(3 of 8)
Nasser has always admitted that his movement was essentially negative, "a revolution without a plan." He has costumed himself in the verbiage of Western liberalism, but in fact his regime has been politically retrogressive. Only last June, 5,000,000 Egyptians certified his dictatorship by casting a 99.9% majority in "free" elections. Years ago he wrote a friend: "I really believe that imperialism is playing a one-card game in order to threaten only. If ever it knew that there were Egyptians ready to shed their blood and to meet force by force, it would have given way like a harlot." Nasser is a counterpuncher who has won a number of prelims by meeting blow with counterblow. All things considered, he has come far; the question is, how much farther can he go?
Double Revolution. Nasser's own life sharply defines the Middle East's double revolution, in which men torn between new Western ideas and old Oriental traditions seek to shake off Europe's political dominance, but. with the techniques learned from Europe, also to break free from their country's stagnant past. It is a combination most often found these days in soldiers of humble origins, European-trained, and hotly nationalistic.
Nasser was born in a farm village some 200 miles up the Nile from Cairo. Like most Egyptians, he was of mixed Egyptian and Arab stock. "We were all one family there," he has said. "The landlords treated the people as slaves." His father was an assistant postmaster. Sent to school in Cairo, young Nasser learned the classic Middle East three Rs: reading, 'riting and rioting. Shouting "O Almighty, disaster take the British!", he fought nationalist street battles, won admittance to the military academy. Of these struggles he has bitterly said: "You come back from your studies feeling a new world is in front of you to a home where there is no food to eat."
In the army he learned to hate the corpulent corruption of King Farouk and his senior officers. Wounded in the Palestine fighting, outraged at the army's wretched performance and sleazy equipment, Nasser went back to Cairo to conspire his way to power. Of the Free Officers' movement he says simply: "I am the original." On the night of July 22, 1952, the plotters struck. Victorious, Nasser ruled through General Mohammed Naguib for two years, then through a junta of which he was the Premier.
When he first came to power, Nasser's knowledge of how to run a country was close to zero, and he said so. In 1953, when he was negotiating with the British for the evacuation of their Suez base, he suddenly broke off the talks one day, explaining to the astounded British that they were making things too complicated for him. "The British are too clever," he told a friend. "I think I'll take some time out." The talks were resumed some weeks later. Today Nasser still plays the role of youthful amateur, frank and quickwitted in private conversation, making his sharper points with a disarming, schoolboyish grin. It is one of his most winning techniques. But in fact, Gamal Abdel Nasser has acquired a new opinion of himself.