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After many decades I reviewed him in what he wrote and intended, and his response was: “As a result of the death of Abdel Nasser, and the deep pain for him, I feared to give a priestly character to his political and historical experience, and that will stand at its gates as priests and guards. It interacted with its challenges, succeeded and failed, escalated and regressed, but it happened in the context of a story that is not a myth sought by segments of poets and storytellers. “His value is confirmed by his battles, problems, dreams and the project he called. These are facts of history, not attributed myths.”
In an audio recording with its own circumstances, the publication did not repeat the same meaning: “We saw it with the vision of one eye, not with the imagination of popular biographers.” “We live his experience and we do not listen to it like the story of Zahir Baybars.” “He was a great rebel and a wonderful person.”
In another interview I asked him: “Have you rediscovered Abdel Nasser again, after all the transformations and coups that took place in Egypt and its Arab world against its main options?” He said: “No, I knew the scope of his role. What happened after him confirms and proves that he is an exceptional man, and what I read from Western documents that were not available in the days of July confirms and confirms the plots at that his experience exposed him. “
Why did you approach Abdel Nasser to the point of identification? Why did he walk away from Sadat to the point of confrontation? Two questions in history that are answered in the main policies, trends and options. He rarely alluded, in a press interview, to the reasons for his urgency in opposing Sadat: “He thought that I played an important role in Sadat’s arrival as president, after the departure of Abdel Nasser, and also in supporting him in the circumstances surrounding Egypt during his days ”, referring to the events of May 15. It is said that he is their engineer.
In the first place, he did not agree with the political administration of the October War. Second, he did not agree with new social trends. There was a root link between peace with Israel and economic openness the way it did.
“Sadat tried to create a new class that would support the idea of peace.” “Henry Kissinger’s question was: Where is the social class that can support any strategic change?” “The social revolution has resulted in the creation of a more religious and less ethical class.” “In 1975, I was faced with a changing social situation without anyone telling us where the fat cats came from or how they obtained their wealth.” So said a text on the recorded tape. This was the opposite project to that requested by Abdel Nasser, who participated in the realization of his dream and wrote its main documents.
On the other side of the July experience are the commitments that he did not abandon under any circumstances towards what he thought of ideas. The realization of ideas is before men. He was not defending Nasser, as much as he was defending his own ideas and beliefs. Once, in one of his crises and battles, he said: “You do not defend me, but what you believe in.”
On one side of his office, there was a small statue, perhaps of a Yugoslav sculptor, half of Nasser’s face and the other half of a structure, as if they were one. Something of that artistic conception is at the heart of his vision of his role in the July experiment. I told him when he “asked to go” after his eightieth birthday, and the general feelings overwhelmed him with abundant gratitude: “I hope you pay attention that people have freely chosen you to be, in the last photo, the second man of the Revolution. de Julio without being one of the officers of his direction, or I held any executive position in his experience, with the exception of a limited period, as Minister of Information.
Free choice, weighting date, without publication of weighting. “I felt strange during the sad hours of the game: How did he go … and I didn’t go with him?” He also wrote with his feelings. “Gamal Abdel Nasser gave __________, I think, totally correct answers to the problems posed by the time. Also, Gamal Abdel Nasser carried out ________, I think, solid practices in its entirety to implement what he gave of the answers to the problems posed by the time, as he wrote with his mind. “I have used the term correct answers in its entirety and good practice in its entirety, because there is no experience without errors.”
Nasser’s experience did not mean “Darwish” in the past, but was an inspiration for the future. Everything of value remains, and any mistakes you made do not detract from their merit when they were traded, and their right when faced. “Gamal Abdel Nasser is the basic truth in the history of modern Egypt”, but he used to think that “there are Nasserists and there is no Nasserism.”
Perhaps he wanted to deny the ideological characteristic, which is necessarily associated with such affiliations, for fear of stagnation with the infection of stereotypes, and perhaps he wanted to confirm the expansion of his vision of the political movement in general, without bias towards one group or another, but no one was convinced of the depth as he is an experienced partner and writer. President for your documents.
In the first interview I had with him, together with the then editor-in-chief of Al-Arabi, Mahmoud Al-Maraghi, published on Monday, July 26, 1993, we got into a long discussion that did not reach a beach. In what he said: “I imagine that the disagreement between us is a disagreement with the labels. I have nothing to object to. It is your duty to keep in your literature the details of what Abdel Nasser did, but the affiliation with an individual in the title brings you back, even without your intention of a whole era. Vows change, when you say Abdel Nasser, or Nasiriyah, or Nazarenes, it means that you speak within the limits of the apps he created … but I agree with you on the value of the symbol. ”“ I feared, and still fear, that focusing on the man pushes others until they respond by focusing on the times, the moment and the climate … and the project, the idea and the application, and even reaching people, will be lost ”.
After eight years, the dialogue between us was heated and prolonged without barriers in public affairs, suddenly the “professor” launched a phrase that seemed strange to his political vocabulary: “I am a Christian …”. She interrupted her longing: “This is a confession whose time has come to be announced to the public.” He said, “Not now.” That was in 2001. After another three years, in January 2004, I published his belated confession after asking his permission: “I never believed that Haykal was not a Nazarene, believing that the visions and ideas he wrote were directly related to the project of Gamal Abdel Nasser, which is, as he sees, the project. The renewed nationalist. Heikal said: I am a Nasserite only in this sense. I immediately told him: I am a supporter only in this sense. “
His legitimate cause was the breadth of his action, not the ideology closing it to his statements. He was not concerned with the ideological classification, as much as he was attentive if there was in what he heard, read and followed a value or an idea that made an impact. Dr. Abdel-Wahhab Al-Messiri told him: “I am not a Nasserite.” He replied, “It is not important.” The incident took place in the late 1960s, when Information Minister Muhammad Hassanein Heikal offered the young researcher to join his advisory circle. According to another account by Al-Masiri, he asked him about the secret of his relationship with Abdel Nasser: “If you transform yourself from a journalist into a lyric poet, how is Abdel Nasser for Egypt the future, which is independent development, and how does Arabism can you give this region a civilized identity? And strategic weight, to face the world of large conglomerates ».
His bias towards the project did not prevent him from criticizing the system. The first extends the renewal in time … and the second, its powers expire according to its time. I asked him: “How do you classify yourself intellectually and politically?” He replied, “Center left.” I said, “Why do some of your contemporaries think you are closer to the right?” He said: “They used to think that my experience in the news today affected my intellectual and political formation.” “How can I be a right-wing person who formulated the philosophy of the revolution, the national pact, the declaration of March 30 and the foundational speeches of the socialist experience, in which Nasser declared nationalizations.” “You know I’m not writing something that I’m not convinced of.” “So don’t forget that I was the first to write about the Dawn Visitors and I used the terminology of the power centers and the state within the state and the intelligence state to condemn a method of government after the June setback, and all these are intellectual and political choices that I believe in. ” “Furthermore, my Arab identity is the harvest of the experience of an entire generation that witnessed and was affected by the war in Palestine, and discovered its identity under the blaze of fire.”
* Egyptian writer and journalist
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