Ahmed Mourad was Egypt’s official presidential photographer for ten years[/caption]When it comes to glad-handing dictators, Ahmed Mourad has had more experience than most.
“I shook hands with Gaddafi in 2004 and 2008,” he recalls with a smile. “We met in his tent in Libya.”
Then there was Bashar Al-Assad, now clinging desperately to power but not long ago seen as the man to reform Syria after decades of repressive rule.
“We met two times in 2003 in his palace in Damascus,” says the 34-year-old. “He didn’t seem like a leader to me, but I could tell he was tough.”
Welcome to the world of Egypt’s official presidential photographer, a position held by Mourad for ten years until the toppling of Hosni Mubarak.
During that time the father-of-two was summoned to the Heliopolis Palace in north east Cairo on a daily basis to take shots of the country’s ailing ruler during official meetings.
He also lived the life of a jet-setter, traveling around the globe to dozens of countries and recording snapshots of Mubarak’s shuttle diplomacy.
But something else was going on behind the scenes.
During his time working with Egypt’s long-time dictator, Mourad began to feel that Egypt was going down a catastrophic path; that decades of mismanagement and repression – fostered in part by his own boss – were ruining his country.
His response was to write a novel detailing the kind of rotten political dealings which he had seen operating first hand. Published back in 2007, Vertigo ended up being a runaway bestseller and was this month broadcast as a 30-part Ramadan serial on Egyptian TV.
The tale, which winds its way from the smoky gaming tables of the fictional Casino Paris to the tension-racked corridors of Egypt’s State Security buildings, became Ahmed’s way of documenting the rotten heart of Mubarak’s Egypt.
He based the main character, a photographer who witnesses an assassination and then uses his photos to undermine a series of corrupt officials, partly on himself.
Yet astonishingly, despite writing the book under his own name while he worked for Mubarak, he said that nobody from the government took issue with him.
“I think this is something from God,” he said, discussing the success of his novel. “It wasn’t planned at all. The only thing I did was to follow the signs.
“I think this happened for a reason. Nothing happens without a reason.”
With his second book, Diamond Dust, also in the bestsellers list, and a third on its way this autumn, it seems Ahmed is making quite a killing from his fictional lives of crime.
