An Israeli in Cairo: "Bravo! Bravo!"

I've gone to many performances at the Cairo Opera House over the years (including my own daughter's, if you don't mind a father bragging a little bit) but last night was the first time I showed up at the ticket office to find the performance sold out. Although I had fought an hour of traffic to get there, I still had to smile. As I stood there regretting my bad luck, I imagined the wonderful headline I could write on this blog item:

Israeli Musician Packs the House in Arab World's Capital

Well, it's long overdue. It's been 30 years since the Camp David Peace Accords and Barenboim is the first Israeli culture figure of stature to perform in Egypt. Out of supposed solidarity with other Arabs who have yet to reach peace agreements, Egypt has balked at what the Arabs detest as "normalization"-- a peace treaty is one thing, but getting friendly with Israel is another thing. The cold peace has strong support from the Egyptian public. It's considered a kiss of death for Egyptian businessmen, journalists or artists to have anything to do with Israel, a country with which Egypt shares a long border. If you want to deal with Israel anyway, then the government finds ways of intimidating you so you won't do it again. That's why Culture Minister Farouk Hosni's public support for Barenboim's appearance in Cairo is welcome and encouraging. (Compare Cairo's hospitality, in this instance at least, with an incident at another opera house.)

You can understand the general Arab aversion to "normalization." Why, the argument goes, should Arab countries give Israel the fruits of peace--economic trade, cultural exchanges--before Israel makes better strides toward making peace? If we were talking about Syria, maybe they have a point. Syria is technically in a state of war with Israel, and Israel continues to occupy a large patch of Syrian territory, the Golan Heights. But Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. The Egyptian regime points to the treaty as a sign of its leadership and political maturity in the Arab world. So, it should understand the good that could be done by encouraging rather than discouraging cultural contacts. It's fine for leaders to make peace, but in the end, as Barenboim has said, it is much more important to build understanding between people.

Barenboim conducted the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and played the Pathetique sonata. I have to point out that I didn't see many "ordinary" Egyptians among the well-healed concert goers I was envying outside the Opera House. A majority of those attending seemed to be foreigners, and diplomats and other non-Egyptian VIPs were well represented. The Egyptians present tended to be Cairo's glitterati, and I wasn't surprised to learn, for example, that actor Omar Sharif was seen chatting amiably with Barenboim in the lobby cafe before the performance. Right up to the day of the concert, the Egyptian papers carried many comments from local artists and writers voicing opposition to Barenboim's presence. Some reports said that Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa pointedly declined an invitation to attend. As a representative of a people with a rich cultural heritage, Moussa might have done a greater service by going to the concert and sitting in the first row. (Ahem, some of us couldn't get a ticket!)

It's all the more absurd to protest the presence of Barenboim because he is not only a world-class orchestra conductor and pianist, but has put an immense personal effort into building bridges between Israelis and Palestinians. Like many other Israelis, he has expressed great sympathy for Palestinian suffering and has denounced Israel's occupation. In 2007 the Palestinian Authority awarded Barenboim honorary Palestinian citizenship. In partnership with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, himself an accomplished pianist, Barenboim established the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra bringing together Israeli and Arab musicians. Before arriving in Cairo, Barenboim commented, "Opening a dialogue is important not in order to accept existing conditions but precisely in order to change them. Therefore, our project is not an act of normalization with an occupied Palestine but rather an act of solidarity against human injustice."

Welcome to Cairo, Daniel Barenboim, a man with humanity, courage and grace, an Israeli--and not a bad musician, either. 

(Housekeeping note: I think that Edward Said would have relished the chance to see his friend Barenboim perform in Cairo, in fact not far from the street in Zamalek where the Jerusalem-born Said grew up. Like the maestro, Said was a Beethoven nut, and the Pathetique sonata was a personal favorite since his own earliest playing days. The young Edward's first piano teacher was Leila Birbari, the wife of a longtime TIME correspondent in Cairo, Wilton Wynn.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo