Tag: family

Demoralized by the failure of the 1977 Bread Intifada, and faced with an escalating witch-hunt campaign and purges by Sadat’s regime against leftists in the universities and civil service, thousands of Egyptian communists and radical nationalists left the country and sought refuge in Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait (yeah, believe it or not, Kuwait received tons of Egyptian communists back then!) and Yemen… Four months after my birth, my family left Egypt for Yemen in 1977, where we lived in Sana’a for two years. In the above photo, taken in 1978 or 1979, my father (on the left dancing while carrying a stick) is dressed together with an Egyptian friend in a Yemeni traditional costume, during a trip outside Sana’a. Below, is a pic of Hoss and Abu Hoss taken on 13 June 1979.