The memoirs of former senior official Salah Al-Shahed make for fascinating reading, especially for the light they shed on what went on behind the scenes during the rule of both King Farouk and the man who replaced him, president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. The following are some of Al-Shahed's stories about diplomatic manoeuvres, pan-Arabism and the unusual behaviour of some of Egypt's allies. FALCON ADVENTURE: In his first ever visit to Egypt, Yugoslavia's president Josip Broz Tito went to Al-Qanatir with president Nasser. The promenade area, 20km north of Cairo, is famous for its barrages. This was in early January 1956, and Nasser threw a banquet in Tito's honour. The guests, seated in the garden, had finished the first course of fish. It was time for the second course. Fifteen waiters emerged from the kitchens, each carrying a plate bearing a Fayoum rooster. But as soon as the plates were laid on the tables, a falcon swooped down, snatched the rooster closest to Tito, and flew away. Tito and his aides exchanged glances, and for a while no one would touch the food. PAN-ARABISM, TAKE ONE: In the spring of 1956, just before Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, Cairo made an unusual overture to Damascus and Saudi Arabia. Syrian prime minister Said Al-Ghazzi came for preliminary talks in Cairo and was joined a few days later by the country's president, Shukri Al-Quwwatli. Between 7 and 12 March, Egyptian and Syrian officials held intensive talks about a political pact with Saudi Arabia. On 9 March, Nasser and Al-Quwwatli travelled in a motorcade to the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, with throngs of people waiting to greet them along the way. It wasn't clear what the two men had agreed to do. But when the Jeddah Pact was signed one month later, Saudi Arabia and Yemen also put their signatures to a deal that could have cemented Arab unity. However, Nasser's defiance of the West proved too much for Arab conservatives, and the pact proved to be short lived. QURANIC ENCHANTMENT: In 1960, King Mohamed V of Morocco came to Egypt to attend festivities to mark the building of the Aswan High Dam. Before dawn, the king would get up and head out to a mosque to pray, accompanied by the Moroccan ambassador to Cairo. When asked what he liked most about the city, the king said that its Quranic chanters had the sweetest voices he had ever heard. MOROCCAN CUISINE: Moroccan King Hassan II, when he was still crown prince, wanted to throw a reception for his well-wishers in Cairo. He summoned the head chef at Groppi's to Al-Kobba Palace in Cairo, where he was staying. He discussed the menu, going into detail about Moroccan cooking and elaborating on various recipes. When the time for the banquet came, guests were seated in a large tent designed in the Moroccan fashion in the palace gardens. Near the tent, a buffet was set up with many different types of delicacies. The first course appeared, and the guests — seated on cushions in front of low tables — started to eat. A minute later, an army of waiters appeared and took the plates away, much to the guests' surprise and indignation. A second course then appeared, and that didn't last more than a minute or two at the tables either. The scene was repeated again and again, as the king had apparently wanted his guests to enjoy the full range of Moroccan cooking, and all at lightning speed. JOINING THE UNION: After Egypt and Syria declared their unity in 1958, Yemen decided to join the new union as well. The then-ruler of Yemen, Imam Ahmed, sent his son Badr to Damascus to sign the deal but took no further steps to merge his country's institutions with those of the Egyptian-Syrian federation, known as the United Arab Republic. Ahmed maintained a close hold on the strings of power in his country, and Yemen's envoys to the union were visibly pleased when Syria seceded in September 1961. However, wishing to stay in Cairo's good books, Badr came to Cairo for talks, arriving at the tail end of a tour that had taken him to Russia, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. When he was comfortably settled at Al-Tahra Palace, Egyptian officials asked him about what he had seen during his trip. His answer took them by surprise. He said that having seen the standard of living in these countries he could not imagine how anyone could be resigned to living in Yemen. In the meantime, his father was composing poems lampooning Nasser and socialism. THE ‘BELOVED OF ALLAH': On 22 April 1956, during a period when Cairo was on good terms with Yemen, Nasser went to visit Imam Ahmed, who was staying in a luxury guesthouse in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian president entered a large reception room and sat to the right of the Yemeni imam. All of a sudden, 40 children, none of them older than ten, crept out from under the seats and started chasing each other around the room. Nasser, stunned, said nothing. The imam turned to him and said that the children were the “beloved of Allah”. As it turned out, they were either the orphans of people he had had killed during various power struggles, or were from rival clans and were being kept as hostages. WHO CAN YOU TRUST? When Imam Ahmed decided to travel to Italy for medical treatment, he asked Nasser if he could borrow the luxury yacht Al-Horriya to take him there. Nasser agreed. The yacht left Suez for Yemen but wasn't allowed to dock in Taez. It stayed outside the port until it ran out of water, food and fuel and had to turn back. Rumour had it that the imam was afraid that he would be poisoned or killed if he boarded the yacht. The imam travelled to Italy by other means. But for his return trip he again asked Nasser to borrow Al-Horriya. Once bitten, this time Nasser was cautious. Certainly, the imam could have the yacht, but he would have to promise to use it. Before the yacht was dispatched, however, the imam hired another ship, called the Sidney, for the trip. The imam passed by Port Said on his way back home, and Nasser went to the city to greet him. Boarding the ship, he noticed an inordinate number of machine gun-toting guards on duty. When he went into the imam's room for talks, the guards also came fully armed into the room and stayed there for the whole encounter. Apparently, the imam wasn't in a trusting mood.
