From Trafalgar to Tahrir

(2012) In this intriguing memoir, British born Rosemary Sabet moves back and forth between her past as a child growing up in post war London and her present involvement in the Egyptian revolution. The events in Tahrir Square, Cairo, trigger her memory as she questions what quirks of fate brought her to participate in such an unprecedented, momentous uprising. As we follow the twists and turns and churning uncertainty of Egypt's revolution from its outset on January 25th 2011 until the ambivalent celebration one year later the author, fuelled by passion, recounts her personal involvement in the uprising, in which she experienced periods of great fear and disappointment intermingled with moments of courage and triumph. In a series of anecdotes, the reader is taken on a nostalgic journey of the author's carefree childhood, to her unconventional experiences abroad as a young girl in the fifties. With raw and honest insight, Sabet remembers London's swinging sixties and reveals some of her wickedly funny amorous escapades. We follow her to Rome during the era of the dolce vita where she eventually meets and marries her Egyptian husband. They move to Southern Yemen where she begins to encounter the cultural challenges so imbued in the Middle East, and from where she is propelled to nearly four decades of Egypt's turbulent history.