On the anniversary of his birth, unprecedented public interest in the self-effacement of his wife emerges as a profoundly affecting accolade by aficionados of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, predicates Gamal Nkrumah Do not be put off by the sudden surge of public interest in a woman, long deceased, who stood literally in the shadows of her irresistible beau -- very rarely by his side. I do pray this does not sound downright misogynistic. She herself stood tall and hers was a monumental achievement -- throughout her conjugal life she had striven to be the perfect homemaker. The most revealing key to her character comes with the use of a single phrase: "The President". In the coming weeks the world, or Egypt and the Arab world at any rate, will be offered the opportunity to determine how unsparing in its depictions of her devotion to her husband and his cause her memoirs detail. As a child, I clearly recall that I never once heard her refer to her husband by his first name during her conversations with my mother. She unwaveringly alluded to him as " Al-Rayes -- the President". But perhaps the more engaging part of the legend is her sense of disgust at being designated "First Lady". It is this sense of propriety that gave her the moral anchor to understand that she was no "Mother of the Nation". Camera shy, her modesty, coupled with a clearly perceptible regal bearing, perhaps it was her Persian origins -- the Iranian blood that ran through her veins -- that bestowed a unique strength of character that was anything but overbearing. But why this curious interest in her on the occasion of his birth anniversary? I suspect it would be going too far to see the seemingly sudden public interest in the somewhat cloistered widow of perhaps the most charismatic leader the Arab world has ever known three decades after his death as directly influencing political developments today. Maybe this newfound obsession with the unpretentious partner of the man of the people is a belated tribute being paid to one of the most elusive female figures in the collective Arab psyche. First his letters to her during the unfortunate episode in Arab history, the Palestine war of 1947-48, were published in Al-Ahram last Friday by distinguished author and columnist Mohamed Salmawy, head of the Egyptian Writers Union. "I published 14 of the 48 letters he wrote to her from the battlefield," Salmawy told Al-Ahram Weekly. Next, Al-Shorouk published her memoirs, the first of the series appeared on Tuesday. The love story that unfolds in both Al-Ahram and Al-Shorouk is, unsurprisingly, a long way from Romeo and Juliet. This is a remarkable story, exceptionally well told. It is a gripping tale not because of its mellifluous prose or melodious romanticism. Rather it is charming precisely because of its down-to-earth nature, the simplicity of the language and the love that exudes from every word written, every white lie told. The letters' focus is not the war itself, but how Gamal Abdel-Nasser tenderly tears through his abhorrence of the battlefield and chilling atmospherics of the frontline with bemusing brevity in order to protect his young and innocent bride from the bitter truth. He likens the scenes of carnage with the beauty and magnificence of the cedars of Lebanon. This satire on armed conflict reveals an idealistic and youthful lover and a perfectly pedestrian love story with a conventional heart beating at its core. All the more odd, then, that the writer of those quixotic letters turns out to be the towering Pan-Arab icon of the 20th century. His world even as he scribbled his billet-doux was teetering on the edge of disaster, of Revolution. He was holding back the central narrative from his beloved. Yet he was about to embark on the most important move in his life. He was soon to become the very embodiment of Pan-Arabism. There was no hint of the enormity of that achievement at the time of his writing the letters to his wife who obviously led a sheltered life and who sought seclusion even when her husband metamorphosed into the most charismatic leader the Arab world had ever known. Taheya Abdel-Nasser was the selfless wife and doting mother. She remained to the end of her life aloof, the homemaker hidden from the public eye, never hounded by the paparazzi. In Aspects of the Novel, E M Forster conjures up, unsuspectingly I presume, an insightful analogy of the relationship between Nasser and his wife. "The king died and then the queen died" is a story. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a plot. "The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king." Forster postulates: "This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development." Now, suppose we substitute "king" with "president" and "queen" with "first lady". The plot thickens. This does not mean that politics is not about life. The political is personal, and Taheya Abdel-Nasser chose not to play too forcefully the part of first lady. But then this particular character trait was the very essence of her grace and mystique. The irony is that she did not set a precedent. Her brother Abdel-Hamid Kazim was reluctant to accept the promising officer as a brother-in-law. Nasser's persistence paid off. 14 January 1944 was a portentous day, the day of reckoning as it were, when her family consented to their engagement. The actual marriage itself took place on 29 June 1944. "My mother left the house of my brother, her family home, with his relative wealth and took up residence with the man she loved who led a simple life. That was the unaffected life they led until his death, and she continued his life of homeliness, plainness and freedom from artificiality until she breathed her last," Hoda Abdel-Nasser, their daughter who was primarily responsible for the compilation of her mother's memoirs, told the Weekly. "My parents were an unobtrusive couple, not much given to social refinements and socialising. They preferred the cosy comforts of their own home." Professor of political science at Cairo University, Hoda Abdel-Nasser does not feign surprise at the unparalleled public interest in her mother's memoirs. Like her parents, she abhors sensationalism, stressing the historical and political import of hitherto unpublished reminiscences. "I believe that younger generations of Egyptians can learn a great deal from mother's self-portrayal. And, I say this in all humility." Do not be put off by remembering the man through his woman, or through the prism of the nature of his relationship with her. For it says as much about him as it does about her. Her death, a decade or so after his, has left an imperative behind it. Taheya Abdel-Nasser comes out in the Al-Shorouk saga particularly well, a hidden star deserving herself of more light.
