"We shall find out if a man or an idea was killed"
The nightmare had come true: the sudden, terrifying death of the beleaguered, valiant, seemingly indispensable Anwar Sadat. In a week of anger and disbelief, the assassinated Egyptian leader was hailed in the U.S., in Western Europe, in Israel and elsewhere as a man of courage and peace. In a few Arab capitals, where he had never been forgiven for signing a peace treaty with Israel, his death was greeted with cheers and celebration, a burst of joy that much of the rest of the world considered obscene. And throughout a week that culminated in a somber state funeral Saturday, there were questions everywhere about what the Middle East, indeed the world, would be like without him; where the earthquake of his death had left Egypt; what would be the future now of the quest for a Middle East peace.
Expressions of shock and tribute arrived in Cairo from Israel, where Prime Minister Menachem Begin said he had lost "not only a partner in the peace process but also a friend"; from Bonn, where Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spoke of his "bewilderment and horror"; from Tokyo, where the government called Sadat "a great gladiator for peace"—and from two men who had been more fortunate than Anwar Sadat. In St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II, who was struck by a bullet just five months ago, spoke of his "emotion and pain." And in Washington, Ronald Reagan, who had decided not to attend the Sadat funeral because of security considerations, greeted the three living ex-Presidents, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, who had agreed to represent their country at the funeral. In a brief White House ceremony for them, Reagan addressed a moving eulogy pointedly toward those "who rejoice in the death" of the Egyptian leader. Said the President:
"In life you feared Anwar Sadat, but in death you must fear him more. For the memory of this good and brave man will vanquish you."
From the chaos of the assassination scene, the Egyptian leadership moved swiftly to secure an orderly transition. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, scarcely two hours after the fallen President had been pronounced dead at the Maadi Military Hospital, the Cabinet met in emergency session and unanimously appointed Vice President Hosni Mubarak as Prime Minister and supreme commander of the armed forces. It was Mubarak, a member of the "October Generation," as Sadat called the participants in the October 1973 war, whom the late President had been grooming as his successor for the past seven years. The next day the People's Assembly, Egypt's parliament, nominated Mubarak for the presidency.