Thread: King of the Nile and other Egyptian costume vendors

I noticed on another thread that Horus and Isis were being praised for shipping on time despite the recent unrest in Egypt. (See thread here: http://www.bhuz.com/showthread.php/5...and-Isis-Kudos!)

I currently have a costume on order from King of the Nile, and haven't heard from them yet, but the proprietor Yaz Taleb has always been very helpful in the past. The internet has been down in Egypt until today, so no one's been able to make contact via e-mail or Facebook.

Does anyone know the status of King of the Nile, or any other Egyptian vendors, to help those of us who are awaiting costumes? Any information would be so much appreciated!

(PS- I will update here if I hear anything, too.)

I just got my fringe order from King of the Nile this week. I had placed the order in early January, so the timing was pretty normal.

Yaz just posted on his facebook page today that he and his family are fine. I know there was no Internet in Egypt for awhile so I'm sure they are busy catching up on the backlog of messages.

Originally Posted by shahla

I just got my fringe order from King of the Nile this week. I had placed the order in early January, so the timing was pretty normal.

Yaz just posted on his facebook page today that he and his family are fine. I know there was no Internet in Egypt for awhile so I'm sure they are busy catching up on the backlog of messages.

Perhaps I can hope that I will get my costume in time, too. I ordered in mid-January with a "needed-by" date of Feb. 26th. :)

i just hope everyone there is ok and will remain to be ok... personally with all that going on, i wouldnt care about what/where/when with my costume and just make sure i'd had an alternative...

Originally Posted by artemisia_danst

i just hope everyone there is ok and will remain to be ok... personally with all that going on, i wouldnt care about what/where/when with my costume and just make sure i'd had an alternative...

I am working on an alternative, but it's hard to put anything together when I don't have any extra money besides what I put aside to pay for this costume. The first thing I did when all this broke out was to e-mail Yaz and wish him and his family well. I wouldn't have dreamed of bothering him about a costume when his country is in an uproar. That's why I posted on here instead, in case someone had any info.

Originally Posted by Jungleflowers

I am working on an alternative, but it's hard to put anything together when I don't have any extra money besides what I put aside to pay for this costume. The first thing I did when all this broke out was to e-mail Yaz and wish him and his family well. I wouldn't have dreamed of bothering him about a costume when his country is in an uproar. That's why I posted on here instead, in case someone had any info.

I would turn to your local friends in the dance community to see what they can help you with.

Egypt needs time to be focused on Egypt.

Remember how everyone in the USA freaked out over 9-11?

That was just a terrorist attack. What's happening in Egypt now is a REVOLUTION. That's a big deal...like the American revolution from Britain, or the Civil War.

It is actually dangerous to be out in the streets in Egypt. There are real obstacles to doing normal business. People are going without food. People are afraid to leave their families, for fear that they won't see them again.

Make other, inexpensive plans to replace the missing costuming elements for your upcoming show (cobble or borrow), and set aside the $$ for the Egyptian bedlah. You can best help your Egyptian tailor by paying him for the costumes when he asks.

Also, even if your tailor has the costume ready, I doubt the Egyptian parcel service is working so well right now. Maybe it's better that he holds onto it until things are more settled. Sit tight, and be glad there's not gunfire or people with machetes outside your door.

I think that, even if Yaz can get the costume finished, and I'm sure he'll do everything he can, the shipping is what is really the problem and he has no control over that.

The Cairo airport is chaos as tens of thousands of foreigners are being evacuated by their governments. There are very few commercial flights running, and I wouldn't think that cargo flights are a high priority right now.

People might be receiving packages now, but they were probably sent before the protests started, or before they escalated.

Oops, and da Sage and I post the same thing at the same time!

Jinx!

Thanks to you both for saying something. I was very tempted to rant into the other thread about how silly it is to be complaining about interruptions in the costume shipments when Egypt is in the midst of such serious turmoil. It's certainly fair to be concerned if you have a business that depends on commercial exchanges with Egypt, or if you were in the midst of a transaction that was stalled because of what's been happening there, but to be whining about how you're afraid you won't be able to get your next sparkle fix is petulant and selfish when the lives and livelihoods of the people who make those costumes are in danger

Honestly, nobody knows how this uprising in Egypt is going to end. There's a substantial possibility that the days of big dance festivals and all-you-can-stuff-in-a-suitcase costume-buying trips to Cairo may be suspended for quite a while. Maybe even indefinitely. Many of the people in Iran who were eager to dump the Shah in 1979 didn't realize that throwing their weight behind the alternative ultimately meant the practice and teaching of un-Islamic performing arts would become illegal there. Depending on who has power when the dust settles in Egypt, the face of our dance may be changed forever. Disheartening as this could be, it's also possible that it wouldn't be a total disaster for us, at least not in the short term. If Islamic fundamentalists take power and every significant musician, master dance teacher, and costumer said, "Pfft. I can see we're not wanted here anymore" and moved elsewhere, I'm sure the larger dance community would have no shortage of suggestions for where they would be welcome to set up new bases of operation in exile.

(I'm not trying to imply that more good resources for us should take precedence over the success of Egyptian cultural traditions on their own soil. I sincerely hope that whatever regime ends up in power continues to support and respect their native fine arts, but the world lost something irreplaceable with what happened in Iran. If more Iranian artists had been able to get out before things were clamped down, those arts wouldn't be hovering as closely to extinction as they are today.)