Abdel-Moneim Said remembers with respect two Egyptian giants of intellect who passed away recently but whose legacy lives on Two luminaries of the Egyptian intelligentsia died within a single week, yet they belonged to very different worlds. Amin Howeidi entered the public realm through the Free Officers, the driving core of the July 1952 Revolution. Following a lengthy career in government that lasted until the early 1970s he became an eminent strategic and political thinker who expressed his opinions in numerous books and articles. Mustafa Mahmoud, who was the same age, hailed from the world of medicine and turned to the world of ideas in the 1950s, in which realm he epitomised the epiphanies that sometimes occur to philosophers who deal with the boundaries between faith and science, on which subjects he wrote extensively and to which he dedicated his famous television programme, "Science and Faith". Both of these figures had a profound impact on my intellectual career in various ways. Amin Howeidi I had the pleasure of knowing personally. In spite of our difference in age, we struck up an intellectual companionship that began in May 1983 in the cafeteria of the Cairo International Airport. I had recently returned to Egypt after completing my PhD in the US and I was still trying to get a sense of the many changes that had taken place in my country during my five-year absence. I was on my way to a seminar on the security of the Red Sea, to which I had been invited by Abdel-Maguid Farid who heads a London-based Arab research centre, and to my great delight I learned that participants also included Amin Howeidi and Ahmed Bahaaeddin. I was familiar with the historical stature of the former and the intellectual stature of the latter and since I knew I would be taking part in the same conference I took the opportunity to introduce myself. The two were engrossed in a deep discussion, so the introduction consisted of some shaking hands and the customary courtesies, after which they resumed their conversation while I became their silent audience and the serendipitous recipient of the political instruction they imparted. At Heathrow, a car had been designated to transport the three of us to the hotel reserved for us. On the way, however, Bahaaeddin asked the driver to drop him off at the "small" -- he insisted -- flat he had in London. Therefore, it was not long before Amin Howeidi and I were alone in the car and it was at this point that we began a journey that would last more than a quarter of a century of sometimes sustained and at other times intermittent discussion that generally focussed on political and strategic thought and rarely on personal matters. In the car, I knew I was with a man of solid intellectual and professional credentials. A graduate of the Egyptian Military Academy in 1940, he obtained his masters degree in military sciences from the Chief of Staff College in 1951, after which he enrolled in the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, one of the most prestigious military academies accessible to a foreigner, from which he obtained another MA in military sciences in 1955. Then, after his return to Egypt, he obtained an MA in translation, press and publication from the Faculty of Literature at Cairo University in 1956. Amin began his professional career as a teacher in the Military Academy then professor in the Military Chief of Staff College. He also served as the head of military operations planning in the Armed Forces Command. It was Howeidi who designed plans for the defence of Port Said and of Cairo during the tripartite aggression of 1956. In the 1960s, he soared up the government ladder, serving as ambassador to Rabat (1962-1963), ambassador to Baghdad (1963-1965), minister of national guidance (1965-1966), minister of state for cabinet affairs (1966-1967), minister of war (1967- March 1968) and chief of General Intelligence (1967-1970). This was the first time in Egyptian history that the war and intelligence portfolios rested in the hands of a single man. In the field of military operations, he served in the 1948 and 1956 wars. As minister of war and chief of General Intelligence he supervised the operation that led to the sinking of the Israeli destroyer Eilat off the shores of Port Said on 21 October 1967 and, several months later, he oversaw "Operation Al-Haffar (Oil Rig)" in which General Intelligence service agents succeeding in detonating a heavily guarded oil rig during its shipment from Canada to the then occupied Sinai on 28 March 1968. I do not know when Howeidi was struck by the creative instinct and the writing bug, but he certainly was fertile in both. Among his many works are How Zionist Leaders Think, Arab Security versus Israeli Security, The Game of Nations in the Middle East, Kissinger and the Management of International Conflict, Lost Opportunities, and The 1967 War: Mysteries and Enigmas. In 1971, he was arrested and imprisoned along with 91 others accused of treason. Brought to trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he was sentenced to house arrest for almost 10 years. Following his release he produced Insights into the Causes of the 1967 Defeat. It was exciting to be in the presence of all this history in person. I first learned of Operation Al-Haffar, which was not yet public knowledge, in a café in London where we met before setting off to see the multi-Oscar- winning film Gandhi. However, the story that most impressed me revolved around the part he played in saving Egypt following the defeat in June 1967. It was he who persuaded president Gamal Abdel-Nasser to summon the resolve to place Egypt's interests over his personal feelings towards Field Marshall Abdel-Hakim Amer. In an article I once wrote I urged the government to award three individuals the highest state medals of honour, even the Grand Collar of the Nile, for the vital services they performed for Egypt. These were Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Osama El-Baz and Amin Howeidi. Early in the morning on the day this article appeared, I received a phone call from Howeidi. "Thank you for your support, Abdel-Moneim," he said, his voice quivering with emotion. It immediately struck me how a public figure must feel when he does not receive the appreciation due to him. The sorrow I felt that day was only eclipsed by the grief I felt when I learned of his death and the loss of one of our great thinkers and heroes before the country that he loved so much could reward him with the appropriate acknowledgement of his services and personal sacrifices. I can think of no other individual in modern Egyptian history that combined practical experience and strategic thought as thoroughly and extensively as Howeidi did. Although he left active public service many years ago, he remained a dedicated scholar and prolific writer, bequeathing a rich and invaluable library that is indispensable to students of history. Mustafa Mahmoud was also a very prolific writer. I had never had the opportunity to know him personally, although we may have met once or twice on public occasions. Perhaps his last phase of output was not the most influential; indeed, I sometimes felt that he pressed information to meet the views and theories he advocated. In his "Science and Faith" programme, in particular, the material was often manipulated to conform to Darwinian theory and some of its philosophical offshoots. Nevertheless, this by no means refutes the fact that his early writings influenced an entire generation of Egyptians. I personally found Relativity, in which he explained Einstein's famous theory, an excursion into a magical world that opened infinite doors to the possibilities of science and technology. The memory of this experience still remains with me. Moreover, I owe to Mahmoud much of the credit for my discussion of science and technology as a fundamental factor in shaping the international order in my book, The Arabs and the Future of the Global Order. Indeed, so impressed was I by Relativity that I included it on the syllabus for Al-Bagour Secondary School for several years. In fact, I ranked Relativity alongside Abbas El-Aqqad's series on geniuses and Anis Mansour's Around the World in 200 Days as some of the most mind-opening and thought-provoking works to shape my intellectual outlook. I will continue to harbour the deepest gratitude to and respect for Amin Howeidi and Mustafa Mahmoud. I am indebted to them both.
