I was an immigrant twice, once from Egypt to Israel. Israel opened her arms and took me in. And America opened her arms, and I’m an American citizen now.
My father was a Foreign Service officer, a diplomat and an Arabist who spent virtually all his career in the Near East, as it was called in the State Department. So I spent most of my childhood among the Israelis and the Arabs of Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
I remember when I was a kid, as a refugee in Egypt, every day, there was always a hope that we’d get to leave tomorrow and we’d get to go somewhere.
The sooner we put Egypt on the right track, the sooner we would be able to have an Egypt that is modern, that is moderate, and that is acting as a beacon for freedom and liberty across the Arab world.
I’m not an encyclopedia of ancient Egyptian history, but women did hold positions of status in ancient Egypt. Obviously, famously, people like Nefertiti and Cleopatra actually ruled, which we don’t often think about women having a lot of agency in the ancient world, but in ancient Egypt, they did.
There’s a big film industry in Egypt, and quite a big one in Syria, and there’s a big Muslim community in Paris.
Of all the places I’ve visited in my life, Egypt has been the most fascinating. I’ve explored almost the whole country: Cairo and the Pyramids, Alexandria, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens and the Nobles.
When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art.
Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less – certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt – got rid of them.
I am dying, Egypt, dying.
When the Egyptians decide something, probably it is not appropriate for the U.S. When the Americans decide something, this, of course, is not appropriate for Egypt.
I think the first time I watched ‘Aladdin’ was when I was still in Egypt, because I was born in Cairo.
There weren’t many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back then. That is no longer the case in Egypt today.
The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people-to-people or arts/culture/media-to-people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries.
In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated understand how democracy works.
Donald Trump is a demagogue. Period. The fervor of his crowds recalls Nasser’s Egypt. His convictions are illiberal. His manners are disgusting. His temper is frightening.
In 2012, President Obama was faced with a new Egyptian leader, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of applying pressure to root him out, President Obama waived U.S. law and provided taxpayer aid to prop up the most radical elements within Egypt.
I’d never heard of Robert Hellenga; I didn’t think a book with the name ‘Snakewoman of Little Egypt’ would hold any appeal for me at all.
When I lived in Egypt, we always wore kaftans. I had cashmere kaftans from Halston. You put on a kaftan in your backyard, and it’s like you’re in Ibiza.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
In addition to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which is crucial to U.S. interests both domestically and in the Middle East, the U.S. has had and will continue to need Egypt’s collaboration in the war on terrorism.
It is a kind of ego booster, the way Egypt’s winning the 1973 war, in the first stages, was an uplift. But I did not find when I spoke to people that the war in Iraq was seen as the major issue in American-Arab relations.
We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.
Egypt has always been critical to the stability of the Middle East pertaining to Israel. We need them with us for continued efforts to maintain peace in the region.
Of all the places I’ve visited in my life, Egypt has been the most fascinating. I’ve explored almost the whole country: Cairo and the Pyramids, Alexandria, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens and the Nobles.
You don’t get the fox to be in charge of the chicken coop. You don’t give the outgoing regime – which has been practicing dictatorship, is an authoritarian system, it’s a bunch of military people – the task of changing Egypt into a second republic, a new Egypt with democracy, freedom, rights, etc.
The West has been calling for years for the forces of moderate Islam to stand up to the very small percentage but very large number of radical Muslims all around the world. When countries – the U.A.E. or Egypt or Jordan – do that, we need to highlight it, we need to celebrate it, and we need to continue to encourage it.
Egypt needs to catch up with the rest of the world. We need to be free, democratic, and – society where people have the right to live in freedom and dignity.
The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.
If I can be a positive Arab figure on such a large platform such as the WWE, and become some sort of an inspiration to an Arab kid in Lebanon, Egypt, or Jordan, then that’s amazing.
Egypt has been a partner of the United States over the last 30 years, has been instrumental in keeping the peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel, which is a critical accomplishment that has meant so much to so many people.
My mum and dad were speaking all the time about, ‘In Sudan we do this,’ and ‘In Egypt we do that,’ so I was very aware of cultural differences. I was confused growing up; it gave me a feeling of being an outsider watching others. But I think this is good for a writer.
I grew up in a conservative household. That was the life of the time in Egypt: a conservative, middle-class household.
Egypt, once a melting pot of peoples, classes, cultures and religions, has, after 30 years of Mubarak’s rule, become a place of intolerance and distrust of the other.
Human resources are just tremendous in Egypt, but we need the science base; we need the correct science base.
I started off at a local newspaper called ‘The Middle East Times,’ which is no longer in existence. I remember one of the earliest stories that I wrote for them was a study about domestic violence in Egypt from a government-run research institute think tank.
The practice of shaving makes its first appearance in the Bible in connection with the story of Joseph, who as a young man was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, where he was subsequently imprisoned on false charges.
Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly.
For all its pro-democracy rhetoric, the West rolled over to military coups in Egypt and Thailand.
There are different opinions across the Middle East of Al-Jazeera. They’ve been kicked out of Egypt and Jordan and then let back in; they’ve been totally banned from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria.
Egypt now is a real civil state. It is not theocratic, it is not military. It is democratic, free, constitutional, lawful and modern.
I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, ‘Well, Jesus was a refugee.’ And yes, he did live in Egypt for three and a half years. But it was not illegal. If he had broke the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.
In my own creations, the earliest influence came from the ancient civilisations of Egypt, China, Africa and Persia. In fact, one of my earlier creations was a range of tunics, made from silk procured from the islands of Madagascar.
Andrew Warren was a rarity in the CIA’s Clandestine Service – African-American, fluent in Arabic, and relatively young for an agent who’d already spent nearly a decade chasing terrorists in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria, so deep undercover that few of his friends or family knew the nature of his work.
The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.
Public opinion in Egypt is very antagonistic to the way the dictatorship, Mubarak dictatorship, interpreted relations with Israel. Very antagonistic.
President Sadat of Egypt made a historic breakthrough in 1977 when he put an end to war and convinced both Egyptians and Israelis that he was ready to make peace. He broke down the walls of suspicion and prejudice.
You think looting is bad in Egypt, look at Peru, India, China. I’ve been told in China there are over a quarter-million archaeological sites, and most have been looted. This is a global problem of massive proportions, and we don’t know the scale.
In crises, the old is dying and the new has not been born. Hence, the revolts we are witnessing in Egypt and Tunisia, which may yet extend to other countries in the region, are full of uncertainties.
I can go back to Egypt anytime I want. Can I leave Egypt anytime I want? I think I can. I think I can.
My arrest in Egypt happened in 2002, and I was convicted to five years as a political prisoner.
Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, the seat of Sunni Islamic doctrine, and has tremendous political, religious and social influence on the rest of the region. For better or worse, it will lead the rest of the Middle East by example. So goes Egypt, so goes the region.
