Early Life
Darwish was born in 1910 to the Jewish Egyptian jeweller Moussa Youssef Farag Darwish. His family belonged to the minority Karaite Jews that were one of the communities that comprised the rich and diverse mosaic of Egyptian Jewry. Karaite Jews were simultaneously multilingual and highly integrated in the Egyptian community at that time; most families spoke French and Arabic at home and sent their children to bilingual schools. Some families spoke Greek, Russian and Turkish as well.
Darwish graduated from a prestigious French high school in Cairo, l'Ecole des Frères, in 1929 and received his degree in law from the University of Toulouse in 1932. In Toulouse, Darwish was first exposed to the Marxist literature and became engaged in the local cell of the French Communist Party.
Read more about this topic: Youssef Darwish
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Parents ... are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfil the promise of their early years.”
—Anthony Powell (b. 1905)
“Who shall describe the inexpressable tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be midwinter, is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)