In 1950, Egypt was poised on the verge of transition. Two years before, it had lost the Palestine War, and two years later it was to end the monarchy and tell the British occupiers of the country that their time was up. But even back then, the transition was fraught with misgivings and bloodshed. The first supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood was killed in 1950, targeted in a wave of assassinations that took the lives of members of both the opposition and the government. The army was also a bone of contention, with former king Farouk appointing Mohamed Haidar army chief, despite strong resistance from the underground movement known as the Free Officers, which included Abdel-Hakim Amer, later one of the instigators of the 1952 Revolution. Ironically, Amer, who led the Egyptian army in later years, was also Haidar's nephew. Amid the turbulence, many expected communism to win, and the government was not happy about the rising popularity of the communists among the educated and working classes. Indeed, some members of the Free Officers had affiliations with the Democratic Movement for National Liberation led by the Egyptian-born intellectual Henri Curiel, who was expelled from Egypt in 1950. The Muslim Brotherhood was also viewed with suspicion by the government, which finally decided to ban it and seize its assets. However, the media, despite occasional harassment by the authorities, continued to operate with relative freedom. The opposition newspapers, including Al-Kotla, published by Makram Ebeid, and Al-Malayin, published by Ahmed Azzam, brought political debate into the public arena in unprecedented ways. The socialists were also active, and their newspaper, Al-Ishtrakiya, at one point ran images of the impoverished classes with a caption berating the king: “your subjects, Your Majesty!” Demonstrations were common, both by high school and college students. Some of the country's future leaders, including Fouad Mohieddin, still studying medicine at the time, participated in the protests. In 1950, Farouk turned 30, and the country's officialdom celebrated the occasion with typical flare. Egypt's leading singer at the time, Mohamed Abdel-Wahab came up with a special song for the king for the occasion, praising his sponsorship of the arts. “Yalli badaatu al-funoun,” or “you, who brought us the arts,” Abdel-Wahab crooned. Women, hoping to assert themselves in an eastern society that at the time had just a veneer of westernisation, organised themselves under Dorreya Shafik, forming their own party and demanding better education and work opportunities. Meanwhile, the political situation was tense, and Fikri Abaza, chief editor of the magazine Al-Musawwar at the time, wrote an article entitled “Mr Bevin expects war”, going on to write of the British foreign minister that “I have learned that Bevin in his talks with Egyptian officials said that he expected a war. For some reason, these officials didn't interpret this statement as a ruse aiming to undermine their position in the current negotiations [over the evacuation of British troops from Egypt], but only as an honest and truly-held opinion.” A defender of freedoms, Abaza, a liberal thinker, also objected to the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood. Writing in the same year in Al-Musawwar, he commented that “when a military order was issued to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood, I demanded a special session of parliament. I called for a hearing to discuss this action, which is a clear breach of the constitution and impinges on financial and social matters in ways having nothing to do with military affairs or the emergency laws. But no sooner had I made this move than the faces of my parliamentary colleagues darkened, and they obstructed my call. Then the government began freezing the assets of the Brotherhood even before publishing the outcome of its investigations.” The British were refusing to pull their troops out of Egypt, despite the persistent demands of the Egyptian government. Some had hoped that Bevin's visit to Egypt would accelerate the withdrawal, but in his talks with Egyptian officials, Bevin had argued that the continued presence of British troops in the Suez Canal zone was a “military necessity”. As discontent mounted, the appeal of communism increased. For the first time, Egypt's peasants began joining the ranks of the communists, and one celebrated trial at the time saw a musician, a cook, an Armenian photographer, a grocer, and an Al-Azhar-educated man, Abdel-Rahman Mustafa, among the suspects. The first defendant in the case, Mohamed Rizk Sorour, played in the Fire Brigade orchestra. Yet, the country's intellectual life thrived despite the turmoil, and academics such as Abdel-Hamid Younis began examining the country's rich heritage of oral history. Younis earned a PhD with a thesis in which he explained the significance and origins of the story of Abu Zeid Al-Hilali, a folk hero whose tales and travails are the subject of a famous epic that was told at social gatherings and in coffeehouses for generations. Meanwhile, Egypt's ruling family had its usual ups and downs, with the usual combination of scandals, broken marriages, and outcasts. In 1950, princess Faiza, sister of king Farouk, won much praise in the media for her participation in events aiming to empower women. Princess Fathia, another sister, married Riad Ghali and the couple emigrated to the US. They were accompanied by queen Nazli, Farouk's mother, who soon afterward converted to Catholicism. Farouk, meanwhile, divorced his wife, queen Farida. The Wafd Party remained the most popular party in the country, and news reporters noted that Zeinab Al-Wekil, wife of Wafd leader Mustafa Al-Nahhas, had attended the opening of the applied art exhibition in which 11 countries had taken part. Ahmed Hassanein Pasha, palace chief of staff and Farouk's main advisor, died in this same year. Writers denounced the government for allowing the house of Saad Zaghloul in the village of Ibyana to be turned into a grain silo. The government, embarrassed, promised to turn the former nationalist leader's home in Cairo, also known as Beit Al-Umma, or House of the Nation, into a museum. Automobiles were only owned by the elite at this time, but Cairo was also beginning to experience parking problems in the downtown area, and the country's few roads were in generally poor shape. The president of the Royal Automobile Club, Abbas Halim, had been calling on the government to upgrade the desert road to Alexandria, to no avail. When Halim had an accident, leaving him bed-ridden for a time, on that same road, writers railed at the government, accusing it of negligence. “Hopefully Halim's injury will raise the red flag,” one said. Edgar Gallad Pasha, owner of the newspapers Al-Zaman and Le Journal d'Egypte, presided over a ceremony honouring exceptional journalists. The event drew a crowd of dignitaries from the government and the opposition. As foreign minister Mohamed Salah was handing out the prizes, Saleh Al-Bahnasawi, a veteran journalist who was the shortest of those in attendance, made a joke. “Where is my prize? I am under 30, you know,” he said. The quick-minded Abaza retorted, “Under 30 centimetres? Yes, I can see that!” Ihsan Abdel-Qoddous, who was to write some very influential novels in subsequent years, had just published his second novel, Seller of Love. His first, Maker of Love, had appeared the year before. The cinema industry was also experiencing a boom, with artists flocking from across the Arab world to be part of the Cairo-based film scene. Among the films that appeared in this year were Saa li qalbak (Time for your Heart) starring Kamal Al-Shennawi and Shadia; Imraah min nar (Woman on Fire) starring Kamilia and Roshdi Abaza; and Qamar arbaatashar (Full Moon) starring Mahmoud Zulfiqar and Kamilia. Raqia Ibrahim, already a popular actress, starred in Makansh albal (Unexpected) along with Kamal Al-Shennawi and Ismail Yassin. Sabah, still at the beginning of her career, appeared in Okhti Setita (My Sister Setita). This was a time in which family values were changing fast, with Egyptians — especially city dwellers — adopting lifestyles approximating to the Western model. As a result, cartoonists kept pointing out to men that their power was slipping. A cartoon in Al-Musawwar showed an inmate in a mental asylum voicing astonishment at the receding authority of men inside the family. The madman says “you are neither deaf nor blind, so why can't you speak up in your own home?” Another cartoonist shows a traffic jam in Qasr Al-Nil Street in downtown Cairo, with a man who is trying to cross the road, but — having a scarf around his head — doesn't seem to notice the hooting and beeping going on around him. In another cartoon, there are cars parked bumper to bumper on Suleiman Pasha Street (now Talaat Harb Street), barely leaving a space for the moving vehicles. Egypt's population was only 16 million in 1950. And yet the country was experiencing its first bread crises, road troubles, Islamist activism problems, censorship issues, as well as sometimes tense relations with foreign powers.
