An Incurable Past: Nasser's Egypt Then and Now

Chapter 6. The Science of Miracles

6 The Science of Miracles [Governor-general Ortai] reported that on the last day of the tenth lunar month of the previous year—the emperor’s fiftieth birthday—glorious five-colored clouds were seen circling the sun for many hours above one of Yunnan’s most sacred shrines. The amazing sight, repeated the following day, could be seen by countless people across a great range of countryside. Clearly, Ortai wrote, this was a“completely unprecedented omen of good fortune.” Jonathan Spence, Treason by the Book On 5 May 1968 the Egyptian media offered rather unusual news. Kyrillus VI (Cyril VI), the 116th pope of the See of Alexandria (1959–71), head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, had announced that St. Mary; Theotokos, the God-bearer; al-'Adhra', the Eternal Virgin; Sittina, Our Lady; al-Mustafiyya, the Chosen One1 had appeared on Easter, 2 April 1968, at a church located in Zaytun, to the north of Cairo.2 National newspapers printed photographs of the phenomenon. The following day the news had reached the rest of the world.A Copt recalled in the late 1970s,“All the newspapers,even the Muslim newspapers, spoke about the Mariophany or apparition of the Holy Virgin. They even spoke about it on television.”3 The front page of Al-Ahram showed a nocturnal, human-shaped halo of light surmounting one of the domes of the church. A few days later, 10 May, the weekly magazine Al-Musawwar published the images of a ghostly luminous form rising between two domes, crowds of believers standing around the church, public officials attending the events,and photographic evidence of supernatural cures.4 Mainstream media reported miraculous sights at the Zaytun shrine for a year after the first apparition . Some say that people continued flocking to St. Mary’s church for two or three years.5 News of the apparition came about during a volatile international political situation.As seen through Al-Ahram’s headlines,these were days of righteous 168 | Part III. St. Mary, Mother of Egypt struggles. On 7 May, Al-Ahram reported Martin Luther King Jr.’s critique of the World Bank. In the United States, the civil rights movement was at its height while anti–Vietnam War demonstrations raged. Czechoslovakia had just started a promising democratization program. And the Palestinian resistance began a new phase of its twenty-year history. On the domestic front, the “visitation” of the Mother of Light had occurred three days after Jamal 'Abd al-Nasser’s 30 March Program Speech.6 The event’s commemoration did not wait long. In 1969 Pope Kyrillus instituted a liturgical annual feast in honor of Our Lady of Zaytun. Some forty years after the apparition,pilgrims still regularly visit the Zaytun church during the Marian month of August in hope of seeing the Virgin.7 Doves and Clouds The international press conference during which the pope had announced the apparition gathered some“150 Egyptian and foreign journalists.”8 Athanasius, the bishop of Beni Suef, read the papal statement aloud. At his side stood an illustrious delegation composed of archbishops Ibram, Samuel, Gregorius, and other officials: The pope Kyrillus VI announced in a statement issued yesterday at the papal residence the veracity of the manifestation of the Virgin at the church of Zaytun. . . . She has continued to appear incessantly until now and some nights She appears for a period up to two continuous hours. The pope said in his communiqué that the apparition of the Virgin manifests itself by snow-white clouds, or in the form of a light preceded by the emission of spiritual figures like the dove.9 On May 4 the Ministry of Tourism circulated a document that confirmed the apparition.10 Newspapers, magazines, radio, and television echoed the story. It made Al-Ahram’s front page for three days, until 7 May. It then vanished from the daily’s cover until the dramatic events of 20 May,when crowds heard the false rumor of another apparition. Some ten thousand people rushed to St. Michael’s church in Shubra, a northern suburb, and now, like Zaytun, an overpopulated Cairo neighborhood. Fifteen people were trampled to death and many wounded.11 Even prior to the patriarch’s authentication in April ’68, news of the Mariophany had spread beyond Cairo’s precinct through the Coptic press. People captured the Mother of Light on camera; one such photograph is The Science of Miracles | 169 sold...