Omniya Abdel Barr lives between London, where she is a researcher at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and her hometown of Cairo, where she is a senior member of a civil society group that acts as an emergency rescue team for historical sites.
Her London job is relatively straightforward, dealing with routine challenges. However, the same cannot be said for her job in Cairo.
Along with a small but tenacious group of like-minded Egyptians, she is fighting a tough battle to protect the city’s heritage against urbanisation, and authorities that have no qualms about sacrificing historical sites to build roads or overpasses.
“Let us be realistic, we cannot save everything,” Dr Abdel Barr told The National.
“What we are doing here is protect and save one site that can be looked at as an example to follow,” she said at the breezy and bright courtyard of an under-restoration, Mamluk-era house known as Bayt Al Razzaz, or Al Razzaz House in Al Darb Al Ahmar, part of Cairo’s medieval quarter
Dr Abdel Barr first came into contact with the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation NGO 10 years ago when a car bomb targeting Cairo’s security headquarters badly damaged the Museum of Islamic Art.
With memories still fresh of incidents of looting at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square during the chaos of the 2011 Arab uprising, Dr Abdel Barr offered her help.
