Dorky Celebrity Sighting # 1

Earlier in the semester my Political Science teacher was going on and on about Patrimonialism in the Middle East and how people care more about their families and/or tribal affiliations than about class structure, etc. etc. One of the famous families of Egypt that she described at length in class was the Marei family, whose members have been heads of lots of different important ministries, etc. After the group projects began, Jayanthi confided in me that there was someone with the last name Marei in her group, and we were giggly about having someone 'with connections' in our class. Today, however, we learned that this guy has much more than we had expected, because it turns out he is actually the product of a marriage between the Marei family and another extremely prominent political family that many of you will be familiar with. After a debate on Nasser vs. Sadat today my teacher asked a question and then said something to the effect of "well, I guess you haven't known your grandad in a while... or at all..." going on to reveal that ...

ANWAR SADAT'S GRANDSON IS IN MY CLASS! This is bigger than having a Bush grandkid or a Clinton grandkid... this is Sadat's grandkid! Sadat was assasinated. Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel. Sadat was... well, Sadat! Pretty incredible. This feels so strange. I think my excitement will probably be singularly held, but my old history teacher told me that Sadat was pretty famous internationally, often times loved more by Americans or other foreigners than Egyptians themselves.