Word: nasserism
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WHEN he succeeded the late Gamal Abdel Nasser last October, he was greeted with a cascade of tasteless jokes. "We're suffering two plagues at one time. First Nasser dies. Then we get Sadat." Haughty survivors of the ancient régime ridiculed him for his dusky skin (from his Sudanese mother) and because he had come from an impoverished delta village that is so remote, the nearest bus route is a mile away. Politicians dismissed him as a light-weight whose chief talent was sheer survival. When he delivered his first May Day speech in the steelmaking city of Helwan...
...major figures with whom the U.S. must deal in the attempts to contain the dangerous Arab-Israeli conflict and to keep it from becoming a Soviet-U.S. confrontation. Last week Secretary of State, William Rogers flew into Cairo to make a first-hand assessment of Nasser's successor. Rogers was also interested in exploring one of Sadat's latest initiatives: a proposal for an agreement between Egypt and Israel on reopening the Suez Canal...
Sadat, among other things, is attempting to come to grips with the kinds of domestic problems that Nasser shunted aside as he pursued his costly war with Israel and his grandiose visions of Pan-Arab unity. Egypt last week reached a population of 34 million (early this year, Israel proudly welcomed its three-millionth citizen). At present, Egyptian babies are being born at the rate of one every 40 seconds. Sadat is trying to meet some of the inevitable problems that this overbreeding creates, particularly in a nation where much of the population is crowded into a narrow ribbon...
...tapped frequently, and mail and cables censored in Egypt. But there have been some notable relaxations. The secret police are far less in evidence now. Following record crops last year, consumer goods are more readily available and some food prices have been forced down. The cruel sequestration laws that Nasser invoked to punish the middle class for opposing him have been eased, and many Egyptians are reclaiming seized property. Faced by a shortage of efficient managers, Sadat is seeking to create a class of executives and to give them a sense of belonging...
Open criticism is being allowed again, and there have been some pointed attacks on the Pan-Arabism that flourished under Nasser and all but obliterated millenniums of Egyptian history. Wrote Literary Editor Louis Awad of Cairo's Al Ahram: "If you search in the six reading books taught from Grade 1 to Grade 6 in Egyptian schools, you do not come across the name Egypt even once. You only discover stupid poems that begin, I am an Arab. My father is Arab. My brother is Arab. Long live the Arabs.' " So pronounced is the "Egypt first" mood, that the Cairo...