Mohamed Hussein Tantawi
It was during his posting to Islamabad that Sharaf met and became a close friend of then Colonel and later Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, it helped that both men were born in the same upper Egyptian town of Aswan. At the time, Tantawi was serving as Egypt's Military Attaché in Islamabad. Sharaf would serve in Islamabad till 1977. His younger brother Ezz El-din would also serve in Islamabad, in the early eighties, as Egypt's ambassador to Pakistan.