In Cafe Riche, as usual, sat Magdy - the co-owner of the restaurant; the other owner is his brother Mikhail. I came in to say Hello and mention that I'd be writing an article on Um Kulthum, and would pass by Sunday or Monday to see him. Instead, he sat me down for at least another 2 hours, where we talked about the people, and the times, that made Cairo what it is today.
He showed me a folder - which he remembers as the red folder - where he had saved announcements of shows being performed at the Cafe Riche. Among them is the opening of Um Kulthum's first show at the Cafe Riche.
He tells me it was Sheikh abu Alaa` who brought her here in 1923. And at the same time since her hiatus in 1921, Mounira el Muhallaiyya sang again in 1923, too, in Cafe Riche theatre.
That Rose el Yusuf and another woman (Laila Mourad?) were three women that first performed at Cafe Riche. I tell him the times seemed ot have passed, and that I want to write about Um Kulthum in her context, in her time.
He pulls out Abd el Rahman El Refai's "Thawra 1919" - Taarikh Masr el Qawmi 1914-1921.
He says how Cafe Riche again was a central part of that time, being one of the secret places for discussions.
Among other "muntaqqa sirri" (secret places) were the Old Groppi (didn't know there was one - apparently on what is now Abdel Khaled Tharwat street, and was then Sharia Manakh), Beit el Umma, on Dar Ibrahim Basha Said, cafe Salt on Fouad Street, Bar el Lewa (lewa means General) which is in Amarat el Lewa, Ahwa (cafes) Guindi, and Salam, both on Midan Opera, Dar Abd el Rahman Fahmy Bek in Kasr el Aini, Dar Amin Bek El Refai in Helmiyya, Dar Mustafa Sheikh Ayyati in Sukkarriyya (Mahfouz's "Sugar Street"), Dar Mahmoud Sulaiman Pasha in Falaki, and so on...
I tell Magdy I also want to write about Ahmed Fouad Negm. He tells me Cafe Riche is where he first met his first wife: Safeyya (Safinaz on the internet).
Negm even wrote a song on the Cafe Riche he said, that was sung in Algeria by Sheikh Imam. Magdy says he has the original paper on which Negm wrote the song.
Everywhere I look I find signs of the one that is missing, not realising instead that I should have felt fullness instead of lack
We talk about writers and the times past, and somehow, Enaam Kejaji and "The American Granddaughter" came up. Magdy corrected my pronunciation of her last name - told me more than I knew about her: that she had written an article "attacking" him (then he later rephrased to criticising), and that her husband owned a sheesha cafe in France which shut down because of the public ban on smoking, that he had given her a picture of Um Kulthum for the cafe, that she came when she was in Cairo to visit him, and that she had given him a signed copy of her book.
Apparently in the article attacking him, she'd said that "Here is a fat man, who sits in the cafe and does not change, while the world changes around him."
Magdy invited me to come sit in the cafe every now and then and talk to people. They were the minds, he said, the real source.
Adli Rizkallah, painter and illustrator, walked in. He said I should perhaps talk to people that were more into talking. Anyhow he gave me his card and said he would go on a 3-week isolation into his studio. Magdy informed me that Rizkallah was friends with Ahmed Fouad Negm, and that he was the one that had first brough Kejaji to the cafe.
A world passes through his cafe, doesn't it? :) And revolves around it... like conversations. :)
