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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.
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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.