Born into a family of 13 children in 1918, Anwar al-Sadat grew up among average Egyptian villagers in the town of Mit Abul Kom 40 miles to the north of Cairo. Having completed a grade school education, Sadat's father worked as a clerk in the local military hospital. By the time of his birth, Anwar's Egypt had become a British colony. Crippling debt had forced the Egyptian government to sell the British government its interests in the French engineered Suez Canal linking the Mediteranian Sea with the Indian Ocean. The British and French had used these resources to establish enough political control over Egyptian affairs to refer to Egypt as a British colony.
Four figures affected Sadat's early life. The first, a man named Zahran, came from a small village like Sadat's. In a famous incident of colonial rule, the British hanged Zahran for participating in a riot which had resulted in the death of a British officer. Sadat admired the courage Zahran exhibit on the way to the gallows. The second, Kemel Ataturk, created the modern state of Turkey by forcing the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. Not only had Ataturk thrown off the shackles of colonialism, but he established a number of civil service reforms, which Sadat admired. The third man was Mohandas Gandhi. Touring Egypt in 1932, Gandhi had preached the power of nonviolence in combating injustice. And finally, the young Sadat admired Adolf Hitler whom the anticolonialist Sadat viewed as a potential rival to British control.
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