"Anwar El-Sadat, a Black man, is President of Egypt," Malouf Medani said aloud, and the six-foot-two, dark-skinned young Afro-Sudanese American Muslim scholar smiled as he read the news in a nearly empty Paris café. Thursday October 15, 1970, was a day that Arabs and Africans would never forget, for entirely different reasons. To the people of Sudan, and the rest of Africa, the rise of Anwar El-Sadat and his installment as the third President of Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, was a significant day. To many Arabs, especially in Egypt, this was a disaster. They felt as though their country had been taken from them.
Anwar El-Sadat had always been bold, and smart, one doesn't rise to the top of the political heap in the Arab world without ambition, smarts and some wicked good luck. The Arabs didn't know what to make of Anwar El-Sadat, a smart and charming man who could be every bit as lethal as any political strongman. He wasn't like the stereotype of the simpleton from Africa, something many Arabs still believed in. Anwar El-Sadat was a force to reckon with, and the Arab world would have to deal with him...
Malouf smiled as he finished his breakfast, which consisted of an omelet, coffee, and deep fried bacon, plus buttered croissants. Malouf liked to eat a good breakfast, and would later work out by jogging along La Seine, as was his custom. After leaving his native Mersa Matruh to study at the University of Paris in Paris, France, Malouf felt the pull of Egypt in his heart and soul. One could take the Egyptian out of Egypt, but taking Egypt out of the Egyptian was an entirely different manner...
"Baba, I hope you are smiling down on me from Jannah, in highest paradise," Malouf said softly, looking at the clear blue skies. Malouf wondered what his late father, Nasir Medani, would have thought of Anwar El Sadat, the Afro-Egyptian political leader who was beating the Arabs at their own game. In his day, Nasir was a great man. He'd been born in Juba City, Sudan, to a Nilotic family, and moved to the City of Cairo, Egypt, where he studied civil engineering at the prestigious Cairo University. In Egypt, where European standards of beauty and western ideas were starting to take hold, the strong dislike that many Arabs felt for dark-skinned Africans was something that Nasir could not escape.
Nasir Medani met his future wife, Rana Bakhoum, while studying at Cairo University. They came from different worlds, the Nilotic man from the wild regions of Sudan, and the Coptic Christian woman from the City of Sohag, near the West Bank of the Nile. In those days, there weren't that many Coptic Christian women at Cairo University, and there were even fewer Nilotic students. In Egypt, just like in heavily Arab-influenced Sudan, the dark-skinned Nilotic people, the Afro-Sudanese, are treated poorly. Many of them work as construction workers and day laborers, the professional classes being forever out of their reach. Nasir Medani was one of a few Afro-Sudanese who bucked that trend.
In Egypt, it is difficult to say who is more disliked, the dark-skinned Afro-Sudanese people, or the Coptic Christians. When Islam took over the nation of Egypt centuries ago, the Coptic population fiercely resisted in order to preserve their Christian faith and way of life. Egyptian Muslims for the most part embraced Pan-Arabism, which had swept across the Middle East and swallowed all but Iran and the future state of Israel. The strong dislike that many Arab Muslims have for dark-skinned Africans is present in Egypt, and even some Coptic Christians dislike them as well.
Nasir Medani was well aware of how the Arab world saw him, a tall, dark-skinned African man, as he sat in class at Cairo University. In places like the United States of America and Canada, people of African descent were rising up against systemic racism and discrimination. They fought for equality, diversity and inclusion. In the Arab world, the Africans never had a successful uprising against their oppressors. In places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Arab nations with significant African populations, the Africans continue to be oppressed and marginalized. Black men like Nasir Medani who seek to get ahead in life through education and hard work were seen as aberrations in the Arab world...
Nasir Medani surprised many at Cairo University with his intelligence, his charm and wit. The Arab students and the European expatriates expected the towering, dark-skinned Afro-Sudanese man to be a brute. Nasir Medani could speak and read fluent Arabic, Farsi, English, Spanish and even Dutch. He'd been taught by European missionaries in his hometown of Juba City, Sudan. This impressed a lot of students at Cairo University, including a tall, raven-haired and bronze-skinned Coptic Christian beauty named Rana Bakhoum.
When Nasir and Rana began seeing each other, this rather unusual pairing turned a lot of heads at Cairo University, and in the City of Cairo itself. In Arab society, race, class and sex are dirty topics. For example, while racism and prejudice do exist, it is considered okay for an Arab man to have sexual relations with an African woman. It is not considered okay for an Arab woman to have sexual relations with an African man. Even among Muslims, such relations are all but forbidden. Nasir and Rana didn't care. They continued seeing each other, and eventually fell in love. At Cairo University, both the Arab Muslim students and the Coptic Christian students were scandalized by the sight of an Arab Christian woman in the arms of an African man. The couple found themselves facing opposition on all sides...
"I don't care what the Muslims or the Coptic people say, I love you and want to be with you," Rana assured Nasir, on the night that he proposed to her. They were in a park, close to Nasir's apartment, and the gentlemanly African got down on one knee and proposed to his beloved lady. Rana looked at Nasir, who was oozing a charm and confidence that her idol James Dean himself couldn't have matched. She threw herself into his arms and kissed him passionately, not caring what passersby thought.
"I don't care if the whole world is against us, Rana, I will love you until the day I die," Nasir assured her. The two of them giggled, and then ran off into the night. They went to Nasir's apartment, and made passionate love. From their union came two sons, Malouf and Aden, and a daughter, Faiza. The family settled in the town of Mersa Matruh, and prospered for a time. In the 1960s, due to social and political upheavals affecting Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, the Medani family left Egypt and moved to the City of Boston, Massachusetts. They settled in the neighborhood of Hyde Park, and lived as Americans for the next decade.
