Omar Sharif died Friday at the age of 83. He starred in a number of major films, like “Doctor Zhivago,” and was a fixture in Hollywood and what used to be the Hollywood of the Middle East, Cairo. It was in Egypt where Sharif, born Michel Shalhoub to a Lebanese Christian family, first made his impact on the silver screen. In many of his earliest films he played the romantic lead, opposite his wife at the time, Faten Hamama, who died this January. His first English-language part was as Sharif Ali in David Lean’s monumental picture, “Lawrence of Arabia,” and his entrance is one of the most memorable in movie history. Ali (Sharif) is a dot on the horizon who shoots and kills another man for drinking from his well, and then he rides to close the distance and fill the screen.

Sharif liked horses. He told me an American president had given him a horse, but I can’t remember which one because it was at the end of a long evening of drinking, singing, and conjugating Arabic verbs. “Where are you going?” he asked when I tried to leave the party. “I have a meeting in the morning,” I said. “We all have something in the morning,” he said, and everyone around the tablverbse laughed. “Oriental people are night people,” he said. I sat back down, and the women whispered, Omar.