Egyptian Chronicles

I know that you probably think that online petitions are useless but they are not because I believe they are another form of expression available to the people around the world.

This petition is special , it is an international petition to the UN General Assembly to set up a special international penal court to try Israeli war crimes, notably in the Gaza Strip.

It is published by the French Palestine Solidarity Association, I hope that more people sign this petition to show that we have not forgotten what happened in Gaza and we want justice.

What happened in Gaza was a war crime by all means.

Thanks to dear friend Ségolène Liger

Spread the website please

To the leader of the free of world : Barack Obama

A letter from a Palestinian Child to the US President

This is a letter from a Palestinian Child who does not have clear definition for terms like “terrorism” and “peace”.

I am sure the Palestinian children like Gamila, Louai and Samar have similar letters to President Obama.

Please spread this letter to president Obama.

This letter encouraged me to send a message to President Obama:

Dear President Obama  as you are working to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp ,I only ask you that the United States would stop exporting incendiary weapons to Israel like the DIME , I do not ask you to stop supporting Israel whether by money or by arms despite I know in this critical time in the American history each penny from the tax payers money the American citizen deserves now more than ever, more than Israel and more than Egypt and Pakistan.

President Obama you are father for two beautiful little girls and I believe you know how it feels when you know that your child is hurt, thousands of Palestinian children have been hurt by weapons like the DIME and WP in which former President Bush made sure to supply Israel with. You correct his mistakes , please correct this mistake

If you do this sir and order that no incendiary weapons will be exported to Israel because they use it against civilians ,then be sure sir that you won’t need thousands interviews like Al Arabiya to send a message to the Arab and Muslim world saying that the American people are not our enemy.

Mr.President you are not our enemy but all what we ask that you would be a fair friend to us as you are to the Israelis.

The Death slide show

I have collected these images every day since the beginning of Gaza land operation up till now. I used some of the photos from the slide show in my posts regarding Gaza still there are some horrible photos that I did not share it with you publicly.

These horrible images are evidence of the war crimes and the brutality of the IDF , I am posting this time in the slide show as kind of respect to the victims “mostly children”. If You think that these photos are too horrible to be shared and seen well remember my dear friend those photos were for Children who killed for no reason at all.

I am not sorry for posting these horrible photos as much as I am sorry for this world and its shameful silence on that massacre.

Please share it.

Ladies and gents I am proudly sharing with you here a very rare photo for the first Egyptian Female Students in the Cairo University or rather the University of Fouad I in early 1930s.Those daring ladies or girls then should be mentioned in the 100th anniversary of the Cairo University and in the Kolena Laila celebration of pioneer ladies.

Before showing you this rare photo, here is a little introduction about how these ladies found their way to the University. We spoke before about the role of Princes Fatimah important role in founding the Cairo University in its current location yet we did not know how Egyptian Laila found her way to the hallways and the auditoriums of the University. There is a little piece of information many do not know that the Cairo university or Fouad University after its inauguration held lectures for high classes ladies where  Madam Couvreur of France used to speak , Madam Couvrer was brought by the request of Prince Ahmed Fouad I with the help of Gaston Maspero.Those lectures were in French and by time some Middle high class ladies joined them still on a very narrow scale.There were other pioneer ladies in Press who thought that those lectures should be translated to Arabic. Lebanese Labiba Hasham in the “Girl of Orient” Newspaper “Yes there was such newspaper then” and the early activist famous Malak Hafiny Nasaf in the “Nation’s party” did that great job. Hasham even raised the bar and called for the Egyptian Ladies to lecture instead of Foreign ladies.

By time a separate women section was opened in the Fouad University but it was closed in the WWI in no time.

Those girls entered the Cairo University in 1929 breaking taboos you can’t imagine back then. The first class of young Egyptian ladies consisted of 17 girls only that Dr.Ahmed Lutfi El-Sayed ,the head of the Fouad University then along with deans of the faculties of Arts “Taha Hussein” and medicine “Dr.Ali Ibrahim” let them enter the University secretly without informing the education ministry except when those 17 girls succeeded in their study , women can study like men , there was no need to not let them complete their study.

From those 17 girls I found the photo of those fantastic 5 girls

From rigth to left Dr. Naema El-Ayauobi and Miss Fatimah Salem setting and behind them , Mrs. Zahirah Abd El Aziz,Dr. Sohair El-Qalamawy and Mrs. Fatimah Fahmy.

Also here is a short essay by Dr. Naema El-Ayauobi under the title “I was the first girl to enter the University” who was among those first Egyptian female students describing her daring experience. In summary she was describing how the girls were shy and avoided any contact with the boys  and how The dean of the faculty of Arts Dr. Taha Hussein told them that if anyone annoyed them or if they needed anything , they should go immediately to his office and complain to him.

It is sad thing that we did not remember those fine ladies and their names except for Dr.Sohair El-Qalamawy ,the famous student of Dr. Taha Hussein thanks to her contribution to the Arabic literature and the fact she was the first woman to hold the position of the famous head of the Arabic language section in the faculty of Arts at the Cairo University from 1958 to 1967.

Dr.Sohair  as I hinted was the student of Dr.Taha Hussein and he supervised her master and her PHD in Arabic Literature which was about One thousand and one nights aka in the West The Arabian Nights , yup the original nights and I read that PHD study when it was published in the Reading for all festival among the treasures of the Arabic literature.
TO be honest till the early 1950s not many families were ready to send their girls to universities like men , for them girls should be educated to get married, I think it was not in Egypt only but rather the whole world , if you watch the Mona Lisa smile you will know what I am speaking about.

By the way if you want to publish the picture in your website or what ever you want please do it but do not forget me , I did not put copyright on it because it is a scan and I am doing this to encourage you to speak about those fantastic ladies but I will not hate that you do not forget my effort.

Links and sources :

• Dr.Latifa Salem’s lecture in the Cairo University about the history of women in the university in Egypt.
• The Photo and the article are from the Al-Thanan weekly magazine published on 12th of March 1945.

For sure a voice like Asmahan’s can be repeated twice in the same time. Asmahan or Amal Atrash is said to inherit her mother’s voice. Still if you listen to her and her brother you feel a great different. “P.S I forgot to mention last time that in the TV series there was an excellent Lebanese actress called Ward Al-Khal ,that should be praised for her role as Aliya Al Munzer,the mother of Asmahan”

Her voice was so pure,powerful and strong like the crystal.

Um Kalthoum should be jealous from her despite their voices are different. I do not think that Um Kalthoum can sing a song like “Ya Habibi Taalaal” and Asmahan can sing “Inta Omri” or “Fakorni” with the same emotions and strong voice of Thuma. Of course this rivalry did not reach to the level that Thuma would be behind her tragic death,that was a dirty rumour by the British forces to divert any accusation of their involvement in her death.

I love Asmahan’s song “Ya Habibi Taalaal” because it was a modern song in its time. I was surprised to know that it was based on a modern Turkish song,already I am searching for the original one.

Here is the song composed by the famous Madhat Assam

Also here is a song “Imta Ha  Traf _ when you will know” from her last film “Love and Vengeance”, she did complete that film and they had to change the ending to sad one where Youssef Wahbi loses his love and acts like crazy with his violin.