Grandfather

My avant-garde grandfather in 1930. On looking back at his biography, ones comes upon a seriously peculiar character in Egypt. As if being a philanthropist physician wasn’t enough, he spent long and long years stuck in the library of the Cairene Islamic museum researching Islamic history. His private library which I had finished off reading by the age of 12 provided me with valuable insights about the multiple versions of history and about the worldliness of many Islamic history characters that have been desecrated as saints in more mainstream history versions. He was also an amateur anthropologist, but serious one by the standards of the time as I can tell from my uncle’s anecdotes.

He was a real hedonist fond of the booze and crazy flirts. My grandmother and him were at odds, as for the age, they were too independent, fun loving and neither gave a dam about what others thought—something that has been passed down to us. They divcorced and remarried. He taught my mother rare creative thinking skills, and my uncle some true critical thinking–which was more common back then– and good head butting skills which were necessary for fending off those who intercepted my grandfather’s way while going home drunk.

I lived in Dokki for a while and used the fist to drive off trespassers who intercepted me while coming home drunk, probably paid by Mafia at work. The police interfered but I made sure the goaders paid dearly for that. In this respect I have a very silly but deep sense of mission about individual liberties on our side of the World.

His last decade on earth in the 60s was mysterious. He had already married a tramp in the late 50s, spent hours drinking in nooks of Cairo unknown to anyone except maybe the characters in Mahfouz’s novels. He also held a multidisciplinary salon for students in his place. He died suddenly and his tremendous wealth of real estate and lands just evaporated in thin air, which was a mystery. Quite uncannily, something close happened to my grandmother in the early 60s.