This, in combination with land speculation by the Mosseri cousins and city planning by Alexander Adams, gave rise to a new town.

[10] In total around 76,000 members of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force trained at a camp near Maadi at the base of the desert slopes of Wadi Degla and Tel al-Maadi.

The rocky plateau was leased to the New Zealand Military Forces, and for the next six years it became the central depot and training area for 2 NZEF in the Middle East.

In July 1942, at the height of the Western Desert Campaign, two German spies revealed under questioning that they had been using a copy of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, found among their possessions, as a codebook for secret, coded radio transmissions.

Their equipment, stored on a houseboat on the River Nile, had been examined by a young signals officer from the Egyptian Army, future President of Egypt Anwar Sadat.

[7] Following the 1952 revolution (which ended the British occupation of the Suez Canal) and the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which Britain, France and Israel launched an invasion of Egypt to regain control of the canal, British and French expatriates living in Maadi and elsewhere were forced to leave by the Egyptian government.

[citation needed] Maadi is a district in the Southern Area of Cairo,[1] and is subdivided into five shiakhas (census blocks).

Road 9 still remains a hub for both locals and expats with its diverse dining options as well as coffee shops and even bookstores.

Most notably are expatriate owned businesses such as Lucille's (known for their American style hamburgers) and The BookSpot (an English language bookstore that has become a staple for Egyptians and westerners for more than 15 years).

Cultural life in Maadi is geared to a great extent towards serving the large expatriate and affluent, bilingual Egyptian populations.

Maadi has also become a popular place for foreigners to study Arabic, as the suburb now hosts a number of local language schools.

In addition to numerous Western restaurant chains and cafés, Maadi offers a variety of international cuisine.

There are also international and multilingual bookshops selling foreign newspapers and magazines catering to Maadi's multi-ethnic population.

Youssef Bahgat's cup was offered to the NZARA (now NZRA) as a trophy for an annual boys' eight-oared race between secondary schools and was brought to New Zealand at the end of the war.

The Maadi Cup gained its native timber pyramid-shaped base from Mt Albert Grammar's woodwork master, Jack Jenkin, in 1951.

The Maadi Sporting Club and Yacht, founded in 1920 by British expatriates who mainly worked at the Delta Real Estate Company, today offers a range of sports, such as Tennis, Football, Swimming, Squash, handball, hockey, Judo, Table Tennis, Sailing, and Rowing.