Yaz Bukey

Portrait by Ami Sioux

 

interview  by CAROLINE GAIMARI
portrait by AMI SIOUX 

 

CAROLINE GAIMARI  — Are you really the descendent of an Egyptian king?
YAZ BUKEY — Yes. He was an officer in the Ottoman Army at the end of the 1700s. In the Ottoman Empire, the better you performed your work, the higher your status became. So the Sultan made him King Muhammad Ali of Egypt. The family reigned until King Farouk, the last king of Egypt, who lasted until the coup d’état in 1953. For the last 20 years we’ve been in a legal battle with the Egyptian government to recover the palaces and the land we owned. My grandmother lived in a small apartment and the view gave onto the palace where she grew up, which is now a museum. It’s horrible for my family. Most of…