Amiable Grimaces

Things were looking up in Cairo last week as a new nightclub opened with a blare of hot music on one of ousted King Farouk's abandoned yachts. A glittering new Shepheard's Hotel, to replace the old one burned by antiforeign mobs back in 1952, was ready to open its doors again to foreign spenders. The Egyptian cost of living had momentarily ceased its steady climb; the stock market was active, and toll money from a once-again busy Suez Canal was pouring into the national treasury. A prospective purchase of $35 million worth of cotton by France gave a needed boost to the export balance. The government announced a budget surplus of nearly $55 million. And to top it all, the government's hand-picked candidates were easy winners in the new regime's first nationwide parliamentary election.

To be sure, like the election itself, Egypt's happy state was not quite all it seemed to be. Before trusting his future to the 5,000,000 Egyptians who trooped to the polls last week, Strongman Nasser had made sure of the results by eliminating all opposition in the key districts. Even so, some 16 voters were reported killed in the fray and another 40 injured; when the final count was made, the Interior Ministry announced that new elections would have to be held in 172 out of the 269 districts reporting since no candidate had been able to muster a clear majority. Still, Nasser himself said: "We have to go step by step."

Isolated Man. Still loyal to his throttled dreams of dominating the Arab world, Strongman Nasser was seeking them now in a new direction. He was trying to win himself back in the good graces of Britain, while his Voice of the Arabs radio turned on an unprecedented campaign of hatred against the U.S., which had saved his neck during the Anglo-French invasion but was now effectively curbing his ambitions under the Eisenhower Doctrine.

More and more, Nasser found himself backed into a lonely corner. As U.S. influence grew to supplant that of Britain as the principal stumbling block to his own ambitious plans for the Middle East, Egypt has been forced to look to Soviet Russia for encouragement. Russian trade with Egypt in the first months of this year quadrupled 1956's figures--but Russia is proving itself an exacting, suspicious and unprofitable partner, and Nasser's Moscow commitments have roused the Arab world's three Kings (Saud, Hussein and Feisal).

Last week Nasser sent his No. 1 military man, Major General Abdel Hakim Amer, scurrying off to neighboring Saudi Arabia to patch things up with oil-rich King Saud. Earlier in the week, sitting before the cameras of Britain's Independent Television News--as Russia's Khrushchev did for CBS in the U.S.--Nasser sent an amiable grimace into several million British living rooms. "I'm sorry," he said, "about that period of bad relations between Britain and Egypt. We hope that both countries will work for good relations in order to be friendly again." As an earnest of his good faith, Nasser at last had released two Britons accused (and long since acquitted) of spying on him in Cairo, promised to pay pensions to Britons formerly employed by the Egyptian government, and even invited BOAC planes back to Cairo airport. He seemed a little surprised that all this did not immediately win the British over to him.

Another Thing. Robin Day, the shrewd British interviewer who asked the questions for Britain's ITN, wanted to know how Nasser reconciled his stand against Communism at home with his overseas dealing with Russia. "Well," said the dictator, "local Communism is illegal, but dealing with Russia is another thing." Confronted with a direct question on Egyptian policy toward Israel--whether he really wanted to see its destruction as a state--Nasser tried desperately to fight his way between the Charybdis of a yes that would please Arabs and the Scylla of a no that would mollify the West. "There is a difference," he said, squirming visibly, "between the rights of Palestine Arabs and the destruction of Israel. We cannot gamble a big war." Then, said Day, "is it right that you now accept permanent existence of Israel as an independent sovereign state?"

"Well, you know--" said Nasser, "you know you are jumping to conclusions."

"No," said Day, "I am asking a question."

Hate America. The answer could only be found by tuning in on the Voice of the Arabs.

Linking Israel, the U.S. and Jordan's King Hussein together as common villains is Nasser's latest propaganda device to try to win the Arab masses. "Brethren in Arabism, brethren in Palestine," cried Cairo's Voice of the Arabs, "imagine all these things which imperialism wishes for you, American imperialism itself. Imagine it is not only intended to scatter one million Palestine Arab refugees, but the intention today is to kill them and annihilate them completely . . . Brethren, imagine your fate after [they] hand you over to your American enemy to annihilate you . . ."

Americans in Cairo could not remember a time when hatred was so directed at them. Day after day Cairo's kept newspapers accuse the U.S. of plotting with Israel and Jordan's young King Hussein to sell out the Arab refugees, to push French massacres in Algeria, to threaten the world with atomic disaster. Street stands are cluttered with paperback tracts such as one called This Is America, with a cover picture of Eisenhower as the Statue of Liberty, holding a gallows rope instead of a torch.

And as the defeated Nasser struggles to free himself from isolation, the very U.S. intervention which saved him last November is now baldly distorted. During the Suez invasion, said one Egyptian newspaper last week, it was the U.S. naval attache in Port Said who gave signals to the attacking French and British bombers to guide them to their targets.

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