October 6, 1981

It was the annual parade for the crossing of the Suez Canal, eight years to the day. He was in the reviewing stand in a dress uniform with Jehan and the government and a row of foreign guests, watching the army go past.

Mirage jets came over low and everybody looked up. A truck in the parade stopped in front of the stand. An artillery lieutenant named Khalid Islambouli got out with three other men, and Sadat stood up - by several accounts believing it was a salute. They threw grenades and opened fire into the stand for about forty seconds.

Eleven people were killed, including a Cuban and an Omani and a Coptic bishop. Twenty-eight were wounded, among them the vice-president standing beside him, Hosni Mubarak, who took the presidency and held it for thirty years.

Sadat was flown to hospital and died two hours later. He was sixty-two.

Three former American presidents - Nixon, Ford and Carter - came to the funeral. Of the Arab states, three sent anybody at all. Egypt's own streets were quiet; the crowds that had lined the roads for Nasser eleven years before did not come out.