An Unhappy Happy Port
Fin-de-siècle Port Said and Its Connections and Disconnections of Water and Iron
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8965872 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lucia Carminati (0000-0003-0308-8178, University of Oslo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 731-739 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0020743823000302 |
| OpenAlex | W4321099582 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 9 |
A joke appearing in the folds of a Cairo-based newspaper published in Italian in 1895 must have fallen flat with Port Said's inhabitants. But the irony was not amiss. The jest suggested that the town, whose toponym could be translated to “happy port” given the Arabic meaning of saʿīd , ought to be renamed “unhappy” due to the sad state of its public services. Readers may have smiled mirthlessly in agreement with the author, who claimed the Egyptian government treated the city “as if it were less than a village.” Many were under the impression that Cairo wanted to scrap this “unhappy happy port” from the rest of Egypt. Continuing the wordplay, British journalist George Warrington Steevens wrote in 1898 that Port Said “would be wonderful if it were not unhappy,” stuck as it was between its riotous past and its doubtfully industrious future. Puns based on Port Said's name must have circulated for a while. Already in 1875, a French author had ironically remarked that this town's auspicious name seemed quite unjustified
Art · Character (mathematics · Government (linguistics · Irony · Joke · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Newspaper · Port (circuit theory · Sociology · Classics · Engineering · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy · Water Governance and Infrastructure
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |