English School Cairo - Old Boys Old Girls
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Greetings!
by Elisabeth Fox (ne Rashid)

I was thrilled beyond measure when I learned about the wonderful ESC website from Essam Refai. I had dreamed for years of making contact with friends from those far off times, but never found any reference to the school on the web. I mentioned ESC on my homepage, www.duke.edu/~efox, and included a picture of some of the buildings and a class picture taken around 1945, as if I were casting a message in a bottle into the ocean, and have had a surprising number of responses from people who chanced upon it. What a delight to have the ESC site now, and to feel part of that community again! In one of the reunion pictures, I found Malak Salem--but could it be the same one who was in my class? She looks too young! I also saw Helen Constantinidis, who I can picture as a little girl, perhaps in the same house. Do take a look at the class picture on my homepage and see if you recognize anyone. I have some more ancient photos of people and buildings which I''d be happy to scan and post. I loved the 1953 picture which was much as I remember it, except that when I was there, from 1939-46, there were no other buildings around at all, and the school was actually on the edge of the desert. It seems to be in the middle of downtown Heliopolis from the look of the recent picture!

Sometime in the 1950''s I was on the upper deck of a bus in London when someone called out "Elisabeth!" and it was Douglas Whiting, the headmaster in my time. Early in the 1970''s I had another interesting chance meeting.I went to a conference about food in Oxford, arranged by Theodore Zeldin. There were only about 120 people attending.I met Claudia Roden who had written a wonderful book about Middle Eastern cooking, and learning that she had lived in Cairo, I asked where she had gone to school, and of course it was ESC.Then I remembered a little boy who travelled on the same school bus as I did and whose name was Teddy Zeldin, so I asked her if she knew wheter he had been there too. She didn''t but said "let''s ask"--and of course, he was the same one! I wonder what the probability is of three "obog"s appearing at the same small unrelated conference, in another country, in this rather astonishing way.

Best wishes to all,

Elisabeth Fox (née Rashid)

posted on Saturday, May 15, 1999
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