An Egyptian-American bodega owner from Queens is now a favorite political commentator for Egyptian news channels: 48-year-old Hatem El Gamasy was just a regular guy who made a living off the bodega he owns in NYC and wrote opinion pieces on current affairs for fun. It was only last year that his “improbable broadcast career began” and he started appearing regularly “on popular Egyptian television news programs, holding forth on subjects from immigration policy to North Korea.” The New York Times shines the spotlight on El Gamasy’s life, telling the story of how the English teacher-turned-bodega owner, who moved to the US in 1999 to study, came to be “part translator of the American people to his homeland, and part good-will ambassador for a country where he feels more at home than where he was born.” (Tap here for the story and video, runtime 3:00)