My Reading & Writing teacher is Professor Hassanein, 6 hours/week, my old TA from Princeton, a bear of an Egyptian, 6’3”, rotund, a tall conk of hair over his forehead, a toothy laugh and an unforgettable crosswise sense of humor and logic, rare at AUC. I met him first in 1974, he invited me to his graduate student apartment to eat his wife’s chicken and rice while his children played in the clothes hamper. I’m lucky he’s still my teacher.
-Letter Home, October 5, 1978
I’ve stayed in touch with Professor all these years, not long ago we met again in the AUC garden and he said he needed some quick help, he hosted a live radio show to discuss American culture, I guess the station hired him on the strength of his American PhD even though it was in Medieval Arabic Grammar, and he didn’t know what to say when it was next to air, so he asked me to tell him about a novel on the American bestseller lists, and I summarized Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which I hadn’t read either but I’d just seen the movie, so he scribbled notes while I recounted its three stranded plot. His final question for me, Is it Comedy or Tragedy? I didn’t hear his show but it couldn’t have been worse than playing with dirty clothes.