Cairo's train station, built in 1853, is the most important station in Egypt: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Whenever the train
goes by your house
it looks back.
That, in spite of the long journey
is the secret of the passengers’ joy.
goes by your house
it looks back.
That, in spite of the long journey
is the secret of the passengers’ joy.
Waiting for the absent train: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Untitled: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Life in the train stations moves fast: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Banha station, the city before Cairo: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
'Your ticket, please.': photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
The train is the only method of transport for people from the south going to Cairo and the delta cities: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
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Traveling from the village to the city: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Commuting to work outside Cairo: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
The train's bathroom is not adequate for human use, so it has became a place to sit instead: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Those riding without paying resort to sitting between train cars or above them: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Commuting to work outside Cairo: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Untitled: photo by Ahmed Ashraf
At the back of the train: photo by Ahmed Ashraf from The Iron Way via Jadaliyya, 18 June 2014
Marwan Ali was born in 1968 in Qamishle, Syria. Since 1999, he has published his poetry in several Arab magazines and newspapers. He has published two collections of poetry. He left Syria for Holland in 1996 and now lives in Essen, Germany. His poem Train appears as a supplement to a selection of his work in Banipal 50: Prison Writing, 2014.
Ahmed Ashraf Is an Independent self-taught photographer from Egypt. He has documented events of the Egyptian Revolution, "but quickly realized that documentary photography suited me better... after that i was very Interested in working on personal documentary projects" His work has been published in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Telegraph, Boston Globe, New York Daily News, Associated Press, The Guardian, Le Monde, EPA and NurPhoto.
Ahmed Ashraf dedicates his Iron Way portfolio "to the soul of Youssef Chahine," director of the 1958 Egyptian film classic Cairo Station.
5 comments:
Youssef Chahine: Cairo Station, 1958 (trailer)
Great poem, great photos. Remember Nazim Hikmet's "Human Landscapes," a book that had a powerful effect on me. Also, Wolfgana Schivelbusch's "The Railroad" is a wonderful history of changing consciousness as a result of new technology (the change from horseback to railroad). Since I'm working on the Chinese workers who built the transcontinental RR, I've become even more attached to trains.
Hilton,
Thanks very much. Hikmet's grand epic novel in the form of a poem, in its first books discovering the human condition in the railway stations and on the trains, offers a useful frame for reading Marwan Ali's poem. So much of the tapestry of life is there... and the universality of the experience of riding trains may provide an inkling of commonalty among all train riders here and there, high and low -- anything, these days, to help to overcome that sense of "the other".
I see latterly that I've neglected to identify the translator of Marwan Ali's poem. It's Raphael Cohen.
The comments of the photographer Ahmed Ashraf on his portfolio come out a bit rough in the English supplied at the site, so I've done some editing, hopefully not too heavy handed -- I think the sense comes across, and relates to Hikmet's project in many respects:
"Two years ago for me it was the first time to travel by the train, what I wanted to do was to try to reach to the human in the train... not the normal traveller for travel, I mean the one who rides the train steadily and permanently... those miserable humans who spend a quarter of their day going to and back from their work every day, from the regions and villages to the capital and the other cities...
"Train in the third class, the creaking and crowded, low-cost... trying to reach those for whom the train becomes part of their lives...
"These images speak for themselves, and for the sincerity of their content. But for the photographer they reflect what he wants to say about the train’s Human... human .. just human..."
Tom,
The poet's "secret of the passengers’ joy" makes me look more closely at the those faces gazing out train windows. What is it? Boredom, endurance, acceptance? Whatever it is, it pitiably human. Stunning photographs. I will return to this post.
-David
Thank you, David. Yes -- palpably human. The common denominator.
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