First pair of shoes for Egyptian giant

Egyptian Mohammed Hussein Heikal has three feet—considering that each of his feet is a foot and a half (45,5cm) long—and is about to get his first pair of shoes at the age of 51.

At a towering 7,5 feet (2,3m) in height, Mohammed is reputedly Egypt’s tallest man, and his gargantuan proportions have been a life-long source of grief.

He says he can’t read and write because he dropped out of school at an early age, fleeing the taunts of his classmates.

He now lives alone with his goats in the solitude of the Qena desert, 640km south of Cairo, having taken refuge there because “I became a figure of fun in the towns and villages because of my size”.

And he laments never having been able to win a wife.

“Women are frightened by my size because they think all my members are huge.”

But the governor of Qena, Adel Labib, has taken pity on Mohammed, who could obviously never find shoes his size in a shop and whose poverty barred him from having any tailor-made.

Labib is going to see to it that he gets a pair of shoes made for him, at state expense.—Sapa-AFP