Completing his studies at Indiana University Bloomington[4] in 1978, Foley left Indiana and took a $99 one-way flight to Amsterdam, where he began to tour Europe.[3] In London, he met photo editor Horst Faas, then the Associated Press (AP) photo chief for the Middle East and Europe.[3] Faas sent Foley on assignment to Egypt, where he worked for the next several years, primarily covering the presidency of Anwar Sadat.[3] Foley was present at the 6 October 1981 military parade in which Sadat was assassinated, and photographed him only moments before his death, calling the photograph "The Last Smile".[5][self-published source?]
Nothing was moving. In a place where I had made many friends, and hundreds of photographs, it was many things, but never silent. Usually, kids were yelling and playing, women were talking, dogs were barking, cars horns were honking ... but, on this morning, all was quiet. I was surrounded by piles of what, at first glance, looked like garbage, but as my brain started to work, I realized it was piles of corpses. The smell of decay was everywhere, as many of those killed had been dead for over 24 hours, in the September heat.[7]
