CAIRO: Former Miss Egypt Yara Naoum has been accused of being “classist” after she complained about another family’s domestic worker using a hotel swimming pool.
Bassant Elkady took to social media to accuse the former Egyptian Beauty Queen of discriminating against her home help.
The Facebook post went viral and sparked widespread debate in Egypt about the treatment of domestic workers.
Using the initials of Naoum, Elkady wrote that Naoum’s mother complained about the babysitter entering the pool at the Albatros White Beach resort in Hurghada.
The security staff asked Elkady to ask her babysitter to leave the pool as she was wearing regular cotton clothes instead of a swimming suit made from non absorbent material.
Respecting the hotel rules, Elkady said her maid changed into a swim suit and then wanted to use the pool. After that, she said, Naoum complained to Elkady for allowing her help to swim.
“She told me I will not swim in the same place as your maid,” Elkady said.
Naoum responded to the incident saying that the nanny went into the swimming pool in “regular clothes” and that she and her family respect “all segments of the society.”
She said she was supporting the hotel management’s policy in adhering to swimwear regardless of anything else.
Naoum earned Egypt’s top beauty queen title in 2008 and is married to Egyptian footballer Emad Meteb.
Arguments over domestic workers being allowed into swimming pools in Egyptian resorts have been common in summer on social media, often leading to debates over whether Egyptian society treats maids as second class citizens.
Egyptian beauty queen Yara Naoum denies being ‘classist’ after maid swimming pool row
https://arab.news/bvhq8
Egyptian beauty queen Yara Naoum denies being ‘classist’ after maid swimming pool row
- Naoum complained about another family’s domestic worker using a hotel swimming pool
- The incident sparked widespread debate in Egypt about the treatment of domestic workers
Decoding villains at an Emirates LitFest panel in Dubai
DUBAI: At this year’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, a panel on Saturday titled “The Monster Next Door,” moderated by Shane McGinley, posed a question for the ages: Are villains born or made?
Novelists Annabel Kantaria, Louise Candlish and Ruth Ware, joined by a packed audience, dissected the craft of creating morally ambiguous characters alongside the social science that informs them. “A pure villain,” said Ware, “is chilling to construct … The remorselessness unsettles you — How do you build someone who cannot imagine another’s pain?”
Candlish described character-building as a gradual process of “layering over several edits” until a figure feels human. “You have to build the flesh on the bone or they will remain caricatures,” she added.
The debate moved quickly to the nature-versus-nurture debate. “Do you believe that people are born evil?” asked McGinley, prompting both laughter and loud sighs.
Candlish confessed a failed attempt to write a Tom Ripley–style antihero: “I spent the whole time coming up with reasons why my characters do this … It wasn’t really their fault,” she said, explaining that even when she tried to excise conscience, her character kept expressing “moral scruples” and second thoughts.
“You inevitably fold parts of yourself into your creations,” said Ware. “The spark that makes it come alive is often the little bit of you in there.”
Panelists likened character creation to Frankenstein work. “You take the irritating habit of that co‑worker, the weird couple you saw in a restaurant, bits of friends and enemies, and stitch them together,” said Ware.
But real-world perspective reframed the literary exercise in stark terms. Kantaria recounted teaching a prison writing class and quoting the facility director, who told her, “It’s not full of monsters. It’s normal people who made a bad decision.” She recalled being struck that many inmates were “one silly decision” away from the crimes that put them behind bars. “Any one of us could be one decision away from jail time,” she said.
The panelists also turned to scientific findings through the discussion. Ware cited infant studies showing babies prefer helpers to hinderers in puppet shows, suggesting “we are born with a natural propensity to be attracted to good.”
Candlish referenced twin studies and research on narrative: People who can form a coherent story about trauma often “have much better outcomes,” she explained.
“Both things will end up being super, super neat,” she said of genes and upbringing, before turning to the redemptive power of storytelling: “When we can make sense of what happened to us, we cope better.”
As the session closed, McGinley steered the panel away from tidy answers. Villainy, the authors agreed, is rarely the product of an immutable core; more often, it is assembled from ordinary impulses, missteps and circumstances. For writers like Kantaria, Candlish and Ware, the task is not to excuse cruelty but “to understand the fragile architecture that holds it together,” and to ask readers to inhabit uncomfortable but necessary perspectives.
