There is an old Arab saying: “My brother and I against our cousin, but my cousin and I against a stranger.” I was constantly reminded of this Arab proverb not just verbally, but also through people’s attitudes and behavior. The message was always to stay “in the tribe” and never trust strangers. And, of course, I should not befriend—let alone marry—infidels who supposedly are only befriending me for evil reasons.
Although the Arab world did not have a Berlin Wall, we were enclosed by a rigid psychological wall. The religious and political leadership wanted nothing less than total control over their citizen’s thoughts, behavior, and, indeed, all their choices in life. That is worse than a physical wall. A wall made of bricks can be brought down for people to cross over. But in the Arab world, terrible consequences awaited anyone who tried to breach the invisible wall of social, religious, and political constraints. The key to survival was to conform—or at least pretend to, never rock the boat internally, and keep pointing at Israel as the villain.
I once visited a Christian girl friend in a Cairo neighborhood called Hadaek El Kubba. My friend and I both heard the Friday prayer sermon through the loudspeakers of a nearby radical mosque. We heard the preacher, Sheikh Kishk, say: “May God destroy the infidels the enemies of God. We are not to befriend them or make treaties with them.” We also heard worshipers responding, “Amen.” My Christian friend looked frightened, and I was ashamed. As I tried to put myself in her shoes and think how it made her feel, I realized that something was very wrong in the way my religion was taught and practiced.
Just as my world had expanded by visiting other countries and befriending foreign visitors, my worldview was also opened by visiting another part of my own country. My sister had become a doctor and was practicing in a small village in the delta. When I visited her, as we walked through the narrow village street, the peasants greeted us with respect, and nearly everyone we saw in front of their homes invited us in for tea. It was the kindness and generosity Egypt was famous for. These simple peasants, whom middle-and upper-class Egyptians shunned, were wonderful, warm people. My deep feelings of respect and love for the Egyptian peasants, the people who feed all of Egypt and whose life has changed very little over the centuries, was reinforced by this experience.
Politically, Egypt was in the doldrums. The defeat in the 1967 war with its loss of lives and the loss of the Sinai had left the country demoralized. Israel became more and more the scapegoat for Egypt’s problems. Add to that the deteriorating economic conditions, and the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy. Nasser was under a great deal of pressure, not only within Egypt but also among other Arab nations, the Soviets, and the Palestinian movement, a movement which was largely created by Egypt and other Arab neighbors.
In 1970 Nasser suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack. The country was stunned. The grief of the Egyptian people was overwhelming. His failures and shortcomings were their failures and shortcomings. The emotional grief over Nasser’s death certainly also applied to me; Nasser was the only president I had ever known even though I never really liked him. Even today, many Egyptians look back at the Nasser period as the “good old days” of reform and reestablishment of Arab pride, both inside and outside of Egypt. It was a time in our nation’s history when colonialism was overthrown and Egypt became independent. As the nation grieved, many forgave Nasser’s many military blunders and disastrous economic policies that had turned Egypt into one of the most economically depressed countries in the region. But there were also others who perceived Nasser’s policies as that of a careless militarism that led Egypt from one defeat to another rather than to peace and economic prosperity. Once he was dead, some people finally felt free to express their disappointment in him and their doubts about the direction he had taken our country. After Nasser’s funeral, I remember somone mentioning that “we get the leaders we deserve,” and “absolute power corrupts.” I certainly agreed with that last assessment.
Nasser’s death gave Egypt a new presidency with Anwar Sadat, who brought a new perspective and new solutions to a country that desperately needed change. At first, Sadat was underestimated by Egyptian citizens, who perceived him to be weak. The country actually knew very little about Anwar Sadat. Born in the delta village of Mit Abul Kom, he came from peasant roots, and his mother was originally Sudanese. He had been one of the first students to attend a military school established by the British. When young Sadat graduated from the military academy, he was sent to an obscure military post, where he was to meet Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat became one of the young officers to form the fledgling revolutionary group that would overthrow British rule. For these activities, Sadat was twice sent to prison. The second time, he took the opportunity to teach himself French and English. After being released from his second imprisonment, Sadat turned his back on military life, trying out an acting career and then various business ventures. But eventually he reestablished contact with Nasser and the strengthening revolutionary movement, and became a member of the Free Officers Organization, which staged the coup that overthrew King Farouk.
Anwar Sadat’s style on the international scene was very different from Nasser’s. Shortly after he took over as president, he pressed the Soviets for additional military aid to replace the losses from the 1967 war. When they ignored his requests, Sadat expelled the Soviets, a bold move that surprised the whole world and won Sadat respect and praise from the Egyptian people. There was another reason Sadat expelled 20,000 Soviet military advisers. The Egyptian government was afraid that the Soviets might leak secret Egyptian plans to cross the Suez, which was in the early planning stage.
This was at the height of the Cold War era, when most nations were aligned either with the United States or the Soviet Union. While careful to officially keep Egypt “nonaligned,” Sadat opened the door to American interests, playing one side off the other. Many Egyptians were happy that under President Sadat’s regime Egypt’s ties with the Soviet Union were weakening and its relationship with the United States was improving.
Sadat allowed American companies to begin doing business in Egypt, and American tourists also began flocking to Egypt. Shopkeepers in Cairo’s bazaars who did not like the poor Russian tourists were now ecstatic about the friendly and generous American tourists.
Despite the anti-American rhetoric we’d been fed for many years, most Egyptians were very happy to receive President Nixon on his visit to Egypt in 1972. They spilled out voluntarily into the streets with American flags to enthusiastically greet Nixon, who at that time was in the midst of the Watergate scandal. We felt sorry for him and could not comprehend how the power of the presidency in such a world superpower could not stop his attackers. After all, it would have been very easy for Arab dictators to crush such opposition. Furthermore, from what we knew of the so-called Watergate scandal, Nixon’s actions were not only ordinary in Middle East politics, but also very mild compared to what our leaders did.
Egyptians who suffered for decades from a closed economy and denials of exit visas to leave the country looked to Nixon as a symbol of hope and of an open economy. I was happy to see Nixon and felt the same way as the rest of Egypt.
After the demoralizing Arab defeat in the 1967 war, Egyptians were dealing with the occupation of the Sinai. They knew that getting back the Sinai this time would not be as easy as in 1956. Regaining the Sinai was at the top of President Sadat’s agenda, probably for more than one reason. In order to put in place the reforms necessary to turn around the stagnant economy, he needed to gain the respect of his people. Some Egyptians, in fact, were upset that two years into his presidency, Sadat had not yet gone to war with Israel. Early on, in 1971, Sadat had signaled a willingness to consider entering a peace agreement with Israel if they returned the Sinai and Gaza—which Israel had refused. Now in 1972, Sadat publicly announced that Egypt was committed to going to war with Israel and was prepared to “sacrifice one million Egyptian soldiers.” But such posturing and talk of war, often to ply aid from the supe
rpowers, was not surprising in the Arab world and was not taken seriously by Israel. However, both the Soviet Union and the United States were concerned. They had no desire to see the world come to the brink of a world war over conflicts in the Middle East.
Sadat was indeed serious about going to war with Israel to recover the Sinai. But he went about it differently than Nasser had. This time the preparation for the war was quiet, and we did not hear the war drums of euphoria we Egyptians were used to.
The War of Attrition had never really stopped since the end of the 1967 war. There were always border clashes and military posturing at the Suez. On October 6, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, while Israelis were fasting and attending synagogue, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack. The Egyptian army breached Israel’s first defenses and quickly crossed the Suez Canal, in what Egyptians would come to proudly call “The Crossing,” and advanced fifteen kilometers into the Sinai.
The Egyptian public was skeptical about the early reports of our gains. From past experiences Egyptians did not trust what was being said by the Egyptian media, and many wanted to know the truth from international sources, which was hard to get.
Bloody battles ensued in the Sinai with heavy losses for both the Israelis and the Egyptians. Other Arab nations were part of the effort. Iraq lent a squadron of fighter jets to Egypt and sent 18,000 troops to the Golan Heights. Libya, which had already given Cairo more than $1 billion in aid to help Egypt rearm, also sent Mirage fighters to reinforce our air force. Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia also helped. Palestinians shelled northern Israel from Lebanon. Even Jordan’s King Hussein, who had been kept uninformed of the early plans, sent two armored units to help Syria. It was all-out war once again: all the Arab nations against Israel.
The October 6 War, as we called it in Egypt, did not bring the Sinai back, and the two armies ended up entangled, but it was still called a victory by Egypt. We were told that Israel crossed the canal and was a few miles from Cairo, and at the same time the Egyptian army took back parts of the Sinai.
An organized cease-fire, brokered once again by outside powers, went into effect October 26, but military tensions remained high, with sporadic clashes breaking out now and then. Our third army remained surrounded by the Israelis in the Sinai desert. Henry Kissinger, who was handling negotiations for the Americans, was surprised to receive a message from Egyptian national security adviser Hafez Ismail. Egypt would be willing to enter into direct face-to-face talks with the Israelis if they agreed to allow nonmilitary supplies such as food and water to reach their army and agreed to a complete cease-fire.
An American journalist I met years later told how she had been taken to the front shortly after the cessation of the fighting. Her Israeli military escort had allowed her to wander for some minutes on the battlefield where the highest casualties of the war had occurred.
As far as the eye could see, the Sinai sand was littered with helmets, bits of clothing, and shoes. She told me she was struck by the fact that every helmet, every shoe, had once been on a soldier, either an Israeli or an Egyptian who was now dead. She realized that for each pair of shoes strewn across this battlefield there was a mother, perhaps a wife or sweetheart, grieving for the young man she had lost.
She described it as one of the most sobering moments of her life. “I was not a journalist right then,” she told me. “I was a woman thinking of other women. There was no politics, no territory, no point. Just a lot of dead men.”
Later she was allowed to view from afar the large white tent where Egyptian and Israeli generals were meeting at that very moment. She remembers thinking: Do these men realize what they must do? Do they realize what they owe the grieving families in their countries? My friend reminded me that the grief was the same on both sides, the Israeli and Arab side.
After I moved to America I would later learn many more details about this war and all the other wars with Israel. But what we knew then was that Anwar Sadat was heralded as the “Hero of the Crossing.” But the problem of the Sinai remained unsolved. Sadat would eventually make an extraordinary move to get it back. The lesson the war taught this seasoned military man was that war was not worth its high cost to his country in economic or human terms. There had to be another way.
The Egyptian public might have been distracted temporarily by the war, but its internal economic problems soon boiled over. A huge, violent, anti-government food riot erupted in Cairo. I was standing on a friend’s balcony on Ramsis Street, near downtown Cairo, and saw poor Egyptian young men rioting and running in the streets out of despair. They were demanding an end to the increases in the price of an Egyptian loaf of bread. Bread prices were decided by the government. I heard the slogan: “Ya batl al-abur, fen al-futur?” which translated was “Hero of the Crossing, where is our breakfast?” Bread was the last thing they could afford to buy to eat, and even that was going up. Even the famous Egyptian “foeul,” which is beans, was getting too expensive for some to buy. From that balcony I saw hungry young Egyptian men whom the upper classes mistreated and used as fodder for jihad yet gave them no respect. Now they were starving them, depriving them of the very basics of life. I felt very sorry for them.
It was also very sad to see the end result of socialism, rent control, nationalization of industry, and war—the failures of a regime that came to power to help the poor and ended up starving them after making them totally dependent on government. The economic, social, and political problems, which had been compounded over the years by the revolutionary military leadership, had prevented our nation from joining the competitive world community.
The Egyptian economy was destroyed long before Sadat took office, but it was a difficult battle to reverse the desperate plight of a society that had been stagnant for so many years.
While I, in my twenties, was personally financially secure, nevertheless, everyone was economically impacted. It was difficult to be young and have any hope for a future in the climate of those times. My government salary at that time paid sixteen Egyptian pounds a month. Almost all Egyptians at that time depended on the government for work. University graduates in 1970—if they were lucky and had lots of connections—could get a job with a starting salary of sixteen Egyptian pounds. My salary covered transportation to work and back and nothing else. It was just enough for me to take a private or a group taxi to work. Taking a bus was out of the question. Riding public buses in Egypt has become a humiliating experience; passengers were crowded like sardines, and no respect was shown for women or the elderly. But I still wanted to work, even though it paid for no more than my transportation to work, since staying home was the last thing I wanted to do in a culture that already denied many activities for women.
The influx of American companies that began in 1972 was a bonanza for someone with my bilingual education. Because of my English-language skills, I was able to get a job as a secretary in a very small office of the 3M Company. Later I took a job with Citicorp. I was paid $75 a month, which was an enormous salary. At the time, $75 was equivalent to 150 Egyptian pounds. By comparison, 60 pounds a month is what a high government official might pull down as a salary. I was making ten times the normal amount for office work, and more than twice the sum of a high government official or business executive.
I am often surprised by the naïveté of people who protest that American companies are paying slave-labor wages to workers in other countries. They do not understand that while the salaries seems small by American standards, they are often huge in comparison to what those workers would normally receive from similar jobs. In fact, American companies can create very unstable and inequitable situations if they pay workers proportionately too much in comparison to the local economy. International economics is far more complicated than many imagine.
My boyfriend’s military service was prolonged as a result of the 1973 war. That meant that we had to postpone our marriage. During that time, I would visit his home, where he lived with his mother and
brothers. His mother was a very kind and devoted woman. Christian Egyptians knew they were a minority and were very careful not to upset Muslims. My boyfriend’s father changed his Christian last name to a more neutral name that could pass. At that time, many Egyptian Coptic Christians were leaving to live in the West—those who hadn’t already left under Nasser’s rule. The pressure from radical Islam was pushing them to leave. In 1976 my boyfriend was finally released from the army. After that, it took him almost a year to get releases from the government to allow him to leave the country. Our plan was that after he got his immigration papers and left for America, I would follow later on a tourist visa. He would convert to Islam and we would be married.
While we were waiting to realize our “escape” dreams, a great deal was happening in Egypt. In the aftermath of the 1973 war, Sadat became convinced that peace with Israel was the only road to solving Egypt’s severe economic and social problems. In an extraordinary speech to the Egyptian parliament in 1977, Sadat stunned the world and his own countrymen by saying he would go anywhere, anytime, to negotiate a peace with the Israelis. The Israelis took him up on his offer, inviting him to Jerusalem to speak to the Israeli Knesset.
In 1977 my heart was pounding with joy as I watched on television and saw President Sadat’s plane land in Israel. It felt as if a heavy burden on the shoulders of every Egyptian had been lifted. It was a great day of reconciliation and pride for President Sadat, who did the right thing and who realized that peace with Israel was the only way for prosperity and the improved welfare of Egypt. However, that did not sit well with the enemies of peace in the region, the Muslim extremists, and other Arab countries who viewed Sadat’s initiative as treason. In retaliation, the Arab League suspended Egypt’s membership and moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis.
Now They Call Me Infidel Page 12