Ghali attended Victoria College, variously at the Alexandria and Cairo campuses, from 1944–47.[2] He studied in the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University, and was present when the students staged a demonstration on 4 December 1948 that left the police chief, Selim Zaki, dead.[3] Ghali started but did not complete medical studies in at the Sorbonne in Paris. He left Paris in 1953. He also lived in London in the mid-1950s.