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In Egypt last week, newsmen were getting their first chance to explore the luxurious vulgarities of ex-King Farouk's palaces (see box). They stared incredulously at the marble, the gold, the diamonds, the pearls, the barrels of whisky, the mountains of rare coins, the statues of nudes. Outside the view was in striking contrast. The newsmen looked out over one of the world's worst agricultural slums: the Nile delta. The peasants toiling there—like most Egyptians—live in mud huts, dress in rags and eat the bread of the poor (Egypt has two kinds of bread; the rich, white variety is available only to the rich). Three out of four own less than an acre of land, two out of three suffer from hookworm and malaria, nine out of ten are partially blind from the effects of bad water and undernourishment. Near the palace gates, beggars lay in the hot sun, too weak, sick, or hopeless to drag themselves into the shade.
The terrible contrast between the palace and the poor is the first fact of political life in Egypt, and in all the Middle East. Of such contrasts revolutions are born. Last week, Egypt was in the midst of revolution.
In six weeks, Egypt's new regime has sent Farouk I into exile, legally abolished aristocracy; declared war on corruption, promised land reform to break up the great estates, raised the rich man's taxes (on caviar, sport cars, wine, other luxuries), lowered the poor man's prices for sugar and cotton cloth, abolished censorship, relaxed restrictions on foreign investments. It was a revolution of the middle class, engineered by soldiers but. broadened by the support of businessmen, professional men, office workers and students who believed they had found a leader.
Overnight, something new has come to this ancient and despairing land, something that gives a new snap to the salutes of Egyptian soldiers and has brought the new government 50,000 grateful letters—in a country where only one in six can write. For the first time in living memory, there is hope in Egypt.
The man who has roused that hope is a soldier whose name was almost completely unknown in Cairo, London or Washington seven weeks ago—Major General Mohammed Naguib (pronounced Nageeb). He is now acclaimed by his people as a savior, and by Western diplomats as the most promising figure to appear in the Middle East since Turkey's late great Kemal Ataturk.
How It Happened. Naguib is a "strong man"—but he neither looks nor acts the part. He lives in a modest suburban house with his wife and three young sons, earns $4,000 a year, smokes cheap Toscani tobacco and drives a tiny German Opel on which he still owes three or four payments. Quiet and self-effacing, a better listener than he is a talker, he exudes an old-fashioned courtesy that echoes the prose of the Koran. How did this mild-mannered man lead a revolution in a land where corruption, disease, glaring wealth and bitter poverty are as old and as familiar as the Pyramids?