Takhtakh of the 21st Century

Our new Egypt office is in Maadi, I recently many work colleagues from Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco in different business meetings in Cairo. I was surprised that they all commented about the famous books "Alghaz Al-Mu3'amiroon al-7'amsah" (the five adventurers)?! Takhtakh, Loza, Noussa, Moheb, and Atef. The great dog Zanger and Al Shwaweesh Forko3, and the Inspector Samy :) They all said that they loved reading them ask kids and they wish they can find some copies so their kids would read them today.



I remember that I probably started reading the “Alghaz” when I was around 7 or 8 years old, my neighbors and I used to dig our grandparents attics in order to collect the old versions and wait passionately until a new release “loghz” is out.
I always thought that this was a typical Egyptian stories and as I was living in Alex I always wanted to go to Cairo in order to see Street 9 where allot of the adventures happened. In one of the books they taught us how to unlock a locked door by slipping a sheet of news paper under the door, insert a wire in the lock hole to push the key, you slide the sheet under the door and yahoooo you got your key. We practiced that trick for days :) My grandparent’s doors were almost 3 meters high so you had enough space to slide the key but when I went home I was extremely disappointed the trick did not work :(

Whenever we played the five adventurers in my grandparent’s garden in Alex every boy wanted to be Takhtakh of course survival was for the toughest, it always ended up as a wresting game :)



I was so shocked when in 2002 "Al Moughamiroun al Khamssa" was transformed into TV series (M5) my heroes have been modernized in a silly way, in a sort 21st century adventurers. In these modern series the 5 adventurers traveled through time using a special machine, to stop the villain "Phi" and save humanity.

I still prefer the original heroes and I was happy that the TV series were a big flop it shows that kids these days still have taste :)