Feature: Papyrus making, selling decline in Egypt due to ailing tourism

With its ancient Egyptian writings and Pharaonic drawings, Papyrus has always been an interesting souvenir bought by tourists in Egypt before the craft declined over the past four years due to deteriorating tourism amid political turmoil.

Surrounded by a vast landscape full of papyrus plant, where a farmer can be seen walking his donkey and feeding his cow, as well as small rural-style, randomly-designed houses on the other side, there lies a workshop for papyrus making with short, unpainted, old walls and wooden ceiling at Qaramos village in the Egyptian province of Sharqiya, some 65 km north of the capital Cairo.

Qaramos is the number one place in Egypt and perhaps in the whole world for papyrus craft, starting from growing the papyrus plant, taking it to the making and printing workshops until the final product is exported to bazaars in tourist cities like Luxor and Aswan in Upper Egypt, Sharm El-Sheikh resort city in South Sinai, Hurghada city in the Red Sea province and the Pyramids city in Giza.

"As long as there is no tourism, papyrus making doesn't even cover its expenses. We work so hard - my husband, my children and I - but in the end the papyrus layer doesn't cover its expenses," said Umm Mohamed at one of the workshop rooms, while spreading lines of peeled papyrus crosswise before squeezing them for several times to become in the final shape.

The chaotic political conditions over the past few years, which saw the ouster of two heads of state as well as growing terrorism and violence in Egypt, scared off tourists to visit the country and hence posed a threat to the papyrus industry.

"Now the market is so down," the woman in her 40s complained. "Tourists want to be reassured about their safety before coming to the country."

Her husband, Bahaa Mounir, told Xinhua that the production is getting smaller than it used to be because the sales are down, yet he still hopes the growing security and stability could refresh tourism and flourish the papyrus trade once again.

Mounir pointed at the papyrus fields outside his workshop and gave an idea about the papyrus making process, starting from cutting and sizing using the outdoor cutting machine, then the peeling process, then the cooking process using large boilers to make the sticks mild enough to be turned into paper, then the squeezing, drying and compressing processes.

"After cooking comes the spreading process, and then they are sorted crosswise with each paper separated from the other by a plastic layer," the man practically explained.

He added that a pile of separated papyrus layers then goes through a compressor to be pressed tight so that the layers of each papyrus sheet stick together and to get rid of the water at the same time.

At the same village, not too far from Mounir's workshop, two men have been working in a print workshop to print ancient Egyptian drawings like the Pyramids and the Sphinx on blank papyrus sheets they get from nearby makers.

"The market is currently down although it started to improve a little bit," said Ali Mohamed, a 20-year-old worker in the print workshop, pointing out that the price of a piece of papyrus depends on the market and the quality.

"This is not the only print workshop in the village that has more than 50 similar workshops, which are all affected by the turmoil and the declining tourism," Mohamed Abdel-Moneim, owner of the workshop, told Xinhua.

"The the papyrus industry has been badly affected in the whole village, which represents the main papyrus producer in the country," the man lamented.

At the ever-crowded Pyramids Street leading to the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Giza, Wagih, 45, was laying down in his store called Pharaonic Papyrus Museum, which was full of magnificent papyrus hanging on the walls but free of customers.

"Sales have tremendously declined and producers in Sharqiya and Daqahliya provinces provide smaller amounts of them to grow rice in their lands instead of papyrus plant due to the market recession," Wagih told Xinhua.

Gamal, a 50-year-old salesman at another papyrus store at Sphinx Street in Nazlet al-Samman neighborhood, which is close to the Sphinx and the Pyramids Plateau and full of bazaars and antiquity stores, said that he used to sell from 300 to 400 pieces every month but now it would be good if he could sell four or five.

"With growing stability, more and more tourists will not exclude papyrus stores from their tours," the salesman of Sphinx Papyrus store told Xinhua, wishing tourism would return soon back to normal. Endit