EGYPT: The Locomotive

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By 4 p.m., the blinds, shut tight all day against the Riviera sun, snapped open. A bustle of servants and bodyguards on the second floor of Cannes’ Carlton Hotel proclaimed the fact that His Majesty was awake. Shortly afterwards, a fat man with a prematurely balding head and a rakish hussar’s mustache, appeared on the hotel terrace, plumped his 225 pounds into a wicker chair and ordered a Coca-Cola. He wore the standard summer garb of the well-dressed Riviera yachtsman—grey flannel slacks, navy blue jacket and white yachting cap. The plump, darkly pretty young woman who accompanied him wore a similar costume. For 15 minutes, His Majesty sat in massive silence. An aide brought him a newspaper. He scanned the headlines, threw the paper on the floor and jumped to his feet. Within a few minutes, in a swirl of salutes and a swishing of Cadillacs, the young couple was off to a cocktail party.

Another day had begun for Farouk I, King of Egypt, Sovereign of Nubia, Sudan, Kordofan and Darfour, and for his young Queen, who are currently in the 13th week of their honeymoon.

“Je Vous Ai Eu!” In his 31 years, Farouk I has become known principally as a glutton, a high-stakes gambler and a wolf. On the Riviera this summer, he has added diligently to his reputation. The Carlton Hotel (where he and his entourage occupy 32 rooms at $2,000 a day) keeps chefs working round the clock because His Majesty might feel hungry at any hour of the day or night. For a typical lunch, he may consume bouchees a la reine, sole, mutton chops, chicken fricassee, a whole roast chicken, a whole lobster, mashed potatoes, peas, rice, artichokes, peaches, pomegranates and mangoes.

During most of his stay at Cannes, Farouk appeared regularly at the casino at 10 p.m. Seating himself at the “tout va” (no limit) table, his hairy chest showing through the opened neck of his shirt, he would snap his fingers, and an attendant would place a stack of chips in front of His Majesty. He tossed in the square white discs, worth a million francs ($2,850) each, as though they were marbles, and when he won, he shouted “Je vous ai eu! [Got you!],” roaring with laughter. When he lost, he laughed too. Croupiers, whom he often left hoarse and groggy after all-night sessions, had a nickname for the huge, lusty man who puffs eight-inch cigars and gambles with machine-like energy—they call him The Locomotive. In one week The Locomotive lost $160,000 at chemin de fer.

But of late, the King has been staying away from the casino. Observers have noticed other evidence that he is beginning to settle down. During past seasons in the sun, His Majesty has shown great interest in Riviera beauties (a local engraver used to be kept busy carving such dedications as “Pour Suzette,” “A Jeanette” into souvenir rings and bracelets which the King liked to pass out among his female acquaintances). This year he has eyes only for his bride. Moreover, the flabby King is taking exercise—he has been observed splashing at the Eden Roc pool like a melancholy walrus—and he works two or three hours a day with his advisers, keeping the long-distance lines to Cairo humming.

Is Farouk, after all, more than a royal buffoon? The U.S. has good reason to hope that he is. Farouk may turn out to be the decisive figure in one of the world’s decisive areas.

The Killer’s Hour. The Middle East is the southern anchor of Europe’s defense. Yet today, the Middle East is like a ship heaped with high explosives, drifting toward the rocks while the crew fight among themselves.

In every city, in every oasis, speakers are whipping up hatred for the West. It is the hour of the nationalist fanatic and his gunman hireling. In recent years, the Moslem secret societies (the Moslem Brotherhood, the Crusaders of Islam, the Arab Sacrifice League) have murdered: one King (Jordan’s Abdullah) and one President; four Prime Ministers; two cabinet ministers; one police chief, one judge, and one army commander in chief. Near misses: one Shah, one Premier. Two agents of the Moslem Brotherhood were reported last week to be trailing King Farouk on the Riviera.

There is virtually no responsible statesmanship; most Middle Eastern leaders are either anti-Western or ineffectual (see box). The U.S. is doing little to help get the situation under control; the only people who stand to profit without making a move are the Russians. Egypt’s masters have on occasion proved themselves as ineffectual as any of the others. But, by virtue of past glory and present intellectual influence, Egypt is looked on by many people in the Arab world as a potential leader. Whether or not Egypt can ever be fit for that role, the country holds a strategic position in the Middle East.

How Goes Egypt? The ancient land of the Pharaohs last week lay drowsily under the parching sun, the Nile Delta a green lifeline beset by the hot brown desert. The river, swollen with the muddy waters from the Sudan and the Ethiopian mountains, as always carried life and hope; as they had for centuries, pregnant peasant women ate mud from its fertile banks, believing that it would make their unborn children strong. Yet even the Nile could not accomplish that miracle. In Egypt, two out of four children die before they are five years old, and the survivors are almost certain to be diseased. In fields which they do not own, 14 million fellahin (70% of Egypt’s population) labor over crops whose fruit they will not eat, for wages (average 10¢ a day) which barely keep them alive.

They live in mud huts, sleep on reed mats, dress in rags, eat the bread of the poor (there are two types of bread in Egypt, the good white bread from Egypt’s abundant wheat being available only to the rich).

Egypt’s ruling class, as stupid, selfish and corrupt as any in the wor,ld, is unconcerned. This summer, as in every summer, the rich fled screeching, scorching Cairo and were relaxing in cool Alexandria or, like their King, on the Riviera. When they return to Cairo later in the fall, their womenfolk diamond-studded and sheathed in Parisian gowns, they will take up life in a small world of their own, which moves between exclusive clubs, theaters and palaces. They own most of Egypt’s land, pay ludicrously small taxes.

Wind of Discontent. The fellahin have begun to stir. Recently, an unheard-of incident shook the country: a band of laborers beat up a graft-taking overseer on a pasha’s estate, then attacked the pasha’s son, set fire to his house and had to be subdued with a machine gun. Some fellahin have grown bold enough to try to seize land from the pashas. When the government recently proposed to raise bread prices, there was such an outcry from the poor that the plan was hastily dropped. The government politicians who until recently were always glad to whip up an anti-British riot to draw the people’s attention away from their misery, now have clamped down on such demonstrations: they are afraid that the rioters might forget about the British and turn against the government.

The situation is ready-made for 1) the Moslem Brotherhood, which is busily organizing recruits toward the day when it can unleash terror, and 2) the Communists.

There is no visible Red leadership (Communism is outlawed), but the party is split into efficiently run cells. Membership, especially among students, is growing. New Communist-front papers are gaining circulation fast; they operate carefully within the press laws. The politicians actually help the Communists by denouncing any advocate of reform as a Communist. Says a Western diplomat: “Up to the turn of the year we were reporting regularly—and we keep very close watch on this—that there was nothing like a Communist Party in Egypt. But this conclusion of six months ago is definitely not true today. Communism started raising its head, as near as we can place it, toward the end of February or the early part of March. Then Communist-front papers started to appear. Newsprint costs $364 a ton out here. The papers carried no ads. How could they exist? Obviously by subsidies. Whom were they subsidized by? That takes no imagination whatsoever.

“The Communists are playing an extremely clever line. They are anti-monarchy, antigovernment, anti-British, anti-American, anti-everything. They are taking the vast, creeping discontent in this country and surely binding it into a movement.”

Forms Without Content. From the day the British occupied Egypt in 1882, the ancient land began to get its first experience of modern government. In the 64 years they stayed, the invaders did a brilliant administrative job: they balanced the budget, reformed the government bureaus, reorganized the army. But they did little to redress Egypt’s social and industrial backwardness. By 1922, when Britain declared Egypt independent, the land had developed the forms of democratic government, but not the content. Egypt today has a constitution, a parliament, elections, a budget and an income tax. But the constitution is rarely observed, the parliament represents only the pasha class, elections are invariably rigged, the budget is hopelessly padded with graft, and income taxes are hardly ever paid.

Egypt’s leading party, the Wafd al Misri (meaning Egyptian Delegation), used to be genuinely popular, a vigorous fighter for reform. But with the death in 1927 of its founder, a onetime fellah named Saad Zagluhl, the party began to sag and split. When the Wafd came to power again in January 1950, after years in & out of office, the party pulled a gigantic switch: from its traditional status as His Majesty’s loyal opposition, it became His Majesty’s obedient servant. The price for the switch: patronage and palace favors for Wafd politicos. The Wafd government is glad to do the palace little favors in return—like appropriating $3,700,000 for, among other things, repair of the royal yacht and of palace walls.

Evil Genius. Premier Mustapha el Nahas Pasha, titular leader of the Wafd, is old (75), tired and ailing. A fellah’s son and once a shrewd, honest politician, Nahas now merely wants to remain Premier in peace & quiet. He still has a following, but on official occasions these days the party usually hires a small crowd to kiss his hand, which makes him happy. The party is really run by a group of rich, unscrupulous newcomers, led by huge Fuad Serag el Din, Wafd secretary general and Minister of the Interior & Finance. Serag el Din’s good friend and ally is Madame Zeinab Nahas, the plump, grasping wife whom the Premier married 15 years ago, when she was 25 and he was 60. Western observers generally describe her as Egypt’s evil genius.

Serag el Din and Madame Nahas occasionally do the nightclub circuit around Cairo. This produces a set routine: just as they come to the side entrance, the lights have a habit of failing, then coming on as soon as they are safely seated behind a couple of partially obscuring potted palms.

Opponents of the pair forfeit their political heads. Madame Nahas and her brother, a businessman, are today among Egypt’s richest people, though their family never had much money. With no visible source of income other than her husband’s salary, Madame Nahas so far this year has bought no less than 750 feddans of land (778 acres).

The Strongest Man? The Wafd has the most efficiently corrupt political organization in the country. At the last elections, policemen handed out ballots to the illiterate fellahin and showed them where to make their marks (in that way one cop boasted he had cast 5,000 straight votes for the Wafd). The party made numerous campaign promises of social reform, has carried out virtually none of them; the one way in which it hopes to keep its popularity and make the people forget about their discontent is to whip up anti-British feeling.

The Wafd government has been negotiating for nearly two years with London to revise the 1936 treaty, which gives the British bases in the Suez Canal Zone. Currently the negotiations are bogged down. Many Wafd leaders do not actually want the British to withdraw from the Canal Zone because they know that the Egyptian army, miserably beaten by the Israelis three years ago, could never alone defend Egypt. King Farouk himself is known to oppose British evacuation but would never dare admit it in public.

There is little hope that other Egyptian parties could do any better than the Wafd. The Saadists, the country’s No. 2 party, a group that broke away from the Wafd in 1938 because it was disgusted with Wafdist corruption, is itself little better today.

All thinking Egyptians and Western diplomats agree that Egypt desperately needs a leader who can give it a thorough house cleaning. The only man who could fill the role, if he chose to, is King Farouk himself. Says one of Britain’s old Egypt hands: “If Farouk were to emerge tomorrow as an active, constructive champion of genuine social democracy, the Egyptian people’s discontent would vanish overnight.”

In its own way, the Moslem Brotherhood has paid him an even stronger compliment. Examining a sheaf of notes taken by a Brotherhood member apparently during an indoctrination session, a U.S. newsman found the following passage: “Brotherhood made bad mistake in deciding not to kill Farouk in 1948 . . . he is strongest man in Egypt . . .”

Mother with Crystal Ball. In 1936, in a bleak stone villa in London’s suburban Kingston Hill, Farouk, a tall, trim boy of 16, got a long-distance call from Cairo. It was his mother, Queen Nazli. “My son,” she sobbed, “you are King.”

Egypt’s shrewd, greedy King Fuad had just died after a 19-year reign. Only six months before, the young prince had arrived in Britian to get a thorough training at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, plus a few lessons in manners and the craft of kingship. The moment he returned to Cairo, he was plumped into an atmosphere of intrigue and luxury. He was surrounded largely by sycophants who catered to his whims and seldom dared contradict him. He inherited a private fortune of $50 million, an annual Civil List income of $400,000, four fabulous palaces, huge estates, yachts. Queen Mother Nazli was a devotee of crystal balls, card reading, the scrutiny of tea leaves, and the augural dissection of pigeons. (She now lives in Beverly Hills where she is reported to be feeling right at home.) Last year, when she sanctioned the marriage of her daughter, Princess Fathia, to an Egyptian commoner, Farouk stripped Nazli and Fathia of their rich Egyptian properties.

Two years after he came home, Farouk, nearly 18, married Farida, 16, a childhood playmate, daughter of an eminent Alexandria judge. She was a beautiful, bright girl, and they loved each other. Six years later, the marriage was on the rocks. The story heard most often is that Farida left her husband because he was running around with other women, but his friends say she had her share of the blame. But in one respect, she had been a disappointment to the King: she bore him three daughters but no male heir.

As a young King, Farouk was popular. Under the influence of his Oxford-educated tutor, Farouk toured hospitals during epidemics, and during wartime air raids he visited the bombed areas, helped clear away the rubble. Farouk went to the houses of the poor. He was well-meaning but naive; one day, eating with a poor family, he was moved to say: “I hope you will some day be able to eat as good food as I do.”

Friend with Light Bulbs. One incident, friends agree, shook the young King badly and may have helped change his course from unquestioning friendship for the West. In February 1942, when Rommel was within a few hours’ tank ride of Alexandria, an Egyptian cabinet crisis developed, and it appeared that the King might name a pro-Axis Prime Minister. The British asked the King to name Nahas Pasha, who was friendly to the allies. Farouk, then at outs with Nahas, refused. Obviously, the British had to do something, but some Britons in Cairo now be lieve that the manner in which they did it was a mistake. On the crucial day, two British tanks rumbled through the gates of Abdin Palace in Cairo. Troops took stations round the building, and British Ambassador Sir Miles Lampson, flanked by high-ranking British officers, marched into Farouk’s study.

“There I was,” said Farouk afterward, “lined up behind the desk with my staff on one side. They came in, and Lampson lined up his staff on the other side, and he started talking. I looked around, and then I signed Nahas’ appointment as Premier.” As the British Ambassador prepared to leave, Farouk said coldly: “Sir Miles, you will regret this day.”

When his tutor died of a heart attack in 1946, the lonely King sought other companions. His choices were strange. One was a short, baldheaded Lebanese journalist named Kareem Tabet, who is now the King’s press counselor and confidant, has been described as Egypt’s Harry Vaughan. Another of the King’s favorites is a little Italian named Pulley Bey, a former palace barber and electrician whom (so the story goes) Farouk used to follow around when he was a child, watching with fascination as he screwed in light bulbs. Now he is a combination court jester and general handy man, recruits poker partners and, occasionally, pretty dancing partners; Tabet, Pulley and a half dozen similar hangers-on are generally believed to be neck-deep in graft, were implicated in the scandal of the sale of faulty arms to the Egyptian army, uncovered after the Arab-Israeli war.

“I Am a Wet Blanket.” Farouk is a lonely man who would like to be gregarious but does not have the knack for it. He used to go to small cocktail parties given by an old American friend, but found that the other guests would freeze up in his presence and stand around silently. Finally he said to his host: “I’m not coming any more because I am a wet blanket.”

There is no doubt that Farouk is intelligent and energetic. Every morning (after breakfasting on a bowl of porridge, five or six eggs, a plate of beans and a pot of coffee) he begins poring over a mass of reports sent him by his special agents in every branch of the government. He updates himself with the latest press clippings, telegrams and diplomatic reports. From then on, he keeps his staff hopping most of the day. He has a quick mind, reads widely, can tell racy stories or discuss foreign policy in seven languages.

But so far Farouk’s intelligence has not been backed by sustained drive. From time to time he walks into cabinet meetings and presents some demand with the words: “I represent the people.” He will sketch elaborate programs of social reform, but somehow nothing ever comes of them. Egypt’s greatest needs—land reform and more industrialization—are nowhere near being met. He has personally made a groping effort to set matters right. Once he gave $10,000 to buy shoes for the barefooted. He has been known to listen to a workers’ petition to redress their grievances, and last May, when Egypt started its social security system, the first in the Middle East, the King distributed the first books to the inhabitants of Cairo: inside each he had tucked a banknote for a sum that would support the aged poor for a few months.

Missing the Bus? Farouk has made attempts at Middle Eastern leadership. At war’s end he sponsored the Arab League; when Ibn Saud balked at joining, Farouk himself dashed off to Saudi Arabia to convince the old King. But, largely because of the Arab world’s disastrous defeat at the hands of the Israelis, the Arab League’s importance has sharply declined. On the surface, Farouk’s interest in foreign affairs has waned, but privately he talks with force and understanding about the Communist menace. He realizes that Egypt’s future is with the West. While he has no choice but to allow his Foreign Minister to rant against the British, behind the scenes Farouk is working quietly to hold nationalism in check, to keep negotiations with the British going.

In Cannes recently the King talked with a U.S. pressagent about what might be done to make the King appear more likable to Americans. There are plenty of things Americans cannot be expected to like about Farouk. There are also plenty of things Farouk cannot be expected to like about the U.S.—notably its support of Israel and its superficial and insufficient policy in the Middle East. Current U.S. policy in Egypt consists of 1) a trickle of Point Four aid; 2) Fulbright fellowships; 3) a sort of passive collaboration with the British; 4) the hope that on his return from his honeymoon Farouk will buckle down to being a better King. With such a record the U.S. is in a bad position to criticize the King for not doing more.

Says an Egyptian editor: “The democracies seem intent on missing every bus. They missed the bus in Iran. Will we be getting a Harriman mission in Egypt when it is too late? There should be more than Harriman missions.”