Much of Heliopolis’ historic beauty remains preserved in the grand architecture at the city’s heart, but amidst socialist-style concrete blocks thrown up in the 1950s and 1960s, it may be hard to envision it the way the Baron did a century ago.

As one of its many activities to preserve Egypt’s historical memory, the bimonthly historical magazine Ayam Misriya (Egyptian Days) held a two-week exhibition of rare media in recognition of the Heliopolis centenary.

The exhibition, which grouped 40 artifacts, including old photographs, postcards of architectural landmarks and newspaper articles, enabled visitors to imagine life in New Cairo back when it was an airy oasis of high society in the eastern desert.

Ayam Misriya Editor Ahmed Kamali and Amr Ibrahim decided to inaugurate the exhibit with a special segment about Heliopolis founder Baron Empain that included an obituary from an Egyptian newspaper announcing the Baron’s death in 1929, a postcard featuring the Baron’s son, cigar jauntily in hand, standing in front of his father’s palace in 1941 and a photo of his grandson impersonating this pose.

The exhibit also focused on the Heliopolis Hotel, which has been Egypt’s main Presidential Palace since the 1980s.

“It was actually the Baron who built the palace in 1910. He asked the Belgian architect [Ernest] Jasper, who had planned and designed the whole suburb, to construct the hotel to attract tourism. It was considered the biggest hotel in the Middle East at the time,” says Ibrahim.

During both world wars, the hotel was turned into a military hospital for Allied casualties, but after the 1952 revolution, the palace was nationalized and served other purposes. Upon the creation of the Egyptian-Syrian union, the palace became the headquarters of the central government of the United Arab Republic grouping the two neighboring countries from 1958 to 1961, Ayam Misriya’s latest issue reports; the issue is devoted to the history of Heliopolis to coincide with the exhibit.

After the disintegration of the Egyptian-Syrian union, the palace served as headquarters for a variety of government departments. Upon coming to power, President Hosni Mubarak renovated the palace to serve as Egypt’s presidential headquarters.

The exhibition also featured several landscape photographs of Heliopolis illustrating the development of the suburb from the 1910s to the 1940s, as well as a colored map featuring Heliopolis’ layout and boundaries in 1934.

“In order to specify the date of our photos, we depend on many things. The photo may be extracted from an explicitly dated source such as magazines. In that case we are positively sure that we have the accurate date. In case of postcards that carry no date, we depend on the photo’s features such as the brand of cars or people’s costumes to determine the photo’s rough date,” says Ibrahim.

In its last section, the exhibition displayed a number of old metro tickets with fares ranging from 15 to 35 milliemes. According to Ibrahim, these tickets had no dates and it was difficult to determine to which decade they belonged.

Eighty percent of the exhibits were drawn from the photo archive that Ayam Misriya’s editor inherited from his father, which also contains thousands of books and periodicals, according to Ibrahim.

“We collected the photos and text [for this exhibition] in one month, which is a short period of time if we are speaking of the place’s history over the course of 100 years. But since we simply rely on primary documents and do not indulge in secondary historical sources [or analysis], we can find what we need quickly,” says Ibrahim.

Kamali started the magazine with his late father and his best friend Ibrahim in November 1995, using his family’s archive of old periodicals, photographs and documents. Kamali explains that collecting printed materials was his father’s main hobby.

“My father was a civil servant in the morning and a magazine compiler in the evening. He traveled to several countries He passed on to me many books, [old] newspapers and magazines So I grew up in a culture-oriented house,” says Kamali.

The main objective of the magazine is to provide a chronicle of Egypt’s history accessible to the majority through the use of illustrative media such as rare pictures, documents, and newspaper clippings, says Kamali.

“In Ayam Misriya, we target the layman who supposedly knows nothing about history, so we do not discuss whether Saad Zaghloul used to gamble or not because the recipient might not even be aware of who Zaghloul is. My mission is to tell him who this person is and when he came to power. I try to make these pieces of information stickthrough photos and documents,” says Kamali.

Kamali’s father initially sponsored the magazine until the government’s Cultural Development Fund decided to back the project in 1997. Ibrahim says that the magazine prints 5,000-7,000 copies per issue.

“One of the problems that pertain to Egyptian [historiography] is a scarcity of historical photos,” says Ibrahim. “The best evidence of this is in history books used at schools. The number of pictures in these books is very limited. So we try to revive the subject [of history] and make it more attractive through photos.” He adds that the magazine also relies on rare photographs donated by readers.

Over the course of ten years, Ayam Misrya’s editorial team has published twenty-five issues. Kamali adds that he has also published two illustrated books, one on the history of Egyptian Radio and another on the history of Egyptian police in the past century.

Kamali keeps buying more historical sources to expand his father’s library, despite limited financial resources. However, he believes the materials he is already holding will allow him to continue publishing Ayam Misrya indefinitely. “I still have archives from around the Arab world including old newspapers from more than 13 Arab countries. I haven’t used these materials yet,” says Kamali.

Surprisingly, neither Ibrahim nor Kamali, both in their late thirties, earned a degree in history. Although they both graduated from law school in the late 1980’s, they now devote their full attention to cultural research and promotion. “We love history, old pictures and archaic materials and that is what made us publish a magazine specialized in history,” says Ibrahim.

While the publication’s editorial team is gaining fame among Egyptian intellectuals, it has been reluctant to collaborate with simply anybody. “We reject the idea [of allowing outside researchers to work with us] because the archives are Kamali’s private property and we do not want anybody to play with them