My family lived in Egypt from 1993 to 1996.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I am an Egyptian Muslim, educated in Cairo and New York, and now living in Vienna. My wife and I have spent half our lives in the North, half in the South. And we have experienced first hand the unique nature of the human family and the common values we all share.
Although I was raised in Canada and the U.K., my roots are in Egypt through my father, in a family line that stretches back generations and runs along the Nile, from the concrete of Cairo to the coast of Alexandria.
I couldn't have imagined that I would live long enough to see Egypt emancipated from decades of repression.
I can go back to Egypt anytime I want. Can I leave Egypt anytime I want? I think I can. I think I can.
In 2003, as a 21-year-old convert to Islam, I moved from Colorado to Cairo to see what life was like in a Muslim country.
My dad was a diplomat and after living in America, where I was born, he was posted to Cairo.
I was born in a house where my family lived for 300 years. I was born in the home where my grandfather was born in.
My family is a Jewish Iranian family, but I was born in Turkey and raised in Italy. So it's a very mixed background.
Egypt is not a country we live in but a country that lives within us.
From 1971 to 1993, my family lived in a number of African countries, including Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Nigeria, as well as Uganda itself.