completely changed. Headgear, whether the traditional fez or not, no longer gets priority." Inside his shop, there are photos of some of the celebrities, who frequented the place when he was still an apprentice. He keeps these relics from the good old days on a table. Located in a crowded commercial street a few yards away from the iconic Al-Azhar Mosque and the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, Sebai's shop seems to be totally out of place. The man keeps on beavering away, despite the lack of demand for his products. Passersby love his workshop with its strange, but attractive interior. The way Sebai looks at these passersby says a lot about the way things have changed. "I know I have no future, particularly after a revolution which will cause massive changes in Egypt, including changes in the way people dress," Sebai explains. "But I really cannot stop doing the job I've been doing all my life."
