“I had a feeling of hybridity that I wanted to both capture and express” Hashem Montasser on his journey from Wall Street to building The Lighthouse from the ground up

This week we reunited with one of our favorite podcast guests from 2020, Fatafeat founder and overall renaissance man, Youssef El Deeb. Having met last summer just as The Lighthouse reopened post-lockdown, Hashem and Youssef formed a bond over chocolate cake, books and a shared nostalgia for Egypt’s ancien regime. In this episode, the tables were turned with Youssef playing host and Hashem as the guest in the hot seat. Through Youssef’s thoughtfully penned questions, Hashem talked about his childhood in 80’s Cairo and the journey from becoming one of the only Egyptian traders working on the trading floor during the Wall Street era of 1990s in New York, to planting the idea of a concept store cum restaurant and establishing The Lighthouse in 2017.