The ES and I.

My name is Mourad and I was born in Alexandria-Egypt but I am presently working and living in the UAE.      I started keeping pigeons 18 years ago. My brother Mahmoud and I were keeping rollers on the rooftop of the building we lived in. We enjoyed very much their flying but we couldn’t tell the difference between a hen and a cock.

I was accidentally introduced to the ES as a neighbor pigeon fancier knocked at our door one night and asked permission to catch one of his YB that landed on our roof. Intrigued by the striking color of his bird, I asked the neighbor what type of bird it was. It was an Ablak and that was my first encounter with one of the most beautiful breeds in the ES.

He later invited us to his loft and we fell in love with his birds. I learnt a lot from this man: how to differentiate cocks from hens, the names of the different breeds, the proper way of flying the ES and more…

He told us about the bird’s market, which was held weekly on Fridays. My brother and I went to this market to look around and learn from older fanciers, as there were no books on ES at that time. We also heard about the Cairo bird’s market that was much bigger than the one in Alexandria and I promised myself to visit it one day.

When I reached the last year of my high school education, my father got rid off all the birds as I used to spend way too much time up on the roof and not enough with my books. I decided to keep a few fish and a couple of parrots in the house.

After graduation, I got all my pigeons back buying them here and there without paying much attention to quality and description. But I still wanted to visit the Cairo bird’s market… A friend of mine made an appointment with the Eng. Mohamed Sherif in Cairo.

The engineer took us on a tour of the market, patiently showing us all the pigeons we wanted to see and introduced us to other reputed fanciers from Cairo. I am to that day indebted to Eng. Mohamed Sherif for all the help he gave us while acquiring the best Safis and Bolk we now have. He is presently serving as the secretary of the ES society.