Omar Sharif a foreigner of some sort. He bridled at travel restrictions imposed by the government of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, leading to self-exile in Europe. He was a lifelong horse racing enthusiast, and at one time ranked among the world's top contract bridge players. Omar Sharif, whose adopted surname means "noble" or "nobleman", was born as Michel Dimitri Chalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Melkite Catholic family, either of Syrian or Lebanese descent: he belonged to a small ethnocultural minority known as the Levantine 'Antiochian' Greek Catholics of Egypt ("Rum Katuleek"), an offshoot of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.
Claude Chalhoub composed and arranged the latest of Majida El Roumi's albums 'Ghazal'. After many years in Beirut working among others as Dean of the chamber music department at the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music he now lives in Vienna, Austria. A film biography on Chalhoub’s life and career called ‘Singing on the Violin’ by German director Boris Penth (2007) has been broadcast internationally, among others on TV channels WDR, 3Sat, Bayerischer Rundfunk, ABC1, Arte, Euro arts, www.medici.tv, etc. Claude Chalhoub Claude Chalhoub () born in Qaa, Lebanon in 1974, from a Christian musical family of 11 children, attended the Lebanese