I did not pay an official call at the Residency at first, though my brother urged it as etiquette; I decided not to until I had seen how things were at the University. I had not realized before to what extent the British were in power in Egypt. I had been told that Egypt was an independent kingdom, but it seemed that my principal allegiance was not to the King who had given me my appointment and paid me my salary, but to the British High Commissioner. Infantry, cavalry, and air squadrons were a reminder of his power. The British officials could not understand the Egyptians’ desire to be rid of them. They considered Egypt most ungrateful for all the painful and difficult administrative work that they had put into it since the ’eighties, raising it from a bankrupt country to one of the richest in the world. None of them took Egyptian nationalism seriously; there was no Egyptian nation they said. The Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Armenians who called themselves Egyptians had no more right in the country than the British. Before the British occupation they had bled the fellaheen white. The fellaheen were the only true Egyptians, and it was not they who called for freedom. Freedom was mere politics, a symptom of the growing riches of the country and the smatterings of Western education that they had brought with them. The reduction of the British official class in the last few years was viewed with disgust. ‘We did all the hard work and when we go everything will run down; it’s running down already. And they’ll have to call us back, or if not us, the dagoes, and we don’t see why they should benefit.’ They did not realize how much the vanity of the Egyptians—probably the vainest people in the world—was hurt by the constant sight of British uniform. Egypt now considered itself a European nation. At the same time it attempted to take the place of Turkey as the leading power of Islam. This led to many anomalies. On the same day that the University students made the protest against the professor of Arabic’s irreligious views, the students of El Azhar, the great Cairo theological college, struck against having to wear the Arab dress of kaftan and silk headdress and appeared in European dress and tarbouche. The tarbouche was the national hat; even British officials wore it. I myself had a tarbouche. Being red it attracted the heat of the sun; and it was stuffy inside and did not protect the back of the head. It would have been difficult to find a hat more unsuitable for the climate. XXXII