Dining With An Egyptian Dreamer

Tarek Heggy’s booming voice, Arab charm, and considerable reputation all preceded him. However, I was not prepared for the quiet soulfulness and seriousness with which he graced my home. Tall, trim, warm, effusive, energetic–but also refreshingly business-like, Tarek reminded me a bit, (but only superficially), of Lucette Lagnado’s father, Leon, whom she memorialized in her wonderful book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. Like Leon, Tarek is also a sophisticated citizen of the world and a very successful businessman; unlike Lagnado’s cherished Leon, Tarek is a voracious and dedicated reader and the author of many books and countless articles.

Of course, Tarek is a Muslim, not a Jew. He was born in Port Said, Egypt and grew up in the 1950s and 1960s when that city was more cosmopolitan than it now is. Tarek told me that he wept the last time he visited his childhood city because “the women are now all wearing sheets, down to the ground and away from their bodies so that no shape shows,” and there is “hate, only hate blaring from the loudspeakers of every mosque.”

We dined leisurely and alone so that we might talk at length, and undisturbed. We have been waiting to do so for more than a year. Our long-ago appointment had to be re-scheduled due to his mother’s illness and then, alas, her death….Continue reading on Front Page Mag >>