RE’AYA EL-NEMR is a very special Egyptian woman whom I got to meet about two years ago when she came to my office with Hind Moustafa, my assistant for international relations. She heard about the Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) of which I am the director and she had a personal story to share.
Re’aya el- Nemr, wife of the famous Egyptian painter Abdel Ghani Abul Enein, lived all her life collecting thousands of handicrafts and folk items from different parts of Egypt – Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, Nubia, the Oasis and Sinai. This collection includes garments, jewelry, utensils, tools … etc. Perhaps she got the biggest collection of its kind in Egypt.The house where she lived with her husband was designed by the late famous Egyptian architect Hassan Fathi and located in Mansoureya, Giza.
Unfortunately, her husband passed away years ago and they were not granted any children. Re’aya came to me to discuss her dream of transforming their house into a museum that would be owned by the govemment and would serve also as an institute for teaching Egyptian handicrafts and artisanal work. I promised to work on bringing her honorable initiative to the knowledge of people in charge of those matters in the Government.
A couple of months later, I arranged a meeting with Ali el Meselhi, the Minister of Social Solidarity, who listened carefully to her story and promised to help in establishing that museum. Just few months later while we were enthusiastically working on bringing her dream to life, Re’aya discovered that she got cancer, and a couple of months later we received the devastating news; the vulnerable lady passed away and the great national dream was sadly aborted.
Few months after Iosing the dream, the story was at the centre of a chat between me and Maestro Sherif Mohie el·Din, director of the Art Center at the Library of Alexandria, who happened to know some members of Re’aya’s family, especially her nephew. Ahmed el-Nasser who works as a scenarist and musician. He approached the family members with a suggestion to keep the unique collection of handicrafts and artifacts as well as the collection of painting of Abul Enein in a permanent exhibit area at the library under their name.
Fortunately, the beneficiaries were convinced to keep the house and donate the collection to the library of Alexandria where it was preseverd for the coming gen-erations beside the collection of the two Egyptian legendaries Shadi Abdel salam and Sayed Darwish.
Ismail Serageldine the director of the Library of Alexandria, ordered sufficient space be provided at the Library for the two col¬lections of Re’aya al-Nemr and Abul Enein and finally, their per¬manent exhibitions were inaugurated last year. This way, half of the dream was fulfilled, and now we have the collection permanently exhibited at a prestigious place as Re’aya hoped. Yet, the second half of dream concerning the creation of an institute for handicrafts and artisan work is regretfully not realized yet.
We then decided to display part of this collection at CULTNAT that is located in Cairo, since it is affiliated to the library. A fair area was created to host part of the collection of Re’aya al-Nemr and the exhibition was completed and opened this week. With this opening, we are celebrating the fulfillment of the first dream of Re’aya al-Nemr, hoping that in the near future the rest will come true.
