This is my response to NopeNotPam’s Letter a Week prompt, where this week her featured letter is ‘E’, and we are challenged to write using the words Egypt, envy, elated, ejected and eagle.

I enjoyed confining myself to 100 words last week, so did the same this week.

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“But, Grandpa, who was he?”

“Shh…… be respectful”, hissed the venerable octogenarian, who, leaving the bewildered boy at his side, resumed his painful revolutionary posture.

The cortege passed by, the coffin immaculately draped in the Coat of Arms, the Saladin Eagle.

Gone, great-grandpa relaxed. “A hero. You see, when I was young, many years ago, the British governed Egypt. They stole our wealth and paid a man called Farouk to keep us poor.” Gazing into the distance, he reminisced, “I shall never forget the elation we all felt when the king was ejected. We were the envy of the world…”

[100 words]

The Egyptian Revolution began after WWII. The British controlled the region (which included Sudan), exerting great influence on the local monarch King Farouk. Britain’s main motivation was control of the Suez Canal. A Nationalist movement grew out of the Egyption army, who launched a coup d’état in which a particular young officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was prominent.

The king was forced to abdicate in 1952, but the struggle was not over, and culminated in the Suez Crisis of 1956, in which the British were finally kicked out of the region.

There remained a paranoia that a counter-coup would be launched by the British, and so Egypt remained highly militarised, only starting to return to normality during Anwar Sadat’s presidency, from 1970.