International Notions of Preservation

August 31, 2007

In an essay written for Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Middle East, Caroline Williams writes scathingly about the efforts of the Egyptian government to turn portions of medieval Cairo into a tourist park. The push to refurbish this area and make it profitable is encouraging shoddy preservation:

The Egyptian authorities in promoting restored buildings full of new marble and landscaped surrounds are expressing an idea of restoration that values the new and the shiny. [279]

The apparent goal of the government is to create an urban landscape that conforms to the expectations of tourists. The idea of keeping a mosque true to what we know about its historic appearance is largely dismissed in the rush to make a building merely attractive.

Williams goes on to make an odd point about the local appreciation of historic structures:

Most Egyptians tend to esteem a site for its religious and associative values rather than for the artistic or historic value of a particular structure... The same Canadian conservator noted with surprise that it was more the spirit of the place than the historic fabric of the building that interested her Egyptian co-workers. [279-80]

This point fits in awkwardly with her essay as a whole. While it is true that elite Egyptian officials generally have poor aesthetic judgment, it is something else altogether to realize that the preservation efforts as understood by UNESCO (which sets the standards for restoration projects) are wholly foreign to the sensibilities of local Egyptians.. the people who actually live in these historic areas.

At the beginning of the essay Williams recalls wistfully the days when Islamic Cairo was virtually ignored:

Neither the people of the quarter, nor our friends in Zamalek or Garden City, seemed to have heard of any of the mosques or buildings for which we were looking. Individually and actively we were forced to find our own way to the monuments we wanted to study. [270]

That sounds fun.. but again what is communicated is that the actual residents of Cairo knew nothing about their historic heritage. I have noted this phenomenon in Cairo. One vivid example is the time I got dropped off at the Islamic Museum by a taxi driver who was clearly a religious conservative (beard, clothes, Qur'an in tape deck). As we got near to the museum I asked whether he had ever visited the Islamic Museum.. and he answered that he had not. The more I thought about that, the more I was floored.

I think this is a variable that is important to deal with when it comes to ideas about preservation: people are not always on the same cognitive page. The UNESCO ideals that underlie restoration as it "should" be done are not universal values.. but historically evolved. The idea of getting back to the most important historic layer (not always the original one) is ingrained in Western scholarship. When I visit a historic site my mind.. unconsciously now.. begins to break down the layers and imagine the building at different points in its history. If the Egyptian people (not the elites who are currently in charge) were to take over the maintenance and restoration of their urban landscape, it would perhaps be a version of restoration that values the "spirit of the place" rather then the "historic fabric".. and it is interesting to think about how that would look.. but it is quite different than what UNESCO expects.

I don't mean to sound hostile to UNESCO standards. The critical perception that allows for historic layers to stand out separately is a central goal of Old Roads. We are here to build that perception.. and the physical preservation of structures and landscapes is a natural outgrowth of this mode of perception. But to some degree it is all a lost cause.. landscapes are being destroyed and any stringent plan that does not have popular acceptance is going to fail. Structures in Cairo are either crumbling or being made up for tourists. It is our conviction that the scholar today will more and more be called on to preserve sites for the imagination by means other than physical preservation.. and that will mean a creative use of technology.