February 3, 2011

The Nile in Style

Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg

I took this picture almost thirty-two years ago—on March 9, 1979, to be exact. The scene is a ceremonial train ride from Cairo to Alexandria. For the entire journey, a hundred and twenty miles through the Nile delta, cheering crowds lined the route. Sometimes the people were three or four deep; more often they filled the sunny scene as far as the eye could see.

I don’t dredge this up from an old photo album just to boast that “I was there.” I was there, yes, but in a distinctly Rosencrantzian/Guildensternian capacity. My role was to write the speeches President Carter delivered to the Egyptian “parliament” and the Israeli Knesset. Well, not to write them, really—what I did was take the drafts prepared by the State Department and gussy them up with rhetorical flourishes and Carterish non-flourishes. The real action—Carter persuading Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin to finalize the peace treaty and not let the Camp David Accords peter out the way the Oslo Accords would do a generation later—took place behind closed doors, where I wasn’t. (I was usually off sightseeing, as in the picture below. That’s me with Jerry Rafshoon, Carter’s imagemeister, posing near the pyramids for a tourist photographer. Why is there a fireman between us? I had no idea then and have no idea now.)

No, my excuse is to make a point about how much being President of Egypt resembles—or used to resemble, until millions rose in protest—being King of Egypt, or even Pharaoh of Egypt. Indeed, the train we were riding had been built for King Farouk himself. In addition to a luxurious private car loaded with Victorian-era comforts, the train featured the open car you see in the picture. Farouk used to ride around in it to display his royal corpulence to his adoring subjects. His trimmer successor, with guest, was doing the same. For some of the ride, the two Presidents sat in throne-like chairs—elaborately carved, comfortably padded, cheesily gilded. But mostly they preferred to stand. (That’s the late Hamilton Jordan over Carter’s right shoulder.) And wave:

Sadat had some truly kingly qualities; he could have been justly called Anwar Coeur de Lion. Like Yitzhak Rabin, he died a martyr for peace. Sadat’s successor, the current Egyptian monarch, has ruled in the style of a mediocre Ottoman sultan, presiding with intermittent cruelty over decades of stagnation and corruption. For most of this week, it has looked as if Hosni Mubarak, like Farouk, would end his days in exile, taking with him his crown prince and his millions, and that something better—perhaps even a sort of democracy—would follow. As of today the outlook is murkier, and darker. Whatever happens, Farouk’s train is unlikely to be needed any time soon.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer. His work is collected in two books, “Politics” and “Obámanos.”