Foreign Policy Blogs

Egyptian Culture in Cartoons

Tarek Shahin, a mid-twenties Egyptian graduate from the American University in Cairo, is a financial analyst by trade and a cartoonist by heart.  He pens the Al Khan comic strip in Daily News Egypt, the country's leading independent English daily.  Tarek excels at showing how different groups in Egypt react to the world around them.  His characters include the atheist, secularist, religious, and mystical.  The rich, the not so rich, and the poor.  The still fading royalty and the newly ensconced power players.  All their stories and lives play out together around what's happening in Egypt, and it's a good way to get a sense of Egyptian culture.
See an interview with Tarek here with links to his comic strip.

 

Author

Matthew Axelrod

Mr. Axelrod most recently researched the US-Egypt defense relationship in Cairo on a Fulbright grant, after serving as the Country Director for Egypt and North Africa in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-2007. He entered the government as a Presidential Management Fellow, rotating through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, and the Pentagon. He graduated from Georgetown University in 2003 with a BS in Foreign Service and an MA in Arab Studies.