Happy Moments in My Life

• The day I graduated from the Department of Architecture at Cairo's Faculty of Engineering in 1938, first in my class with distinction.
• My days in 1939, just after graduating, working without pay in the offices of the architects Ahmed Sidky and Ali Labib Gabr.
• The day in 1940 I met the companion of my life, who shared my long journey and was a model of sacrifice and generosity. May God envelop her in His mercy.
• The day in 1944 I was chosen for a practical mission to the United States.
• The day I received my master's degree from the University of Illinois, 2 February 1947.
• The day I learned I had won first prize in the 1949 competition for the Murad Wahba building, the real beginning of my architectural life.
• The day I learned I had won first prize in the 1956 competition for Cairo International Airport.
• The day in 1963 I received the State Incentive Prize in the Arts from the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the second architect to receive it.
• The day, 1 May 1977, my son the architect Aly Shawky joined me in my office, after working at the Reconstruction and Popular Housing Company since graduating in 1968. He has worked with me ever since and is an excellent architect in character and in art.
• The day, 10 March 1980, the wife of the President of the Republic inaugurated the salvage of the Philae temples at Aswan, whose documents I prepared and whose architectural and planning execution I supervised; and the day, 15 October 1980, in Milan, I received the prize of the international Ingersoll-Rand organisation (Italy) for the best project completed in 1980.
• The day the Faculty of Engineering Alumni Association honoured me at the golden jubilee of my graduation, 24 March 1988.
• The day Dr Mohamed Abdel Kader Hatem opened my retrospective exhibition in June 1990.
• The day I received the State Merit Prize in the Arts (architecture), 20 June 1990.
• Reading what was written about me in Al-Mohandessin magazine, issue 417, September 1990, on the occasion of the State Merit Prize. I was the fifth architect to receive it since it was founded in 1956.
• When the Architecture Division of the Engineers' Syndicate honoured me on 31 July 1991 for the State Merit Prize.
• And I must say that the most beautiful moments of all were those of prayer and reading the Qur'an in the Holy Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, during the Hajj in 1984 and 1986 and the Umrah in 1981.

Written in Arabic by Mostafa Shawky. English translation.