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MEGUERDITCH BOULDOUKIAN
ARCHITECTURAL PROJECTS
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SHEIKH ALI AL GHAMDI MOUNTAIN HOUSE 1985, AL BAHA - SAUDI ARABIA We seldom get aware that inanimate objects may have a long story of tragedies and joys. They are there, immobile for our use or misuse and we never question how they were made. It was on a late summer afternoon in 1985, at an altitude of 2000m in Al Baha, Saudi Arabia, that for the first time in my life, I became conscious of the total value of a dining table. After completing the construction of a large mountain house, we were ready to install the furniture and furnishing brought from Spain in 6 large containers. A team of Pakistani, Afghan, Indian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian workers were carrying armchairs, beds, closets, tables, chairs, lampshades, curtains, cushions and ashtrays in order a Saudi family living in Jeddah, would find the necessary comfort, in an isolated spot, on the mountains of Al Hijaz, for a few days every year. Workers have been there since on year, living in mobile homes, freezing in winter and scorching by the summer sun, in order somewhere in another mountain top or on a desert sand in Afghanistan or Pakistan, their families could survive. Now it was the turn of large dining table top. A monolithic 9 meters long, massive piece of wood packed and protected inside a 40 feet container. We had to move it manually for a distance of 60 meters, like the stones of the Pyramids or Baalbeck. The totality of the work force was mobilized, ready for the hauling. It was a precious piece not to be scratched. Through shouts of organization, self encouragement and rhythmic movements, the awful mass was lowered to the ground from the container. Then it was the slow rhythmic march of the modern slaves to the main gate, again facing the sun as in Egypt five thousand years ago. The to-be table was inside the mountain house. I imagined the trees that had become logs drifting on a river in the African jungle, navigated by persons singing their dreams for better days, to silent their everyday tragedies in a land with no promise. Then, at a distant port, a cargo ship and other load bearing persons, caring for logs of trees for their safe arrival to a store, kiln or a factory. New faces, energies, responsibilities and care; drawings, saws, Spanish laughter, shouts, screws, glues, suffocating odor of paint, plastic bubbles, packing, administrative nervousness, paperwork, angry communications due to delays, promises, disappointments and at last the good news that the table has safely arrived to its destination. Yes, the table is in the middle of a mirrored dining hall, still surrounded by multinational expatriates, with their number multiplied ad infinitum by large panes of mirrors facing each other. Chairs in red velvet surround the shining table to receive a modern Louis without a number, if any! Of course, it is much more practical to sit on an Iranian carpet made in Belgium and eat with five fingers the same meal as during the past thousands of years. I have never met Sargon and Tutankhamen exists only as a name, but the pyramids are still alive with their secrets and closed chambers of millennial air. All the kingdoms with their queens and distant cousins have become a molecule in a particle of sand, while the sphinx guards the secrets of pyramids, build upon human misery and tragedy. The table of Hijaz, like so many other inanimate anonymous objects, shall probably outlive their owners, who shall never know the sum total of the tragedies invested in those objects that were supposed to be a source of joy for others. |
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