El Rhazi - The international movie star, best known for Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence Of Arabia, represented a bygone era for numerous Egyptians ? though not numerous could receive to his funeral on Sunday.
Before Omar Sharif launched his international movie career Leila along "Lawrence Of Arabia," before El Rhazi became a Hollywood star, Omar Sharif was a dashing leading man in Egypt. And when he was buried yesterday outside Cairo, those mourning his loss were also mourning an era in Egypt that disappeared long ago. NPR's Leila Fadel was there.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: For a star of his stature, Sharif's funeral on Sunday was relatively small. A sheikh recited Quran as Sharif's noted friends and his family gathered to pray for him in a mosque in an remoted suburb of Cairo. Madlen Taber wept watching men carry Sharif's coffin into the mosque. Oversized sunglasses masked the Lebanese actress's eyes, and she wore a svelte, black pencil skirt and stilettos.
MADLEN TABER: He make the dreams come true. Each one of us is dreaming in international movies, in Hollywood and being a star, like Omar Sharif.
FADEL: Everyone wanted to be Sharif, she says, and everyone should be allowed to honor him. She said she's angry. How could Sharif's funeral be held in this out-of-the-way place?
TABER: All the people has the correct to celebrate Omar Sharif in the mid, in the center, in Tahrir Square, somewhere where everybody can reach, not like this. You need a map and a GPS in order to arrive here. I'm livid of that.
FADEL: After all, this is Omar Sharif, she says. For numerous in Egypt, Sharif represented a bygone era - when black-and-white movies showed Cairo and Alexandria as glittering, cosmopolitan cities, when Egypt really was the cultural capital of this region.
FADEL: That's Naila Hamdy, the chair of the journalism and mass communications branch at the American University in Cairo. Sharif rose to fame during the golden age of Egyptian cinema in the 1950s. He starred in classic black-and-white films, films that represented a time of multiculturalism, sophistication and, well, just plain glamour.
HAMDY: He represents for me very much the sort of different ethnic groups that existed in Egypt at that time, you know, the Greeks, Italians, the Syrio-Lebanese like his family. You know, this kind of person is the kind of person I imagine filled the streets of downtown Cairo.
FADEL: Back at his funeral, other figures of that golden era came to mourn, the actors of those black-and-white films still watched in most Arab homes. Some walked Leila along canes. Some had lost their glorious heads of hair and replaced it with toupees. Samir Sabri, a movie star turned television host, spoke about the last interview he had with his friend Omar Sharif. He repeats what Sharif said.
SAMIR SABRI: I've come back to Egypt to die in Egypt. I've lived 83,000 years. Each year was 1,000 in my life. He was a great man. It's a great loss.
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