Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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We are still with Wilton Wynn's A Typewriter and a Dream. At the end of Gamal Abdel-Nasser's section of the book Wynn writes, "As I looked back at Alexandria harbour, I thought it would be my last sight of Egypt. I was to learn that I had underestimated the gravitational pull of that ancient land, at once so frustrating, so fascinating, so unforgettable."

And that pull had its effect in 1973 when he returned to Egypt as Cairo bureau chief for Time magazine during the rule of Anwar El-Sadat, in Wynn's words, "the hero charismatic". Wynn was sent to cover the October War. He describes his journey to Cairo via Libya, going through Al-Alamein, the place where World War II hit its turning point for the Western Allies. Wynn writes: "Now we were passing through that historic battleground on the way to yet another war in that war-prone region."

Wynn describes the change he noticed. "Instead of the old demagogy and fanaticism I expected to meet, I found Egyptians in an upbeat frame of mind, all talking of peace more than of war." This change, in Wynn's words, "from the old Nasser rhetoric had been brought about by the new president of Egypt, Sadat, who had launched a war in order to make peace. The statesman in Sadat said that the long, exhausting series of wars with Israel must give way to a lasting peace." But, adds Wynn, "there was enough of Nasser in Sadat that he never would accept humiliation as the price of peace." And the victory of October 1973 gave Sadat the possibility to negotiate with the Israelis while holding his head high.

Wynn then goes on to describe the war and how the Egyptian attack caught the Israelis "flat-footed, a total surprise assault." With other correspondents, Wynn crossed to the east bank of the Suez Canal on a pontoon bridge. There flew the Egyptian flag "waving over a ruined Israeli fort, on the same site where just a few days before the star of David had flown. Sadat had done it."

After covering the war Wynn went back to Rome where he was told by the Time chief to return to Cairo for a six-month duration, but that six months lasted five years. Here Wynn gives us an idea about the competition among foreign correspondents in search of scoops; that competition, in the case of Wynn, being between Time, which Wynn represented, and Newsweek, where Arnaud de Borchgrave reigned supreme.

De Borchgrave, writes Wynn, was "one of the finest reporters of his era. He had top level contacts and I remember him going around after interviews with his wife, who was his photographer." It was the journalistic battle of the century. When de Borchgrave heard that Wynn was opening Time 's Cairo bureau "a grinning Egyptian editor told Arnaud, your monopoly is broken." That happened when Wynn became closer to Sadat than any other correspondent including de Borchgrave.

Wynn remembers how, through Ali Amin, he broke de Borchgrave's monopoly on interviews with Sadat. When president Sadat took that incredible trip to Jerusalem, Wynn was the only foreign correspondent to travel with the president. There were anchors of the three major American networks -- Walter Cronkite of CBS, Barbara Walters of ABC and John Chancellor of NBC. Wynn was the only print journalist to accompany the president on that historic trip.

On the plane Wynn asked the president if he was nervous, and with a broad grin Sadat answered, "Do I look nervous?" Adding, after a puff on his pipe, "What I really want to do on this trip is knock down the psychological wall that separates us from Israel." A year later, Wynn flew with Sadat to Washington where, "in that famous Camp David meeting with Carter and Begin a peace agreement was hammered out between two old enemies, Egypt and Israel."

Four years later Wynn wrote the concluding part of "The Saga of Anwar Sadat". He was to return back to Cairo in October 1981 to cover the funeral of the Egyptian leader. Sadat had been brutally assassinated by a gang of fanatics. At the end of the "Sadat Saga" Wynn writes, "Nasser, a failure, had been mourned as few men in history, while Sadat, the success, was reviled by the Arabs even at his death."