---
title: Mohsen Rifaat Traces a Life Lived Between Cairo and Canada in New Illustrated Memoir
description: Egyptian-Canadian architect Mohsen Rifaat's illustrated memoir navigates a life between Cairo and Vancouver, uncovering surprising ties between Egypt and Canada.
updated: 2026-07-22T03:18:32.027Z
canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/mohsen-rifaat-cairo-canada-memoir
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/desk-img-27.webp
categories: Memoir & Biography
content_type: News
region: British Columbia
publication: Rich Books
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

When Mohsen Rifaat left Cairo in 1968 with his newlywed wife, Sarah, he carried the formation of an entire city in his eyes: the Belle Époque facades, the layered street life, the particular quality of light over the Nile. What he could not yet know was how much that formation would shape the way he came to see his adopted country, and how the two places would spend the next half-century in quiet conversation inside him.

His memoir, *Spaces between the Nile and the True North: Negotiating Egyptian-Canadian Cultural Fusion*, is the account of that conversation made visible. Published by Tellwell (ISBN: 978-1834381282), it moves across architecture, urban planning, public service, diplomacy, and international business, the arc of a career that itself mirrors the hyphenated life the title names. The book is illustrated throughout with Mohsen’s own watercolours, sketches, photographs, and personal memorabilia, so that the negotiation between two cultures is not merely described but shown, page by page, in his own hand.

The result is something closer to a collage than a conventional memoir. Crystal Hurdle, author and educator, puts it precisely: “His life becomes a literal and metaphorical collage, the rich text embedded with his images: sumptuous watercolours, blueprints, sketches, photos, and ephemera, a sensory delight.” Mohsen is writing, and painting, toward a way of inhabiting two worlds at once without flattening either.

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