After six years of devastating conflict in the Middle East, hope is in short supply for the region's intellectuals. In his new film, In The Last Days of the City, Egyptian director Tamer El Said paints a powerful portrait of hopelessness in the Arab world over the course of two intense hours.
Set two years before the Arab uprisings of 2011, the film delivers a thoughtful critique on the failure of the uprisings to transform anger into concrete social and political change using the dense urban environment of downtown Cairo as a storyboard.
The film, which debuted this month at Manarat Al Saadiyat at an event co-hosted by Cinema Akil and Image Nation Abu Dhabi, takes place in the winter of 2009. The protagonist, Khaled, is a young, idealistic Egyptian filmmaker trying to make sense of his life and finish a long-term film project. His movie is a sporadic set of interviews describing episodes of loss and longing.
One character, an older woman named Maryam, describes the beauty of her family home in Alexandria. The home has been sold to a developer who intends to demolish the building to make way for a mall. The protagonist’s ex-girlfriend Laila features heavily, describing her desire to leave the country. The subjects are filmed negotiating the vast urban matrix of Cairo. The city is in flux and changing all around them, but they have no control or say in its future. They merely react and reflect on the past or some distant dream of the future.
Khaled’s day-to-day life, travelling around his city and breathing in its chaos, is the narrative glue of the film. He searches in vain for a new flat, only to be shown options inhabited by live chickens or with pious neighbours keen to share their beliefs. He sits in Cairo’s famous traffic, listeningto news reports about emergency laws and former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s support for the national football team as it competes in the African Cup of Nations.
Like his characters, Khaled is part of the fabric of the city but appears unable – almost paralysed – to do anything about the changes he sees unfolding around him. He can merely observe, with a sense of bewilderment and melancholy – an obvious metaphor for the position of many intellectuals who struggle to process the failure of the 2011 uprisings.
From the start, Cairo’s cacophony of sounds and pace fill the screen and destabilise the viewer. But El Said’s articulation of hopelessness extends far beyond Cairo as several of Khaled’s friends from around the region make an appearance.
It is only when Khaled’s friends visit for a panel discussion about violence in cities across the region that the film’s message becomes clear. In morbid yet jovial conversations in cafes and rooftops above the city, Khaled's intellectual friends from Iraq and Beirut describe their futile attempts to find normality in cities destroyed by war.
Tarek, an affable character from Beirut, describes his fear of alleyways. In the 1980s, Tarek’s father would hide in alleyways to avoid the fighting on the streets. On more than one occasion, he watched from an alleyway as someone was shot dead. Agreeing to send Khaled footage of his life in Beirut for his friend's film project, Tarek decides to venture into an alleyway to face his own fears.
With shaky hands and heavy breath, he enters the alleyway and describes how uneasy it makes him feel. He stops midway and looks up, swearing off Khaled's silly film idea. Tarek is paralysed with a mix of fear and abandon, both physically and emotionally. He cannot proceed through the alleyway nor can he retreat to the entrance. He merely stops and looks helplessly up to the sky.
For a director grappling with an unfinished revolution, this scene is a metaphor for a project with a beginning but no ending. As a stand-in for the disenfranchised youth of the region, Tarek embarks on a journey of change – by entering the alleyway – only to stop in the middle, unable to retreat or move forward.
Back in Cairo, Khaled is again walking aimlessly through the downtown backstreets. He stumbles upon a protest against Hosni Mubarak on the steps of the journalist syndicate, once a popular site of protest before the 2011 uprising. Khaled appears disengaged with the chants against the regime, and, as he walks away, a young activist comes sprinting out in front of him, chased by undercover police.
The police catch him, beat him senseless and throw him in the back of an unmarked pickup truck. Paralysis returns as Khaled stands idle in the street. He snaps a photo on his smartphone but does nothing to intervene. Six years after the Arab uprisings, Khaled’s voicelessness in front of the journalist syndicate is a damning indictment of the paralysis shared by many across the region.
Nothing, El Said demonstrates in the film, has changed since “the last days of the city”. The stalled and unfinished revolutions that promised change yet delivered regression have only resulted in hopelessness. All that is left for the concerned intellectual is one’s craft and the endless city that affords a sense of respite through its chaotic anonymity.
jdana@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @ibnezra
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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.
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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
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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.”