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The U.S. offered arms to Nasser shortly after he came to power, but he refused to sign a mutual security pact, or to allow a U.S. military mission into Egypt, as is normally required by Congress when a key to Uncle Sam's armory is passed out. His objection to any kind of pact with a Western power stems from the long history of alien control that began when the Egyptian booty first fell to the Persians in 525 B.C., then to the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Mamelukes, French, British—to Alexander the Great, Mark Antony, Napoleon and Kitchener. Nasser, like most Egyptians of his generation, cherishes bitter memories of the British, whose armed forces occupied Egypt for 72 years. "We have complexes in this country about some words . . . such as 'joint command,' 'joint pact,' 'mutual defense' and 'mission,' " he says. "Our experience is that foreign pacts mean foreign domination."
Nasser grew up in the period when resentment against the British was at its highest pitch, and the Wafd, a powerful national party, was engaged in a struggle with both King Fuad and the British, who never hesitated to intervene directly in domestic politics. Born in Alexandria, the son of a post office official, Gamal Nasser was a husky youth who played hookey from school to go to the movies, often flunked his exams. He was only 16 when he took up politics. "One day," recalls Nasser, "I was walking down the street when I found a fight going on between the police and a lot of people. I joined the people against the police. I didn't know what the fight was about. I was arrested. In jail I discovered that the people were the Masri el Fatat (Young Egypt). I joined up. We worked hard, and the government hated us. I stayed with them a year and then got disgusted over an embezzlement scandal." He joined other movements, other street battles. He led a school strike and was expelled. Said his father, a strict Moslem in the old tradition: "You'll ruin your life playing politics. You've failed at school. This is the result of the freedom you get."
A Few Like Spirits. Another young man, King Farouk, who succeeded his father to the throne at the age of 17, was already showing a cynical capacity for playing one political party against another for piasters and public laughs. Politics was confined to just the top level. The only movement which could claim to have roots in the people at this period was the Moslem Brotherhood, which had grown out of the personal following of Hassan el Banna, a schoolteacher who called for better observance of Islam and its purification. The Brotherhood tapped reservoirs of religious sincerity and fanaticism, but its political horizon was limited to a passionate xenophobia. "Ya Azeez, Ya Azeez. Dahiya takhud al-Ingleez!" (O Almighty, O Almighty. Disaster take the British) was the catch cry on a million lips. The British, meanwhile, ruled pretty much as they pleased and called the Egyptians "wogs."