Once in a while there comes a book that manages to capture the mood of the times and the spirit of an entire generation for the sake of posterity. Alijah Gordon's Time of the Mishmish (2002) reads as one such text. Set in Egypt during the tumultuous period when the star of the charismatic and legendary Egyptian leader Gammel Abdel Nasser was on the rise, it tells the story of a complex nation desperately waiting for answers and looking to the future. These were "proud days to remember, days of baby steps", as Egypt was seeking its place and voice on the stage of global politics.

The opening lines of the text sums up the collective hopes, longings, pain and anxieties of that first generation of Egyptians who lived under the long shadow cast by their charismatic leader:

"Hope is born of dark places, mixes itself with dirty faces, seeps into the looking of trachoma-distorted eyes; persists in camps; goes madly in prisons; in the obscurity and mediocrity of an office clerk does it reside. Hope: man's condemnation and man's release."

But the Egypt of the Mishmish was also one that was anxiously "waiting for the fall of the regime, the backsliding of a nation". Surrounded by enemies within and without, the people turned to Gamal Nasser, Gamal 'the beautiful', the "brown faced ruler with Egyptian integrity re-established in his blood'" who promised them that "life would be grand, life would be beautiful". But three years after the Free Officers' coup of 1952, the people were still waiting for freedom and the Parliament they were promised.