here & now
C an You Fre nc h K i s s D u r i n g Ra ma da n? ▉ “This is the courtyard of Cairo’s AlAzhar Mosque, established as the city’s first in 972. I modelled it in Rhino back in 2018, somewhere in Europe. It was my white boss there who first introduced me to it, much to my surprise. No professor or employer had ever mentioned a mosque before. Now, I was hearing it alongside European medievalism and modernism, as part of an intellectual discourse on interior spaces. Strangely, I felt validated. ▉ The courtyard is original, the only space dating back to 972. It leads into a beautiful interior sequence of pointed arches set upon columns, sometimes clumped in pairs and triplets. The building is not only of considerable architectural value but has a complex history as a cultural, political and religious space, constantly evolving with Cairo. The East is not stagnant. ▉ At the office, Al-Azhar is an aesthetic. It is the architectural equivalent of me, the Muslim intern. That is why I am told to model it. And because it has pretty columns. It’s plain tokenism, but weirdly I feel some distorted gesture of inclusivity, which has been missing these three years into my architectural education. ▉ As I write this though, I am learning that it is not just a mosque. A quick search online tells me that Al-Azhar is also the world’s second oldest continuously operating university. I should know this already, but I don’t. ▉ My mind is instantly cast back to a certain first year cultural history lecture on the origins of the university institution. I remember the oldest was also first established as a mosque, in Morocco. But there is no mention of mosques, nor Africa. Only Europe. That’s how erasure starts. 17
