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It was also an empire that fell swiftly apart. By the 16th century, the Arab states, one by one, fell to the Ottomans and passed into the long sleep of Turkish domination. Then, in World War I, Arab nationalists rebelled against their Turkish overlords and fought beside the British armies in the Middle East, confident that they would obtain unity and freedom. Moviegoers who have seen Lawrence of Arabia know the gloomy result: under League of Nation mandates, most of the Middle East was handed over to Britain and France, and frustrated Arabs wasted themselves in futile rebellions against the colonial powers. World War II did little better for the Arab nationalists. Individual states gained independence, but control was securely held by feudal monarchs or coalitions of landowners and business men who were often little more than colonial puppets. Sir Winston Churchill "invented" the state of Jordan "on a Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem." Even worse, in the Arab view, was the partition of Palestine to provide a national homeland for the Jews. Humiliation became complete in 1948, when the combined armies of the Arab countries were crushingly defeated by the Israelis.
Moon Orbit. Hence the enormous prestige Nasser won in 1956, when he survived the massed assault of Britain, France and Israel in the Suez War. Arabs ignored the fact that the Egyptians were beaten in the field and that only intervention by the U.S. and the Soviet Union saved Nasser from collapse. What mattered was that Nasser had engaged the imperialists and Israel in battle, and managed to survive. When Egypt later proved that it had the technical skill to operate the Suez Canal efficiently on its own. Arab nationalists were as proud as if Nasser had personally orbited the moon.
His Arab brethren also share pride in Nasser's achievements at home in the years since Suez. Cairo, a city as populous as Chicago, has become a bustling, busy metropolis. New skyscrapers line the banks of the Nile, throwing glittering light on the river at night and by day reflecting in their glass walls the stately grace of the sails of feluccas headed upriver with cargoes of wheat and lime.
The building boom is not confined to the hotels, which were host this winter to a record half-million tourists. On the edge of the city, entire new suburbs are in being or abuilding. At Medinet el Waqf, Egypt's new managers are housed in modern stucco cottages. On the northern rim of the city, 40,000 low-cost housing units were erected last year.