New secrets about Samir Al-Iskandarani on the anniversary of his passing
A furniture store in Tahrir Square exposes a spy network in the fifties
The late Samir Al-Iskandarani with a group of his friends.
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One of Al-Iskandarani's albums.
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A new episode of the “Souls in the City” project of the Cultural Development Fund in Egypt revealed new secrets in the life of the late singer Samir al-Iskandarani. After his meeting with the late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, to clarify more information in this regard.
The broadcast of the episode coincides with the second anniversary of the death of Samir Al-Iskandarani, at the age of 82.
The episode presented by the journalist Mahmoud Al-Tamimi at Al-Hanager Theatre, revealed that the main reason for discovering the espionage network was “a passing conversation that took place between Samir’s father, the merchant Fouad Al-Iskandarani, in his shop in Tahrir Square, and one of the buyers, as Al-Iskandarani, the father, was keen to prove all the information about the buyer.” On the sales invoice, including his address and occupation, and discovered when he wrote an invoice to a client that the client was responsible for a sovereign security authority, he only told him that his young son returning from Europe had been subjected to an attempt to recruit a foreigner there, and that he wanted to meet with an official adults to inform him of dangerous information.”
He added that "Samir al-Iskandarani tried before that to reach the responsible authorities to inform them of this, but for unknown reasons, the meeting with the furniture store was the direct cause of the eruption of the case, which received wide attention from the media at the time."
It is worth noting that the espionage case known as the “White Ink Network” occurred when Al-Iskandarani traveled to Rome in 1958, and introduced him to a person named Selim, whose real name was Jonathan Smith. its members.
On the other hand, "Souls in the City" revealed that the furniture store owned by the late singer's family played a major role in his rise and fame.
The producer of the episode recounted a funny incident in this regard, as one of the readers sent a message to the “readers’ mail” door, which was supervised by the late journalist and writer Saleh Jawdat, in which he asked about “the place where he could obtain the Alexandrani CD.” Jawdat replied that “he has to He goes to the furniture store located at 5 Tahrir Street in Cairo, and asks the owner of the store, Fouad Al-Iskandarani, the father of the singer Samir Al-Iskandarani. The producer comments that “this is the strangest way to answer a question of this kind.”
The episode also revealed new details about Samir al-Iskandarani's relationship with politics, as it documented his candidacy for a round of parliamentary elections.
It is also interesting that Samir al-Iskandarani ran in the elections in a joint program with his father, who carried their two pictures together. The episode included a copy of this program directed to the people of Abdeen district, and his expressions carried the spirit of the fifties enthusiastic, as he said, addressing the audience, “This battle of yours (meaning the electoral battle) is in order to achieve Your wishes, for the sake of your honor and dignity, two soldiers come forward with the honor of jihad for you.”
Samir al-Iskandarani was born on February 8, 1938, and died on August 13, 2020 in the Ghouria district of Cairo. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, mastered five foreign languages, and was famous for his relationship with art, literature and culture, and sang in Arabic, English and Italian, and had extensive relations with great poets and composers such as Zakaria Ahmed and Bayram al-Tunisi. and Ahmed Ramy, whom the writer Fatima Naoot considered her “spiritual father,” and called to honor him with a national medal, and to give his name to a street in Cairo and one of the amphitheaters of the Faculty of Fine Arts.
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