Cairo Magazine published this article by Ursula Lindsey on the history and the actual residents of the Yacoubian building.

When the Egyptian-Armenian businessman Nichan Yacoubian built an apartment building on Talaat Harb Street in the 1930s, he could never have guessed its future.

He could not have predicted how his son Dikran would emigrate to Geneva after his death, leaving the building in the charge of several superintendents, how his own ground-floor store would become the bright Wanan shirt shop, or how the simple Art Deco façade would grow spotted with air-conditioning units and billboards, blending into Downtown’s busy commercial scenery. Nor could he have envisaged that “The Yacoubian Building” would one day be a name famous and familiar across the city, much to the chagrin of its residents.

Alaa Al Aswany’s best-selling novel Amarat Al Yacoubian (The Yacoubian Building) (Merit, 2002) is on its sixth edition in Arabic, has been translated to English (AUC Press, 2004) and will soon be published and distributed in the United States by HarperCollins.

 More importantly, the film based on the book—a US$3 million mega-production starring Adel Imam, Nour Al Sherif and Youssra—has reportedly just finished filming, and should be out by the beginning of 2006.

The bad publicity

For the actual residents of the Yacoubian, all this translates into much unwanted attention. The novel’s blunt depiction of the sexual and financial exploitation to which its characters subject each other reflects badly on its real-life counterparts, they say.

“People call it the building of homosexuality, of prostitution,” says Edward Kamil, one of the building’s administrators. “Not the Yacoubian building. There are characters in the book who have the same name as real people. It’s a novel but it deals with real people and a real place.”

This is the argument of the sons of late Yacoubian resident Malak Khela, who are suing Al Aswany for LE2 million for allegedly depicting their father as a ruthless schemer and a smuggler of liquor and currency. The brothers say two characters in the novel share the same names, professions and physical traits as their father and uncle.

Building superintendent Fikry Abdel Malek is also taking legal action against Al Aswany, as well as against the film production company of “The Yacoubian Building” and screenwriter Waheed Hamid. Hamid is in turn threatening to sue his accusers, saying they are defaming him.

With so much spite in the air, it’s little surprise that the film crew of the Yacoubian movie (produced by Emad Adeeb’s Good News Films) were not allowed to film on location, and were obliged to adjourn next door to 32 Talaat Harb Street. There, they employed the bawwab in a small role as a policeman, and offered him and his family the amusing sight of superstars such as Hind Sabri posing as a baladi girl and washing laundry for the cameras.

Al Aswany, who had a dentistry practice in the building in the 1990s and shared a flat with the late Malak Khela and another professional, dismisses the claims. He says his is a work of fiction and that any similarities are purely coincidental.

The name of the building—written in lovely elongated green letters across the threshold of the building’s lobby—captivated him, and he decided to use it as the title of his work, which he had originally thought of calling simply Downtown. “The name was only thing I picked up from the building,” says the writer, “the characters in the novel have nothing to do with the building’s inhabitants.” Al Aswany has cast doubt on his accusers’ motivations, saying they only became interested in the book three years after its publication, when news of the film’s budget was printed in the press.

As far as the work’s supposedly scabrous subjects, Al Aswany says, “I believe literature must discuss what people don’t discuss.”

But residents of the Yacoubian building would rather the writer had set his discussion elsewhere. From the top to the bottom of the building, inhabitants seem to be united in their anger at Al Aswany.

“Everything he wrote is lies,” doorman Muhammed will tell you from his bench in the lobby. “What Al Aswany said in his novel is not true and defames our reputation,” rooftop resident Said argues heatedly. “If I saw him, I don’t know what I might do with him.”