Staging the State: Commemoration, Urban Space and the National Symbolic Order in 1970s Cairo

Abstract

This article investigates how commemorating practices are deployed to fix and affirm sovereignty and its ordering. Through conceptualizing commemorating practices as ‘national symbolic order’, this article focuses on Cairo’s monument of the Unknown Soldier as a tangled cluster of shifting attempts to signify urban space. Built shortly after the 1973 war, the monument expressed an approach to nationalist symbolism that was in line with how the Sadat regime came into its own because of the war. The article traces the influences on the style of the monument and the narrative of its construction. Ironically, six years later, the same monument became the resting place of Sadat after his assassination on the same site. How is urban space implicated in the construction of a national symbolic order? How is politics as death and mortality navigated and scripted in city space? In answering these questions, the article relies on interviews with the designer of the post-independence Monument of the Unknown Soldier conducted in 2015 and 2016, and his photographic collection. It proceeds in four sections discussing the significance of the October war of 1973 in shoring up the legitimacy of Sadat, imagining the monument, constructing the monument and, finally, the monument’s mediation of death and sovereignty. From the materiality and entanglements of one site, the article analyzes ‘state-making’ via ‘city-making’ after 1952 and well into 1970s. Ultimately, it follows the hesitations of deploying a national symbolic order in post-independence Egypt and of attempts at shoring up a shaky state apparatus in a common political space.

Key Words:

• Cairo
• Memorialization
• Monument of the Unknown Soldier
• National symbolic order
• Space

Acknowledgments

The research informing this article is from my doctoral research funded by the University of Warwick Chancellor’s International scholarship, the BISA founders fund, and the IJURR foundation. I want to thank James Brassett, Mohamed El-Shewy, Mohamed Ezzeldin, Alan Lester, JoAnn McGregor, Nicola Pratt, Sara Salem and Divya Tolia-Kelly for comments on earlier drafts. I also thank Sami Rafiʿ for his time and permission to use his photographs.

Notes

1 Benedict Anderson (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. Ed. (London: Verso).

2 Ibid, pp. 9–12.

3 See for example: Laura Wittman (2011) The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body, Toronto Italian Studies (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press); on politics of burials and commemoration, see Katherine Verdery (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change, Harriman Lectures (New York: Columbia University Press); and with relevance to memorialization, death and security, see Charlotte Heath-Kelly (2017) Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite, New Approaches to Conflict Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

4 See Israel Gershoni & James P. Jankowski (2004) Commemorating the Nation: Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Egypt, Chicago Studies on the Middle East (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center); and Alexandra Dika Seggerman (2014) Mahmoud Mukhtar: The First Sculptor from the Land of Sculpture, World Art, 4(1), pp. 27–46; and Beth Baron (2005) Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics, 1st ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

5 Lauren Gail Berlant (1991) The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life. (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press).

6 Ibid, pp. 5–6, 20–21, emphasis added.

7 Ibid, p. 21, emphasis added.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid, pp. 21, 25; and Lauren Gail Berlant (2011) Cruel Optimism (Durham: Duke University Press) p. 23.

10 Heath-Kelly, Death and Security.

11 Baron, Egypt as a Woman; Gershoni & Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation.

12 Gershoni & Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation, p. 35.

13 Ibid, p. 123.

14 Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, p. 5.

15 Gershoni & Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation, pp. 53, 87–88,149–165, 191–192, and 209–212.

16 Alia Mossallam (2012) Hikāyāt Sha‛b—Stories of Peoplehood: Nasserism, Popular Politics and Songs in Egypt, 1956–1973, PhD thesis (London: The London School of Economics and Political Science [LSE]), pp. 206–207.

17 Timothy Mitchell (2002) Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 211.

18 See Nicola Pratt (2000) Maintaining the Moral Economy: Egyptian State-Labour Relations in an Era of Economic Liberalization, Arab Studies Journal, 8/9 (2/1), pp. 111–29.

19 Ghali Shukri (1981) Egypt, Portrait of a President, 1971–1981: The Counter-Revolution in Egypt, Sadat’s Road to Jerusalem, Middle East Series (London: Zed Press).

20 The International Exhibition Land is currently in Nasr City and this area has been designated for the new Cairo Opera House. This was to replace Cairo’s Opera House that burnt down in the 1970s and in which Sami Rafiʿ, the designer of the monument, had worked.

21 Baghdad, like Cairo, has several and shifting symbolic-scapes. If this inspiration story is true, then the monument in reference is most likely the Arch of the Unknown Soldier built by Agha Khan; winner architect Rifat Chadirji in 1959 (see portfolio of images online at: The official site of Rifat Chadirji, available at: http://www.rifatchadirji.com/jondi-majhool.html, accessed May 12, 2019). The primary reference for this monument, however, is a mother wailing over her son’s dead body. This monument was destroyed in the 1980s and replaced by a statue of Saddam Hussein—the same statue that was demolished in 2003. Alternatively, Rafiʿ mentions in some interviews that the inspiration came simply by having a view of the pyramids from his home. While this discrepancy is not very consequential, the Baghdad influence opens questions about reference since the monument is a hollowed arch, as well as the effect of comparing building material on the form of memorialization, which is the account that Rafiʿ gave me in our interviews.

22 Sami Rafiʿ interview, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo on 2/8/2015.

23 Kufi is an angular script, one of the oldest Arabic styles. For a study on its origins, subtypes and development see: Annemarie Schimmel (1990) Calligraphy and Islamic Culture (London: Tauris), pp. 1–47.

24 Sami Rafiʿ interview, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo on 4/8/2015.

25 Ibid.

26 See Samah Selim (2000) The New Pharaonism: Nationalist Thought and the Egyptian Village Novel, 1967–1977, Arab Studies Journal, 8/9(2/1), pp. 10–24.

27 Liliane Karnouk (1995) Contemporary Egyptian Art (Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press), pp. 81–82.

28 Clement Henry Moore (1994) Images of Development: Egyptian Engineers in Search of Industry, 2nd ed. (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press), pp. 174, 178, 187; also see the dedicated chapter in Raymond William Baker (1990) Sadat and After: Struggles for Egypt’s Political Soul (London: Tauris), pp. 14–45.

29 Sami Rafiʿ interview, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo on 2/8/2015.

30 Ibid.

31 Sami Rafiʿ interview, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo on 4/8/2015.

32 Adrian Forty (2012) Concrete and Culture: A Material History (London: Reaktion), pp. 22, 97, 197, 202, 254.

33 Sami Rafiʿ author interview, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, 4/8/2015.

34 Maha Abdul-Rahman (2015) Al-Fanān Sami RafiʿWa Al-Fan Al-Jamāhīry [Sami Rafiʿ and art for the masses], Afāq Al-Fan Al-Tashkīly series no. 32 (Cairo: al-hayʾa al-ʿāma li-qusūr al-thaqāfa), pp. 53–55.

35 Hussein Bikar (2012) Dars fī al-balāgha [A Lesson in Eloquence], Al-Akhbar, March 14, 1975, reprinted in Sami Rafiʿ (ed.) Sami Rafiʿmin khilāl al-funūn al-tashkīliyya al-mutaṣila bil-jamāhīr [Sami Rafiʿ through mass fine arts] (Cairo: Print House), pp. 37–38.

36 Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, p. 191.

37 Ibid.

38 Najīb Maḥfūẓ (2008) The Day the Leader Was Killed (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), p. 89.

39 Shukri writing a separate preface to his book on Sadat, indeed announces that ‘[d]eath was the Egyptian people’s verdict on the whole regime’. See Shukri, ‘Egypt, Portrait of a President’, p. iv.

40 Baker, Sadat and after, p. 2.

41 Ibid.

42 BBC (1970) Mourners Killed as Nasser is Buried (October 1). Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/1/newsid_2485000/2485899.stm, accessed May 12, 2019.

43 For images and videos of the funeral, see: Ahram Online (2013) Nasser’s: The Largest Funeral in Egyptian History (September 28). Available at: http://english.ahram.org.eg/UI/Front/MultimediaInner.aspx?NewsContentID=82636&newsportalname=Multimedia, accessed May 12, 2019.

44 Hassan Fathy (1971) Gamal Abdel Nasser Mausoleum (Facade Perspective), 1971, HF 71.02 A 102 Y. Hassan Fathy’s Collection in RAC AUC RBSCL. Available at: http://dar.aucegypt.edu/handle/10526/1163, accessed May 12, 2019.

45 H. Fathy (1971) Correspondence regarding the competition for the shrine of Gamal Abdel Nasser (21 March) Hassan Fathy Archives. Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Geneva, Switzerland. Available at: https://archnet.org/sites/863/publications/6629, accessed February 8, 2018.

46 H. Fathy (1971) Memorandum regarding the architectural competition for Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Mosque and Shrine (27 March) Hassan Fathy Archives. Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Geneva, Switzerland. Available at: https://archnet.org/sites/863/publications/6630, accessed February 8, 2018.

47 Al-Ahram, October 9, 1981.

48 Al-Ahram, October 8, 1981.

49 Sami Rafiʿ author interview, Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, 4/8/2015.

50 See for example Baker, ‘Sadat and After’; John Waterbury (1983) The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Raymond A. Hinnebusch (1981) Egypt under Sadat: Elites, Power Structure, and Political Change in a Post-Populist State, Social Problems, 28(4), pp. 442–464; R. A. Hinnebusch (1988) Egyptian Politics under Sadat: The Post-Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State, Updated ed. (Boulder; London: Reinner); Joel Gordon (1992) Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution, Studies in Middle Eastern History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press); Sherief Younis (2012) Nidāʼ Al-Shaʻb: Tārīkh Naqdī Lil-Aydiūlūjīyā Al-Nāṣirīyah [The Call of the People: A Critical History of the Nasserist Ideology], (Madīnat Naṣr, al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Shurūq); and Nazih M. Ayubi (1995) Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris).

51 Heath-Kelly, Death and Security, p. 124.

52 Ibid, pp. 124–125, 132, and 150.