o you imagine one day James Bond can be a real person ??
Do you imagine that someone can live a life in the same style ?? Espionage,Women,gambling,cars and living on the edge for your country
No one really, in fact in the last Bond movie "Casino Royale"
we find a character other than that we know the character we used to
know for the last 30 years , the Blonde human Bond and thus Bond
producers and Makers understand that in real life there may be no Bonds
But to their surprise and our surprise we will find that there was a person who can be a living example for 007 ,he was Egyptian
And his name was Ihab Na'af and he died on the 30 of last December 2006 quietly in Cairo in a strange way, not even an obituary was written for him in Al-Ahram newspaper
He was born in Cairo in the year 1935 in Cairo for a wealthy family ,also famous in the showbiz , as his cousins were the Zoulfakr brothers "Mahmoud,Ezz El-Din and Salah" ,also he was related to the famous Shakib sisters "Zozo and Mimi"
Yet despite his dashing look he didn't work in the showbiz ,he joined the Egyptian Air forces in year 1952 and graduated as Air fighter pilot in 1955. Ihab was a qualified pilot that he was the special pilot of President Nasser till the 1960s ,I believe till 1962
After that he suddenly became famous to the Egyptian Society when he married the famous movie star then "the virgin of the Cinema" as they used to call her Majda El-Sabhy ,whom he met in the some evening in the Russian Embassy in 1963 and fall in love according to El-Sabhy version of the story
After his marriage he formed a duet with the mega superstar and producer then and presented about 7 or 10 movies ,I don't remember ,the famous ones are "The Naked Truth","The last kiss" and "That Man I love", of course there were others he acted in without Majda like Hend Rostom "The nun" and with Faten Hammah in that wonderful romantic movie "Something in My life" {The only movie I love for him really }
Beside their acting and producing together , Ihab and Majda gave birth to a girl "Ghada" who also turned to an actress like her mother
In 1970s ,in 1973 I guess they were divorced and since the man was almost vanish for the public memory except may be appearing in 1990sin some television movie ,other than that he was just some pretty face appeared for some time in the Egyptian Cinema , not that talented, many believed he was just like the ice-cream ,pretty but so so so so cold
Yet really few knew who was that man for real and what he was doing for living
Ihab Na'af since 1960s was working for the Egyptian Intelligence , and it seemed to me that he was more like an under covered agent , his book about his memoirs made a shock for everyone even his own daughter Ghada , political surprises ,shocking confession about personalities from actors ,singers,kings and even about presidents of Egypt . Ihab who was very old then was surprised with the attack from every body , even the so-called liberal writers like Khaled Monster described him as the male version of "Etamad Khorshid" !!!
What I read about the book in the newspaper didn't make me hate the man because I know for sure that every single word in that book is true from the political facts not his personal life but the political facts ,as that book was reviewed in the Egyptian intelligence word by word ,so he wouldn't put a single word about what he did in the secret service if didn't really took place
Your Egyptian scheherezade will stop here because I don't want you to get bored ,so come back soon Coz the story has just began ,I swear that man was did more than James Bond did in 30 years
Thank you for sharing information. It quite useful for us also. I always love to read such type of things. Lots in Costa Rica
Posted by: Talena | 05/05/2010 at 12:40 PM