By Nesmahar Sayed No amount of time will relieve the bitterness of the June 1967 defeat, but it is less to its redress in October 1973 than to the Naksa itself (as said defeat is euphemistically known) that Yuzbashi (Captain) 's most miraculous feat is due. A reconnaissance officer of distinction, Ayyad was the last to return from the battlefield in that doomed summer, a good six weeks after the war ended on 5 June -- dodging both enemy and collaborators. A Copt whose faith carried him through the worst, Ayyad remains a staunch believer not only in national unity but in the concept of rebirth. Despite the repeated pleas of his children, now settled abroad, he refuses to leave the homeland whose sands quite literally soaked up his blood. His conviction is that it is through the birth and rebirth of its children, both Muslim and Coptic, that Egypt will progress through the ages. And it was this conviction and no other that informed every step on the way. At his Mohandessin apartment, Ayyad welcomes us unaided, bearing a tray of cool drinks. A handsome man, he looks remarkably younger than his years; there is hardly a sign on his smooth, smiling face of the horrors he endured at various points in his life. A lucky man, frequently reborn: not only did he survive, but he lived to have a wife, two sons and a daughter -- all successful; as much in his family life as in the war, more to the point, he is someone who knows his duties and lives up to them. A role model: Ayyad believes his story could be of benefit to the generations, and, being the epitome of modesty, this is the principal reason he is now eager to tell it. He tells it beautifully. Born on 24 October 1939, Ayyad was born again on 15 July 1967, when he was safely home from the Rafah border, where the enemy roamed freely, having walked some 400km to Ismailia despite his wounds. It had all started on 29 May, when Egyptian troops moved closer to the Israeli forces, to the point when only 300-500m separated the two sides; Ayyad's unit was stationed opposite to an Israeli settlement. "I stayed in this unit till 4 June, when, hearing tanks, I sent the required signals to those in charge." The sounds went on all night, and by morning the Israelis were attacking in full force. Soldiers mistook them for Iraqi forces coming to Egypt's aid, but one look with his binoculars confirmed Ayyad's suspicion that he could make out the Star of David. The unit used three-barrel anti-aircraft weapons, but the enemy proved stronger. At the time, he explains, the majority of Egyptian forces were still in Yemen, aiding the revolution to no avail. Troops stationed in Sinai were rather badly equipped for defence -- the main reason, according to Ayyad, behind the Naksa. It was 9am when the tanks came into the Egyptian cannon's field of view; with the aid of a single soldier, Ayyad managed to hit two of them before receiving three bullets: one in his arm, two in his left leg. "They were on top of the hill, we were down below. The soldier was instantly dead. I grabbed his detonator and tried to continue shooting from behind a hill, but before I knew it, I had fainted and just lay there on the sand. The next thing I knew there was a small voice calling ' Ya afandim !' [Sir!]". It was a soldier from another unit bearing the terrible news: everyone else was dead. Shot in the leg, the soldier had sought Ayyad's company on hearing him groan, and suffering thirst and hunger, together they crawled some 300 metres before falling unconscious again. The next day the soldier could move but, dispatched to look for water, he came back some eight hours later with a live chicken -- "stolen from a Bedouin hut" -- and was sent back with it, never to return (they would have a brief reunion in the course of the next 10 days, before Ayyad lost the soldier for good). It was on 7 June that, with the help of an impromptu stick, his thirst unquenched, Ayyad set off into the desert, on foot, alone. "As a reconnaissance officer," he says. "I had memorised the desert and knew my way around." It was hard going, but he persisted until he came upon a figure with a hoe. At first he thought he had hallucinated the sight, as castaways often do in the wilderness, but the man turned out to be real enough -- and offered him shelter -- only, as he remembers bitterly, to abandon him later on. The Bedouin was rude and uncouth, more in sympathy with Israelis, who paid LE10 instead of LE2 for newspapers, he said. Sarcastically, he expressed surprise at the quality of the shirt Ayyad was wearing, which he doubted the Egyptian army could provide. Feeling that he was unsafe with him, Ayyad was later to realise the man was an Israeli agent. Still, he refused to be handed over to the International Red Cross, preferring his condition, to being a prisoner of war. Ayyad was given water and bread, and, after 10 days, set off on camel back with the Bedouin, only to be left alone in the desert; when the sun came up he realised they had been moving in the wrong direction all along. "We should have been walking west, in the direction of the Suez Canal; we had actually walked south, and I had ended up near Abu Ejeila where the army had been stationed: there was nothing and no one. I kept looking all around -- nothing but sand. I was exhausted. My hunger was such that I felt unimaginable pain, I could no longer move and I collapsed once again on the sand." Two days later Ayyad was saved again, but the Bedouin who took him in this time was genuinely sympathetic. Amazingly, he could tell from the hoof prints that the camel belonged to Mahmoud El-Hawly. They walked for the rest of the day, when they came to a hut -- where he met Sheikh Khalaf, the local clan chief who was to become a friend for life. "By then the wounds smelled so much that, no sooner had he seen me than he ordered someone to bring over a bucket of water and fresh change of Bedouin clothes. Later, a goat was slaughtered in his honour; he remembers balking at the prospect of eating with his bare hands -- the fatta was as yet too hot. "Later, when all the others had finished, I ate my fill. Then we sat down and he asked me to tell him my story. The next day was a Friday and everyone went to pray. Sheikh Khalaf asked me if I was going to pray along with them, and I said, 'no, because I am Christian'." The chief's response to this was so warm and welcoming that Ayyad felt even more at home. Such, he insists, is the genuine Egyptian spirit, which makes no distinction between Muslim and Copt. Neither in the army nor in any other aspect of life has he ever felt any kind of discrimination; sectarian strife is rather a more recent result of badly educated mosque imams and politically motivated fundamentalists. "There was never any difference," he repeats. A boxing champion at the military college, Ayyad could not stay still for very long; and, with the permission of Sheikh Khalaf -- whose only condition was that Ayyad avoid the area while the women were there -- he took to walking the small distance to the well and back to train his legs; 25 days on, feeling ready despite resistance from Sheikh Khalaf, he determined to set out. The chief sent him off with an old man and a young man, once again on camel back; their provisions, he remembers, consisted of a bag of flour and a tankard of water: a fire fuelled by camel dung was used to bake as much bread as they needed every day. "While we were saying good-bye, Sheikh Khalaf looked into my face and said he was sure I would be home safely." They walked some 60km, due west, from 4pm to 10am every day; Ayyad confirmed that they were in the right direction by looking up at the stars. But they arrived at the Arish Airport, 23 kilometres away from the town, to find it was occupied by the enemy. They separated temporarily to avoid being seen, with Ayyad running to a safe spot and falling asleep there. After walking another 60 kilometres they came to Beer Al-Abd, where Sheikh Khalaf's friend Sheikh Abu Marzouqa was awaiting them; the party had been required to bring back a letter from Sheikh Abu Marzouqa to the effect that he had received the yuzbashi, and they did not leave until they had. Ayyad stayed hidden in the desert until the opportunity for transportation presented itself: there were boats belonging to a man named Abu Zikri that could carry him across Lake Bardawil to Port Said -- a northern detour that would deliver him to relative safety. With three officers, two soldiers and two Gaza Council employees whom he had found at Abu Marzouq's, he set off. "They found a camel for me -- I was the only injured party -- but on reaching the shore, we realised Abu Zikri's boats were no longer operating because of Israeli presence, so I managed to convince them by sheer force of will, one of us went back to fetch water and we set on, one foot on the shore, the other in the water. We also met six Palestinian fedayeen who, seeing my condition, refused to travel with us, only to end up shot dead. We had been given the latest news by the person who went back to get water: the last point at which Israelis could be found was Al-Qat', a small canal connecting the sea to the Port Said salt ponds. Whoever wants to get to Cairo must cross that canal -- as I told people who kept asking, 'is the canal deep?' after I finally arrived. As we approached Port Said I felt perfectly fit, as if I hadn't been injured at all. My main concern at this point was landmines, and the possibility of being shot at by Egyptians who might mistake us for the enemy -- we had no papers whatsoever to prove who we were. At Port Fouad, where I arrived at 8am, I met a Sudanese battalion of five or six people who had come to help the Egyptian forces. They gave us food and water, and I finally sat down to write a report for the military intelligence -- an army officer again." But it wasn't Ayyad's last brush with death. On the way home from Ismailia, the train he had boarded narrowly escaped an air raid that levelled the railway station. After 15 days at the Helmiya Military Hospital, where the bullets were finally pulled out of his flesh, Ayyad could resume life normally. While on his deadly odyssey, he had thanked God that his mother had been deceased before the war broke out; evidencing a remarkable faith, however, "my father met me as if I'd been away on a trip, saying he had known all along that I would be back." To avoid the massive numbers who kept visiting to ask about their loved ones -- painful questions Ayyad was unable to answer -- he went to Alexandria, coming back for a huge party after which he was meant to be placed in charge of the Rimaya Club in Haram -- a much sought after, and safe position which gave him a three-year respite before he joined the October War as head of the 39th infantry battalion. On his release from service, Ayyad received the Order of Duty from President Hosni Mubarak in 1982 following the return of occupied Sinai, when he made the journey back to the site from which he set off to pay his respects to Sheikh Khalaf, who is now mediating between the Bedouin and security forces in North Sinai, Ayyad informs us with pride. Then he turns to me, beaming: "what else will you have to drink?"
