Word: nasserism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...certain that watching Israelis understood, they intermittently switched to Hebrew, "Nasser lo yamut." At the compound enclosing Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed is supposed to have ascended to heaven, mourning Arabs were only a few yards away from Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall for Rosh Hashana prayers marking the start of the Hebrew year 5731. Among the Israeli worshipers was the old antagonist who had twice helped humble Nasser on the battlefield, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan...
...Cairo, the capital of Nasser's own country, that anguish over his death reached its peak. All week long, the lower-class fellahin poured into the city. They came on foot or riding donkeys, aboard bicycles or cars or ancient trucks, clinging precariously to the roofs and sides of trains rolling into the city's Central Station. Like members of some giant caravan at rest, they camped all over Cairo. They watched the comings and goings at the Kubbeh Republican Palace, where dignitaries made solemn calls. They wept at the new Nasr Mosque in the suburb of Manshiet al Bakri...
Finally came the moment for which the caravan had gathered. Flying low over the Nile, four Soviet-built helicopters landed beside a palace on Gezira Island, the original headquarters of Nasser's Revolutionary Command Council. From the lead copter, a flag-draped coffin was unloaded and strapped to a gun carriage pulled by six black horses. A funeral cortege formed, with a troop of lance-bearing cavalrymen leading the way. Six military bands, the morning sun glinting richly off their brass, struck up the melancholy strains of Chopin's Funeral March. Twenty-seven visiting chiefs of state, eleven Prime Ministers...
...Tahrir Bridge when the crowd swept from the Nile's banks to engulf it. The dignitaries behind it were supposed to march nearly a mile to the headquarters of the Arab Socialist Union and there make way for a "popular funeral," in which the common people would escort Nasser's body to the burial mosque. The officials could scarcely move at all. Police tried un successfully to beat back the crowds with braided whips and bamboo sticks...
...procession finally reached Nasr Mosque, renamed Abdel Nasser Mosque as a tribute, but not before the coffin had been transferred to an armored car, which rammed through the crowd at 25 m.p.h. Nasser's widow Tahia fainted at one point. One Egyptian newscaster who was describing the proceedings passed out, and at least three others broke down and wept. Wrapped in a white sheet, Nasser's body was removed from the coffin and lowered into its crypt. The face was carefully turned toward Mecca, 800 miles away across the Red Sea. Nasser's soul, as far as devout Moslems were...