MEETING 2010

The Meeting of Egypt
“If the Egyptians cannot come here, we’ll go there.” From an idea among friends, to a two-day event to take place in October in Cairo, on the theme of beauty and dialogue... WAEL FAROUQ tells us what is happening.

by Davide Perillo

The idea popped up a year ago, during a trip on the Nile with a group of people who had attended the Rimini Meeting in 2009. The group included  Wael Farouq, Professor of Arabic at the American University of Cairo and by then habitué of Rimini, and some Egyptian friends, jurists, and high-ranking magistrates won over by the experience of the Rimini event to the point that one of them, Hossam Mikawy, afterwards said that he calculated his age “from the Meeting, because I was reborn there.” Also present was Fr. Ambrogio Pisoni, the only Catholic of the company, who, when the conversation moved to “how beautiful it would be if our Egyptian friends could see what is there–this is something that would truly help dialogue,” threw out an idea: “If the Egyptians can’t come to the Meeting, why don’t we bring the Meeting to Egypt?” It seemed like a quip, at best good to set the tone for something possible in the future: a few articles in the newspapers, maybe a small gathering… It became an event, because good ideas, taken seriously, move quickly (much more quickly than we expect).
Wael threw himself into it with passion, as did his friends, with contacts, telephone calls, and hours of work donated after university lessons or court cases. Can you imagine a constitutional judge spending his time after work to gather up the threads of the secretariat? Or an academic who pinch hits as PR person? Well, it happened, and it must have struck those who saw it. “Bit by bit, we involved about 50 friends: intellectuals, journalists, and actors,” recounts Farouq. Famous names, and important signatures on the letter asking the authorities for permission to organize a cultural event to present the Meeting in Cairo. “Why did they get involved? They’re friends, and they understood what’s at stake: a true opportunity for encounter, more powerful than a thousand debates on coexistence and religions.”
The government understood as well. Four ministers got involved, and the permission arrived, and the date, and the program, and the location, which changed a couple of times because the mailing list grew well beyond expectations. The result is that on October 28th and 29th, the Meeting will berth in Cairo, in the Mohammad Ali building, at the Opera House, and in the same university hall where last June Barack Obama gave his famous speech/appeal to Islam. On stage, discussing “Beauty as the Space of Dialogue,” will be Emilia Guarnieri, Meeting President, the astrophysicist Marco Bersanelli, and other guests. The hall has 3,500 seats, not much smaller than the auditorium of the Rimini Expo Center. Could it possibly be filled? In Cairo? “I don’t know. We’ll see,” answers Farouq. “But the important thing is that as many people as possible come from Italy.” Why? “To understand what the Meeting is, an explanation isn’t enough. You have to meet those who do it.”