The Girl From Cairo

Download or read book The Girl from Cairo written by Peggy Hinaekian and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For many of us in the disconnected 21st century, it is time to speak about our heritage. This memoir creates a whole world bridging memory and narrative. It has a sense of longevity, no so much in the number of years, but with the depth and range of felt experiences. The writer is an artist who brings to the page an astute eye for the meaning of belonging and identity as she shifts between her many selves. There’s a real sense of looking at people in the Middle Eastern world through the lens of her mixed ethnicity—Egyptian, British, Armenian. The sense of tension with her characters, particularly her roguish, bon-vivant father, who gambled away the family fortune, and her strong-willed, fashionable but secretive mother ever vigilant about neighbors gossiping as they lived in gentile poverty. Nevertheless, she maintained a sense of normalcy while railing in her “headstrong” daughter. “The memoir finds humor in dark places like a childhood spent in trauma, cowering from overhead bombing raids during WWII, telling how entire families were able to find resilience to survive constant danger. Following WWII, Peggy’s fascination with American GIs stationed in Cairo sets her off on a life path. When the Suez Canal political upheaval after “Black Saturday” happens, it catapults her to leave Egypt. “The author’s coming of age story is composed of her education in a Catholic Girls’ School, her sexual awakening, her first love, and her childhood daydreams of becoming a film star or a fashion designer that sets her on a journey through several countries: Canada, Switzerland and the U.S.A. The narrative plays on the reader’s question of ‘what’s next?’ as the writer weaves her family story with compassion, finding inspiration in the ‘showing’ of ordinary people living their lives against an exotic and, often, foreign backdrop.” “Frances Roberts Reilly--poet, playwright and memoirist”.

Download or read book A Border Passage written by Leila Ahmed and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Egyptian woman's reflections on her changing homeland—updated with an afterword on the Arab Spring In language that vividly evokes the lush summers of Cairo and the stark beauty of the Arabian desert, Leila Ahmed movingly recounts her Egyptian childhood growing up in a rich tradition of Islamic women and describes how she eventually came to terms with her identity as a feminist living in America. As a young woman in Cairo in the forties and fifties, Ahmed witnessed some of the major transformations of this century—the end of British colonialism, the rise of Arab nationalism, and the breakdown of Egypt's once multireligious society. As today's Egypt continues to undergo revolutionary change, Ahmed's inspirational story remains as poignant and relevant as ever.

Download or read book Shelf Life written by Nadia Wassef and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “As a bookseller, I loved Shelf Life for the chance to peer behind the curtain of Diwan, Nadia Wassef’s Egyptian bookstore—the way that the personal is inextricable from the professional, the way that failure and success are often lovers, the relationship between neighborhoods and books and life. Nadia’s story is for every business owner who has ever jumped without a net, and for every reader who has found solace in the aisles of a bookstore.” —Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here “Shelf Life is such a unique memoir about career, life, love, friendship, motherhood, and the impossibility of succeeding at all of them at the same time. It is the story of Diwan, the first modern bookstore in Cairo, which was opened by three women, one of whom penned this book. As a bookstore owner I found this fascinating. As a reader I found it fascinating. Blunt, honest, funny.” —Jenny Lawson, author of Broken (in the best possible way) The warm and winning story of opening a modern bookstore where there were none, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller recounts Nadia Wassef’s troubles and triumphs as a founder and manager of Cairo-based Diwan The streets of Cairo make strange music. The echoing calls to prayer; the raging insults hurled between drivers; the steady crescendo of horns honking; the shouts of street vendors; the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she founded Diwan, a fiercely independent bookstore. They were three young women with no business degrees, no formal training, and nothing to lose. At the time, nothing like Diwan existed in Egypt. Culture was languishing under government mismanagement, and books were considered a luxury, not a necessity. Ten years later, Diwan had become a rousing success, with ten locations, 150 employees, and a fervent fan base. Frank, fresh, and very funny, Nadia Wassef’s memoir tells the story of this journey. Its eclectic cast of characters features Diwan’s impassioned regulars, like the demanding Dr. Medhat; Samir, the driver with CEO aspirations; meditative and mythical Nihal; silent but deadly Hind; dictatorial and exacting Nadia, a self-proclaimed bitch to work with—and the many people, mostly men, who said Diwan would never work. Shelf Life is a portrait of a country hurtling toward revolution, a feminist rallying cry, and an unapologetic crash course in running a business under the law of entropy. Above all, it is a celebration of the power of words to bring us home.

Download or read book Cairo Stories written by Anne-Marie Drosso and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Egypt is the setting for this collection, but the stories are universal -whether it's the girl whose mother no longer recognises her, a young man who uses the changing political climate to avenge his despotic father, or the woman consumed by guilt for abandoning her children. Echoing V.S. Pritchett's words, they 'look for the silent moment in which our singularity breaks through, when emotions change, without warning, and reveal themselves. And while revealing themselves they also unveil the scents and sensations of modern Cairo, from the early 1930s to the present day. Essential reading, not only for those with a love of this fascinating city but for those who cherish the story, unobtrusively and beautifully rendered.

Download or read book A Woman of Cairo written by Noel Barber and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Son and daughter of diplomats in Cairo, the gentle Serena Pasha and Mark Holt are good-looking and privileged, growing up in a magical world of champagne breakfasts and midnight picnics at the pyramids. Their lives entwined since childhood, they grow ever closer as adults. Yet Serena's hand has been promised not to Mark, but to his brother, Greg. However, as the Second World War speeds closer to Cairo, a terrible accident gives these young lovers a second chance - and with this chance comes terrible dangers. Egypt is threatened not only by the German army but by nationalist forces within Cairo determined to end the British occupation at any cost. The country torn apart, and with enemies on all sides, Mark and Serena's love is tested to the limit.

Download or read book The Arrogant Years written by Lucette Lagnado and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the award-winning The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit—hailed by the New York Times book review as a “crushing, brilliant book”—returns with this, the extraordinary follow-up memoir In The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Lucette Lagnado offered a heartbreaking portrait of her father, Leon, a successful Cairo boulevardier who was forced to take flight with his family during the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, and of her family’s struggle to rebuild a new life in a new land. In this much-anticipated new memoir, Lagnado tells the story of her mother, Edith, coming of age in a magical old Cairo of dusty alleyways and grand villas inhabited by pashas and their wives. Then Lagnado revisits her own early years in America—first, as a schoolgirl in Brooklyn’s immigrant enclaves, where she dreams of becoming the fearless Mrs. Emma Peel of The Avengers, and later, as an “avenging” reporter for some of America’s most prestigious newspapers. A stranger growing up in a strange land, when she turns sixteen Lagnado’s adolescence is further complicated by cancer. Its devastating consequences would rob her of her “arrogant years”—the years defined by an overwhelming sense of possibility, invincibility, and confidence. Lagnado looks to the women sequestered behind the wooden screen at her childhood synagogue, to the young coeds at Vassar and Columbia in the 1970s, to her own mother and the women of their past in Cairo, and reflects on their stories as she struggles to make sense of her own choices.

Download or read book Live from Cairo written by Ian Bassingthwaighte and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After being denied permission to join her husband in America, an Iraqi refugee is trapped in Cairo during the aftermath of the 2011 revolution and must rely on a foolhardy attorney with feelings for her and a not entirely legal plan to get her out.