This article is two years old but still incredible and fascinating. Thanks to Stobo for sending it. (Take time to watch the videos).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Bilo
Bilo plodded back into the living room, his hacking cough announcing his arrival. One arm was carefully wrapped around a folder of dress sketches, dating from the 1960s to 2000. Just a handful remained now of the thousands of sketches he had burned before returning to Egypt.
After landing in Cairo in 1997, Nabil Jamal, lovingly known as Bilo, went straight to a small hotel in Zamelek and never left. The hotel was owned by a good friend, and living there at no cost, Bilo had no desire to look for his own house. Without any savings, Bilo resigned himself to spending his retirement in Cairo after decades in Paris and New York. His few sketches and pictures remained the only material evidence of his past lives, for even Egypt had changed under years of post-revolution.
“It was like I had walked out of a beautiful house and came back and found it all beaten up and tattered. The streets have gone dirty. Look at the traffic. We didn’t have 1/10 of the cars we have now,” Bilo said.
The Cairo that Bilo remembered was of dressing the Queen and actresses. Nightly parties, ballets, and the English theater company were regular rituals, and at the Opera House, he would stand alongside his friends when the national anthem played to honor King Farouk’s entrance.
Bilo pulled out a carefully preserved black and white photograph, as if presenting evidence. A young group of seven smiled back in the midst of a party, and in front sat an Arab James Dean, fully aware of his good looks. The face across from me had now turned wrinkled and spotted, hoisting up thick glasses.
The hostess’s husband, Bilo told me nonchalantly, had disappeared suddenly. Ahmed Kamal had been politically active, and had spoken against Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser. He left his house in Al-Maadi one day in 1956 and never returned.
But Bilo had grown impatient with the conversation. After all, the topic at hand was the Cairo of his youth, filled with theater, parties, and…
“Finola O’Shannon!” he said the name with excitement and careful enunciation as he discovered a photograph.
He spent every night in the club with the actress while she was visiting Cairo. The last time he saw her was when he had surprised her in London after leaving Egypt in 1963. She died from cancer a few years later.
Finola was one of Bilo’s two loves. Both brief, and both lost. “The one girl I wanted to marry was so much in love with me that she said ‘I’ll marry you when your father gets your money back.’ That’s what her love was like.” His bitter tone lingered in the silence as he glanced away from me.
Bilo’s father had come to Egypt in 1923 from Palestine, where he had met Bilo’s Lebanese mother. Although living in Egypt, he had refused to sell the land in Palestine that he owned with his two brothers. When Israel was formed in 1948, the Jamal brothers lost all their properties.
It was the only time that Bilo’s father’s history intertwined with his own. Otherwise, he never questioned his father about Palestine, and his father never spoke of it.
War had shaped Bilo’s entire life: wars that were personal and never spoken of, wars that raged outside his front door, and wars that were seemingly far, but that still left damage in their wake.
During World War II, Bilo’s father closed down his travel agency since his only client was a German company. “And the Germans that came in came without a visa,” Bilo said with a laugh. “They came in with their guns and their tanks and their airplanes. They came into Alexandria, because there were a lot of Egyptians who were very Nazi and they had pictures of Hitler in their apartments. In fact, even the King was pro-Hitler.”
But it would not be long before the King himself was ousted from power. King Farouk’s downfall, the revolution and subsequent Nasserism, while changing Egypt, had changed the course of Bilo’s life as well. There was no more royalty to dress. “All the millionaires were trying to sell their stuff to live on, especially the royal family. [Nasser] was giving them pennies to live on.”
Unemployment took Bilo to London where his friends found him work, then to a chance job as a fashion designer in Paris for 17 years, and finally to New York City for 16 years until he no longer had a job or money. He returned to Cairo after having spent his savings over the years on cashmere sweaters, Parisian theater and travels with friends. And when he came back, he found Cairo worse than it had been after the revolution. There was no money left, no jobs for the youth, and no way to get out.
From the hotel in Zamelek now, Bilo hears the call to prayer five times a day. “I think they’ve come to a point where they are desperate,” he said quietly. “They think by praying, they are going to go straight upstairs. They pray and pray and pray…”
Was he not religious, having grown up in a devout Christian household and living in a country where every hour was a reminder of God? “I don’t go to church, but I have to pray every single night,” Bilo said. “I pray for the souls of my parents, and mostly for the friends that passed away, and some of them passed away pretty young.”
His remaining friends visit him at the hotel as they pass through Egypt, bringing him beer that inevitably offend the Muslim receptionist, or shirts that he refuses to wear for lack of good fashion sense. His weeks are booked with dinners with relatives of once good friends - prominent families in Zamelek, younger generations of the Sadat family and former royalty who now reside in Alexandria. But he returns, always, to his room at the hotel to watch the world affairs that once bored him. Egypt. Lebanon. Gaza.
As he stood up, he looked down at his swollen feet peeking from his black sweat pants. “This is the only thing I inherited from my father,” he said with a quiet laugh. “I refused to take insulin until 6 years ago. Now I can hardly walk. Look at me. I walk like a penguin.” He waited for no answer as he plodded down the hallway to his room.
After landing in Cairo in 1997, Nabil Jamal, lovingly known as Bilo, went straight to a small hotel in Zamelek and never left. The hotel was owned by a good friend, and living there at no cost, Bilo had no desire to look for his own house. Without any savings, Bilo resigned himself to spending his retirement in Cairo after decades in Paris and New York. His few sketches and pictures remained the only material evidence of his past lives, for even Egypt had changed under years of post-revolution.
“It was like I had walked out of a beautiful house and came back and found it all beaten up and tattered. The streets have gone dirty. Look at the traffic. We didn’t have 1/10 of the cars we have now,” Bilo said.
The Cairo that Bilo remembered was of dressing the Queen and actresses. Nightly parties, ballets, and the English theater company were regular rituals, and at the Opera House, he would stand alongside his friends when the national anthem played to honor King Farouk’s entrance.
Bilo pulled out a carefully preserved black and white photograph, as if presenting evidence. A young group of seven smiled back in the midst of a party, and in front sat an Arab James Dean, fully aware of his good looks. The face across from me had now turned wrinkled and spotted, hoisting up thick glasses.
The hostess’s husband, Bilo told me nonchalantly, had disappeared suddenly. Ahmed Kamal had been politically active, and had spoken against Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser. He left his house in Al-Maadi one day in 1956 and never returned.
But Bilo had grown impatient with the conversation. After all, the topic at hand was the Cairo of his youth, filled with theater, parties, and…
“Finola O’Shannon!” he said the name with excitement and careful enunciation as he discovered a photograph.
He spent every night in the club with the actress while she was visiting Cairo. The last time he saw her was when he had surprised her in London after leaving Egypt in 1963. She died from cancer a few years later.
Finola was one of Bilo’s two loves. Both brief, and both lost. “The one girl I wanted to marry was so much in love with me that she said ‘I’ll marry you when your father gets your money back.’ That’s what her love was like.” His bitter tone lingered in the silence as he glanced away from me.
Bilo’s father had come to Egypt in 1923 from Palestine, where he had met Bilo’s Lebanese mother. Although living in Egypt, he had refused to sell the land in Palestine that he owned with his two brothers. When Israel was formed in 1948, the Jamal brothers lost all their properties.
It was the only time that Bilo’s father’s history intertwined with his own. Otherwise, he never questioned his father about Palestine, and his father never spoke of it.
War had shaped Bilo’s entire life: wars that were personal and never spoken of, wars that raged outside his front door, and wars that were seemingly far, but that still left damage in their wake.
During World War II, Bilo’s father closed down his travel agency since his only client was a German company. “And the Germans that came in came without a visa,” Bilo said with a laugh. “They came in with their guns and their tanks and their airplanes. They came into Alexandria, because there were a lot of Egyptians who were very Nazi and they had pictures of Hitler in their apartments. In fact, even the King was pro-Hitler.”
But it would not be long before the King himself was ousted from power. King Farouk’s downfall, the revolution and subsequent Nasserism, while changing Egypt, had changed the course of Bilo’s life as well. There was no more royalty to dress. “All the millionaires were trying to sell their stuff to live on, especially the royal family. [Nasser] was giving them pennies to live on.”
Unemployment took Bilo to London where his friends found him work, then to a chance job as a fashion designer in Paris for 17 years, and finally to New York City for 16 years until he no longer had a job or money. He returned to Cairo after having spent his savings over the years on cashmere sweaters, Parisian theater and travels with friends. And when he came back, he found Cairo worse than it had been after the revolution. There was no money left, no jobs for the youth, and no way to get out.
From the hotel in Zamelek now, Bilo hears the call to prayer five times a day. “I think they’ve come to a point where they are desperate,” he said quietly. “They think by praying, they are going to go straight upstairs. They pray and pray and pray…”
Was he not religious, having grown up in a devout Christian household and living in a country where every hour was a reminder of God? “I don’t go to church, but I have to pray every single night,” Bilo said. “I pray for the souls of my parents, and mostly for the friends that passed away, and some of them passed away pretty young.”
His remaining friends visit him at the hotel as they pass through Egypt, bringing him beer that inevitably offend the Muslim receptionist, or shirts that he refuses to wear for lack of good fashion sense. His weeks are booked with dinners with relatives of once good friends - prominent families in Zamelek, younger generations of the Sadat family and former royalty who now reside in Alexandria. But he returns, always, to his room at the hotel to watch the world affairs that once bored him. Egypt. Lebanon. Gaza.
As he stood up, he looked down at his swollen feet peeking from his black sweat pants. “This is the only thing I inherited from my father,” he said with a quiet laugh. “I refused to take insulin until 6 years ago. Now I can hardly walk. Look at me. I walk like a penguin.” He waited for no answer as he plodded down the hallway to his room.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
