Mary Mourad - The Egyptian Novelist

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Nevertheless, my love for writing has only enlarged to an infinite appetite when Ms. Mary Basta, my high school teacher, started dedicating classes to initiate us in the art of writing. The simple examples she gave, the exercises, the compositions and the atmosphere around the pens and papers, all of which created a sacred aura around writing which left me fascinated and hooked for life. I never had the courage to write in English before that date, yet on that year, my English assignments were a pleasure. I enjoyed every single class so deeply that my love for writing has never ceased since then. To consider writing my profession, though, never crossed my mind. For one thing, I’m still Egyptian, from a society that respects doctors and somewhat engineers, but not writers – not by the same extent at least!

Yet as I sought my High School Diploma in California, USA, and I fell in love with many other subjects, including Economics, which led me in turn back to Egypt, to the Cairo University’s Faculty of Economics and Political Science.

University years were the best!!! Other than the fantastic friends I made and the wonderful professors I met, there was this continuous curiosity inside me and so much space and scope to explore and learn. They ended sooner than I would have liked, and I later worked in research, then in media and communication for a while. Then there was my trip to the UK to study, and I found my curiosity re-ignited into topics beyond economics; into history, theology, philosophy, psychology and politics.

Back to Egypt, I moved back into research, this time in the field of environmental economics. I considered that role a true challenge! I worked in different regions around Egypt and worked in new places I would have never otherwise had the chance to visit.

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