Harper&Row, Publishers N ew York Hagerstown San Francisco London Publisher's Note All of the author's proceeds from this book are donated to the committee in charge of the social, cultural, and educational development of the village of Mit Abul-Kum, Egypt. Portions of this work originally appeared in Time magazine. in se a r c h o f id e n t it y . Copyright © 1977, 1978 by The Village of Mit Abul-Kum. English translation copyright © 1977, 1978 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For informa­ tion address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto. FIRST EDITION Designed by C. Linda Dingier Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sadat, Anwar, 1918- In search of identity. Includes index. 1. Sadat, Anwar, 1918- 2. Egypt—Presidents— Biography. I. Title. DT107.828.S23A33 1978 962’.05'0924 [B] 77-3767 ISBN 0-06-013742-8 78 79 80 81 82 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For the love of peace Contents Prologue 1 1 From Mit Abul-Kum to the Aliens’ Jail 2 2 The Struggle for the Liberation of Egypt 41 3 The Liberation of "Self”—Cell 54 68 4 The July 1952 Revolution 94 5 Revolutionaries in Power 116 6 The Powerlessness of Power: Egypt under Nasser from July 1956 to June 1967 142 7 Interlude: A Struggle for Survival 181 8 The Second Revolution (May 15, 1971) 204 9 The October War 232 10 The Road to Peace 271 Epilogue 314 Appendixes I. Text of Message from President Sadat to President Brezhnev 317 II. Directive from President Sadat to Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces 325 Vlll CONTENTS III. Strategic Directive from President Sadat to Commander-in-Chief o f the Armed Forces 328 IV. Telegram from President Sadat to President al-Assad of Syria 329 V. Speech to the Israeli Knesset 330 Index 344 Illustrations follow page 216. Prologue I, Anwar el-Sadat, a peasant born and brought up on the banks of the Nile—where man first witnessed the dawn of time—present this book to readers everywhere. This is the story of my life, which is at the same time the story of Egypt since 1918—for so destiny has decreed. The events of my life have coincided with those which Egypt has lived during that period. I therefore tell my story in full, not merely as the President of Egypt, but as an Egyptian whose life has been intimately bound up with that of Egypt. It is, I believe, like every man’s life, a journey in search of iden­ tity. Each step I have taken over the years has been for the good of Egypt, and has been designed to serve the cause of right, liberty, and peace. This is the image I have had of myself since childhood. Now, as the landscape of my life unfolds before my eyes, can I claim that this image, which is in effect that of Egypt, has been realized—even recognized? I leave this to the reader to find out for himself. From M it Abul-Kum to the Aliens’Jail i "The treacle has arrived,” shouts the local crier through the alleys and squares of our village. My grandmother rushes outside, dragging me along beside her, toward the canal where a ship loaded with treacle has just arrived from nearby Kafr Zirqan. The road is not long, but every step fills me with joy and pride. Men stand up as we pass to greet Grandmother. Though illiterate, she is a haven for everyone; she solves their problems and cures their sick with ancient Arab concoctions of medicinal herbs unrivaled in our village or any of the neighboring ones. We buy a big jar of treacle and return home. I trot along behind her—a small, dark boy, barefooted and wearing a long Arab dress over a white calico shirt—my eyes fixed on the treasured jar of treacle. How delicious it was mixed with curdled milk! It made me so happy—nothing could make me happier. Everything in the village, in fact, made me ineffably happy: going out to get carrots, not from the green grocer’s but from the land itself; slipping an onion in to roast in our oven (while the family baked bread), then taking it out at sundown to eat; our boyish games in the village by moonlight, and the nightly entertainments that took place on a rustic open stage in the heart of the land, with nature all around us and the bare sky above. And sunrise—when I went out with scores of boys and men, young and old, taking our cattle and beasts of burden to the fields; when farmers went out to work in a land of unlimited richness, extending, as it seemed, into infinity. Everything made me happy in Mit Abul-Kum, my quiet village in the depths of the Nile Delta, even the cold water in the winter when we had to leave at dawn for the special canal that filled to FROM MIT ABUL-KUM TO THE ALIENS* JAIL 3 overflowing for no more than two weeks, our "statutory” irrigation period, during which all land in the village had to be watered. It was obviously necessary to do it quickly and collectively. We worked together on one person’s land for a whole day, then moved to an­ other’s, using any tunbur (Archimedean screw) that was available, regardless of who owned it. The main thing was to ensure that at the end of the "statutory” period all the land in the village was irrigated. That kind of collective work—with and for other men, with no profit or any kind of individual reward in prospect—made me feel that I belonged not merely to my immediate family at home, or even to the big family of the village, but to something vaster and more significant: the land. It was that feeling that made me, on the way home at sunset, gaze at the evening scene with a rare warmth, recognizing an invisible bond of love and friendship with everything around me—the smoke rolling down the valley promising a delicious meal at the close of a village day, and a perfect calm and peace in the hearts of all. That big, shady tree was made by God; He decreed it, and it came into being. These fresh green plants whose seeds we had ourselves sown could never have been there if God had not decreed it. This land on which I walked, the running water in the canal, indeed, everything around me was made by an overseeing God—a vast, mighty Being that watches and takes care of all, including me. Trees, seeds, and fruits were all, therefore, my fellows in existence; we all came out of the land and could never exist without it. The land is firm and tough, so all that belongs to it must be equally tough. As these ideas floated in my young head, the echoes of a saying of my grandmother’s became almost audible: "Nothing is as signifi­ cant as your being a child of this land. Land is immortal, for it harbors the mysteries of creation.” How I loved that woman! She had a very strong personality and enjoyed a rare wisdom—a natural, innate wisdom, matured through lifelong experience. Throughout my childhood in the village she was the head of the family, as my father was away working for the army in the Sudan. She looked after us and supervised the work on the two and a half acres my father had acquired. "The effendi’s mother,” everybody in the village called her, and there is a story behind this. Although the highest hope a villager could have was to join 4 IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY nl-Azhar and become the sheikh of a mosque, my grandfather, who was literate (a rare accomplishment at the time) wanted my father to take a different route. He chose a secular education for him and helped him to obtain the General Certificate of Primary Education (GCPE)—an important qualification at the time, for the British occu­ pation of Egypt was still young and all the subjects were taught in English. As my father was the first to obtain the degree in our village, whenever a reference was made to "the effendi” and his sons, everybody knew that it was my father and his family who are meant (although many villagers have since qualified as doctors, engineers, and university professors). My grandmother apparently wanted me to pursue the same course as my father. Initially she made me join the Koranic Teach­ ing School in the village, where I was taught to read and write and learned the Koran by heart; then she made me join a Coptic (a Christian sect) school in Toukh, near an ancient monastery headed by the bishop of Wadi al-Natrun. The school was about half a mile away from the village. I did not stay there for long but I still remem­ ber Monsieur Mena very clearly, the Christian teacher who taught us all our subjects and was both loved and feared by us all. I can still recall the huge school bell ringing in the morning to start the day’s work.