The Ancient Trees of Beheira: Uprooting History from its Roots

The deep cultural and environmental costs as century-old historic trees and rare royal palms are systematically uprooted across Egypt’s Beheira province.

By Mahmoud Dowair

Beheira endures as one of Egypt’s grandest agricultural domains, a province lavishly endowed with verdant expanses and ancient, towering trees. For many decades, its cities and public squares boasted a distinguished character, seamlessly marrying aesthetic grace with historical depth. Majestic, dense canopies and royal palms lined its arterial streets and celebrated squares, anchoring themselves as an organic element within the visual memory of the province’s children, forever intertwined with their identity. A contemplative gaze into the lineage of these trees reveals that some possess lifetimes stretching well beyond a century, standing as silent witnesses to the sweeping historical epochs that the cities of Beheira lived through, generation after generation.

The Eradication of Visual Memory

In recent years, the contours of this emerald landscape began to shift incrementally. Several squares and streets across the province’s cities became the stages for the systematic felling and clearing of ancient trees sentinels long bound to the collective memory of the populace. These operations unfolded under the banners of development, modernization, and urban replanning.

While some observers view these developmental endeavors as an imperative to keep pace with modern civic aesthetics, others harbor deep anxieties over cities stripping themselves of their environmental and visual identities. This is particularly poignant with the disappearance of rare trees and palms that once served as the definitive signatures of numerous historic squares. The province’s public spaces and avenues have succumbed to these clearing campaigns, enacted either under the guise of urban remodeling or the pretext of relocating the flora to alternative domains, all while the final destination of these uprooted giants remains cloaked in ambiguity.

An Assault on Greenery and Growth

“The uprooting of the palm trees that once graced the square unfolded right before my eyes,” says Dr. Zuhdi Al-Shami, an economist and a resident of Hour Square, who captured the scene on his phone, overcome by a profound sorrow.

He notes his utter shock at witnessing the ancient palms torn from their ancestral soil by loaders and carted away from the heart of the square, despite the vocal protests of onlookers. He deems what transpired a “crime,” characterizing it as a direct assault on nature and greenery. He points out that these palms, severed from their life-source, were effectively condemned to death, questioning the very purpose of planting them in the first place if their ultimate fate was to be torn down. He further observes that the lush vista was supplanted by a towering monument of a design imported from Dubai, an installation that harmonizes neither with the square’s spatial proportions nor its architectural heritage, ultimately obstructing the view and distorting the landmarks of the space.

A Void in Urban Harmony?

Ashraf Rabi, an advocate for environmental and cultural affairs, considers the “assassination of all that is green” under the pretext of modernization and development to be a deeply grieving matter. He points to the felling of a vast number of rare royal palms that once embellished Damanhour’s Hour Square, alongside various other dense canopies.

He asserts that Hour Square was not an isolated casualty; these development operations extended to other locales, including Misr Station Square and the Fatima Al-Zahra Mosque Square. He stresses the urgent need to consult faculties of engineering, fine arts, and urban harmony organizations whenever any square undergoes redesign, ensuring the preservation of the visual identity of these cities.