Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts

Friday, June 17, 2022

Soviet Aswan Dam poster


"Aswan Dam. We are loyal to our friends and always help them in a brotherly unmercenary way." Soviet poster, 1970s. Source here.

The effect of the Aswan Dam on Nubians, one elderly Nubian told me in the late 90s: "Have you heard of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima? The Aswan Dam was our Hiroshima bomb."

Saturday, June 11, 2022

Aswan: Krushchev visits Egypt

I very much like this photo of a Nubian (I presume) kid looking at the photo welcoming USSR Premier Nikita Krushchev on his May, 1964 visit to Egypt. (I apologize for not keeping a record of where I grabbed this from.) I visited Aswan with my family that same year, in November. Here's a photo.




Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Nubia: the expulsion


“Hajj Elias holds picture of himself playing oud before Tahgeer [removal” [photo: Nour El Refai]

Amazing photo from an article in AlAraby.com, "For the National Good: Casting out Egyptian Nubians," by Gehad Quisay, November 17, 2017. On the current struggles of Egyptian Nubians, but also with historical background. Egyptian Nubians were removed from their historical homeland in 1964, due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam and the flooding of their villages and farmland. The article, alas, tells us nothing about Hajj Elias.

 

Monday, December 16, 2019

Early Um Kalthoum Publicity Photo


Um Kalthum, early in her career. 
Publicity photo from Odeon. 
Courtesy Akassah, Center for Photography, NYU Abu Dhabi.


Saturday, April 06, 2019

Report on American Research Center in Egypt conference, "Egyptian Soundscapes: Music Sound and Built Environments"


 I gave a paper at the conference last December, and posted last month a bit from my paper, about Khidr and his song, "Ismi Hunak."

Here is a report on the conference from the online Cairene culture magazine Scene/Noise. It was posted in January, but I just now ran across it. There were many excellent papers presented at the conference, but the author, Tucker McGee, who I met, chose to provide summaries of just three papers: mine, Mark LeVine's and Michael Frishkopf's. Too bad he didn't cover more.

One small error in his report on my paper: I never saw Hamza El Din at Cairo's General Nubian Club, but I did see him perform at the Opera. (And I met him several times in the US, after I left Cairo.)

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Nubian songs of the bitter migration: Khidr al-'Attar


Khidr al-'Attar

When I lived in Cairo (1992-96), and once work on my book on Palestine was wrapping up, I started doing research on Nubian music. This involved hanging out at the General Nubian Club, conveniently located right off of Tahrir Square, and right across from the campus of AUC, where I taught at the time. The friends I developed at the Nubian Club were all very engaged in Nubian culture, some were musicians themselves or belonged to folkloric troupes, and they invited me to lots of weddings, which always featured live music from Nubian (and sometimes Sudanese) performers. I also made one trip to New Nubia, near Kom Ombo, the area where Nubians were resettled when the High Dam completely flooded their villages, in 1963-64. And I returned to Cairo for more research on Nubian music, in the summers of 1997, 1998 and 2000. 

Then I stopped going to Cairo, not returning until March 2011, for a very short visit. I was back again in Decembers 2017 and 2018, again for very short visits. There was not time to pick up my Nubian research during those very short visits, but on my last trip I did make a presentation on Nubian music, based chiefly on my research during the nineties, at a conference, “Egyptian Soundscapes: Music, Sound, and Built Environment” put on by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). (You can see a report on three of the presentations at the conference, by me and Michael Frishkopf and Mark Levine, here.)

One of the musicians I discussed in my talk was the late Khidr al-‘Attar, who passed away in 2014. I saw him perform at several weddings, and here is a photo from one of them, probably taken in 1995.


Khidr was born in 1962 in the village of Ibrīm, in Old Nubia, and one or two reports I’ve read report that he lived there until age five. (Frankly, this doesn’t seem quite right, as his village would have been re-located in 1963 or 1964.) He was a Fadikka speaker, but he sang in both Fadikka and Kenuz (Faddika and Kenuz are the two Nubian languages.) He was a great artist, who released lots of cassettes, and I collected most of them when I lived in Cairo. (Nubian musicians released many, many cassette recordings between the 1970s and the 1990s, and this was an important means by which their music, which for the most part did not get aired on TV or radio, could be circulated and disseminated.) (Three of his cassettes are listed at discogs.com; and you can also hear him on that great, 1999 world music collection of Egyptian popular music, Yalla - Hitlist Egypt).

The music played at weddings was for the sake of entertainment, for dancing. Songs for the bride and groom, popular songs dealing with themes of love, and so on. At the same time, the practice of music on such occasions was a time for the celebration of Nubian culture – modernized, for modern times – and Nubian community, as these were gatherings that brought together Nubian Egyptians, and few outsiders – other than invited guests like myself.

At the same time, everyone gathered together was well aware of the tragedy that had befallen the community of Nubians as a result of the total inundation of their homeland by the Aswan High Dam. One elderly Nubian I met in Cairo described the event as the equivalent, for Nubians, of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. In the political atmosphere of the time, however, expression of such public sentiments needed to be kept muted, and so, to a great degree, Nubian political issues were to a great degree expressed and kept alive through cultural and musical means.  

 At many of the weddings I attended, a song would come on, which I came to know as “Al-Higra al-Murra” (the bitter migration). It was principally performed by and known as Khidr’s song, but if my memory serves me, other artists performed it as well. At the time, I was never able to find any recordings of it. 

When song would come on, everyone would get up and dance, and chant along with the song, especially the lines, “faradu ‘alayna al-higra al-murra,” or, “they imposed the bitter migration upon us,” referring to the displacement of 50,000 Nubians by the High Dam. The wedding, for the period of the song, would turned into something that resembled a political rally, and often people in the crowd would break into tears. 


Last year, while teaching about Nubia, I came across a video on YouTube of that Khidr song that I used to see performed during the nineties. There are several versions on the web, the first one I found was this one, available here. It's not an "official" video clip for the song, but is an interesting one, full of nostalgia-inducing photos of Old Nubia.

I learned from the YouTube vid that the song is actually called “Ismi Henak” (My name is there). Below are the lyrics (by Khidr, I believe) and the translation, on which Elliott Colla did the bulk of the work. The lyrics are fairly straightforward, but just a couple of observations. Note that Khidr refers to Old Nubia as a “civilization,” not just a bunch of agricultural villages, and the reference to the waterwheel or saqiya, the ancient mode of irrigation used by Nubians, which serves as a key symbol of Old Nubia in contemporary Nubian cultural expression. “Kom Ombo” refers to the space of New Nubia, which the Egyptian regime in the era of Nasser promised to those who were moved would be a “new dawn,” where life would be much improved, with modern housing and electricity.  

O people, they've erased an entire civilization
  شطبوا يا ناس حضارة كاملة

And killed the hopes of a black Nubia [looking at this again, I think the word 'samra' should be translated not as 'black' but as 'chocolate']
واغتالوا اماني النوبة السمرة


The sighing of the waterwheel calls me back
بتنادي عليا انين الساقية


As they've ground up what's left of my forefathers' bones  
    وطحنوا عظام اجدادنا الباقية

My name is there, my homeland is there
اسمي هناك بلدي هناك

I myself am there, and Nubia is there
انا ذاتى هناك والنوبة هناك

Standing witness, O people, behind the dam
    شاهدة يا ناس خلف السد

Come, O Nubian man and woman!
    هيا يا نوبي ويا نوبية

Bang the drums of the coming return
    دقوا طبول العودة الجاية

They imposed the bitter migration upon us
    فرضوا علينا الهجرة المرة  

They said Kom Ombo was the verdant heaven
قالوا كوم امبو الجنة الخضرا  

We’ve lived sad nights there
    وعشنا فيها ليالي حزينة
 

We've walked for years, and our exile has been long
   مشينا سنين والغربة طويلة
 

My name is there, I myself am there
    اسمي هناك ذاتي هناك
 
My homeland is there and Nubia is there
    بلدي هناك والنوبة هناك

I hope in future to post some more bits from the paper I gave in December. Inshallah.

Monday, November 12, 2018

Franco-Arab music: Bob Azzam, Bruno Mory (Dalida's Brother), "Ya Mustapha," "Fattouma"


I first heard Bob Azzam's "Ya Mustapha" when I moved to Beirut in 1964, it was one of the very few songs in Arabic that any American kid would have been familiar with. It was a hit all over the Mediterranean, and I've posted about it previously. If you're not familiar with it, here it is:





I've since discovered a bit more about the song. First, it shows up in the Egyptian film "El Hob Kedda" (1961) which stars, among others, Salah Zo El Faqqar, Sabah and Abdelmonem Ibrahim. I'm not sure who is shown performing the song here, but it's the Bob Azzam's version. 



There is also another version, overshadowed by Bob Azzam's version, recorded by Dalida's younger brother Bruno Gigliotti, known in Egypt as Bruno Mory, and better known in France as "Orlando." Bruno had a brief career as an actor and a recording artist but then went on to become Dalida's artistic director and producer. It sounds much more "Egyptian" and less campy then Bob Azzam's version. 





It was released on record by the Egyptian label Sawt al-Qahira, and who knows, maybe it came out before Bob Azzam's version. Note that the lyrics are credited to Sa'id al-Masri, and the music to Muhammad Fawzi. According to an article from Rotana on "Franco-Arab" music, Bruno's version did precede Bob Azzam's.


 


Bruno's "Ya Mustapha" can also be found on a cassette, issued in 1978, called Al-Aghani al-Raqisa (Franco-Arab), or Dance Songs (Franco-Arab). I'd love to get my hands on this cassette.




The second song from Bruno on the cassette, "Fattouma," can be heard on YouTube (below). It's very very cool, more "Franco Arab" than his version of Mustapha.





"Fattouma" was released, according to discogs.com, in 1960, from the Egyptian label Misrphone. This song too was by Muhammad Fawzy and Sa'id al-Masri.



Finally, please check out the amazing scene of Bruno Mory, doing "Fattouma" while dancing the cha-cha-cha with the divine Egyptian actress Hind Rustom, from an online article from Rotana. Sorry, the article is in Arabic, it's the second video embedded here. Really, you must watch it. 

 
Bruno Mory and Hind Rustom in Fattouma, 1961

The scene is from the film of the same name, Fattouma, released in 1961. Here's a poster for the film. I've not seen it and don't know much about it.



And here is another poster for Fattouma, and note that it announces the participation of "Orlando" (on the right of the photo) in the film. (I cannot make out what it says above Orlando, sorry.)


That Franco-Arab cassette also has some songs from Karim Shukry, including "Take Me Back to Cairo," released on Sono Cairo, with lyrics in England. Not as interesting as Bob Azzam and Bruno's material, I don't think, but have a listen, you decide.

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Hamza El Din, live in New York, 1989


Nubian Egyptian composer, oud player, tar player, and vocalist Hamza El Din live in concert at the Borough of Manhattan Community College Triplex Theater (now known as the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center) on April 15, 1989, broadcast on WNYC's show "Folkwave."
         

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Shadia, Sudanese style

The divine Shadia, who passed away in November 2017, performs a song composed by Munir Mourad (Leila's brother), "Ya Habibi Oud Li Tani," in Omdurman, Sudan, sometime during the 1960s. The original recording was done in distinctly Sudanese style, it's not just for this performance, and of course the Sudanese audience receives it warmly. I'm sorry about the quality of the video, it's not great, but the song really is. I don't know of other examples of well-known Egyptian singers of the period performing in Sudanese mode, but perhaps there are some. Please let me know! And thanks to Rania for the tip.


Saturday, March 24, 2018

One of Mohamed Mounir's best: 'Ad wa 'Ad ( قد وقد)


One of my favorite tracks by the legendary Egyptian star Mohamed Mounir. From his 1981 album, Shababeek. Lyrics by Sayed Higab; melody, Yahya Khalil. Backing Mounir are: on drums, the legendary Egyptian drummer Yahya Khalil; keyboards, Fathy Salama; guitar, Aziz al-Nassir; bass, Michael Cokis. Produced by Yahya Khalil.

Yahya Khalil is one of Egypt's most celebrated jazz drummers. Fathy Salama has recorded several albums with the group Sharkiat. One of my fave recordings he was involved with is Roman Bunka's Color Me Cairo (1995).

Sorry that this recording is not complete, I grabbed it from YouTube. You can hear the complete song here.

You may still be able to find this recording on cassette tape, although when I was in Egypt recently it was hard to find shops selling cassettes. Everything, alas, has gone digital.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Ramy Essam in Fayetteville, AR (Jan 22)

Ramy Essam was at the University of Arkansas campus on January 22, courtesy The House of Songs Ozarks (based in Bentonville). He did a jam and Q&A session with students, a lecture/Q&A, and a concert in the evening. I had the pleasure of running the lecture/Q&A session with Ramy. I spent about 9 days in Egypt in December, where I purchased the red hat, which has the logo of the Ahly Football Club. I guessed Ramy might be an Ahly fan, and I was right!

More on the visit later, inshallah.


Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Dalida!


And a few reminders of why Egyptians love Dalida (born in Shubra, Cairo, in 1933, so much):



Dalida in the Egyptian film, Sigara wa kass (1954)

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Calypso in Farid El Atrash's film, Mā Ta’ūlsh le Ḥad (1952)

I've been reading Margaret Farrell's excellent dissertation ("Aspects of Adaptation in the Egyptian Singing Film", CUNY 2012) and learned this: the operetta " Mā Ta’ūlsh le Ḥad" which concludes the film of the same name (1952) runs consecutively through these styles: Modern Egyptian, Tango, Waltz, Calypso, Arabic traditional, Egyptian traditional, Egyptian samba. I was familiar with Egyptian music adapting all these styles but it was "Calypso" that really stuck out. Fuller doesn't discuss this segment, so I checked out the clip on YouTube. It's amazing. The calypso segment (yes, with calypso beat, starting at 5:19) features a Sudanese singer (I don't know who it is), black dancers, and Samia Gamal dancing in (subdued) blackface. Farid El Atrash joins in the calypso song at the end. Check out the entire operetta, it's great. Samia Gamal dances throughout, she's the best, and the woman singing in the operetta is Nur al-Huda.


A side note on calypso, courtesy Billy Bragg's new book, Roots, Radicals, and Rockers. The mass migration of West Indians to the UK was launched with the arrival on June 21, 1948 of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury in Essex. On the boat were two of calypso's finest singers, Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener. Lord Kitchener was filmed on deck singing his new composition, "London Is the Place for Me." Newsreel footage was shown around Britain and calypso was presented as the music of the new immigrant community. One of the earliest calypso recordings to be released in the UK was Lord Beginner's "Victory Test Match Calypso" (1950) in celebration of the West Indian cricket team's first victory over England. 


It is said that the world craze for calypso was launched in 1956, with the success of Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song." So Egypt -- or maybe it was Sudan -- was ahead of the cultural curve.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Enrico Macias in Egypt, 1979


In 2005 a chapter I wrote entitled "Against Hybridity: The case of Enrico Macias/Gaston Ghrenassia" appeared in a book I co-edited with Rebecca Stein called Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture
One of the things I wrote about was the appearance of Enrico Macias in Egypt in 1979, at the invitation of Anwar Sadat. I only just discovered that the concert he gave on September 22, 1979 at Gazira Stadium was actually released as an album, called Enrico Macias en Egypte, on the Phillips label, that same year. Ah, the marvels of discog.com and YouTube.

Here is the discographical information, and you can listen to the entire recording on YouTube here
And here is the tracklist: 

A1 La Musique Et Moi
A2 Aux Talons De Ses Souliers
A3 Solenzara
A4 La Folle Esperance
B1 Le Grand Pardon
B2 Kelbi-Btala
B L'Oriental
B4 Oumparere
 

Below I've excerpted what I had to say about Macias' visit to Egypt in 1979, and I discuss the song "La Folle Esperance" and the role it played in the trip. He only performs two "Oriental" tracks here: first, "Kelbi-Btala," which he describes as an "Algerian classical" number, featuring Enrico's father Sylvain Ghrenassia (who used to back Cheikh Raymond Leyris) and oud playing from Enrico and second, "L'Oriental," which he originally recorded in 1962. "L'Oriental" was originally made famous by the great Algerian Jewish singer Lili Boniche (I'm not sure in which year). It was composed by the Tunisian Jewish artist, Joseph Hadjedj, better known by his performing name, José de Souza. Here Macias gives it a more "Oriental" inflection than he did on his original recording of 1962, when, as he outlines in his autobiography, he was trying to make it as an artist in France and in order to do so, it was necessary to downplay his Algerian-Arab heritage.

Here's what I wrote in 2005:


In September 1979, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat organized a festival of peace, on the first anniversary of the Camp David Peace Accords. The Egyptian government invited Enrico Macias to participate, and contacted him--significantly--via the Israeli government (Monestier, Enrico Macias, 178). Clearly, President Sadat did not see Macias as simply a knee-jerk backer of Israel. During the seventies, Macias continued to insert small doses of Arabic music into his live performances and his recordings. In 1977, he composed and recorded “La Folle Esperance,” a song based on a folkloric Arab melody that Cheikh Raymond had played. The song's lyrics praised Sadat's November 1977 visit to Jerusalem, and asserted, “we [Muslims and Jews] are brothers.” Macias reports that, when he first performed the song, on French television, it was a big success, and that the studio audience included many Maghrebis, who clapped and sang along enthusiastically (Macias, Non, je n'ai pas oublié, 327). Another song Macias composed in the early seventies, “Le Grand Pardon,” expressed his hopes that the “sons of Abraham” would achieve peace. In a 1974 interview, Macias went so far as to assert his sympathy for the Palestinians, because they had been uprooted. He did not agree, however, that the Jews were responsible for the Palestinians' dispossession (Monestier, 145).


Macias writes that when Sadat met him in Egypt, he “said first he invited me because his people like me. But he also said to me, 'I made peace with Israel, but I want also to make peace with all Jews in all the world, and for the moment you are the representative of these Jews'” (Richard Cromelin, “Macias: Singer for the Dispossessed,” Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1985, part 6, p. 1). The fact that Sadat chose an Algerian Jew who spoke Arabic to represent world Jewry at the peace festival, rather than an Ashkenazi, is certainly significant; this was not a choice based on European notions of Jewish “representativeness.” Macias was warmly greeted in Egypt where, despite the boycott, his music was well known due to the underground market. In Egypt, Macias did not simply perform his variety hits, but felt comfortable enough to indulge in his Arabic repertoire. At a private concert, for instance, he performed a song by one of Egypt's most beloved stars, Farid al-Atrash, in Arabic. Macias played his third show in Egypt at Gazira Stadium for the general public, with his father Sylvain joining the band on violin. The crowd of 20,000 was enthusiastic, knew the lyrics to his songs, and went wild when Macias took up the 'ud (Monastier, 183). Macias and his father were invited to an audience with Sadat at his winter palace in Ismailiya, and Macias performed a few songs for the small gathering, including “La Folle Esperance,” which he sang in Arabic. Macias has called his encounter with Sadat “the crowning achievement” of his life (Monastier, 183).

(If you want to know my entire "take" on Macias, you'll have to check out the book chapter.)

Monday, August 08, 2016

Simsimiyya in Egyptian Popular Culture: El-Gizawy in "Fatat al-Mina (The Harbor Girl)"

In the very fine documentary Nuh el-Hamam (Wailing of the Doves), 2004, directed by Amir Ramsis, 2006), we learn that the Port Said singer and simsimiyya player El-Sayed Abdou Mahmoud, known as El-Gizawy, appears in the 1964 film, Fatat al-Mina' (The Harbor Girl), which is set in a village on the Suez Canal. (That's him on the left.)


He tells us that he worked as an ironer (mikwagi) and that he used to sing at parties in the street -- the traditional way that simsimiyya music, known as damma, was performed at the time. He says he was contacted by director Hossam el-Din Mustafa to appear in the film, which stars Farid Shawki, Mahmoud El-Meleigy, Nahed Sharif, and Nagwa Fouad. He says that he sings on two songs, but I can only find one. The song starts at about 31:45. Check it out.



When the group El Tanbura was formed in late 1988 under the leadership of Zakaria Ibrahim, el-Gizawy was one of the veteran artists recruited to join the project of reviving the Port Said musical tradition that seemed to be dying out. He appears as a singer on all four of the group's albums. Sayed Gizawy passed away in October 2015. Allah Yarhamu.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

Mahraganat's march into the mainstream


I'm doing a lot of reading and video and movie watching on the topic of mahraganat for a writing project, and I thought I'd share this nugget.

In 2012 mahraganat artist Sadat was asked to compose a song for the mainstream film Game Over, released in June, a remake of the Hollywood release Mother-In-Law (starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez). The song, “Haqqi Bi-raqabti” (my right to my neck? -- help, please!)  appears in a scene where Egyptian film stars Yousra and Mai Ezzedine lip-synch it. The scene looks pretty fairly ridiculous, especially Yousra (at age 61) dancing and singing to the autotuned vocals of Sadat. 

Here's the scene:


Sadat’s name does not appear in the movie credits. I learned this from watching Hind Meddeb's 2013 documentary, Electric Chaabi, which you can purchase from Amazon. I highly recommend it. 

Very soon thereafter it would be hard to imagine mahraganat artists not receiving credit or anyone other than the artists themselves performing their own songs. 

As a footnote, I love Yousra, especially in Mercedes and Al-Irhab wa al-Kebab.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Mahraganat & hip hop mix from DJ No Breakfast


Ok, so I'm behind on posting...this is from 4 months ago, sorry! In any case, it's an excellent one from France's DJ No Breakfast, great fun, and it gives a sense of the great variety and clever mixing going on today in the mahraganat and hip hop scenes in Egypt. I really like what Abyusif is up to on the mahraganat front, and Satti is very cool too -- categorized as rap, I guess. The songlist is to be found here.

Here are a couple fine photos I found awhile back of the mahraganat scene -- I can't remember the source. If anyone knows let me know, it's important to give credit. 

I've now found the source for the top one: it's from CBS News, a wonderful portfolio of photos of the mahraganat scene. This is from a concert in April 2013.

 
 (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)

This one is from the Manchester Guardian, "The World in Pictures," Jan. 2, 2014. It's a bachelor party with mahraganat music in El Marg, a large and very populous informal district on the northeastern edge of Greater Cairo.

New mix (well, a month old now) from Habibi Funk

"get to know what fadoul sounded like when he was playing around with rapping, disco from egypt, coladera from algeria, an arabic take on zouk music and much more. it also includes 2 tracks from egypts al massrieen which will be the next reissue on habibi funk."

This is all the information provided by Jannis of Jakarta Record (based in Berlin and Cologne), so, alas, no track list. But it is a sweet list.

Jakarta has released three notable Middle East albums of late:

Fadoul, Al Zman Saib -- Algerian funk from the 1970s, pretty amazing.

Ahmed Malek, Musique Originale de Films -- terrific music soundtracks from the Algerian master, including music from the soundtrack to Merzak Allouache's brilliant 1976 film Omar Gatlato.

Dalton, Alech/Soul Brother -- a 7" from Tunisian funk/rock band, released in 1971/72


Wednesday, July 13, 2016

MTV documentary on Egyptian 'rebel music,' the massive June 30, 2013 demonstrations against Morsi, and the aftermath

This is a quite interesting documentary, from MTV, about the period running up to the Tamarrod-organized demonstration of June 30, 2013, and the role of musicians in that movement. Ramy Essam, Karim Adel Eissa of the rap group Arabian Knightz, and Nariman El Bakry, a music promoter, are all strong supporters of Tamarrod and critics of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. After the coup, Karim Adel Eissa expresses support the army, who he says he did not support previously. [Addendum from just a couple hours after this was posted. I posted more or less the same thing on FB. A FB re-posted, and within minutes a comment from Karim Adel Eissa, who says, "my stand openly and publicly changed shortly after that tho."] Nariman seems to shut down emotionally. Ramy got alienated by the crowds expressing support for the army at an event the night before the June 30, and so did not play at the June 30 demo. He says he was glad that Morsi got tossed out but not with the coup.

Good resource that is not always terribly accurate -- claims that 33 million Egyptians demonstrated against Morsi on June 30. Its estimate of 1200 killed in the Rabaa massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters on August 14 is more sound. Human Rights Watch estimates at least one thousand.