An Affair to Remember

Review by Sheryl Feldman

Nasser: The Last Arab
Säid K. Aburish
Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin's Press
New York, 2004
                                                 355pp

The author was driving in California when he heard the news that Nasser died.  He lost control of the car for a moment, then pulled over to the side, parking awkwardly, put his face in his hands and sobbed. An officer pulled up to check on the oddly placed vehicle and when he saw Said Arburish, asked him waht was troubling him.

There has been a death in my family, sir" he said. "I just heard it on the radio."

Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power when the Middle East was being racked by Cold War players.  The USSR was in an expansionist mode and coveted Middle Eastern oil and territory; the west, shcoked by Russian aggression after World War II, was determined to hold it back. So the Westerners, also attracted by oil, went in with crowbards, upending regimes, redrawing boundaries, installing kings, assassinating the irritating, even shoving a brand new country - Israel - onto the Middle Easern map.

In Egypt, the Egnlish dragged their feet, coming up with one excuse after another for maintaining their adminstrative interference and military presence in a land bisected by the Suez Canal.

None of this abuse did much for the Arab's feelings of self-worth, which had been fragile since the decline of the Ottoman Empire anyway.

Enter Nasser, a man who knew the people of his country by having grwon up in towns all over it. A sensitive type, a voracious read who "incorporation what he read into an Arab-Saidi [read tribal] attitdue twoard pride and dignity and ...religious tolerance.'  His favorites were of "conquering heroes, notas lovers of war but as liberators."

As Said K. Arburish present shim, Nasser is a seriously flawed leader. While cntreal to the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy and the dismissal of British trooops, neither he nor his colleagues had much of a schme for replacing the government which did exist. The Free Officers, the group of  army officers who led the overthrow, called for the removal of the British, the liquidation of feudalism, the end to domination by the wealthy, the establishment of social equality, the rebuilding of the army and a healthy democratic atmosphere." Arburish calls the program so naive as to be laughable."

Of all Nasser's failing, including his turn toward dictatorship in his later years, his inability to transform dream into strategy and political structure is the fault which Arburish most regrets. After all Nasser had been able to ascend from revolutionary hero into being the "Voice of the Arabs." In Egypt and throughout the Middle East; he was a star, attracting huge crowds by speaking their dreams aloud and embodying their sorthist sense of identity.  He gave them back the dignity and self-respect which had been undercut by history.

Had it been a different time, had the West been less ignorant and suspicious of him, had it been less pre-occupied by the Soviet threat and the establishment of Israel, had it been more willing to partner with him in development, to compensate for some of his weaknesses, he might have pulled off a genuine internal revoltuion in Egypt. Instead he  put his energies into rallying the Arabs region-wide, in hopes of creating a bulkhead of self-respect against western forces.

But that's wishful thinking, which Arburish doesn't indulge in.  Like the throngs who crowded Nasser's speeches, Arburish appreciates his power, but he is not sparing in pointing out where the man went wrong.

In the end, the book reads like a love story of youth recalled in maturity. Nasser and his people tragically failed the dreams envisioned.  Some of Arburish's disappointment still spikes through the text.  But in the end, it's the poigance of the dream of Arab dignity which lingers longest after the book .

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