Taking a walk with a friend in Esna, a lovely southern town not far from Luxor, I came upon an aging but stunning mansion which my friend told me belonged to Abdel-Latif Abu Regeila, who was Egypt's leading public transportation businessman the mid twentieth century. Born in Esna and raised in Sudan, Abu Regeila was educated in Cairo before leaving to Europe to work in Italy and the UK. A sportsman by nature, Abu Regeila was goal keeper during his years in the Saidiya High School in Cairo, and he was also a first-class tennis player. Soon after finishing high school he went on to study commerce, and started doing small business deals on the side. Interviewed by Sekina Al-Sadat in Al-Musawwar in 1959, Abu Regeila spoke of his admiration for Talaat Harb, Egypt's top industrialist and banker at the time. Harb was a pioneer of Egypt's industrial development in the 1920s and 1930s, and his ideas about economic independence greatly influenced the young Abu Regeila. After a stint working in Banque Misr, Abu Regeila was sent by the bank to study banking in London and Rome. This was the beginning of his love affair for Italy, a country in which he married and returned to regularly. While in Italy, he contacted several companies and sealed a deal to export Egyptian agricultural products to Europe. Having returned from Italy, Abu Regeila resigned from the bank and started his business. He told Al-Musawwar that he started his business with nothing but a typewriter, office and 34 pounds. He had one employee, an assistant who was paid four pounds a month. A competent negotiator, Abu Regeila helped buy arms for the Egyptian army up to 1952. He pointed out that this wasn't an easy task, considering the hostility that the Zionists, and later on the Israelis, viewed his work. He was attacked once in Italy, he said. His other business activities involved the production of porcelain, brake pads and metal springs. He also founded a cement factory that helped reconstruction efforts in Port Said after the 1956 war. Being a descendant from a farming family, Abu Regeila also focused on agriculture, starting a farm and succeeding in exporting mango and citrus to Sweden and other European countries. He also set up a hotel called Semiramis in the Italian resort of Capri. When the Allies invaded Italy in WWII, Abu Regeila lost most of his capital there, and had to start again from scratch. The woman he married, Linda, was an Italian from the southern town of Calabria, and he felt that they came almost from similar backgrounds – those of south Egypt and south Italy. He lived on and off in Italy for 19 years, before returning to Egypt in 1949. In that same year he bought a plot of land of 6,000 metres bordering Soliman Pasha and Champollion in central Cairo, as well as a 400-acre farm in Ein Shams, in northern Cairo. His stay in Cairo lasted for only three years. In 1952, he decided to go back to Italy. But soon afterwards, the Free Officers government asked him to come back to help in the economic development of the country. So he returned to Cairo in 1954 and became involved in the public transportation business. For years, Egypt has been trying to regain control on its transportation and communication from the foreign companies that ran the railways, the telegraph and the telephone services. With the encouragement of the government, top Egyptian entrepreneurs began setting up bus companies. Abul Wafa Donqul formed the Upper Egypt Bus Company. Ahmed Abbud formed the Sharqiya and Daqahliya bus companies. On 3 July 1954, Abdel-Latif Al-Boghdadi of the Free Officers government, asked Abu Regeila if he would come back to Cairo from Italy and help develop the Cairo bus system. Abu Regeila got immediately to work, paying workers their overdue salaries, buying 400 new buses for the company, and making sure that the buses run on time. He also introduced training programmes for his workers, created new maintenance garages and parking lots, and launching an education and health care system for the families of the workers. He was known to ride incognito in his buses to check the level of service and customer satisfaction, and his buses were known to be the cleanest in the capital. At one point, he started hiring female bus conductors, a move that was enshrined in cinema. A film titled “Al-Komsariyat Al-Fatinat,” or The Beautiful Female Bus Conductors, featured Ismail Yassin, Abdel-Salam al-Nabulsi and Nagah Sallam. Abu Regeila's companies were nationalised in 1960, a move that impelled him to move back to Italy. Soon afterwards, the Sudanese government asked him to go there and revamp its transport system, which he did. His accomplishments in sports almost matched his business acumen. Many would remember the years in which he presided over one of the nation's most venerable clubs, Zamalek. Before it was named Zamalek, this sporting facility was formed in 1911 under the name Qasr Al-Nil Club. In 1912, it was renamed Al-Mokhtalat Club, or the Mixed Club. In 1941 it was renamed Farouk Club, a name that didn't gain favour in post-revolutionary Egypt, so it was renamed Zamalek. Zamalek's long running rivalry with the Ahli Club, or the National Sporting Curb, was already in full fling by the 1940s. But the Ahli was slightly ahead of the game, as it had as president the shipping tycoon Ahmed Abboud. So Zamalek wanted someone who can stand up to Abboud, and couldn't find better than Abu Regeila – who wasn't only rich but unlike Abboud was an accomplished sportsman. Under Abu Regeila's tutelage, Zamalek won the football league competition for the first time ever, expanded its facilities and attracted more members – as well as more football fans. Abu Regeila's athletic accomplishments were extensive. He was an accomplished golfer, car racer, boat racer and fisherman, winning several international prizes in boating and fishing. Abu Regeila ran the Zamalek Club from 1959 to 1961. He died in 1987.
