[4][5] In 1946 João was stationed in Cairo as a member of the Brazilian air force when he was invited by King Farouk of Egypt to attend a reception, at which he met an Egyptian aristocrat, née Fátima Scherifa Chirine[2] (born 19 April 1923 in Cairo and died 14 March 1990 in Rio de Janeiro), daughter of Ismail Hussein Chirine Bey and Aysha Musallam.
[2] The couple's only child, the future photo-journalist, royalist and agricultural environmentalist Prince João "Joazinho" Henrique of Orléans-Braganza, was born in Rio de Janeiro on 25 April 1954,[6] where they took up residence, imposing a substantial lifestyle change on Fatima, who had been accustomed to a luxurious and cosmopolitan existence at the court of Cairo.
[1] João returned to Brazil with the intent of doing military service,[2] did not pass an admission test to join the Brazilian navy, but began a career in naval aviation with the aid of Admiral Castro e Silva, and inspired by his uncle, Prince António of Orléans-Braganza (1881-1918).
[1] Prince João joined the Brazilian Air Force in 1941, during World War II, which sent him for training as a pilot to the United States, where he attended the academies at West Point (and met Antoine de Saint-Exupéry), Annapolis and Pensacola,[2] graduating as a second lieutenant.
[3] The prince served in the first Brazilian fighter planes, the North American T-6, which were subsequently used to execute Brazil's famous aerial acrobatic exercises, "La Fumaça" (Smoke).
At that time, Brazilian airlines, like Panair, lacked the resources to compete, so the government detailed air force pilots to supplement their international service.
When he settled there in the 1960s, it was a 400 year-old town, surrounded by forest in a national park, wedged on the bay of Ilha Grande between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.