Word: war
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When Nasser came to power in 1952, he used to insist that any renewal of war with Israel would detract from his most important task, raising the standard of living of his people. "In Egypt today," he complained at the time, "a water buffalo is more valuable than a human being. I mean, it costs more to hire a water buffalo for a day's work than it does to hire a fellah." Today the same holds true, though the price has gone up for both a man's labor (58¢ a day) and a water buffalo's hire (69?...
...fellaheen, who make up more than half of Egypt's population, the threat of Israel is as remote and unreal as any hope of improvement in their ancient way of life or freedom from their backbreaking, dawn-to-dark work on the land. The war is brought home daily to Cairenes in the shabbiness of their once-exciting city, in the tomblike echoes of the airport terminal, in the empty streets of the Moussky shopping district, where donkeys now outnumber tourists?and in the constant shortages. For four years the capital's citizens have endured three consecutive meatless days...
...war comes, it comes," says a shopkeeper in the Moussky. "There is nothing I can do except protect myself and my family and my business from bombs the best I can." The attitude seems typical of Cairenes, preoccupied with living through whatever lies ahead in the safest and most comfortable way possible. The daily task of hacking a way through the urban jungle is difficult enough for ordinary Cairenes, visible in the streets as ranks of sullen men in unpressed suits. Bitterly insecure, frustrated and angry, they might, in a less apathetic country, provide the base for a revolution...
...their luxuries on the black market. But they cannot get uncensored news, and miss "most of all an open society," as one said last week. They freely complain that their life was better in the long-gone days of King Farouk, blame Nasser for dragging them into a war in Yemen that was none of Egypt's concern, and were for the first time convinced, by the 1967 war, that Israel is their real enemy. With little or no hope for the future, they respond in many cases by simply packing up and leaving Egypt for good, "to live instead...
Nasser is neither much threatened by Egypt's civilian population nor pressed by them into fresh military adventures against Israel. Politics in Egypt is essentially army politics. Some of the younger officers of the army bitterly recall how they were spat on in the streets of Cairo after the war, and would like to wipe out that memory. If there is an Egyptian alternative to Nasser, he is most likely