11 posts tagged “egypt”

Consider this bit of news from Dubai (last night): "Grand opening of the new
$1.5bn marine-themed facility built off the Gulf coast on an artificial
island in the shape of a palm tree. Organisers claimed that the
fireworks display for the $20m party could be seen from space." The
grand ceremony featured some of the biggest names in showbiz.

Hold that thought.

Why hasn't anyone drawn a parallel between present-day Dubai and
mid-to-late ninteenth-century Egypt under Khedive Ismail? There is
probably a book in this!

Khedive Ismail was King of Egypt 1863-1879. Whereas it was his uncle
Said (whom he succeeded) who signed off the order to construct the Suez
Canal (an artificial canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean
Sea), it was Ismail who bankrolled the project relentlessly and took it
as his flagship, the centerpiece of his vision for Egypt. Approximately
30,000 Egyptian workers died during the Canal's construction and it
costed more than a billion dollars by today's standards.

Khedive Ismail announced at the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal:
"Egypt henceforth ceases to be part of Africa, it is now part of
Europe." Having mixed with French, English and Italian aristocracy, such
was his ambition for Egypt. But sadly for him, within a few of years of
the opening ceremony, Egypt had become bankrupt. He was exiled, his son
succeeded him, and the British arrived. Egypt had not become part of
Europe; instead, Europe had come to Egypt - and not in a nice way!

The British were in Egypt to "protect" the Suez Canal; they more or less
dominated the country until 1952. Strictly speaking, it was not the
canal that bankrupted the country; it was Ismail's insistence on
borrowing in order to continue pursuing his lavish vision that did.

Before Ismail was thrown out, he was busy spending. He is considered
the architect of modern Cairo. He hired the best French and Italian
engineers and architects of the time to plan Downtown Cairo (now an
older-looking part of Cairo). He also got them to design palaces,
bridges, gardens, and public buildings. Ismail put in place great
economic openness, and Egypt became a hotspot for foreigners of many
nationalities, especially Europeans.

In that atmosphere, they competed to construct the buildings and
infrastructure that Ismail saw fitting for Egypt. The climax was the
grand opening ceremony of the Suez Canal, which featured the opera Aida,
a special composition that Khedive Ismail had commissioned from the
Italian composer, Verdi. The ceremony was spectacular by those days'
standards; Ismail paid for almost all the royal families of Europe and
the Mediterranean to travel to Egypt for the grand opening.

Ismail dreamed big, and he failed big. He could not even die in Egypt;
it was only years later that the royal family fulfilled his request to
be buried at home. They shipped his tomb over from Istanbul, Turkey
where he had been buried alongside the Ottoman royals.

I have lost you. What has this got to do with Dubai? Well, I know there
not that many parallels between Egypt of 1869 and present-day Dubai. The
contexts are different too. But I am sure someone out there can make a
good case for the few parallels there are. What strikes me are the
parallels of lavish spending, the desire to imitate by importing from
abroad, and the buy-in from various nationalities.

Let's get this straight: in Egypt, Ismail is mourned for his naiveness,
for having aspired just a little too much, but he is appreciated for the
beauty he brought to the country. His vision set the country in a good
direction. Most importantly, the Suez Canal remains to this day one of
his great achievements: it brings in about $3 billion a year in revenues.

I am sure that great good will come to Dubai from some of the projects
they have undertaken (just like the Suez Canal brought great good to
Egypt). However, I think the razzmatazz will come to nothing.

The question is: what projects will remain standing as good business
propositions long after the speculative bubble is gone? I don't have the
answers, I invite you to speculate with me!

See also:

Khedive Ismail entry on wikipedia

The Dubai desert dream: it's not all fireworks and Kylie

Khedive Ismail and Downtown Cairo

24 November Dubai's Grim Reality

Thanks to Zeinobia's Egyptian Chronicles blog, I have watched parts
of Gamal Mubarak's pretty long press conference in Cairo yesterday,
as part of the proceedings of the (ruling) National Democratic Party's
annual conference.

Gamal Mubarak, and the Egyptian regime, have an obvious and very
serious problem: who succeeds his father, President Hosni Mubarak?
His answer: "it is still two years to 2011, when the president's term
expires", is seen as a diplomatic smokescreen.

The National Democratic Party (NDP) behaves as if it knows the
answer to the question. Indeed, Gamal Mubarak himself accepts
treatment that is not in line in any way, shape or form with his
official position: policy director of the ruling NDP. He travels
with huge entourages, has chats with George W Bush in the White
House, and gets undue attention in the Egyptian press.

The position of policy director is not a high-profile one in any
major party in any country. Only political geeks know, for example,
who the policy director is of the Conservative Party in the UK, or
the policy director of the CDU Party in Germany. So, Gamal is hugely
discredited by this pretence that he is just a normal policy director
like any other. He is not: he does not act like one, nor is he treated
like one.

But moving past this very serious problem with his profile, I do not
disagree with much of what he says. The NDP is - possibly for the
first time - consistently formulating policies outside of the testing
environment of government. He is right: the other parties are not
coming up with studied policy ideas. The thing is though, Gamal
Mubarak's ideas are not the issue. The issue is that there is no one
else in the arena to debate his ideas with.

Why? Because the various structures of the state, who are still
fused with the NDP, do not behave independently. They crack down,
they rig elections, they scare, ... The other parties are not
focusing on policies because there are far more important
priorities: constitutional change, independence of the judiciary,
separation of state apparatuses from government, free and fair
elections, etc.

Gamal Mubarak talks high-mindedly to audiences who think he is
living in a virtual reality. He stands there complaining that no one
else is offering ideas, that the opposition change their words at
will. He tries to bring a more objective and optimistic tone to the
various issues of the country. But you gotta do this out in the real
world, Gamal.

Out there where there is no protection from daddy's people. Out
there where you behave like you are not special, you are like
everyone else. Out there where you are dealt with as who you are,
not the presumed successor to your father.

I feel Gamal Mubarak needs to be liberated. I think it would do him
well. I sense a guy who wants to question, debate, bring new ideas,
who wants to raise the bar. But he will never achieve this
excellence so long as he does not liberate himself and become a
'nobody' like everybody else! Deep down, I think Gamal knows it too.

Update

A long report describing the conditions of present-day Egypt, and
likening the entire situation to an abstract painting.

Mostafa El-Sayed, an Egyptian-American scientist, has been awarded

a "National Medal of Science, Technology and Innovation" by president

George W Bush.  See the vid here.  (Skip to the interesting bits.)

Always amusing to see the high and mighty humble themselves in front

of the great and good.  GWB did a fine job of humbling himself, gotta say.

But you have to wonder how on earth a frat brat gets to be the fella awarding 

medals to these esteemed propeller-heads!  Something is amiss.  It is one

of the rare occasions when the guys at the bottom pull the strings and play

puppet-master.  The C-grade guy is made to present medals to people he

spent his entire life avoiding.

I enjoyed Professor Viterbi's treatment of GWB: "How odious it is to stand next

to you," he almost said.  Viterbi is the author of the Viterbi Algorithm, taught

in many a textbook - it was my first time to see the distinguished man on

camera.

The medals were awarded about a week ago.  I was in Egypt at the time,

and all the media gave the story prominence.  Professor El-Sayed invented

a method to help cure cancer via nanotechnology.  He authored many of his

papers with his son.

Still, an A+ to George W Bush for graciously playing his designated role of

humblest-in-chief.

The life I led while on holiday in Egypt was virtually insulated from
the financial-crisis-news that is covering London wall-to-wall. In
Egypt, things are sufficiently absorbing as to render the rest of the
world's news feel remote and pointless.

In London, I learn that Iceland has been virtually wiped out as a
modern economy, with the prospect of Russia 'bailing it out' being
given very serious consideration by the government in Reykjavik.
Commentators here see this Russian 'expansion' as a classic cold war
move.

The UK government is going to force people like me to 'bail out' the
banks to the tune of £50 billion. I hate this. They gave themselves
massive profits and did not share a penny, now they have failed, we
the taxpayers have to step in and cover their losses.

My day of travel began at 6am and involved possibly the worst lines
at Cairo airport I have ever experienced. Except they were not lines.
It was the usual Cairo jostle. The jostling was done through airport
trolleys - it was like driving in Cairo streets, but with trolleys in
the airport hall.

Normally, after you've checked-in with the airline, you get the
security check-in. But in Cairo, they screen everything first, before
you can go through to the airline counters. The screening process was
controlled by two officers and it was bizarrely slow. When I finally
pushed through, I was highly irritated to find a very long line,
twisting four-fold, for the airline check-in counters.

At one point, I was going to 'call the cops' on some guy who had
brazenly cut the queue, jumped about fifty people, and stood right
behind me. I told him off. But no one else said anything, and the
tourists kept silent too (I suppose they thought it typical in
Egypt). When I did finally get to talk to an official, he smiled at
me like I was naive and said "absolutely, that's so wrong" and did
nothing.

Things were sped-up, thank God, when they announced that London
boarders should be prioritised. So, we all scrambled forward, cutting
through the lines to get to the check-in counters. A European-looking
female tourist on her own had an anxious reaction when I hit her
trolley in my scramble. "EXCUSE ME. DO NOT GET IN MY WAY," she yelled
in one of those "I am an assertive American woman" voices. Sorry
lady, just cos you're not a native, don't mean you should not get
jostled like everybody else.

As ever in these situations, tension is discharged through an extreme
reaction, someone cathartically expresses our anxiety. And so,
without any visible reason, a gentleman yelled: "You do not have
manners" (in Arabic) to a young man. He did so ad nauseam - more than
twenty times. (May be I should have tried doing the same thing with
my queue-cutter.) The younger guy, being a tour guide, constrained
his reaction and kept his mouth shut.

Check-in was followed by another wait at passport control. Then
another passport check, then another security check. Then another
passport check. I moaned to the security officer "how many more
passport checks?" "Cheer up," he said, "I am the last one." I wanted
to tell him: "Normally, my friend, I am cheered by news of 15
visitors to my blog. I am not normally cheered by news that someone
will be the last officer out of 5389 to check my passport today", but
I didn't.

On the bus, I asked an English couple what they thought of Cairo. The
wife was not in a good place: "It's a dump!" she said. I instantly
yelled out to the driver: "Stop the bus, we have an ungrateful
tourist on board". I also stopped hearing anything, regretted asking
her in the first place, and felt all Cairenes in the bus egging me on
to avenge our pride. Some Cairenes flashed their gritted teeth to me,
an agreed-on way of saying "I am ready to bite hard".

No, none of that stuff happened.

"Whoo!" was all I said, showing some displeasure.

She moaned about all the passport checks, the chaos of check-in, how
the passport officer told them to queue for another 45 minutes just
because they had not filled in a form, etc. Her husband tried to
soften her mood: "It was beautiful weather though, and we had a great
time in Hurghada". I felt I was doing Cairo a favour: by getting her
to vent her frustrations with me, she was hopefully going to ease up
on the criticisms when she gets home. I took her "Goodbye, sun!" just
before she set foot in the plane as a good sign.

On the plane, I sat next to a poised, quiet guy from Yemen who works
as a software engineer for the UK transport service. We lamented the
state of the Arab countries; he named tribalism, bad education, and
corruption as his top three reasons for Yemen's backwardness, I named
corruption, apathy, and disrespect for others as Egypt's. We shared our
international experiences. He told me about Malaysia, Indonesia, and
Mexico. I told him about South Africa, the US, and Canada.

I arrived in London to find my landlord had still not put up my bed
as he had promised. Luckily, he was at home and we spent an hour or
two putting it up. Now, I have to face the chaos of my room - which I
had left virtually boxed-up after moving-in and then flying out. I
also need to unpack the new bits of 'things to handle' that arose out
of my time in Egypt.

This integration of 'things that came about from a particular trip'
is very hard. My instinct is to 'freeze' one life and 'unthaw' the
previous one. But, somehow, stuff needs to be transferred from one
life to the other.

Leafing through the Starbucks copy of The Times (old habits die
hard), I was struck by the repetitiveness of the UK worldview.
Nations have certain 'scripts' (like the subconscious scripts people
have) that they constantly play. So it was that I found the headline
"The Cane: a brutal, barbaric practice". And the witticism that it
has kept generations of Brits not run down a corridor, or play tag in
an empty pool.

One of the more stimulating things about London is the quality of
people you may run into in a mundane setting. Married to a husband
who works in Google, and working herself as an IT consultant to some
of the biggest corporations, the Moscovite who sat next to me was
very smiley, effortlessly intelligent, and quite pretty to boot. Our
conversation ranged over the financial melt-down, her savings,
Iceland, Putin, Judo, Georgia, James Bond, and a bit of IT geekery.

Moments like these make you wonder what London might be if they
sucked out those Brits who are shy, reticent, and banal!

"Whoo!"

In Cairo, I notice people deal with me with more respect than was
usual. Do I look older, do I look more 'ibn naas' (of good breeding),
do I tip more generously, do I look more 'nedeef' (clean-cut), do I
pay whatever they say too easily?

Here is an incident in the opposite direction. I park the car and run
off to buy something, by the time I am back, there's a car that's
parked alongside me in a manner that shuts me in a little. There's a
woman sitting in the passenger seat. I decide not to talk to her, and
to get out carefully. As I am turning on the engine, a man of about
45-50, who turns out to be her husband, taps on the boot of my car a
few times, almost drumming on it. I ask him: "What is going on? Why
are you beating on the boot?" He goes: "Having a laugh". I am
dumbstruck. I glare at him. He gives me a look that says: "get over
it".

Why is he drumming on my boot and not apologising! Am I getting too
English?

Wealth manifests itself in pockets of exclusive communities around
Cairo. Villas with pools and landscaped gardens go at $3-4 million a
pop. And they go! Much to the amazement of the masses, some people
have the money to buy this stuff. This ostentatious wealth was never
part of modern Egypt; you heard of it in Johannesburg and Rio De
Janeiro but never saw it in Egypt. It is here now.

There's a 1-3% slice of the population that has deep pockets and they
are a far way from the 10-20% middle class who are in turn a safe
distance from the common folk. The 'supers' are businessmen,
entertainment folk, emigrees with second homes in Egypt, highly
successful doctors, international expatriates, etc. But the young
graduates all want a piece of the action.

Some "just know" they will have their own $3 million villa one day;
some have already figured out that they will only ever be spectators,
and they are deeply resentful. They are 'dislocated' from the
country; they want to get the hell out. They hope that 'abroad'
(Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Canada, etc) they will have a
fair chance at living a civilised life.

Naguib Sawiris is the only Egyptian in the world's list of
multi-billionaires. He sits atop an empire that owns a huge mobile
telecoms operator, a construction company, and a zillion other
ventures. He wields significant influence in the world of
international telecommunications. A proud Egyptian Christian (a
Copt), well-spoken in both Arabic and English, and obviously
intelligent, he seems to be one of the few voices radiating optimism
about the future of the country.

He owns a satellite television channel (OTV) that is distinctly
Egyptian, youthful, and very well-funded. His business empire
recently acquired five IT companies (some of which were Indian),
which it is proceeding to unify and run out of Cairo. They are not
quite taking on the Indians in the out-sourcing business, but they
reckon there is enough spare business around to keep them happy.
Their main problem is they want more talent out of Egyptian
graduates.

Usually the problem in Egypt is unemployment, but the Sawiris people
have the jobs, they have the salaries, they just can't find the boys
and girls with the adequate skill sets! So, they have started their
Orascom Academy to retool the kids for the 21st century. It is
typical of Sawiris mentality: rise to the occasion and find
solutions.

Sawiris bravely went for the Iraqi telecoms market when no one in
their right minds wanted to do business there. He lost out on that
one: they pulled out a year later; but it is indicative of his
mind-set. But, still, his example is misleading.

Watching this polished, smart doer of a man, one can easily forget
the realities. I cannot compare this man to the Google founders, or
to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. This man never invented or innovated
anything. Most of his business ideas were imitations of foreign ideas
in the Egyptian market.

After spotting business opportunity, Sawiris had the means (through
his second-generation-businessmen family connections) to go for them.
Yes, Sawiris towers over the other local businessmen; they did not
pursue opportunities with the same hunger and creativity as he.
Nevertheless, all of them, every single one of them, is nothing more
than an entrepreneur who saw opportunity and had the wherewithal to
draw on it.

None of these guys, I think, will ever change the way people across
the world lead their lives. To bring a mobile network to an African
country, is not the same quality achievement as developing the mobile
itself.

It seems the coterie of very rich businessmen and elite media
personalities are part of the same circus. They sit on various
television stations talking in urbane Egyptian dialect, alternating
between gentle and sarcastic humour, telling amusing anecdotes,
sending their children to international, private schools and then to
private universities (either in Egypt or abroad), they get their kids
jobs in their own field, and they all hang out in exclusive gated
communities. Then they lament that Egypt is changing and their kids
are not going to be the same Egyptians they once were!

They sit as if in a castle surrounded by a very wide moat (hat-tip to
shehab). The locals are watching the elites through the windows of
the castle and wondering how on earth to cross, or as may happen,
storm, the moat. Meanwhile you park your car and the 'menady' (the
guy who helps you, uninvited, to park) chases after you: "One pound
more, sir. What difference will a pound make to you!" His job is not
proper, your tip is voluntary, but he has mistaken you for one of the
guys who lives in the castle. After all, you drive a car and you are
going inside the city's premier mall!

Elrakabawy was our descriptive geometry professor at Ain Shams
University. A big man with a bulky neck and a reddish face, he had
been teaching the subject for what seemed to be, twenty years ago,
twenty years. When I found out last year that he was still teaching
it, I was surprised. Today I learnt he passed away a couple of months
ago.

Descriptive Geometry is probably a Soviet term. I did not find
textbooks on the subject in the West. But a couple of years ago, I
spotted second-hand copies of two Soviet-era textbooks on the
subject. Given that our curriculum at Ain Shams was a mixture of
Soviet, French, British, and American curricula (reflecting the
typical PhD destinations of our professors), Descriptive Geometry
probably came our way via the Russians.

The subject is about drawing three dimensional objects to-scale on a
sheet of two-dimensional paper. It is extremely difficult because it
requires imagination as well as mastery of technique. Reading the
problem statement usually brought on bouts of dizziness. "Chess is
the best cure for a headache", said a famous philosopher; I think
wasfeyya ("descriptive"), as we called it, had pretty much the same
effect. Your brain had to read each sentence three times before it
could begin to fathom it.

Rakawaby taught it workman-like and without humour. He had a serious
disposition, and there was rarely any occasion for him to impose
discipline. His lectures were 9am lectures and he tucked right into
the problems. I hardly remember a word he said.

His name, El-rakabawy, has something to do with "the neck", and this,
combined with the difficulty of his subject, led us to caricature him
as an executioner. The guy seemed so impenetrable, just like the
subject. But he did have a few attentive front-row students. He
queried them as he went along: "so we extend a line to ??", "yes,
point q, and then we project it onto plane ??" ...

Failure rates in the first year at Ain Shams's Faculty of Engineering
were usually around 30-40%. Almost every single one of these guys
would have failed 'wasfeyya'. You could even find guys with overall
excellent grades and a "pass" in 'wasfeyya'.

Elrakabawy is responsible, not single-handedly, only partly, for the
impression of impenetrability and intellectual demand that the
Faculty of Engineering left on me. I remember people being confused,
going through 'sheets', jumping through hoops, cracking jokes, none
the wiser. Slowly, I began to spot the ones who were standing on firm
ground, those who were watching and following and asking.

Their mark was their concision and clarity. If they could not explain
it simply and with clarity, they started again. I recognised 'my
people'.  I often have to remind myself not to lose that and become
a Rakabawy - may he rest in peace.

Water cuts are common across various neighbourhoods in Cairo. We live
in an area lucky enough to suffer only two sets of two-hour cuts. The
word on the street is to not drink tap water directly: boil it and
filter it first, or buy bottled water (courtesy of Coca Cola -
Dasani, Pepsi Cola - Aquafina, or Nestle). We are not sure bottled
water is, in fact, to be trusted, but we have no choice.

The main roads across the city are serviceable, but once you turn
into smaller streets, holes and uneven surfaces become the norm.
Rubbish collection takes place, but some people can't afford to pay
for the apartment-collector and dump their own rubbish themselves in
a big metal skip. This usually overflows and becomes a dogs-n-cats
haunt, as well as a smelly eye-sore.

Healthcare is obviously hit-and-miss, what with doctor clinics and
hospitals that may not be hygienic.

Public transport is unappealing. The buses tend to be over-crowded.
The micro-buses (privately-run) are totally irresponsible. About a
half of them are driven by young cowboys who do not have a license to
drive. They stop anywhere and speed irresponsibly, paying no heed to
the passengers they have on-board. Even the taxis are hit-and-miss:
fares are a negotiation, and the taxi itself is, 50% of the time, a
car that should not be on the road.

My well-to-do middle-class friends drive around in strong,
air-conditioned cars. They drive responsibly and may occasionally
give way to pedestrians, but their number one preoccupation is to
watch out for the "animals" and the "donkey-and-cart-drivers". These
are code terms. Traffic is self-regulating, self-organising. A friend
who drove in India noted the key difference of aggressive
competitiveness in Cairo driving.

We hop from one relatively chic spot to another, ordering juice or
coffee, and we complain. No one has a good word to say. The default
is to complain and blame someone else. From the bastards up high, the
beardies on the side, the "new generation" on the other side, to the
poor and ignorant down low.

Passiveness is the order of the day. You partake in it with relish
and in your heart of hearts thank God that you've got yourself a way
out.

Right in the middle of this degradation of yourself and immersion in
a form of group-nihilism, a friend points out that if we all give up,
we are promoting the status quo.

Stuff that connects with people, stuff that leaves a mark on people's
lives, is stuff that is (i) realistic, (ii) resonates emotionally,
(iii) simple and relevant.

Writing coaches tell us that if you have the characters sorted,
everything else is. Great writers depict memorable characters and
then they put them in situations that test them. Anne Tyler once said
that the bulk of her work is done when she's figured out the
characters. Afterwards, she queries them and follows them around.

Comedy is a strange beast because it can be nothing more than
one-liners and funny faces. But it could also be a lot more.

Logan Murray teaches that just as the poet sees a problem, observes
something, and finds the words to paint a picture of it, a comedian
finds the joke in the observation. A comedian's solution to a problem
is to find the funny in it.

But the great poets do not just paint pictures, they paint pictures
of how they feel about something. Likewise, great comedians find the
funny in how they feel about something. I find both mediums equally
powerful and remarkable.

The poet makes us go "mmm, how true, how apt, i never saw it that way".
The comedian makes us go "hahaha, how funny, i never saw it that way".
Poetry is about emotion, truth, resonance; comedy is about impulsiveness,
playfulness, deliberate stupidity.

I think both mediums stay with us. Everytime I go inside an aeroplane
loo, I remember Jerry Seinfeld's: "you lock the door behind you, and
the lights turn on, it's like someone's throwing you a surprise
birthday party". Saeed Saleh's line in Madrasit el-Moshaghbeen about
the lebanese school curriculum: "It's so easy. you tell the
curriculum come here, it comes. Not like our impossible curriculum"
(using curriculum as code for girls), that's a line that has been
passed down generations.

The new development on Egyptian TV over the last year has been a
preponderance of sitcoms. We're talking a dozen sitcoms. This is a
brand new format in the Arab world. Now we have Tamer & Shew'eya
(he's posh, she's slummy); a doctors' clinic involving an
incorrigible central character; a husband who lives with six women
(wife, sister, mother, mother-in-law, daughter, ...), and many more.

They mostly don't work. Because the writers have not matured enough
to generate the stuff that connects and leaves a mark with people.
But everyone agrees that it is a question of time before a critical
point is reached, and a killer sitcom comes around. More importantly,
these mediocre sitcoms are actually popular! People are perfectly
happy with caricature, one-liners, and funny faces.

Being in Cairo is tumultuous (is this even a word, I don't want to go
and check). It is turbulent and deep and emotive. Being here brings
nostalgia, longing for a past, wanting to take care, wonderment at
what has happened while you were away, love of the place, the people,
the land, and many other things.

Home is family. Though I have lived in it continuously only
seven-eight years, I never was too far away from "masr" (Egypt): my
parents, their families, and the history and culture that my parents
painted me part of. The familial connections, together with the
friendships I made about twenty years ago, friendships with
middle-class Cairenes of similar backgrounds to mine, are/is what
Egypt is for me. Through them I belong to a bigger entity called
Egypt. Through these connections, I am entitled to have opinions on
Egypt as an Egyptian, and I am also looked to to contribute something
to my country.

I was at my aunt's place last night. Ageing being what it is, I took
her 'leg trouble' casually. Likewise, I took in her husband's
increasing stoop almost without noticing it. My mother was absent
because of stomach trouble. It was only my father, who sometimes
needs to steady his walk by leaning on something, his sister, her
husband, and me. Average age: 64!

My aunt's husband had positively enthused (over the phone) that I was
coming to visit. After the initial greetings, he sat me down to give
me a short introduction to the autobiography of Galal Amin that he is
reading. Knowing I was coming, he had prepared a written note
summarising his thoughts, and at some point he read from it directly.