Remembering Mubarak

Even as a child, Hosni Mubarak, the future pilot and president of Egypt, was always looking to the sky. In rural Mounifa in the Nile Delta in 1928 ( the year he was born) it was a common site to see the pigeons returning to the “the “pigeon towers” each night which were used to collect their droppings for fertilizer. This ancient technique is still used throughout the region. It was perhaps in some ways a natural evolution for him to choose the air force when duty called. His air force career took him from being a Spitfire pilot in 1973 to playing the leading role in Egypt’s air campaign during the 1973 war. During the 1950s and 1960s he spent long periods in Moscow and what is today Kyrgyzstan receiving training in the latest Soviet warplanes.