Biography
“I was born in Egypt,” says Ahmad, “But my family moved to Dubai when I was just one year old, then when I was eighteen, I moved back to Egypt to attend university. I enjoyed learning other languages and dialects at school within multi-national classes. I made friends with students from the likes of India and Sudan. I loved all the sports, but my heart was in music. We always had music of some kind playing around the house as my mother was and still is a classical pianist and at the time, my Uncle adored The Beatles and we also had two TV channels broadcasting in English and Arabic.
I was just 14 when a friend in my class from Palestine introduced me to Iron Maiden. I loved this band, but at the time didn’t really think it was music and I was a little unsure about playing Iron Maiden loud in the house.
In ’97 it was time to look at my future and in my heart, all I wanted was to be a musician, but my father was totally against my wish, he wanted me to study accountancy at university. This was just the start of a very difficult and epic journey for me. I agreed to go to university, but against his wishes, I bought a bass guitar and hid it under my bed. I could only play it unplugged during the night when everyone was asleep.
When the house started to wake up around 5 am, I’d hide it away and go off to university. I had to be careful, as my father said if he found out I was learning an instrument, he would break it over my head. He was that strict. It wouldn’t have gone down well if he knew I was listening and trying to learn Iron Maiden songs.
I had already met musicians at University who were also ‘into Maiden’ and we had arranged to go into a studio. It was all a bit premature as up until then I’d only played bass unplugged in the dead of night without an amp. But you know, this was a milestone in my career, when I heard how my bass could perform through an amp, it was one of the most beautiful things I had experienced to date.”
“During that same year in ’97, when it looked like I might at least be able to enjoy playing live music, the government wanted to ‘get back’ at the people and said, those who are listening to rock music must go to prison, not a normal prison, but one they sent terrorists and elite criminals to. It wasn’t because of rock music, we have Satanists in our country and Jesus, Mohamed and religion were important to Egypt. These people were worshipping Satan.
They said that music played in a rock style was evil. It was in all the newspapers and so my friends and family started to reject me and even said that I should be killed. I was 20 and people were being rounded up. I was in a critical situation and couldn’t listen to music, even my poster of Iron Maiden was destroyed by my family if the police found out, I’d be arrested, they destroyed so many people’s lives.
I was devastated as I was just blooming as a musician. Beforehand I didn’t have a dream or a personality, so let’s say the bass made me and made me someone. All the western music ceased and I wasn’t enjoying university, and while a lot of people were watching and monitoring me. I was still secretly playing the bass at night, it was my ox.
I eventually met someone who had heard about me and who had been released from prison for this music related ‘crime’ and was hungry to play more. He suggested we go into a studio with some other friends he knew. Once again, even though I was learning, I explained that I had not played in a band before, I didn’t even know the names of the strings on my bass or where position C was.
After several months rehearsing we had enough material to organise our own concert, all the time wondering who would show up as we were all still in hiding. We rented a place that accepted us and printed some flyers which we put everywhere. We just thought if we went to prison, at least we tried.
Fifteen people came to that concert, but more and more people heard about it and more gigs followed and helped changed the music scene. I learnt a lot in that band, they shouted out D or E to the guitar player during a song, and they would say major or minor, so I was getting pretty competent on the bass and could soon play all the popular musical styles, whilst still a big fan of heavy metal.
I managed to keep working as an amateur bassist when someone asked me if I wanted to get 20 Egyptian pounds a night playing Arabic pop music, the equivalent of 2 British pounds.
I said I wasn’t that sure of the songs, but they said don’t worry, the audience would have a good time and I’d go home with money in my pocket. I did that for four years, then swapped from all sorts of bands playing different styles, like blues, acoustic blues, rock, metal, Latin and folk for example.”
