RE: RE: Arabs, Americans and Culture: A Proposal

Nice to see some positive comments posted so far. I thought it was worth adding that, with or without museums and institutes, there is fortunately a fair amount of routine cross-cultural cooperation going on. It doesn't get anything close to the headlines of a hostage beheading, I guess, so that's a reason some folks may get a twisted perception of the people in this part of the world.

As it happens, I've just returned from a wonderful evening at Alexandria's Sayed Darwish Theater. France's Amadeo Modigliani Quartet and the Cairo Opera Quartet combined their strings for a magical performance of Mendelssohn and Brahms. (The Cairo Opera House, by the way, was itself financed by a Japanese grant and designed by a team of Japanese and Egyptian architects.)

At the intermission, I ran into Franck Goddio, the French underwater explorer. He told me he just returned for another season of diving off the Mediterranean coast near Abu Kir. Franck's been working with Egyptians for over a decade to recover ancient artifacts documenting Alexandria's illustrious history. Many exhibitions have been mounted with the discoveries, including "Egypt's Sunken Treasures," which is now in Bonn. More than 1 million people already saw it in Berlin and Paris. Franck hopes the exhibition will get to the U.S. eventually; well, an Arab Cultural Center in Washington would be an excellent place for it.

Speaking of the Cairo Opera, I attended an incredible American-Egyptian event there about a year ago, when American conductor Gilbert Kaplan led the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Second Symphony "Resurrection". Afterwards, my wife and I had the pleasure of being invited by an Egyptian businessman to a small dinner in Kaplan's honor. I sat next to an Egyptian investment banker and the mother of Jehane Noujaim, the young filmmaker who directed the acclaimed 2004 documentary on Al Jazeera. The dinner was held at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza, owned by Jewish-Canadian businessan Isadore Sharp and Saudi Arabian tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal along with an Egyptian partner.

To Oilguzzler, I guess I can't resist pointing out that, well, I've come across a few Arabs who aren't terrorists. You actually don't have to look very hard. They are musicians, architects, archeologists, businessmen, investment bankers, filmmakers and every other sort of person you can think of. In their everyday lives, by promoting the arts, discovering their past, investing money, asking questions, whatever, they're trying to build a better world.

--By Scott MacLeod/Alexandria