From Zero-Net.net Team
Don’t Hate, Educate!

Salaam Hanna and Monika,
Salaam to all my “Secret Friends” in Trekronergade Freinetskole,

I’m writing to you on behalf of the volunteer team of the Zero-net cultural outreach initiative, which has many projects under the slogan “Don’t Hate, Educate!” you are now part of the Talk2Me schools project, and it’s my pleasure to meet you all.

It makes me and the team very happy that we could help your school in Denmark become friends with two in Egypt. We want you to have fun learning about each other.

I’ve learnt something from this wonderful experience, and I’d like to share it with you: When I started Zero-Net in February to try connecting our two sides of the world, this was just an idea… a dream in one person’s imagination. But through turning it into an action plan then working on it with friends around the world, it became a reality. I’ve learnt that dreams CAN and WILL come true with two things: good intentions and hard work; positive feelings + consistent action can make this a much better world for all.

Now let’s take a look into your Treasure Box from Egypt :)
I have been thinking for a long time what to send you, and you know what?
I love stories, so here is a story I like very much:

Hundreds of years ago, before the invention of planes or credit cards or computers, merchants used to travel for many months on foot, in ships and on horseback to carry their goods to other countries. History books tell us that Muslim merchants reached as far as China, Africa and Europe, some even say that a Chinese Muslim navigator called “Zheng He” -who was an envoy of the Emperor of China from the Ming Dynasty- has reached America a full 70 years before Columbus! Have you ever been to England? There is a unique gold coin in the Numismatical department of the British Museum, it was issued by a British king named Offa, King of Mercia (Kent) 1230 years ago, very interesting story, but I will let you discover it through research on your own :)

Back to our ancient travelers: In their long journeys, they carried exotic products from far away lands: spices, incense, silk, leather, jewels, unusual animals, strange fruit and beautiful clothes. They were the first cultural exchange experts, because they weren’t only successful businessmen, but they were also interested in learning and teaching about the places they visited. They learnt many languages and wrote beautiful travel books that still survive till today. This is how we know about Ibn Battouta, Sindbad, and many other legendary travelers, who taught us that travel is a great learning adventure.


They were famous for being honest too you know, that’s why Kings trusted them with caravans of camels carrying huge treasure boxes full of expensive gifts to deliver across the world. But the most precious gift they always carried from Arab and Muslim Sultans to the rest of the world was a very unusual gift in those times: beautifully decorated handwritten books! Books of philosophy, science, geography and poetry … back then, gifts of knowledge were more precious than anything else, even jewels.

In those days, Muslim scientists loved to read, learn, and translate between languages. So they were famous for their discoveries. They came up with lots of useful inventions for the world, like the Astrolabe, the first camera, and the first windmill. They even invented entirely new sciences like Algebra. At that time, Arabic was the international language. Do you know that when you say cotton or guitar you’re actually speaking Arabic? :)

One of those scientists wanted to help traders across the world calculate easier, so he read many books, and he finally found the answer in ancient Indian scrolls, through his valuable research, he introduced a new concept: the ZERO! Don’t laugh J this is a very important invention, without it, we’d still be counting on our fingers or on Abacus boards; we’d have no computers, space shuttles or microchips. Can you imagine trying to calculate the speed of light in Roman numerals? And so Al-Khwarizmi (that’s the name of our ancient friend from Persia) published his research in Arabic, which was translated into Latin and introduced to Italy, then the European scientists and mathematicians used this information to make a lot of useful modern inventions that we use today.

I like this story because it talks about learning and teaching others, and cooperation across different cultures to make this a better world. That’s why I called my project ZERO-net: Zero is the invention that changed the world and Net is how I like us all to be connected in a network of friendship and learning :)

That’s also why I’m sending you books about my culture as gifts for your school library. Some of them are in English and Arabic so you’d see our language in writing, we read from right to left, so some of the books open that way. There are 6 books in our Treasure box.

You can color photocopies of the coloring books in order to keep the books useful for many people in your school. You can also make an exhibition with the colored pages at school and put the pictures on your website for us to see.

New Generation school sent you 14 letters + a letter from Manal their teacher. Their gift to you is a hand-colored wooden decoration for your class with many themes from our culture. Our graphics team on Zero-net helped explain those themes in the sheet attached to the gift, feel free to hang it as a poster in your class.

Creative Learning Center (CLC) sent you 5 letters + a letter from Mona their teacher. They also sent you 10 tiny colorful bead bracelets and 10 blue strands of prayer beads. Muslims use those to keep count when they recite the 99 beautiful names of Allah.

Zero-Net sent two bigger strands of prayer beads from me to Hanna and Monika, my new “Secret Friends” you also get 6 books, and bookmarks with Arabic calligraphy which is an ancient art. The word written there is: “READ!” it’s the first word revealed in the Quran (the Muslim holy book) asking us to read and learn.

Through these little treasures, we tried our best to bring back to life the generosity of the Ancient Arabs with guests, and the adventures of the ancient Muslim travelers roaming the world on horseback to exchange knowledge, culture, and friendship.

You may notice that a lot of our social traditions are mixed with Islamic religious ideas; those two elements are inseparable when you look at our world, Islam is a culture we practice in our everyday life, not just religious rituals for prayers in mosques, so to understand our world, you need to know a little bit about our beliefs. We hope that our Treasure Box will help you learn about our culture, and that you will enjoy this learning experience as much as we do. We’ll always be very happy to answer your questions and exchange knowledge with you.

Salaam to you and your families from all of us and our families :)
We look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Your Secret Friend in Cairo,

Sahar El-Nadi
Director, Zero-Net.net
Cairo, Egypt

www.zero-net.net