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Cairo, the glory years Book by Samir W. Raafat

Cairo, the glory years Book by Samir W. Raafat

LE 275.00 EGP
LE 550.00 EGP LE 275.00 EGP
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Samir W. Raafat



Samir W. Raafat was born and raised in Maadi, once the green suburb of Egypt. Schooled at Victoria College, he witnessed at the age of five its transformation into Victory College following the 1956 Suez War, not that it meant anything to him then. He was a young teenager when Nasser's socialism bit deep in the fabric of Cairo society.

Raafat studied economics at the American University in Cairo and after completing his military service, which coincided with the October '73 War, joined Bank of America during the heyday of Sadat's infitah or Open Door Policy. These were a series of economic reforms the fruits of which were mostly real estate speculation and rampant inflation. The after effects were to destroy Maadi turning it from a green suburb into a concrete ghetto. This would later prompt Raafat to write his book Maadi 1904-1962; Society & History in a Cairo Suburb (Palm Press, Cairo 1994). But in the meanwhile, Raafat worked with a Kuwaiti-owned real estate investment company in Cairo and upon leaving it spearheaded, together with a Canadian, a German and an Argentine, the introduction into Egypt of its first satellite dishes. To this day Raafat has his column "DEEP DISH" in Egypt's leading satellite magazine Satellite Guide.

During its writing and after the book's launch Raafat published a series of articles for the Ahram Weekly and later became a regular contributor to the Egyptian Mail. This is the Saturday supplement of Egypt's only English daily, the Egyptian Gazette. Some of these articles were re produced or quoted in several magazines both locally and overseas. He has become an authority on many aspects of Cairo history. He sees his passion for local history as fitting in with a world-wide trend towards conservation and plans further studies of those parts of Cairo which are under threat by bulldozer and high-rise.

Raafat is currently writing a book "The History of Egypt's Department Stores; 1882-1962". Any contributing material and pictures will be greatly appreciated since archives and material are scant.

Aside from working on his first book, Raafat together with Philippe Simard of Ottawa, Canada, set up in 1993 Egypt's very first website "The Egyptian Gazette." For lack of server providers in Egypt the The Egyptian Gazette* is temporarily domiciled in Canada.

(Excerpt from a profile in Egypt Today January 1994)
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