Before the Throne

62

HORUS CALLED OUT, “Gamal Abdel Nasser!”

A tall man entered; his features were strong and his personality powerful. He continued to stride forward until he stood before the throne.

Osiris asked him to state his case.

“I come from the village of Beni Murr, in the districts around Asyut,” Abdel Nasser said proudly. “I was raised in a poor family, from the popular classes, and endured the bitterness and hardships of life. I graduated from the War College in 1938, and took part in Wafdist demonstrations. I was besieged along with the others at Falluja in 1949. The loss of Palestine dismayed me, but what disturbed me even more was the depth of the defeat’s roots inside the homeland.

“Then it dawned on me that I should transfer the fight to within, where the real enemies of the nation were hiding in ambush. Cautiously and in secret, I formed the Free Officers’ organization. I watched as events unfolded, waiting for the right moment to swoop down upon the regime in power. I realized my objective in 1952, then the Revolution’s achievements — such as the abolition of the monarchical system, the completion of the total withdrawal of British troops from the country, the breaking up of the big landed estates through the law of agricultural reform, the Egyptianization of the economy, and the planning for the comprehensive revamping of both farming and industry to benefit the people and to dissolve the divisions between the classes — came one after another. We erected the High Dam while creating the public sector on the path to building socialism. We built a powerful, modern army. We spread the call for Arab unity. We assisted every Arab and African revolution. We nationalized the Suez Canal. In all this we were a beacon and a model for the entire Third World in its struggle against foreign colonialism and domestic exploitation. In my time of rule, working people enjoyed strength and power not known to them before. For the first time, the way was made for them to enter the legislative assemblies and the universities as well, when they could feel that the land was their land and the country their country.

“But the imperialist forces lay waiting to spring upon me — and then the detestable defeat of June 5, 1967 descended upon me. The great work was shaken to its foundations, and I was doomed to what seemed like death three years before I actually expired. I lived a sincere Egyptian Arab, and died an Egyptian Arab martyr,” Abdel Nasser ended his opening statement.

“Allow me to convey to you my vast love and admiration,” gushed Ramesses II. “What is my affection for you but an extension of my love for myself? For look how much we resemble each other. Both of us radiate a greatness that filled up our own country till it spilt over her borders. Both of us fashioned a surpassing victory from a defeat, while neither of us was satisfied with his own glorious accomplishments, raiding the deeds of our predecessors as well. To my good fortune, I sat on the throne of Egypt when she was supreme among nations, while you ruled when she was a tiny band of believers straggling amongst titans. The God bestowed strength of spirit and body upon me through all my long life, while begrudging you but a little of these things, hastening your demise before your time.”

“Your interest in Arab unity was higher than your interest in Egypt’s integrity,” bemoaned Menes, “for you even removed her immortal name with one stroke of the pen. You compelled many of her sons to migrate abroad, such as happened only in fleeting moments of subjugation.”

“I am not to blame if some Egyptians see Arab unity as a catastrophe for themselves,” disputed Abdel-Nasser, “nor if I accomplish majestic things that those who came before me were too weak to achieve. For in truth, Egyptian history really began on July 23, 1952.”

A hubbub arose among those present, continuing to build until Osiris called out, “Order in the court! Ladies and gentlemen, you must allow everyone to express their opinion freely.”

“Permit me to hail you in my capacity as the first revolutionary among Egypt’s poor,” began Abnum. “I want to testify that the wretched did not enjoy such security in any age — after my own — as they did in yours. I can only fault you for one thing: for insisting that your revolution be stainless, when in fact the blood should have run in rivers!”

“What is that butcher raving about now?” objected Khufu, scowling.

“Do not forget that you are no longer sitting upon your throne,” Osiris berated him. “Say you are sorry.”

“I am sorry,” said Khufu sheepishly.

“Despite your martial upbringing,” Thutmose III lectured Abdel-Nasser, “and though you have proven your outstanding ability in many other fields, none of them were military. Nor were you a military leader in any serious sense of the term.”

“One must forgive my defeat by an army equipped by the most powerful state on the face of the earth!”

“Your duty was to avoid war and to refrain from provoking superior powers!” Imhotep, vizier to King Djoser, rebuked him.

“That conflicted with my goals, while I was deceived more than once!” Abdel-Nasser complained.

“An excuse worse than the offense,” snapped Ptahhotep.

“You attempted to blot my name from existence, along with the name of Egypt,” said Saad Zaghloul. “You said about me that I rose on the crest of the 1919 Revolution. Let me tell you about the meaning of leadership. Leadership is a divine gift and a popular instinct. It does not come to a person either by blind luck or chance. The Egyptian leader is the one to whom all Egyptians pledge their allegiance, regardless of their differing faiths — or he will never be leader of the Egyptians. He may also be an Arab or Islamic leader — for which, in any case, I don’t reject your claim. I consider your slander against me but a youthful indiscretion, that perhaps could be tolerated in view of the glorious services you have rendered. The Urabi Revolution was a noble struggle that was thwarted most painfully. The 1919 Revolution was one of the great exploits bestowed by history, but its enemies grew more and more numerous until it was wiped out with the burning of Cairo. Then your revolution came, and you put paid to its enemies as you completed the message of the two earlier uprisings. And though it began as a military coup, the people nonetheless blessed it and gave it their loyalty. It was in your power to build its base among them and to establish an enlightened, democratic form of government. But your delusive impulses toward autocracy were responsible for all the drawbacks and disasters of your rule.”

“We needed a period of transition to fix the foundations of our revolution,” Abdel-Nasser asserted.

“That is a feeble dictatorial claim that we always hear from the nation’s enemies,” Mustafa al-Nahhas, Zaghloul’s successor as head of the Wafd Party, retorted scornfully. “You had at your disposal a popular Wafdist fundament which you crushed with your tanks. You were incapable of creating an alternative to it, and the country suffered in a vacuum instead. You stretched out your hand to the criminals of the land, falling into an unfortunate contradiction between a reforming project whose spirit had come from the Wafd, and a style of rule inspired by the king and the privileged elites — until this way of running things frustrated all your fairest designs.”

“True democracy to me,” swore Abdel-Nasser, “meant the liberation of the Egyptians from colonialism, exploitation, and poverty.”

“You were heedless of liberty and human rights,” al-Nahhas resumed his attack. “While I don’t deny that you kept faith with the poor, you were a curse upon political writers and intellectuals, who are the vanguard of the nation’s children. You cracked down on them with arrest and imprisonment, with hanging and killing, until you had degraded their dignity and humiliated their humanity, until you had had eradicated their optimism and smashed the formation of their personalities — and only God knows when their proper formation shall return. Those who launched the 1919 Revolution were people of initiative and innovation in the various fields of politics, economics and culture. How your high-handedness spoiled your most pristine depths! See how education was vitiated, how the public sector grew depraved! How your defiance of the world’s powers led you to horrendous losses and shameful defeats! You never sought the benefit of another person’s opinion, nor learned from the lessons of Muhammad Ali’s experience. And what was the result? Clamor and cacophony, and an empty mythology — all heaped on a pile of rubble.”

“I moved my country from one condition to another, just as I shifted the Arabs and the course of helpless nations. The problems will be treated until they disappear. In time, they will be forgotten, while what was helpful to humanity will remain. Then the people will affirm my true grandeur.”

“If only you had been more modest in your ambitions, if only you had stuck to reforming your nation and had opened the windows of progress to her in all areas of civilization. The development of the Egyptian village was more important than the world’s revolutions. Encouraging scientific research was more urgent than the campaign in Yemen. Combating illiteracy was more imperative than confronting global imperialism. Unfortunately, you wasted an opportunity that had never appeared to the country before. For the first time, a native son ruled the land, without contention from king or colonizer. Yet rather than curing the disease-ridden citizen, he drove him into a competition for the world championship when he was hobbled by illness. The outcome was that the citizen lost the race, and himself, as well.”

Here Isis had her say.

“My joy at the return of the throne to one of my children cannot be contained!” she exclaimed. “His magnificent accomplishments would need all the walls of the temples in order to record them. As for his faults, I do not know how to defend them.”

Osiris then announced his verdict.

“If our trial here had the last word in your judgment,” he declared, “we would be compelled to give long and difficult consideration to arrive at justice. Certainly, few have performed so many services to their country as you have for yours, nor brought down so many evils upon it as you have, as well. However, in your case, being the first of Egypt’s sons to occupy her throne since olden times, and the first to devote himself to the laboring people’s welfare, we will suffer you to sit with the Immortals until this tribunal ends. Afterward, you shall go to your final trial with an appropriate recommendation.”