By A’laa Koddous Allah
Mohamed AboulMajd discovered his passion for art by chance.
This was when he succeeded in turning some small wooden sticks into a small scaffold.
“I liked the idea, namely of making samples with wooden sticks and toothpicks,” AboulMajd, 33, told the Egyptian Mail.
So, he decided to create another big model with the same materials.
This time, however, he decided to copy something from real life and this was the local mosque in Ezbet el-Nakhl, a sprawling residential district in the northern part of Cairo, where AboulMajd lives with his parents and brothers and sisters.
AboulMajd went to the mosque and took photos of every detail in it. When he returned home, he embarked on a journey to make a miniature of the same mosque, using several wooden materials. It took him around 12 months to complete the miniature.
“This was my first real trial,” AboulMajd said. “The result was impressive to me and to everybody around me.”
AboulMajd used 8,000 different pieces of wooden sticks, toothpicks, ice cream sticks, and wooden shish tawook sticks to create this model of the local mosque.
This encouraged him to turn his hands to another more aspiring project, namely making a small copy of the al-Fatah al-Aleem Mosque, an iconic Islamic house of worship in the New Administrative Capital.
AboulMajd downloaded photo of this gigantic house of worship from the internet and started drawing the design on a large piece of paper to determine the structure’s sizes and proportions.
It took him six months and 11,000 different pieces of wooden materials to make a small copy of the mosque. He also used a candlestick pistol to stick all these pieces together.
AboulMajd’s family members were not appreciative enough of his work at first.
“They just did not understand what I was doing,” he said.
Nonetheless, soon after he put his models into shape, everybody started to cheer the work and encourage him.
“My workmates also gave me a lot of encouragement,” AboulMajd said.
He also posted pictures of his work on social media and the feedback from his friends was just amazing and encouraging.
This encouraged AboulMajd to keep moving and made him realise that somebody is out there to appreciate what he does.
“True, I discovered my knack for making these structures by chance,” AboulMajd said. “However, I am very happy that I do the thing I love.”
AboulMajd hopes he can organise his own exhibition where he can showcase the models he created over the past years and prove that small things can sometimes make perfection.
