In 1995, I went on a business trip to Cairo for my company. I had to help translate from Italian to English as all the meetings were in English and nobody in my company can speak English very well except me.

When I arrived, I met for the first time an Egyptian man called Asbratti. His job was the same as mine and he had to translate from Arabic to English. I think this person is one of the most interesting people I have ever met.

He was quite old for his job, about 60 or 62. But he had done everything in his life and in the ten days I was there, he told me many different stories about all the places he had visited and all the different people he had met.

He was an enormous man. He wasn´t very tall but very fat and he had a happy face and a huge white beard. This was a little strange because his hair was still black.

When I left Cairo, we gave each other our addresses and we still write to each other in English once every two or three months.