أوراق أكتوبرية/عبد المنعم خليفة خوجلي-مسقط – سلطنة عمان

Quote: On Oct. 21st 1964, an hour before my dear friend Abdelmoneim Khalifa leaving the Ministry of Commerce at the end of the day, I popped into his office unannounced; a habit I developed ever since he joined the Ministry! I requested borrowing his Hillman car 4Kh. 1771 as I had an important appointment. He asked me to have lunch with him first in Burri, at his brother’s Abd El Rahman house and then catch my appointment. I reluctantly agreed as I was in a hurry. He had one condition though, that I should come back to him in Burri before dusk, but I could worm my way into his good graces arguing that I cannot make it before dusk as I planned to prepare for a mid-session examination in Tort between 6 and 8 as the examination would be held early Thursday morning. I left him completely dismantled, but he warned me that was by no means five minutes past 8. I said with a smile that extended from ear to ear,” Surely, as we have a Union meeting at 8:30 in the Barracks to discuss the continuous infringement of the University’s autonomy by the police forces”. When he asked me why the meeting was held in the Barracks, I explained that the usual meeting places had of late been easily accessible, but the Barracks would be difficult to wade. I left after lunch without preamble and came back to him as agreed. He dropped me at the Barracks at the very time when masses of students were marching from the Campus to the Barracks. As soon as the leaders began delivering their speeches the police forces came by the side of the river and entered the Barracks armed with rifles, pistols and protective shields. When they approached the meeting place east of Sobat Hostel, the students armed with sticks and stones charged at them, hence they retreated and took cover behind the Barracks Medical Facility and began shooting when the mob closed on them. I vividly recollect that my intimate friend Ahmed El Shaigi, who was by my side, told me and the others who were standing behind on the upper most steps of Sobat Hostel, that those were fake bullets (fashank), aimed at driving us out of the Barracks. No sooner had the others begun moving than the shooting intensified. Some flinched but El Shaigi still believed that the bullets were not real. Suddenly El Shaigi and myself felt that only the two of us had stood their ground. Those who retreated to the higher places began to cry hysterically. Their voices were shrill and discordant, but two friends could still figure out that their mates were trying to warn them that the bullets that were flying above their ######### were deadly. They came to their senses and crept to the other side and found pools of blood and a lot of damage. The first barrage of bullets immediately killed El Qurashi who was hurried to Khartoum Hospital. El Shaigi and myself helped carry some of the injured students to staff cars whose owners were eyewitnesses and assisted in evacuating the severely injured. El Shaigi and myself walked to the University Street with no clear idea what to do. There, near the current Mosque we found Ustaz El Hassan Ahmed El Hassan (died in a drowning incident in the United States in 1967) who asked us to join him to the hospital in his aging Morris Minor. We welcomed the idea and next to no time the tiny car was jammed with students uninvited. When we got there the hospital was not yet dominated by the police forces. We could locate where the body of El Qurashi had been dumped on a stretcher in a solitary room in the First Block; the one facing the North Gate. I was able to sneak into the room that was neither guarded nor attended and found El Qurashi in shirt and trousers with his face uncovered. I clearly saw that a bullet had hit him just above the right brow and existed at the back of the skull.