An interesting take on the power struggle leading up to the 1952 Revolution has been recorded by a close associate of former king Farouk. Salah Al-Shahed served under Farouk as chief of ceremonies, a job he managed to keep under the next three republican rulers, Mohamed Naguib, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and Anwar Al-Sadat. In his Zekrayat fi Ahdein, or “Memories of Two Eras,” Al-Shahed describes a three-way rivalry between the king, the British consul-general in Egypt at the time, and the Wafd Party, as well as offering a glimpse into the inception of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt's nationalist movement, which eventually culminated in a showdown between the Wafd Party and the British occupation, started with the writings and public speeches of various political activists, including Gamal Al-Din Al-Afghani, Mohamed Abdou, and Mustafa Kamel. The rivalry between Lord Cromer, the British consul-general in Egypt at the beginning of the last century, and the Khedive Abbas II whipped up nationalist zeal, leading to an early termination of the Khedive's rule. However, by 1919 the nationalist politician Saad Zaghloul had emerged as the country's most charismatic leader. The son of a village mayor, Zaghloul studied at Al-Azhar and rose up the political ranks after he formed a delegation, or Wafd, to demand an end to the British occupation. From then on, much of the nation rallied behind Zaghloul, catapulting his Wafd Party into the spotlight of Egyptian politics. Zaghloul's successor, Mustafa Al-Nahhas, was a genial, light-hearted person with a quick temper who strove to roll back the British occupation without allowing the king to boost his constitutional powers. A junior partner in Egyptian politics at the time and later was the Muslim Brotherhood, a group founded by Hassan Al-Banna in Ismailia in 1928 as a religious society. The Brotherhood's real involvement in politics began more than a decade later, when Al-Banna ran for parliament in 1942. Reacting to this development, Al-Nahhas summoned Al-Banna to his office and told him in no uncertain terms that the government could not allow the Brotherhood to double as a religious group and a political party. Differences between the Wafd and the Brotherhood grew worse after the appointment of Ismail Sidki as prime minister in 1946, even though Sidki was the first politician to try to undermine the Wafd by boosting the Brotherhood's fortunes. Fouad Serageddin, a senior Wafd politician at the time, later recalled that Brotherhood-Wafd relations were good in this period. He himself was invited to speak at Brotherhood meetings, and as minister of social affairs he promoted the group's interests. According to Serageddin, it was unfortunate that relations between the Wafd and the Brotherhood deteriorated between 1945 and 1950. Ahmed Hassanein Pasha, chief of staff at the court at the time, also encouraged the Brotherhood and met regularly with its leaders. All this led Al-Banna to seek political power. “His self-esteem became inflated, and he began thinking of himself as a politician,” writes Al-Shahed in his memoirs. In 1944, the interior minister received a report to the effect that Brotherhood members were greeting the group's general guide with military parades. Summoning the guide to his office, he told him that either the Brotherhood remained a religious society or it became a political party. It could not be both, he said. Al-Banna's answer was that he could not stop his religious proselytising and so would rather halt his involvement in politics. It was around this time that Karim Thabet, an adviser to Farouk, asked for a cabinet position in the Wafd government. Elias Andraos, the king's financial adviser, passed on the request to Serageddin. “Pasha, are you crazy,” was Serageddin's answer, as reported by Al-Shahed. Andraos argued that Thabit was a journalist close to the king. But the Wafd was unable to agree since it had its own competent people and could not have someone in the cabinet who would be widely regarded as the king's spy. Indeed, between 1946 and 1951 Thabit was at the heart of court life before his sudden fall from grace in 1951 when the new queen, Nariman, asked the king to dismiss him. A few months later, the country was in turmoil. According to Al-Shahed, powerful courtiers including lady-in-waiting Nahed Rashad warned the king of what was to come. Standing at the palace window with the king on 16 January 1952, the day on which crown prince Ahmed Fouad was born, Rashad, a long-time friend of the king, was struck by the lack of public enthusiasm for the birth of the royal baby. “Your majesty, you will have to do something spectacular to win back the nation's heart — or there will be a reckoning,” she said. According to Al-Shahed, Rashad advised the king to give half his wealth to the nation. The king only laughed. Ten days later, Cairo was in flames, and six months later he was dethroned. One of the reasons for the famous Cairo Fire on 26 January 1952 was the stalemate on the Canal Zone, where British forces were stationed against the will of the Wafd Party, which had not only asked for their withdrawal but had also encouraged popular resistance against them. British ambassador Sir Ralph Stevenson met with Farouk's chief of staff, Hafez Afifi, to discuss the crisis, and the king, recognising the perils of future confrontation, was all for a compromise. The British wanted to keep their forces on the Suez Canal as part of a regional defence deal that included several other Arab countries and Turkey. The Wafd rejected this arrangement. After months of negotiations, Wafd leader Mustafa Al-Nahhas Pasha annulled the 1936 Treaty, which legitimated the British military presence in the Canal Zone. The British presence became illegal, and efforts to replace the 1936 agreement with another deal collapsed. Elias Andrawos Pasha was the king's point man on this crisis. According to Al-Shahed, he warned the king that unless a deal was reached, the confrontation between the Wafd and the British could lead to the king's dismissal from power. One of the most remarkable events of these tense months happened in October 1951, when prime minister Al-Nahhas practically held the king captive in his own office. According to Al-Shahed, Al-Nahhas returned from Alexandria to Cairo on the night of 7 March 1951. The next day, “he asked me to install a line from the parliament to his office in the cabinet within an hour. I told the engineers to do this and the job was done,” Al-Shahed writes. Al-Nahhas then summoned Al-Shahed to his office. “He asked me to clear the office and to invite cabinet members to attend a meeting of parliament. Then he told me that the king would arrive soon,” Al-Shahed writes, adding that Al-Nahhas had told him that as soon as the king arrived he should be admitted immediately without anyone seeing him. “Then he asked me to close the office door behind the king and not to allow him to leave.” This was too much for Al-Shahed. He agreed to all of the above, but drew the line at locking the king in a room, with the result that this task had to be completed by the prime minister himself. When the king went into the office of the prime minister, Al-Nahhas told him to remain there and to listen to his speech in parliament through the loudspeaker that had been installed in the room. Al-Nahhas then left the room, locking the door behind him. In his speech he declared the annulment of the 1936 Treaty with the famous words, “I signed the 1936 agreement and for Egypt's sake I call on you all today to abrogate it.” This was the beginning of the king's final reckoning.
