Mohamed Sid-Ahmed comments on an almost four decade relationship with Mohamed Hassanein Heikal There was nothing in my early upbringing that augured the relationship I was to have with Mohamed Hassanein Heikal throughout my life. After graduating from the Lycée Français, I studied law and engineering, got a degree in both but practiced neither. Deeply impressed by the works of French poets under France's resistance movement against the Nazis, notably Aragon and Eluard (both communists), I espoused Marxism in my teens, and was sent to prison before I was 20. When I first met Heikal in 1964, he was already Nasser's close confident and a prominent journalist and I had already served two prison terms totalling seven and a half years. We were released before term, when Kruschev visited Egypt for the inauguration of the High Dam. The story goes that when he met Sadat, who had been dispatched by Nasser to invite the Soviet leader to Aswan, he told him that, being a communist, he could not come to Egypt for fear of being jailed! The message was understood and all communists in Egyptian prisons were released. Back home, I wrote an essay expressing the view that despite the years of prison and torture, the left should back Nasser because a worldwide fundamental change was underway. From an era where the forces of world capitalism were besieging world socialism, we were moving into an era where the forces of world socialism could come to besiege world capitalism, provided movements of national liberation joined hands with the socialist camp. It was thus self-defeating to let quarrels of a secondary nature get the upper hand in the relations between the worlds of socialism and national liberation movements. Inside Egypt, this meant between Nasser and the Egyptian Marxist left. My essay, which was seen as a reflection not of my personal views only but as an acknowledgement by the Egyptian communists that cooperation between the Nasser regime and the Egyptian left should take precedence over any divergence of views, was well received by Heikal. This found its most striking manifestation in the creation, under Heikal's sponsorship, of the Marxist monthly Al-Tali'a, whose editor-in-chief throughout the decade of its existence was our late close friend, Lutfi El-Kholi. In a move that was unprecedented in the history of the communist movement, the Egyptian communists took the momentous decision to dissolve their party following their release from prison. In 1966, a seminar was held in Cairo bringing together Al-Tali'a and Peace and Socialism, the international organ of the communist parties. This symbolised the sealing of a new relationship and seemed to confirm the thesis of my essay. However, Nasser was keen that his opening on the Egyptian Marxists should not produce a coalition of left-wing elements, which would bring together socialists of a Marxist, Pan-Arab and even Islamic inspiration, and eventually become the nucleus for an anti-Nasser regrouping of forces. This placed Heikal in a difficult position. On the one hand, he developed working, and even very friendly, personal relations with a number of Egyptian Marxists, and on the other, he found himself on a collision course with many dignitaries of the regime, known for their excellent relations with the Soviet Union, but who were prevented by Nasser from developing similar relations with the Communist left. Thanks to his position at the heart of the decision-making process, Heikal was privy to the inner workings of government, and was said to be in charge of much of Nasser's delicate dealings with the West, including the United States. Moreover, Heikal was not only a political figure, but also Egypt's most prominent journalist, whose weekly editorials in Al-Ahram were seen, if not as necessarily exactly reflecting Egyptian official policy, at least as expressing an insider's view of that policy. From his vantage point at the crossroads of the Egyptian political scene under Nasser, he was uniquely placed to comment authoritatively on the critical aspects of Egypt's history as it unfolded in a period marked by perpetual turbulence. For a time, the rapprochement between the regime and the left was such that they rarely differed on fundamental issues of policy. Such differences as did exist were usually over the jargon used in making political statements, rather than over the substance of the statements. Communists were very "useful" inasmuch as they could appear as sticking to Marxist dogma while implementing policies acceptable to the Nasser regime. What was mainly distinct was the way issues were addressed, thus making them acceptable to the left and defusing the regime's previous crises with the left. My friendship with Heikal deepened as this process proved feasible and, eventually, successful. It was not always smooth, however, and misunderstandings did arise. I remember, for instance, the Dubcek crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Before the Soviet invasion, I had written an article predicting that the Soviets would not intervene militarily. When they did, Heikal summoned me to his office and said: "Your prediction was wrong." I admitted that I had indeed misread the situation. He answered: "I want you to go to both Prague and Moscow and write how the situation is seen from the perspective of each." It was a wrenching experience, at the end of which all I could find to say was that while the invasion had been a success from the technical point of view, it was difficult to justify politically. This pleased neither the Soviets nor the Czechs, nor, for that matter, Heikal, who decided not to publish my articles. He himself had already devoted one of his weekly columns to the subject and considered it sufficient (Egypt at the time was desperately in need of Soviet weapons). Lutfi El- Kholi published my reporting of the event in Al- Tali'a. My working relationship with Heikal began when I was part of the Al-Tali'a group. Following the 67 defeat, he appointed me as editor of Al-Ahram's opinion page, as well as to Al-Ahram's Centre for Strategic Studies, the first think-tank of its kind in Egypt. My involvement with the centre exposed me to a different type of enterprise. Nasser had been alarmed, during the 1967 war, by the extent of Egypt's intelligence failure and realised that the total lack of knowledge of the opponent was a serious liability. Hence the need for a think-tank that could debate, unhindered, what Israel was all about and how to deal with it, while continuing the policy of avoiding direct encounters, so as not to be seen as giving in to Israel's insistence on direct dialogue. The private debates conducted behind the closed doors of the centre were instrumental in shaping the views I expressed in my book, After the Guns Fall Silent. Not that the other participants in the debate necessarily drew the same conclusions. But the book was definitely my reading of what was underway. The book was a big success abroad (it was translated into six languages, including an Israeli pirate edition), but was violently attacked in the Arab world. The late Khaled Al-Hassan, a veteran leader of the PLO and a close personal friend, explained the furore thus: "Your mistake was to have written this book 10 years too early," implicitly suggesting that the balance of power was still so much to our disadvantage that talking of peace acquired the character of talking of surrender. But, beyond these tactical considerations, the book was actually addressing a fundamental question: is peace between Arabs and Israelis possible, or are we condemned to remain locked in a confrontation that can only end with the definitive defeat of one of the two antagonists? I held the view that peace was a strategic imperative and that under no circumstances should the peace option be rejected out of hand, if only because no one could afford to let the situation degenerate into a worldwide conflagration. Heikal saw the problem otherwise. He believed the global setup did not justify capitulation (what I saw as compromise) at the regional level. This gave rise to a basic disagreement that went far beyond using different terminologies to help reach some form of consensus. But the disagreement did not lead to a rift, perhaps because, as editor of Al-Ahram, Heikal never openly opposed the principle of peace. Then too I never crossed the line of no return by visiting Israel. So co-existence, and I would say even whole-hearted friendship, between Heikal and myself was never affected. But crisis situations did emerge, the most critical being what has come to be described as the Copenhagen affair, which marked the start of a systematic effort to build a common Arab-Israeli peace front. For Heikal, addressing the issue of peace is more a tactical device than a strategic objective. For me, peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict is a strategic objective, even if attaining the objective entails tactical moves to improve the balance of power that cannot be attributed to peace in the short term. The Arab states have all adopted the Saudi initiative based on the exchange of total peace (total normalisation) for the full restoration of occupied Arab territories. This is definitely a recipe for peace as a strategy. But this does not necessarily mean relinquishing the belief that peace should be addressed only as tactics. Heikal is celebrating his 80th birthday next Tuesday, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish him many more years of active contribution to the intellectual life of this country. He is said to have decided to retire from writing, but I do not think that he can, or should, or will. It is hard to imagine him living and breathing without his pen in hand, always ready to share his insight with his many loyal readers. I do not see him remaining silent on the key issues to which he has devoted his life, especially now that the situation calls for all concerned parties to stand up and be counted.
