Primary sources and the road to madness| Nadin Helmi

I start thinking about this topic 2 years ago, while I was working at the Egyptian center for economic and social rights in Egypt, we were excited to lunch a campaign including different NGOs, activists, and academics aimed to preserve heritage buildings in Alexandria from being demolished after the revolution. We held a number of roundtables, meetings, and events to discuss the issue from different perspectives and suggest solutions. A significant meeting changed my life latterly, that day as we were discussing the legal issues which were one of the main reasons why the buildings are being demolished in Egypt. After an intense 3 hours discussion, I decided to investigate the issue myself although I don’t have a legal background and this is when the madness started!

After a year of only reading legal documents I decided that will be my thesis topic: how the complex system and legal gaps led to the demolish of heritage buildings in Egypt and I've chosen Alexandria as a case study for 2 reasons; firstly I love Alexandria, (I guess more than Alexander the great did)  secondly, is related to community efforts and officials to protect the city heritage after the deconstruct of tens of buildings the past five years.

And the question was: how to start!?!?

1.       Heritage and monuments protection laws

I started by reading the monuments and antique laws in Egypt and its Executive Regulations. According to the first article, the law is protecting a specific type of buildings " to be a product of the Egyptian civilization or the successive civilization or the creation of art, sciences, literature, or religions that took place on the Egyptian lands since the pre-history ages and during the successive historic ages till before 100 years" then I was thinking that heritage buildings maybe not part of the protected buildings in this law?

After digging deeper, I realized that there is a new relatively law had been enforced since 2006 for the protection of those type of buildings, the law defined "Heritage buildings" as "buildings and structures of outstanding architectural style that are associated with the national history or a historic personality. That represents a historic era or that is considered a tourist attraction the foregoing shall be implemented without breaching any legal compensation" and to get a better understanding I had to read the following executive regulations. But is it enough?? for me the answer is negative…. I need to understand how did they come up with this law and why?

2.       Parliament discussions and memos

In order to answer this question, I had to look through different parliament sessions and memos to find when the law had been discussed and approved (as required by the Egyptian Constitution).  I learned a lot about the concept of preservation from a legal perspective and also discovered that the government suggested the law after a problem followed the issuance of a court ruling which revoked prime minister's official decision to prohibit the demolish of palaces and villas in Egypt, which led me to my 3rd and 4th source.

3.       Official decisions

To be able to find all previous decisions issued by Egyptian's officials, I had to subscribe to a private online service "east laws" which publishes all official decrees since the establishment of the official newspaper in Egypt (all official decrees had to be published in this newspaper to be effective).

And due to the fact, that, we don’t have a collective heritage list, I had to go through hundreds of documents to be able to calculate how many buildings had been registered in Egypt since the law required the issuance of an official decree for that matter

4.       Administrative and supreme constitution

I found some of the court rulings online but it was very tricky to find them all and that requires a lawyer's multiple visits to the court's archives. And I decided to use some as an illustration for the law interpretation. 

5.       The national organization for urban harmony official database

The organization is responsible for conserving specific areas for its distinctive value or urban characters including buildings, their website is really helpful as they publish the heritage database for registered and unregistered buildings, yet no information available related to the importance of the building.

The website also includes a guideline for the concept of urban preservation in Egypt, which was really helpful to understand the mindset and the approach towards heritage.

6.       International covenants and charters

Since I started to understand the national level of protection by reviewing all the laws and decrees, I thought I need to understand how the heritage is being protected internationally and that led me directly off course to WHL, the documents attached to each site and reports provides mostly a full picture around the importance of the site and different protection levels.

7.       Interviews

And then I start to think about the community approach towards preserving the heritage and spotted many situations when the local community challenged demolishing heritage buildings or attempted to protect a landscape from being distorted by the construction of new concrete buildings. For that matter, I will need to interview several cultural activists in Alexandria and meet some of the community representatives to document and understand their motives.

During this journey I had to read and understand thousands of legal documents, although my head was spinning the whole time, I've learned a lot how to analyze laws and criticize it for that matter. I still have a lot to grasp especially regarding the international protection of heritage and also understand others countries legal system to be able to compare the level of protection even if I will not include it on my thesis!! I don’t know yet.

In the end, I am still thinking about my thesis approach and struggling to find my way around it and I always remember what Frederick Douglass said: "If there is no Struggle, there is no progress."