Here is our fourth night of Ramadan Arabian nights.
First, you can refresh your memory and listen to last night’s episode.
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| Scheherazade and Shahryar's famous animated version in Egypt "1989" |
Now, here is the fourth episode of our tale tonight. It was episode no.586 of our favorite show.
Prince Rihan heads to the island of Princess Hanom to ask her one: Would she accept polygamy for the sake of unity of the Kingdom?
Ramadan Kareem
Here is our third night of Ramadan Arabian nights.
First, you can refresh your memory and listen to last night’s episode.Now, here is the third episode of our tale tonight.
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| A princess on an Arabian Horse by Kate Baylaw |
It was episode no.585 of our favorite show.
Prince Rihan continues to meet Princess Hanom claiming that he was a stable boy. Throughout the festival he meets her in their hunting trips.
Ramadan Kareem as we use in Egypt, “we are not used to Ramadan Mubarak”
Here is our second night of Ramadan Arabian nights.
Before we go into our routine, I want to speak a little bit about the One Thousand and One Nights TV series and its crew.
You may think it was poorly produced but during then in 1989 in Egypt, that production meant a lot of effort especially since the series was hit since its start in 1984.
Tonight I will speak about one of the most trademarks of that series: Shahryar and Scheherazade’s animation.
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Scheherazade and Shahryar's famous animated version in Egypt "1989" |
The intro and outro of Shahryar and Scheherazade use the original recordings of our favorite radio show. That illustrated animation was made by the late famous Gamal Kotb.
It was a surprise for me to find his name in the credits.
Another interesting name I found in the credit was Egyptian pioneer editor and animation director Shewkar Khalifa.
This woman had hundreds of intros and outros in her portfolio made in the old way in Pre-Adobe Illustrator and After Effects time.
Yes, Egyptian women were working in film and TV animation editing for decades.
You may think that this is a bad acid-trip TV series from the 1980s but I can’t keep thinking if Fahmy Abdel-Hamid and Shewkar Khalifa lived in the days of CGI, green screen and after-effects.
Ramadan Kareem
Here we are back again to this amazing blessed time of the time; the Holy Month of Ramadan.
We are back to Ramadan and it is the time of our annual audio Arabian Nights like every year.
In those hard times of war, economic crises and pandemic that has not disappeared yet, a nice short daily break with the Book of One Thousand and one nights is the best escape.
Once again we will listen to episodes produced by the Egyptian State Radio inspired by the famous book decades ago.
We are back to the One Thousand and One Nights radio show in Arabic created by Egyptian Radio legend Mahmoud Shaaban aka Papa Sharo.
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| Scheherezade and Shahyer as we know them from TV "Gamal Kotb" |
Legendary actress Zouzou Nabil as Scheherazade and Theatre legend Abdel Rahim El-Zarakany as Shahryar are back as well, so get ready for our tale for this year.
You can check previous Ramadan Arabian Nights here.
This year I chose the tale of “Al-Ashkeef” and some of the 1980s generations will know it very well.
Ramadan Kareem.
This is the third Ramadan the world observes during the coronavirus pandemic.
Officially, its numbers are declining in Egypt and the Arab world to the level that some countries decided not to publish their daily coronavirus or to publish it weekly like in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia for example.
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| An Egyptian woman wearing a face mask in El-Sayeda Zeinab Ramadan market |
What we expected and feared happened now.
On Monday, The Monetary Policy Committee “MPC” of the Central Bank of Egypt “CBE” announced raising the Key interest rates for the first time in five years by 1%.
The MPC raised the overnight deposit rate, the overnight lending rate, and the rate of the main operation by one percent (100 basis points) to 9.25 percent, 10.25 percent, and 9.75 according to Ahram Online for the first since 2017.
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| The Central Bank of Egypt in Downtown Cairo "March 2020" |
The Egyptian Pound plunged into its lowest value in five years against the US dollar going down from LE15.6 for buying and LE15.7 for selling on Sunday to LE18.1 for buying and LE18.2 for selling on Monday.
The Egyptian Pound dropped by 10.67% against the US dollar accordingly. It is worth mentioning that JP Morgan estimated earlier in March that the Egyptian Pound to be overvalued by 15%.
Changing the key interest rate was a matter of urgency because the monthly meeting of the MPC was on Thursday not on Monday or Sunday. Usually, these big economic decisions are announced on Thursday right before the weekend. In some black comedy news, the committee announced it would not convene next Thursday.
Happy Mother’s Day 2022 from Egypt.
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| Happy Mother's Day |
Taken in 1974, I wonder what happened to that mother and her baby. I hope they are well. She looked so beautiful.
I tried to know more about that photo taken in 1976 for a young mother from the countryside breastfeeding her baby with a group of women but I failed.