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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Monthly supplement
July was always a month rich in revolution. Two recent books shed new light on key actors in the making of modern EgyptThe missing bust
Awraq Youssef Seddiq (The Papers of Youssef Seddiq), ed. Abdel-Azim Ramadan, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 1999. pp308The limits of allegiance
Shahadati lil-Ajyal (My Testimony to the Coming Generations), Helmi El-Said, Cairo: Dar Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, 1999. pp271
Playing the British at their own game
Fayed -- The Unauthorised Biography, Tom Bower. Macmillan, 1998. pp496Discrepancies of doctrine
Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity, Otto F A Meinardus, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999. pp344 + 24 b/w photographsFrom Ottomans to Officers
The Cambridge History of Egypt (2 vols.), volume 2, Modern Egypt from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. M W Daly, Cambridge University Press, 1998. pp464Functionalising religion
Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics and Religious Transformation in Egypt, Gregory Starrett, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1998. pp308Recovered memories
Zaman al-nisaa wal zhakira al-badila (Women's Time and Alternative Memory), eds. Hoda El-Sadda, Somaya Ramadan and Omayma Abu Bakr, Cairo: Dar Al-Kutub, 1998. pp382The illusion of the journey
Travellers in Egypt, eds. Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1998. pp318
Soon to appear, Stokely Carmichael's memoirs are themselves a part of history. Al-Ahram Weekly previews the manuscript and talks to the co-author
Rendezvous with history
Michael Thelwell helped Stokely Carmichael write his death-bed memoirs. Visiting Cairo recently, Gamal Nkrumah sounded him out on the political legacy of the Black Power movement
At a glance:Al-Hilal, a monthly magazine, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal, July 1999
* Ibdaa' (Creativity), a monthly magazine, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, June 1999
Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross
"Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996
The missing bust
Reviewed by Mahmoud El-Wardani
Awraq Youssef Seddiq (The Papers of Youssef Seddiq), ed. Abdel-Azim Ramadan, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 1999. pp308
During a visit to the Military Museum in Cairo, police Major General Hussein Seddiq saw in the hall devoted to the Revolution of 23 July 1952 busts of all the Free Officers, except for one -- Colonel Youssef Seddiq (1910-1975), his father, the man said to have delivered the crucial blow on which the Officers' success ultimately depended. Hussein promptly filed a court case against the Ministers of Defence and Culture.
Although the case has not yet been resolved, this chain of events demand a re-examination of the man who stands at their centre. Who was Youssef Seddiq? And why has his role in the national struggle been so frequently underrated?
As if in answer to these questions, the General Egyptian Book Organisation has now published, in its "History of Egyptians" series, The Papers of Youssef Seddiq, a volume which incorporates documents that relate to this forgotten hero, his role in the Revolution, the tragedy which later engulfed him, and even the poems he composed on various occasions.
Besides Seddiq's memoirs of the 1970s, the book includes a laconic biographical sketch by his daughter, Soheir Seddiq, as well as excerpts from a log book dating from the 1948 Palestine war. One chapter is devoted to the night of the Revolution. Another deals with Seddiq's experience of the RCC, from the beginning of his involvement with the Free Officers until he was practically expelled from their midst few month before the March 1954 Democracy Crisis. What enriches the book and extends its historical scope is the fact that it brings together almost all that has been written about Seddiq in newspapers and magazines over the last five decades.
Coming from a long-standing military family (both his father and grandfather were army officers in the Sudan), Seddiq's early career seems to have been predetermined. He graduated from the Military Academy in 1933, completing his training at the Military Staff College in 1946. In 1948 he was not only among the first Egyptian officers to set foot in Palestine, but his was the only battalion to reach Osdood where it sustained its position until the end of the war. However his patriotism and ethical integrity -- confirmed by reports from the intelligence agencies of the time Ð soon made him unpopular with the military establishment (subsequent confessions by King Farouk's private guard show that Seddiq was a target for assassination long before 1952).
But it was the harrowing defeat with which the Palestine war ended -- the result, as much as anything, of a corrupt political order which openly condoned British colonialism -- that provided Seddiq with his painful introduction into the political life of the nation. He began by joining the Muslim Brothers, but, discouraged by their dogmatism, he transferred to Misr Al-Fatah, a patriotically oriented party with fascistic leanings. Eventually, he contrived to reconcile his religious faith with the basic tenets of Marxism, and his subsequent revolutionary commitment probably derived from his sojourn among the communists, whom he abandoned because of "the numerous internal conflicts which divided them and fragmented their efforts".
The solidarity of the Free Officers, and their potential control over the army, made them by far the most viable alternative on offer. When they approached Seddiq in October 1951, he was only too happy to join their ranks. On the fateful eve of 23 July, Seddiq was to command the battalion charged with occupying the military Headquarters in Sarrai Al-Qubba, Cairo. He was supposed to set out from the Hikestep barracks at 1.00am, but an army general loyal to the King notified the authorities of Seddiq's intentions in time. However, due to faulty communications, Seddiq had received instructions to set out at 12 midnight instead. This he did Ð and his battalion was able to take over the headquarters before the authorities could intervene to prevent it.
Cairo the morning after the revolution"Had he not started out an hour earlier than scheduled on this particular day," Nasser said in his 1962 speech, "all our efforts would have come to nothing." Involuntary though it was, Seddiq's move was crucial.
But -- like his older colleague, Major General Mohamed Naguib, who became the first president of the republic in 1953 -- it was not long before he fell out of favour with Nasser over the issue of constitutional government. Seddiq wanted a speedy return to democracy and parliamentary life. Nasser, whose position in the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) was growing ever more powerful, had a different vision for the newly emerging "democracy". Moreover, the RCC (with the exception of Seddiq, Nasser and Khaled Mohieddin) had approved the execution of two workers following a strike in Kafr Al-Dawwar only a few weeks after the Revolution, and Seddiq's shock at this consensus could only have exacerbated his doubts. He resigned from the council in January 1953. Thus began his long misadventure, passionately documented in these frank, persuasive, but above all moving memoirs.
After a few months in Aswan, Seddiq recounts, he was transported to Switzerland. Once there, however, he realised he would not be permitted to return to Egypt. He travelled to Lebanon, and a few months later returned in secret to the village where he was born, near Beni Suef. From there, he wrote to Naguib, informing him of his arrival. During the March 1954 crisis, an interview was published in which Seddiq openly affirmed his position regarding government in Egypt, insisting that the army give up its political power to a fully-fledged constitutional democracy.
As a result of this intervention, he was treated as a political renegade. Not only Seddiq himself, but both his wives, as well as relatives and friends, were searched, detained and/or confined. This situation continued until 1956, when he was pardoned, but never allowed to assume a position of power, participate in elections or play any kind of public role. Notwithstanding Nasser's 1962 speech, Seddiq was totally forgotten. In 1970 he developed lung cancer and, ironically, it was Nasser (whose own life was to end the same year) who sent him to Moscow for treatment. President Anwar El-Sadat, too, acceded to his children's admittedly modest demands throughout the last five years of his life, and after his death he was honoured with a fully-fledged military funeral.
Reading this book is like making one's way through a labyrinth of complex, interrelated anecdotes which, taken together, add up to a thrilling epic. The main road which Seddiq travelled can perhaps be summed up in a few words, but its back streets and alleyways are interminable. And it is for the fresh light which both Seddiq and his many commentators throw on these dark paths, that this book is most to be valued.
