Blood on the Nile

Cairo merchants knew what was coming. Stores and offices were shut down tight, giving the city a quiet, sabbatical appearance. But it was an unnatural quiet. Soon ugly crowds began to gather in the streets.

By noon thousands of Egyptians were swarming across the Nile bridges and down the streets that spoked into the Midan el-Ismailia. Around the British Embassy raucous voices chanted "Down with England, down with the conqueror," "Evacuation of British troops or bloodshed." Sweaty, swaying bodies surged across the square toward the Embassy, where tin-helmeted Egyptian police barred the way with billies. The rioters turned back toward the R.A.F. barracks on the Midan.

Three British trucks, coming out of a side street into the square, ran into the demonstrators. Egyptians set fire to the trucks, tossed torches and stones onto the wooden roofs of the British barracks. Exploding ammunition in one truck momentarily drove the rioters back. At that point R.A.F. troops opened fire with rifles.

Reported a British communique: "This had a salutary effect on the rioters." There were 14 dead, 123 injured.

Next day, Egypt's new premier, grizzled old Ismail Sidky Pasha, pleaded with his people to keep their fezzes on. Sidky's regime sympathized with nationalist goals--evacuation of British troops in Egypt, an end to British joint control over the Sudan. But cautious Sidky knew that negotiations to revise the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty might consume weeks; it might take only minutes to touch off another riot.

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