1 am a small boy. My father told me how old T am, but I forgot. I will ask him again next time he comes home. My father is a soldier. The place he goes to is called a Sudan. A Sudan is a long way away. I go to school. I learn the Koran. The Koran is a holy book. I also learn to read and write. Reading is easy, but it is difficult to write without making a mess. Sometimes I pick cotton or take the beasts to drink. My mother and my grandmother look after me. My grandmother is a famous person. Practically everyone in the whole world comes to see her when they are sick. She gives them medicines made of herbs. She gives me treacle. I like it mixed with curdled milk. I fie on top of the oven in my kitchen and she tells me stories. My favorite story is the ballad of Zahran, the bero of Denshway. When she tells it, she always says that Denshway is nearby. She must be getting old and forgetful, because Denshway is a long way away. I walked there once with Abdel and it took us all morning. Denshway is where the British were shooting pigeons when one of their bullets set fire to a barn. All the men of the villa,-e come running to find out who had started the fire. One of the soldiers was frightened by the sight of all the strong men of the village running toward him, so he fired at them. There was a fight between the soldiers and the villaeers. Nobody won the fight. but the soldier who had fired on the ham was killed. Soon more soldiers came and arrested all the men in the village. The soldiers made a thing out of wood called a scaffold. 1 70 THE KEY TO REBECCA 71
don’t know what a scaffold is but it is used to hang people. I don’t know what happens to people when they are hanged. Some of the villagers were hanged and the others were flogged. I know about flogging. It is the worst thing in the world, even worse than hanging, I should think. Zahran was the first to be hanged, for he had fought the hardest against the soldiers. He walked to the scaffold with his head high, proud that he had killed the man who set fire to the barn. I wish I were Zahran. I have never seen a British soldier, but I know that I hate them. My name is Anwar el-Sadat, and I am going to be a hero.
Sadat fingered his mustache. He was rather pleased with it. He was only twenty-two years old, and in his captain’s uniform he looked a bit like a boy soldier: the mustache made him seem older. He needed all the authority he could get, for what he was about to aropose was-as usual—faintly ludicrous. At these little meetings he was at pains to talk and act as if the 1,andful of hoth,-ads in the room really were going to throw be British out of Egypt any day now. He deliberately made his voice a little deeper as he began to speak. “We have all been hoping that Rommel would defeat the British in the desert and so liberate our country.” He looked around the room: a good trick, that, in large or small meetings, for it made each one think Sadat was talking to him personally. “Now we have some very bad news. Hitler has agreed to give Egvpt to the Italians.” Sadat was exaggerating: this was not news, it was a rumor. Furthermore most of the audience knew it to be a rumor. However, melodrama was the order of the day, and they responded with angry murmurs. Sadat continued: “I propose that the Free Officers Movement cholild negotiate R treaty with Germany, under which we would organize an uprising against the British in Cairo, and they would guarantee the independence and sovereignty of Egypt after the defeat of the British.” As he spoke the risibility of the situation struck him afresh: here he was, a peasant boy just off the farm, talking to half a dozen discon- tented subalterns about negotiations with the German Reich. 72 Ken Follett