Desertion reveals Egyptian soldiers’ true feelings toward Mehmed Ali’s regime

Evidence

Because of its centrality, the very format the book takes is intended to echo this tension: a soldier’s story of his service from conscription to desertion flanked by two scenes of the Pasha entertaining his guests. Nevertheless, and as far as the soldier’s own story is concerned, this book has attempted to argue that desertion offers a historically more nuanced ending than nationalist versions do with their emphasis on “martyrdom” or “fighting for Egypt’s independence.” In other words, I find acts of desertion to be a much more eloquent testimony of how Egyptians felt towards the Pasha’s regime than all the tomes written on Mehmed Ali’s nationalist enterprise. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1697

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to James C. Scott’s work on everyday resistance and the ‘weapons of the weak’; desertion as the soldier’s hidden transcript.
• SEED: A potential essay angle: desertion as the truest available metric of a regime’s legitimacy, applied across historical armies from Napoleon’s to modern conscript forces.