Will Sayed Ibrahim and Kamel Kilani intercede for Arab al-Yasar …
Sayed Ibrahim was born …
the dean of Arabic calligraphy and one of the most important calligraphers of the twentieth century without exception — in the Arab al-Yasar quarter.
which, most regrettably, is at present subjected to systematic erasure …
In the midst of this quarter, Sayed Ibrahim grew up alongside the friend of his life, the great writer Kamel Kilani (one of the most important authors of children’s literature in the Arab world) …
and between a seller of basbousa named Mustafa al-Halabi, who had memorized by heart the poems of the Sufi poet ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi … and Sheikh Mahmud al-Mallah, the poet who would sing to the rabab in the coffeehouse facing their alley — they would go to him to listen to the folk heritage every night …
In the same area, in the house of Kamel Kilani, there lived a Greek widow with two daughters of great culture, from whom (Sayed and Kamel) would listen to the legends of ancient Greece …
In the alley, too, was a popular coffeehouse where the folk poet (ʿAbduh al-Shaʿir) would chant — reciting to his rabab the tales of Abu Zayd al-Hilali and al-Zanati Khalifa …
And in Arab al-Yasar itself, Kamel Kilani founded a literary club in 1908 …
perhaps the first children’s club founded by a child not yet past his tenth year …
A virtuous city, or a dreaming utopia …
from which emerge the artist, the writer, and the poet …
This was the atmosphere and climate of a quarter with a unique character and particularity, hard to repeat …
and easily erased …
The question here is: who is it that swept away the people and crushed them?
For after Arab al-Yasar had been an Egyptian soul made manifest in its diversity and its arts …
it became a breeding ground for crime and for systematic social exclusion …
What is that monster that demolished the people …
so that demolishing stone became easy, pliable, simple …
and with it memory departs, with all its past — and there is no problem in that …
Who invented the terms … development / modernity / modernization, to kill with them, in cold blood, every landmark and culture that is part of the mosaic of this homeland …
Are the sequences of oppression …
and poverty … and need …
