Hotel Tiberias: A Tale of Two Grandfathers. Sebastian Hope
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the foreign sultans and viziers and kings who had finally been expelled, nor the pashas and beys of the Ottoman time – their titles were abolished and their land redistributed to the fellahin depicted in the mural. They were the bedrock of a republic, proclaimed on 18 June of that year, reliant on its agricultural output. The social-realist style reflected the political mood of the Free Officers, though when they seized power they lacked a coherent political philosophy. The more influential, like Abdul Gamal Nasser and Anwar Sadat, were by and large nationalists with socialist leanings, but the Revolutionary Command Council also included Marxists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter would not have approved of the mural since representations of the human form are forbidden by Islamic law. They were bound to clash with the nationalist elements and an assassination attempt by the Brotherhood against Nasser in 1954 provided him with the excuse to replace General Neguib.
The besting of the British encouraged the Free Officers to embark on a programme of nationalization, reclaiming property and trade which had become concentrated in the hands of foreigners. Despite the protests of the capitalist bloc and warnings of creeping communism, nationalization was to be the chief weapon used by newly independent and non-aligned countries against the old imperial powers, a mechanism whereby they could take control of their nation’s wealth and infrastructure. Iran’s oilfields, India’s railways, sugar plantations in the Dutch East Indies were all nationalized in the decade following the Second World War. In Egypt the process was building to a climax of international significance, an appropriation that would see Nasser become a hero of the non-aligned movement. Along the way Egyptian Hotels Limited, the company that owned both Shepheard’s and the Continental, whose shares had doubled in value during the course of the war, was also taken into public hands and renamed ‘Egos’.
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