21/06/2019
THE CITY OF THE SUN
History of the world’s first-ever compound.
I faced the mysterious word "compound" the first time seven years ago. At the same time "inshallah" appeared in my lexicon. I was infected with a Middle Eastern subject and all Arabism’s by the incredible director well very creative agency. By the way, it was he (an infection) who presented me for New Year the book “Guide to unknown Egypt "; then on January the 22 it happened to me to go to Sharm-el-Sheikh, and further, the history is known - my stay in the country of Tutankhamen counts upon five years today. So as the baron Empain, the Belgian by origin, exclusively creative engineer and the talented town-planner arrived in Egypt under the contract – to lay the tram line – and remained for the rest of life. He built a palace, became a city legend of Cairo and … presented compounds to the world.
Perhaps, you overheard this word? Compounds are the huge housing estates built for foreigners. A distinctive feature of a compound is a social and ethical microenvironment. A place of the greatest distribution of similar complexes in Saudi Arabia. Exactly their laws are especially strict, and it is quite difficult for Europeans to live in this country which is screwed up on all screw-nuts. Agree, every time to dress up paranja to go for some bread, it is terrible.
The compound is micro-town where other rules work. In a compound, it is possible to go sure not stark-naked, but in habitual European clothes. It is possible to drink beer (it isn't sure that in Saudi it can be bought, but to weld by means of multi-cooker at due ability – no problem, I fried tea if who remembered). A compound is a place where the Europeans who live in the east country with its strict rules can to aside laws of Sharia for a while - to sunbathe in the bikini at the pool, to chat in the mixed company and to snuggle a doggie. Everything that is forbidden in the territory of the country is allowed in a private order inside of the compound.
Compounds are quite often confused with condominiums. Recently in Egypt, by the way, such fashion started - to call compounds just housing estates with a pool. But it is absolutely incorrect. The house with the closed internal territory is a condominium. And the compound it is somehow as Middle Eastern secular Vatican, the closed complex assuming the possibility of internal service for residents. The compound purpose is to provide the maximum quantity of household opportunities for foreigners, beginning from shops "for Europeans" and finishing, we can say, with a private bar, a restaurant, and a laundry.
The first compound in the Middle East was constructed by the Baron Empain, that very whose palace decorates one of the most prestigious districts of modern Cairo. Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, now is one of the districts of the Egyptian capital. But once, in those days, when the baron Empain conceived to build "small Europe" in the naked empty desert, it was that first compound which sense consisted was the formation of exclusively European quasi-town.
At the beginning of the century, most perspicacious ran from Europe. Wars didn't shake the continent yet, blood didn't flow in tons on a scorched land yet, but the sensitive elite already understood that it was time to get away where this horror wouldn’t get them. Egypt was a fine option – nearby, quite habitable, cheap. Alexandria at the beginning of the twentieth century became the advanced city dictating fashion to all Europe!
However, the baron Empain threatened on something absolutely impossible (this feat was repeated by Samekh Sawiris, El Guna's founder, half a century later). The Belgian conceived to organize the city in the desert, such as Egyptian Las Vegas. “The Empain” corporation was rather powerful and financially provided to do such grandiose work.
Edouard Empain appeared in Egypt at the beginning of 1904. Initially, his task included the construction of the tram line, but, having puzzled with Napoleonic plans, Empain created the internal Egyptian company "Cairo Electric Railways & Heliopolis Oases Company" and undertook up classing of a huge piece of the desert. It should turn twenty-five square kilometers of the area into one of the most magnificent districts of Cairo. "The City of the Sun" this name Empain called his creation.
Many, who had to happen in Cairo at excursion, were terrified dirt, narrow streets and oppressive gloom of this city tarred by smog. I’ve been to Cairo an uncountable number of times, and each my trip has convinced me more and more of thought that it is a terrible gloomy garbage can. And what my surprise was when I appeared in Heliopolis!
Instead of slim-jim backstreets where houses reach each other and neighbors can greet from balconies by hands; there were very broad streets and the boulevard with well-known green trams of Empain at once. Instead of smog – the clean hot air which slightly smells as foliage. Instead of the tarred and smoked high-rises with garbage roofs – there are ancient houses in Mauritian style, villas with terraces and huge balconies, with the forged gates and fences, an ancient mosque and near it – the buildings of the largest banks sparkling with chrome. No wonder that Heliopolis was elected as a residence for the last half-dozen of governors of Egypt.
The Heliopolis is the most real compound; it is exclusively well-planned secular area which is intended for the life of the Europeanized population. With surprise, I saw at an office of the operator Etisalat the Egyptian woman with the hair painted in green water nymph color (my sharp-eyed companion girl noticed also keratin straightness). In the nearby bank where we came occasionally, we were met by the whole flock of office clerks dressed in the latest fashion. There were no cheap motley “hijabs” or patched black “abays”. For two days in Heliopolis, I’ve never met any sloven in “galabeya” or the grandfather driving donkey on the highway.
I was surprised also what even traditional laziness, and also a fair share of indifference isn't felt there. We were served very quickly and qualitatively in the Italian pizzeria, and then without excess red tape, we were helped with the solution of the whole heap of documentary questions. Regional taxi drivers didn't need to remind about turning on a counter; and the passersby who were met on the street without surprise, habitual for me, took views of my body painting.
The Baron Empain, creating Heliopolis – the City of the Sun, hardly imagined that the whole century would fly by; all - the government, a thinking vector, and mentality of the Egyptians would several times be replaced; but his creation, a unique oasis of the European culture, civilized luxury and a secular pomp would remain as a silent monument to the gone away era and the very first, the most grandiose example of the real compound.
