In Ferment

From DESMOND STEWART CAI RV SINCE October Cairo has been a fermenting city. The process of fermentation is not rest- ful to sit among. To prolong the metaphor (an unsuitable one, I admit, for a Moslem country), it will be far pleasanter to assess the vintage in a few years' time. Yet angstvoll Cairo is more interesting than easy Beirut, in whose cloudy bars (I write without metaphor) foreign corre- spondents gather their information.

To such gatherers, gleaning from each Cairo plane, each Levantine whisper, the chief thing that has been happening is the sequestration of around 800 people's property, the dramatic first step towards a classless society. The Daily Mail claimed that there had been a mass expulsion of Copts, rivalling Hitler's treatment of the Jews. In making this claim and filing it from Beirut the newspaper was living up to its reputation. When the Coptic leaders in Cairo sent a tele- gram denying the allegations of persecution and discrimination, the newspaper quoted the cable, but added that it had probably been sent under duress. The duress under which the newspaper published its charge is not known. It was not the weight of fact.

No one likes to lose his wealth, even if he acquired it on a race-track or in Carmelite House. The lists of penalised names deserve the pity we give to all sufferers of what Aristotle called reversal. The Egyptians whose property has been put under sequestration are not allowed to touch their capital or dividends; they are 'E--= me—pass it ont allowed to practise a profession and to receive, ve, freely, its emoluments. They are also paid an allowance.

Who are the sufferers? The biggest single bloc was composed of 168 Moslem hashish dealers, impounded in one swoop. The regime is deter- mined to wipe out a scourge which benefits no one, they say, but Israel. What about the re- ligious groupings of the rest? The two great fellah families of the Scrag el-dins and Bedrawis, intermarried and corpulent, are Moslems. A large percentage are exiles from the world of Durrell's novels, people with Greek, Italian, Lebanese or Turkish names; they came to Egypt in Cromer sunshine and they now shiver in a winter which has been appropriately cold. They were, some of them, cultivated, but their lan- guages were French, Greek or Turkish, not Arabic. Their children were educated in foreign schools. This Levantine plutocracy felt- them- selves alien to the Egyptians on whom they lived in a way unknown to the Bourbons. There was never that class-fusion which occurs, for example, in England in times of danger. When the Egypt of the Egyptians was in trouble, this plutocracy lifted their glasses in delight. One such occasion was the Syrian coup; their re- joicings were so open that they were naturallY known to Nasser.

One group has suffered less than any other in the sequestration. Despite the Mail, of the first 650 names which I checked (before the addition of the hashashin), only twenty-one were those of Copts. The Copts are distinct from the Levantine Christians. They are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the Nile Valley who were converted to Christianity and stayed converted. Kinglake noticed a resemblance between Alni !to!, the Sphinx, and the face of a Coptic maiden dancing near him. The Copts may sonic' times quarrel with the Moslems (though less in' tensely than Protestant quarrels with Catholic in Northern Ireland), but they are Egyptian in all their attachments. The Durrellesque fantasy of a Coptic-Zionist alliance, symbolised by the marriage of Nessim with Justine, was a clan" gerous libel on Egypt's Christians. In Beni Mire.

Nasser's own village, Coptic villagers in gallabya work alongside Moslem fellahin.

To the Egyptians inside Egypt the most ex- citing thing this early winter has not been the cutting of prices. though this has been welcome, nor the arraignment of French spies and their contessions on television. What has collected vast crowds round the public TV screens has been the ripping down of the blanket of airlessness which for a long time stifled free discussion. [he blanket had its defenders: they invoked the need for a united front, the problems of unruly Syria, foreign eagerness to divide if given an entry. But the blanket was unpopular

Now in the continuous sessions of the Pre- paratory Committee for Popular Powers there has been a debate as outspoken as anywhere in the world. It has not been enclosed. Each session has been broadcast live; the range of Egyptian-TV now includes the whole Delta and as far south as Assiout; viewers in Israel are said to look in, too.

The 250 members of this committee were nominated: they include university professors, farmers, ministers, workers, women. When it started, there was some scepticism as to whether the discussion would be free. Scepticism has vanished. Nasser has attended frequently and there have been open clashes of opinion.

A writer in his thirties, Khaled Muhammad Khaled, has defended the right of the 'reac- tionaries,' as well as everyone else, to participate in the new society, urging that no one should be penalised for offences which were not offences when they were committed. He quoted a 1952 statement by Nasser that the army would be Purged. 'If the army needed to be purged, but hot annihilated, why should not the parliamen- tary system be purged too, and not annihilated?'

Some of the committee members objected to such flat contradiction of Nasser's own view- Point. Anwar Sadat, the Speaker, silenced such objectors and insisted that Khaled Muhammad should have the right to say exactly what he Wanted. Nasser then gave his own view, that the social revolution could only be carried through by the sections of society in whose interest it was, and pointed out that he had himself over- ruled the censor who on one occasion had tried to forbid the publication of one of Khaled Muhammad's books, on the grounds that it was Communist. Later, the head of the Lawyers' Syn- dicate insisted that freedom of expression should be sacred. 'It does not exist at the moment. There may in fact be no governmental obstacle, but people sense that there is. We must now Make them feel free to say whatever they wish.' Some of the best speakers were in gallabya. One farmer, after hearing a particularly portentous address in classical Arabic, as remote from the popular audience as an Elizabethan sermon to a teenage jazz rally, protested: 'Can't we all talk in colloquial, like the President?'

This 'popular upsurge' is manifest in many vays in Cairo: from the cartoons in the press (one showed an official saying to his boss, `If You want me to stop taking bribes, you must give me a monthly compensation!') to a new questioning among the educated as to where.

Egypt's future alignments (if a non-aligned coun- try can have such things) may lie. There is also anxiety. The security forces are active. They have to be. There is no reason to doubt that French extremists who planned to murder their own President would be equally willing to assassinate Nasser.

In Beirut, only the malevolent story seems to reach the journalists. Rumours flourish. 'Old boy,' mon vieux,' say the confiding whispers, 'Nasser is finished.' This reminds me both of 1956, when the same dangerous rumours were purveyed by the same newspapers and believed. and of a recent rumour in Cairo itself. Three pages had been torn from the November issue of the Paris monthly Horoscope. This was a fact. Why had the censor torn the pages out? 'Be- cause,' I was assured, 'their political astrologer predicted that the first days of December would see the end of Nasser.' A little research via my newsagent (incidentally a Copt) established that the three pages had been torn out in Paris. The sinister omens had been for de Gaulle and not for Nasser.

Much of the'reporting of the current ferment in Egypt has more than a trace of the witch's bowl. This can be amusing. But when it alleges the mass-persecution of Copts, in flat denial of any evidence, it can be as dangerous as witch- craft. The minorities in the past have been ex- ploited by the various outsiders in the Middle East. This led to mistrust on both sides. The Turks had played the Moslems against the Christians. The French and British played the Christians against the then powerless Moslems. Such organisations as the Moslem Brotherhood (always Nasser's bitterest enemies) undoubtedly included a dash of anti-Christian fanaticism with their general xenophobia. Nasser has made strenuous efforts to treat Christians precisely in the same way as Moslems. There is one Chris- tian minister as well as twenty Coptic members in the committee I have described. For Western newspapers to use a legend of their own making against Nasser can only damage our reputation in the Arab world and, worse, the position of the Copts for whom the tears are so needlessly and unscrupulously shed.

hear there's a carol going around about you. Wenceslas.'