Ramadan Arabian Nights 2025 : The Tale of Fatima,Halima and Karima “A Palace Bigger Than Ours” EP.1

Ramadan Kareem to all Egyptian Chronicles readers.

Yes, we are back to Ramadan Arabian Nights this year.

Last year, Scheherazade could not go forward and a genocide was taking place.

This year, a fragile truce holds, and for just 15 minutes, we all need a brief escape into fantasy from our harsh reality.

However, if Benjamin Netanyahu chooses to resume the conflict—whether in Gaza or by advancing toward a full occupation of southern Syria—we will have to pause the tale.

For the newcomers, a quick background for our little Egyptian Chronicles’ Ramadan tradition.

Every Ramadan, we tune in to episodes of Egypt’s Thousand and One Nights radio show, created by the legendary Egyptian broadcaster Mahmoud Shaaban, also known as Papa Sharo.

Originally based on the famous book One Thousand and One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights), it was one of the longest-running shows in the history of Egyptian State Radio.

Shaaban could not have created the show without the ongoing work of Egyptian writer and folklorist Taher Abu Fasha, whose name became forever linked to Arabian Nights.

While other writers contributed to the show over the years, this year’s tale was written by Abu Fasha.

The tale was inspired by the book, its universe and its themes, but was not directly based on any of its stories as far as I could tell.

Legendary Egyptian actress Zouzou Nabil and theater icon Abdel Rahim El-Zarakany return once again as Scheherazade and Shahryar.

For this year, I chose another story that the 1980s generation knew very well because it was presented on TV in 1987 and was a hit show.

This year’s tale is the tale of Fatima, Halima and Karima, which was re-presented on TV in 1987, starring Egyptian Diva Sherihan.

Kodak Agfa Presents: Cairo’s Umm Kulthum Museum in photos and video

It was like a perfect cinematic moment that Saturday afternoon. Just two days before the 50th anniversary of Umm Kulthum’s passing, you step out of her small yet rich museum in Cairo, still enveloped in the aura of her larger-than-life presence.

Outside, by the Nile, an old yet elegant man sits alone, detached from the world around him. From the small speakers of his mobile phone drifts the voice of Umm Kulthum, chanting "Lailat Hob"—her last recorded love song. He gazes into the river, lost in a trance, as though the currents carry the echoes of his own memories, entwined with the Lady’s immortal voice.

It was a perfect Egyptian scene. I wanted to capture it, to ask him what Umm Kulthum meant to him. But I did not dare, unwilling to be the one to pull him back to reality.

That scene summarizes a lot about Umm Kulthum and Egyptians if not Arabs.

Umm Kulthum's statue outside her museum in Al-Manial island 

On Monday Egypt remembered that 50 years ago it woke up to find its “Planet of East” Umm Kulthum passed away after having

Umm Kulthum died on the same day the music died in the US. She died but her legacy and art still stand as the true fourth pyramid in Egypt.

According to historians and those who witnessed the day, her funeral was a popular one to the level that people compared to the funeral of the second president of Egypt and her lifelong fan Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Yes, Umm Kulthum Ibrahim, the singer who came from rural Nile Delta’s Tamay e-Zahayra village had the biggest public funeral of a woman in Egypt in the modern age if not in the nation’s long recorded history.

I can’t speak about Umm Kulthum or Thuma or the Dame “as we nickname her in Egypt for decades” easily thus I would focus on her museum.

Umm Kulthum Museum is located inside the Nilometer-Manasterly Palace site on Manial Al-Roda Island in Cairo.

11 February 2025: When King Abdullah II met Donald Trump "Updated"

It is 11 February 2025, the 14th anniversary of Hosni Mubarak's ousting. It came at a very critical time, and it is not about the challenging economic conditions.

It came at a time when the U.S. President himself tried to force Egypt to accept the unacceptable and he is insisting on it.

It came on the same day when US President Donald Trump said in an informal press meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan that the US won't buy Gaza, it will simply "have it". For the record, journalists were told there would not be a press but then Abdullah II found himself inside a mini-Trumpian presser.

In the same meeting, Egyptians saw Trump saying that he believed Palestinians would have a parcel of land in Egypt and Jordan while Abdullah II did not challenge him, sitting there silent with an extremely red face.

The king of Jordan was not thrilled or happy in his meeting with Trump 
"Reuters"

From his side, the Jordanian King said that his country would host 2,000 Palestinian children suffering from cancer or other serious diseases. “Nothing new under the sun because for a whole year, Jordan used to do this”

"We have to look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region, especially to my people of Jordan," Abdullah said adding that the Egyptians were working on a plan that to be discussed with the Saudis and other Arab countries.