The village of Harrania sits within sight of the pyramids of Giza, a half-hour's drive from central Cairo. In recent years, the huge chaotic, dust-swept city of fifteen million souls has gradually begun encircling it.
Thirty-nine years ago, of course, things were different.
It was then, in 1951, that Ramses and Sophie Wissa Wassef came to Harrania with the idea of launching a utopian experiment. First they spent time building an indispensable groundwork of affection and trust with the children of the village.
Egyptian children do not have long school hours since teachers, even today, must teach three shifts every day. Children on the early shift, for instance, are out by eleven and have the rest of the day free. They can work in the fields or play in the streets.
The couple had bought a plot of land in the village. Wissa Wassef, an architect fascinated by the traditional adobe architecture of his country, had started building a handsome, inexpensive structure there. It was low-cost, because mud, after all, costs nothing. And in that climate it becomes as solid and durable as concrete.
It took time, but once the Wissa Wassefs had established a relationship of trust with the children, they asked them if they would like to learn how to weave.
A dozen of them expressed interest and began working regularly. As Mrs. Wissa Wassef recalls, the girls were quicker to respond. Yet, she can remember one six-year-old boy, who applied too late and was turned down. He went home and built his own loom, picking up bits of wool the others discarded, and began working on his own. The Wissa Wassefs then decided to take him in - he became one of their best weavers. One of their principles, incidentally, was always to deal with the children directly - never through their parents.
They were all very young children - most aged between eight and twelve. This particular preference was motivated by experience. Wissa Wassef at one time had tried to get professional craftsmen to produce decorative woodwork and colored glass for the houses he built and had been dismayed by the drab quality of the work. The suggestion to try working with children actually came from Sophie's father, Badie Habib Gorgy, a mathematician and art amateur. While in Cairo, he himself had encouraged townspeople of the poorest class to do sculpture. Indeed, he even succeeded in persuading King Farouk to support the venture.
But Wissa Wassef's idea for the experiment really began in 1941, when he was commissioned to build a school using traditional materials in old Cairo, near the ruins of the city's sprawling Roman fortress. While he was working on this building, he convinced the school authorities to let him teach weaving, after hours, to some of the children enrolled at the school.
One belief Wissa Wassef held throughout his life was that every human being has artistic potential, though it may, of course, be perverted or destroyed by education. As it happened, the results of his first adventure were so exciting that he decided to take it a step further. Three of the Cairo children
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