Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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Martin Dickson is a lover of Egypt, but of a different calibre. His love is not for the country per se, rather for a certain period in its history, and to be more exact for a certain dynasty that ruled Egypt, Mohamed Aly and his line of rulers after him.

Dickson's book Keith of the 78th (Ibrahim Agha) is a novel, but, at the same time it is some kind of a biography, not only of Thomas Keith whose life story the author tells, but of Mohamed Aly and his son Tousson.

Thomas Keith of the 78th Highlanders was a Scotasman who came to Egypt as a soldier of the 78th Highlanders, who was made prisoner of war, became a Muslim, fought with Prince Tousson in Arabia and received the appointment of the Governor of Medina.

I cannot vouch save for the truth of this story, at times it sounds far fetched, yet the author assures us of its authenticity. Collecting the historical data for his book, the author was beset with many difficulties, not merely from lack of information but more so from the conflicting historical records of this period in Arab history.

The story begins in the spring of 1769, when the wife of an Albanian named Ibrahim Agha, who lived in Kavalla gave birth to a son whom he called Mohamed Aly. On his birth a voice whispered to the mother aying "Woman, your son will be the splendid destiny of a splendid nation".

One feels from the beginning the deep admiration Dickson has for Mohamed Aly. He says that in Egypt under Mohamed Aly "there lies revealed to all who are alive to that realisation, a great land fostering the essences so valuable to the life of a nation -- freedom, independence and national pride."

Such is Mohamed Aly's legacy, in the words of Dickson, "that it will always sparkle in the Egyptian vision so long as the Nile continus to flow."

Details of the story, interesting as they are, do not concern us here. What really impressed me and drew my attention is the enthusiasm the author manifests when writing about Egypt or about Mohamed Aly and his son Tousson. Even the way he describes places and things Egyptian. to him the Nile is the eternal Nile, the sounds of Egypt are issued with such an individuality as to convey the impression of an orchestral instrument tuning for the overture to follow.

When Dickson describes the fight of the Egyptian army against the British, he appears to be on the Egyptian side. "Most of these men had marched from Cairo. Others had come by sailing boats down the river and joined the main body at a fixed point. Now they were prepared to attack and drive the British army from Egyptian territory," he says, adding further: "The despatch of this army against the English, who had already defeated Napoleon's Frenchmen in Cairo and liberated Egypt from the power of the great conqueror, was the deed of a man who was fearless, a man who had ambition, a man who had an objective for Egypt."

The book's protagonist, Keith, arrested by the Egyptians was given the choice of either being freed and returned to his country, or staying in Egypt, and helping with its development. He chose to stay, to become a Muslim, and to marry Latina, the Egyptian.