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Southampton
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THE AUTHOR
Yasseen was born in Jamaica, a British colony at the time, of medical parents – a West Indian doctor mother and an Egyptian doctor father. Throughout his childhood he thought of himself as a "parasitologist", like his parents. That was his nationality. And all was well till he received call-up papers to the British army in 1952 and discovered he was also wanted in the Egyptian army. The Suez Crisis of 1956 compounded the problem.
He went to school in Jamaica and then in Britain where he went on to university. He has spent his working life in radio, TV and newspaper journalism, in the Middle East—in Egypt, Oman and Dubai. He is married and has children and grandchildren.
He loves cooking, gardening, swimming, poetry and listening to Cuban,
Spanish and Arab music. He hates politics. Yasseen, who is not the retiring
kind, recently left his last newspaper and is currently trying to write a
novel and a sequel to 'Emigrating Home'.