Strife with Father

In his huge, bay-windowed Cairo office, President-Premier Mohammed Naguib last week puffed his pipe and busied himself with an agreeable task. He set out various photos of himself, cocked his head at them, then, with the help of curio dealers, selected appropriate silver frames. He was going to Khartoum in a few days as Egypt's delegate to the first session of the Sudan Parliament; the pictures would be gifts for his hosts. At 53, the native son was returning to his birthplace.

At that very moment Egypt's real government -the young, twelve-man Revolutionary Command Council -was holding an emergency session to decide Naguib's fate. Three days before he had delivered an ultimatum: either the R.C.C. would give him the right to veto its decisions, to appoint and dismiss Cabinet ministers and to promote and cashier army officers, or he would quit. Naguib felt no uneasiness; since Farouk departed in July 1952, the amiable major general had become Mr. Egypt. He put on his general's cap and went home, confident.

All that night, in a towered, yellow, Nileside palace where Farouk once dallied, the R.C.C. fretted and wrestled with its decision. Nineteen months before the young soldiers, seeking a front man for the anti-Farouk uprising, had picked the bluff, respected, thrice-wounded soldier. The choice was happy: the nation cried "Yahish [long live] Mohammed Naguib," and flocked to him, holding out its centuries-old wounds. Naguib looked as a good father should -kindly, wise, genial. He smoked a pipe; he spoke softly and slowly; he waved aside guards and let the lowly approach. When they tried to kiss his hands, he would raise up the humble and buss them on the cheeks. He was honest and looked it, and Egyptians who had felt leaderless and betrayed for generations came to see him, their eyes shining.

But having tasted popularity, Naguib wanted power. He was President and Premier in name only; brilliant, selfless, young (36) Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real creator of the revolution, made all the big decisions, and he passed on to Naguib all the state papers, with notations on what to do. Naguib wanted a finer home, in keeping with his title; he insisted, when Egypt became a republic, on becoming Premier as well as President. He learned how to sulk and how to suffer diplomatic illnesses to get his way.

Learning the News. At seven the next morning Naguib woke, switched on the radio and heard the surprising news: at 4 a.m. the R.C.C. had accepted his resignation and had named Nasser to his place as Premier. Over the air, Chief Propagandist Salah Salem painted Mohammed Naguib as never before -an ambitious, hypocritical, devious publicity seeker. Added Salem: Naguib was not "under arrest," but had merely been "asked to remain in his house a month or two."

Newsmen sped out ten miles to suburban Helmieh to Naguib's modest, one-story, stucco villa in the center of a sandy, poverty-row street. They found the ex-President incommunicado behind a cordon of wellarmed, closemouthed troops. Even his phone was cut off.

That day Cairenes read their papers with a sort of dazed resignation, and it looked as though the R.C.C. had gotten away with sacking Egypt's idol. Weary and unhappy, his duty done, Gamal Abdel Nasser stretched his six feet on an army cot at R.C.C. headquarters and dozed off.

Cavalry Protest. But across the street from army GHQ, a group of cavalry officers, who consider themselves an elite in the army, fell to arguing. They were distressed and took up the subject with one of their fellow cavalry officers, a mercurial, fellow-traveling 33-year-old named Khaled Moheddine, who was a member of the twelve-man R.C.C.

Nasser was summoned. When he left the cavalrymen five hours later, his face was stern: they had insisted that he must recall Naguib as President and must resign as Premier in favor of Moheddine. Nasser scented a coup. Back at his GHQ he snapped out orders.

Next dawn, as the cavalry officers woke, they saw field guns unmuzzled and zeroed in on their barracks, antitank guns commanding the approaches and machine-gunners atop Army GHQ across the street. The cavalrymen called out their own soldiers. Soon the rooftops along the Sharia el Geish (Street of the Army) swarmed with troops glaring at each other and nervously fingering triggers. From Radio Cairo poured a nervous refrain: "Disturbances will be severely crushed."

Street Cry. In the midst of this gathering struggle, an outside force threatened, so menacing that the army closed ranks. As though by magic, crowds began to appear on Cairo streets, chanting, "No revolution without Naguib," and "Down with Salem." Nasser called the R.C.C. into session. As the council debated, the street outside spoke louder and louder until it could not be denied. At 1 p.m. an officer passed through the armed cordon in Helmieh, saluted Naguib, who was still in his pajamas and smoking his pipe. The courier bore an offer from the R.C.C.: Would Naguib come back to work as President and let Nasser stay on as Premier? The leathery-faced man smiled and said Yes.

Cairo turned itself into a carnival. Drivers honked their horns, tore past GHQ and yelled to no one in particular, "Mabrouk, Mabrouk," (Congratulations). Children and men, acting like children, dashed through cafes and streets, clapping their hands, dancing and shouting. They swept up to his isolated house by the thousands, held up his picture and cried: "We all apologize to you. President Naguib." Naguib, the ever-moderate, called in news men and said : "These things happen in all revolutions. Just a family quarrel. Thank Allah it has all been settled."

Together once more, Naguib and the R.C.C. seemed overjoyed. United they had been irresistible; 48 hours without each other had been a terrifying experience. Naguib and Nasser fell on each other's neck, wept and hugged. Naguib went into a Cabinet meeting and shook hands all around. "There is no grudge in my heart," he said. "These things are petty matters." He turned to Salah Salem, who had said the harshest words about him. He growled heartily : "Get ready to go with me to the Sudan tomorrow." Salem smiled.

Martyrs' Blood. It seemed to be all over. But the quarreling in public had for the first time destroyed the regime's untouchability. Now, on the fourth day of the crisis, discredited Wafdists, Moslem Brothers and Communists mingled with the mobs. Soon the streets' mood changed. The omnipresent cheerleaders who before had yelled for "Habib el Shaab" (People's Beloved) added a new cry: "Down with the rule of the twelve." The crowd formed into a mob that surged across the Kasr el Nil bridge, passed the plush Semiramis Hotel and headed for stately Garden City, the embassy row. Soldiers opened fire; twelve fell wounded.

The Moslem Brothers dipped their handkerchiefs into the martyrs' blood, held their Korans aloft and led a mob of 50,000 in Abdin Square, under Naguib's office balcony. A brotherhood chieftain climbed atop a jeep, screaming that beloved Naguib must free all the prisoners and oust the military from the government. Naguib, appearing on the balcony, ignored the agitators and told the crowd: ''I owe you my life. Everything will go in the right direction." The mob responded by dispersing. As a gesture to the evident public dissatisfaction with the behind-the-scenes rule of the junta, the R.C.C. announced vague plans to create a parliamentlike assembly. The worst seemed over. Nasser was still running the show but had lost prestige. Naguib, whose position as leader had its origins in a fiction, had found his people eager to take it as a fact.

...

This week, after surviving the crisis at home. President Naguib arrived in the Sudan and promptly ran into bloodier trouble. Yelling tribesmen who oppose joining their land to Egypt rushed the British Governor General's home, where Naguib-was staying, brandishing steel-tipped spears and yelling, "Long live the independence of the Sudan" The police first tossed gas grenades, then opened fire as the tribesmen charged on. In the melee, 31 were killed. Seventeen policemen were dead, among them Sudan's police superintendent and the British police chief of Khartoum.

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