Time to share in the joy of matrimony, dears, with my charming friend Antonio Badini, the Italian ambassador to Egypt, celebrating his wedding here in Cairo -- on 30 December 2004, the last day of the Egypt-Italy cultural year -- with the music drifting through a beautiful Oriental tent. Badini married a gorgeous Moroccan, Dounia Abu Rashid, an employee of the French Embassy in Cairo, and the delightful celebration bore testimony to the renewed force with which Arab-European relations have progressed. The greatest force of all, my sweets, is love. All was meticulously organised, down to the dinner menu, which offered trademark Italian cuisine painstakingly produced to represent various parts of the country: Rome, Sicily, Tuscany. And the Oriental dance troupe had me swooning with rapture -- all the more intense when I realised that our Dounia, dear, is herself a gifted belly dancer and singer. Together with Badini, she chanted the passionate Um Kulthoum song "Enta Omri", to heart-warming applause that had my colleague Reham El- Adawi remarking that they looked like Antonio and Cleopatra. Eternal love, dears -- and what better way to usher in 2005, in the company of ministers, ambassadors, literary and business figures -- a veritable galaxy of notables. Well, the pleasure would not have been complete without Badini 's perfect speech, in which he spoke of love of Egypt -- "the cradle of civilisations" -- as a binding force and enduring strength. The Shepherd Hotel in Cairo witnessed the inaugural party of the Arab Female Investors Union, dears, a new institution that finds particular favour in my heart. Headed by the invincible Hoda Yassa, the union brings together many businesswomen from across the Arab world. Present at the party were the Secretary-General of the Arab Economic Unity Council Ahmed Geweili, Moroccan Ambassador to Cairo Mohamed Farag El-Dokali, head of the Arab Labour Organisation Ibrahim Queidar and business figures from Lebanon, Algeria, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. photo: Ayman Barayez "Spring of Secrets" is the name our very own Tamer Youssef has given to his latest exhibition, which opened this week at the Cairo Opera House Music Library. Youssef is not only a versatile artist and treasured colleague, dears. He is a delightful impreasario, and his mere presence at a gathering is sufficient to invest it with a festive spirit. Inaugurated by Opera House Director Abdel-Moneim Kamel in the presence of artists Mohamed Nadi, Saad Metri, Mohamed Efat and our very own George Bahgoury, the exhibition is dedicated to the late, seminal artist Bikar, and showcases mixed media and collage that demonstrate Youssef 's philosophy of energy and how it can transform line and colour into anger, happiness or love. Colleagues who were present included our international page editor Gamal Nkrumah, the multitalented Jailan Halawi, layout guru Nader Habib and his fiancée Donia, our young man for all seasons Mohamed El-Sayed and Al- Ahram 's Washington Bureau chief correspondent Khaled Dawoud. photo: Riham Hany More money from Japan, my little ones -- a grant of $26,351, no less, for vocational training equipment to service the mentally challenged. Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Japanese Embassy Shinsuke Sugiyama and President of Caritas Egypt Samaan Botros signed the contract on 11 January, and globalisation took on a heartening visage. "Handicrafts Weave the life of Women" -- but do they? Judging by this ground-breaking exhibition, dears, a joint project of the Institute of Cultural Affairs (Middle East and North Africa) and the Embassy of Holland, they most certainly do. Held in the village of Al-Namous, Fayoum, the exhibition demonstrated the work of local women; later my friend Hemat Salah presented the project at El-Sawi Cultural Centre, where Hala El-Kholi delivered an absorbing opening speech. When it comes to reading material, dears, Fedra: A Woman Across of Civilisations is heartily recommended. It's a new study of gender and the construction of female identity by scholar Randa Rizq, professor of educational media at the Faculty of Special Studies, Cairo University, and it deals with its difficult subject through a close reading of drama across eras and cultures. Riveting stuff. Four years after willingly freezing its activities, the Group of Democratic Development (GDD) now resumes work as a registered NGO. The group had stopped working in protest of certain legislation, which has now been modified by the Constitutional Court. Worth mentioning that GDD's chairman is my friend the lawyer Negad El- Borai, and the board includes my friends Wahid Abdel-Megid, the new head of the General Egyptian Book Organisation, and Jihad Ouda, strategic analyst and Helwan University professor. Urban planning was at the centre of an Alexandria Rotary Club discussion at the Syrian Club that I would have enjoyed, with Samir Gharib, head of the National Organisation for Urban Harmony, and members of the club putting forth on the issue. The topic was tackled again in a Horeya Palace seminar coordinated by Ahmed Yehia Ashour. More nudes by artist Adli Rizqallah, dears: a new exhibition of provocative paintings by the veteran artist opened yesterday at the Picasso Gallery, 30 Hassan Assem St, off Brazil St, Zamalek, and will go on till 17 January. A kind of retrospective, this is the first in a string of exhibitions with which Rizqallah is celebrating his 66th birthday -- and shows work he produced in the years 1988-2004 that has never been exhibited. To mark the event, Rizqallah is giving away genuine card-size paintings to exhibition-goers.
