Letter from Michael Rynne to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(19/4/B) (Copy)

The new Egyptian Ambassador, Mr. Ali Fawzi Marei, called on me to-day. As you may recall from a report of last year from Mr. C. Cremin at the Holy See, Mr. Marei was formerly accredited there. He was a really great friend of the late Mr. J.P. Walshe and was visibly shocked when I told him the news of Mr. Walshe’s death in Cairo. He, the Ambassador, knew all about Mr. Walshe’s great affection for Egypt and his many associations with the Egyptians in Paris in the old days (1919-21) when our respective nations were striving for freedom. The Ambassador told me that he also suffers from a bad heart and Mr. Walshe and he often spent hours tête-á-tête in the Villa Spada discussing their possible demise, but in a relatively cheerful manner. Mr. Walshe used to advise a small liqueur glass of brandy when heart-trouble was coming on and hoped to survive long enough to retire eventually to Cairo to die. I did not insist that Mr. Walshe was on his way back to Rome when he took ill in Cairo.

After this kind of conversation – the Ambassador spent an hour altogether with me – I told Mr. Marei about the various Egyptian workers for independence who I knew in Dublin and Paris in the early twenties. He asked me if I had ever met his late father-in-law, Sidky Pasha,¹ during our Civil War. Although I had heard rumours of this man’s mission to Ireland (in search of arms?) in those days, I was too engaged at the time to take much interest. As it happened, – by the purest chance – I spent some winter months in a snow-bound hotel in France, just across the border from Geneva with Sidky Pasha in 1927. He was then forbidden to reside in Switzerland following pressure from King Fuad (the rival Khedive, Sidky’s friend then in exile in Caux, Switzerland).

The Ambassador told me all the subsequent history of his father-in-law (who became premier of Egypt, initialled treaties with England, was again exiled to Paris where he died, having first sent a friendly personal warning to his enemy, King Farouk,² who was deposed six months later, etc.). He, the Ambassador, was delighted at my stories of his hero-relative with whom I had maintained a cautious enough but yet extremely pleasant friendship nearly thirty years ago.

[matter omitted]