The photographer Xenia Nikolskaya had an idea for her book after a visit to an empty museum: "I realised that absence could stand out as a theme - that it has been my theme all along."
She refers to absences in her own story: the country where she was born, the Soviet Union, which is no more, and her native city, Leningrad, now known as St Petersburg. It was there that Nikolskaya studied the art of Ancient Egypt, and this background informs her work, which expresses the viewpoint of someone who grew up surrounded by fine architecture and is able to see Egypt through western eyes. In fact, the Cairo she captures with her lens is a European city, its grandeur and dilapidation devoid of exotic oriental motifs and shown as somehow frozen in time.
Dust contains 68 photographs taken at a few dozen locations in Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Minya, Esna, Port Said and villages around the Delta. The main theme that binds her images is an empty space where past and present coexist and memories abound.
Dust is seen here as a kind of sundial that measures not diurnal rhythms but epochal ones. Some of the palaces featured in the book have been neglected for decades - a result of nationalisation and rental laws introduced by Nasser's regime. If in the photographer's home country "War to Palaces" was declared in 1917, in Egypt the revolution did not happen until 1952.
The differences between that early 20th century period and today are striking, but to see them for what they are you need to get a picture which is broader than a holiday postcard. Nikolskaya's camera provides just such a view.
The buildings pictured in the book include the Serageldin family palace in Cairo, which was built in 1902. It was intended as Kaiser Wilhelm's residence during his visits to Egypt (which were thwarted by the First World War) and bought by Serageldin Pasha afterwards.
At one time, the mansion served as the headquarters of the influential Wafd party headed by Fuad Pasha Serageldin. Since his death in 2000, the residence has been unoccupied, a belle époque monument which no one seems interested in preserving. Such are Egypt's realities; the property boom in the country has everything to do with the price of land, while the value of old houses built on it is considered negligible.
Looking at the picture of one of the palace's huge salons, with its moth-eaten carpet lit by a luxurious chandelier, you can almost smell its musty air. Another spacious room, discovered in Diwan al-Hozayen, a guesthouse in the small town of Esna, still has the furniture ordered by its owners from Paris a century ago, in line with the Europeanised nature of old Cairo. The Tiring Department Store, opened in 1912, was also envisaged as a place of Parisian chic. Now, more than half a century after it was nationalised in 1952, it is partly abandoned and partly used by squatters, mainly as tailors' workshops. The grand staircase is rotting away, surrounded by the detritus of several layers of life, all covered with dust.
Many stately homes, such as Sultana Malak Palace in Cairo's Heliopolis neighbourhood, were converted into schools after the revolution, and classroom paraphernalia is still visible in the photographs. How did pupils manage to concentrate in these opulent surroundings? Prince Said Halim's Palace, a secondary school for boys that produced a number of government officials, looks a lot more austere.
In the photo taken in 2007 there is a portrait of Hosni Mubarak above a door. "When I returned in May 2011, the room looked exactly the same as in 2007, except that Mubarak's portrait was now on the floor," remembers Nikolskaya.
In his essay accompanying the photographs, On Barak writes about "the pre-1952 cosmopolitan rainbow grey", which contributes to contemporary dust colours and lends different meanings to the substance that gave the book its title.
The state of Egypt's colonial architecture may seem static in these photographs, the idea of which is to explore spaces where life appears to have stopped half a century ago. However, since the project was started in 2006, a number of these places have been demolished. Decay and an overpopulation crisis also pose threats to the endangered urban spaces documented by Nikolskaya.
Dust was completed just before the Arab Spring stirred last year, and its message can be read as the opposite of "War to Palaces". This sentiment is strengthened by Barak's afterword, which finishes on an optimistic note with the hope of a new Egypt emerging from under the layers of dust accumulated here.
Anna Aslanyan is a freelance writer and co-editor of 3:AM magazine.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Student Of The Year 2
Director: Punit Malhotra
Stars: Tiger Shroff, Tara Sutaria, Ananya Pandey, Aditya Seal
1.5 stars
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
