Egypt: Sadek, the collector
by Sherif Awad
At Cairo’s Faysal neighborhood, archivist Mohamed Sadek
found several reservoirs and spaces set in a one-way street to save his large
collections of books, magazines, posters and lobby stills dating to the early
days of the 20th century. Upstairs at one of the buildings, he has
an office full of large volumes of books, early cinema projectors and antique
telephone on his desk where he usually receives his guests of artists,
researchers, intellectuals and collationers like himself.
Mohamed Sadek was born at the neighborhood of El-Darb
El-Ahmar. He considers his current work not a hobby but a message he inherited
from grandfather. In the old days, early 20th century, people used
to call them El-Warakeen i.e. the papermen who work in everything
related to paper. The grandfather used to have a store called “Sadek Bookshop” in
Port-Said Street (at that time, it was called El-Khaleeg El-Masry Street) in
El-Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood. When Sadek became a young man, he started to take
his father’s place at the family’s shop. However, sales of second of books and
magazines were not that high. And so, slowly, Sadek realized that it is better
to become a collector and owner of archives of magazines, books, pressbooks and
posters retracing Egyptian and Arab history in arts and politics and daily life
for him to deal with organizations and not with individuals. “It was in the
aftermath of the 1992 earthquake when I decided to develop my practice from a
secondhand salesperson to a collector and archivist”, remembers Sadek. “At that
time, the Egyptian government wanted that their officials to move smoothly in
their private cars to reach any crisis location. Hence, they decided to kick us
from our usual place near Al-Azhar up to the mountain near the entrance of
infamous El-Batneya neighborhood”. Many intellectuals criticized this
evacuation including novelists and columnists Gamal El-Gheitany and Youssef
El-Kaid until we were resettled down near El-Azbakeya Garden in El-Attaba. “Once
there, I tried to elevate the sales by attracting the eyes of the pedestrians through
daily changes I used to make on my newsstand for it to feature a thematical variety
of history, arts and pop culture”, explained Sadek who found himself becoming a
celebrity guest in radio and tv programs. Many writers come to Sadek or send
their assistants seeking archival information for their researches like bigtime
screenwriters Waheed Hamed and Youssef Maaty, just to name a few. Also, big-time
stars like Adel Imam and Youssra visit Sadek or send people to get books and
magazines either featuring them few years ago or to research roles.
Sadek organized many exhibitions in Egypt and abroad. The most
prominent was during the 2014 edition of the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF)
when he exhibited classic posters from the golden era of black and white of
Egyptian cinema in addition to pressbooks, lobby stills and even old formats of
box office tickets which retraced the film industry’s different decades. Also,
Sadek was invited the UAE where he succeeded to gather publications and photos
retelling the 70-year history of the state of emirates until nowadays.
Sadek also has a great line of customers of film fans and
collationers like himself. “My biggest sale was a one-folio size poster of
Youssef Chahine’s Salah El-Deen The Conqueror which I have sold to an America
guy with a prize of 1000 dollars”, reveals Sadek who is receiving customers at
his downtown Cairo shop and at the many reservoirs he owns in Faysal
neighborhood. “I like to sell and buy in the real world”, he explains. “I have
never been convinced to post my items on sites like ebay for sales or auctions.
You know why? Because it is quite an experience for a customer to come and see
and feel the real thing. A photo of an item on the internet could be unreal and
deceiving”.
But how Sadek is seeing himself ten years from now? He
doesn’t want to sell online or to digitize his archives like most organizations
and individuals do. “I hope I can deal with Egyptian organization to retrace
the history of Egypt like I did in Saudi Arabia and Emirates”, hopes Sadek who
is criticizing our national entities for their bureaucracy that is not
providing him spaces to exhibit his memorabilia. Until things change, Sadek
will be exhibiting again during the next edition of CIFF and at the UAE during
its national days festivities.
