São Paulo – The Misericórdia Mosque in São Paulo, Brazil, has received earlier this week a half-ton chandelier with 150,000 Egyptian crystals. The huge piece was designed by Egyptian civil engineer Mohammed Darwich, who lives in Brazil and sells Egypt’s Asfour chandeliers. The chandelier was donated by the businessman.
The giant piece is shaped like the Arabic word for Allah, which is how Muslims call God, and seems to be floating overhead at approximately 15 meters from the floor. Embellished by thousands of tiny 14-mm crystals, it was painted gold and features 200 interior lamps.
Designed by Darwich, the piece began to be made around eight months ago. The crystals came from Egypt, but the other materials and assemblage were by Darwich’s Brazil-based firm Crystal Star, which owns décor stores in Brazil. “It represents the centuries-old Brazil-Egypt relation,” he told ANBA, explaining that it featured both Brazilian and Egyptian materials and labor.
The chandelier was handmade, each crystal put individually, in a process that took around one month and a half of work. The assembling process had to be done in the mosque itself, in a large engineering effort. The installation took around a week and involved twenty professionals, according to Darwich. “It was a giant operation,” he said.
For the mosque
The Egyptian says the history of the chandelier started three years ago, when the community of the Misericórdia Mosque, which he attends, mentioned they were planning on substituting its old chandelier. Darwich volunteered to create a piece that the community could relate to, that would please everyone and was made from a noble material.
The engineer explains that the Egyptian crystal is associated with long-lastingness and nobleness. “It’s a jewel, a life-long sparkle,” he said. The word Allah was thought of to refer to the soul and the spirit. “We look at it and remember we’re in the house of God; it fits this spiritual environment,” Darwich explains.
The Egyptian gets emotional when talking about his donation. “God has helped me a lot in Brazil,” he said. Mohamed Darwich worked as a tourism service provider in Egypt, whose earnings paid for his college, and he moved to Brazil in 2012, with almost no resources, but with a large entrepreneurial desire. He created the tourism agency EGP Viagens and started a chandelier and crystal business, standing out among the Arab entrepreneurs in Brazil.
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The chandelier for São Paulo the was the second one Darwich provided for a mosque. The first one was an oval-shaped for a mosque in the state of Santa Catarina. Glad that the piece he designed and installed in the Misericórdia Mosque has pleased the community, Darwich dreams even bigger and wants to create chandeliers for mosques in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Palestine, and his home country, Egypt.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
