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By the mid-point of the twentieth century, many Egyptians made Coke a beverage of choice. While the Atlanta-based, multinational corporation forged a global empire on which the sun never set,1the Coca-Cola brand also ensconced itself within the Egyptian frontier. Within a five-year span, Egypt witnessed the establishment of six Coca-Cola bottling plants, which produced 350 million bottles of Coke in 1950 alone. King Farouk, Egypt's ruler from 1936 to 1952, was reportedly so enamoured with the soft drink 'that every restaurant in Egypt kept an iced supply in case the monarch should arrive unexpectedly'.2Egypt's craving for Coca-Cola even transcended the Free Officers' revolution of 1952. During an official Egyptian visit to Algiers in May 1963, a mini-crisis erupted at the Aletti Hotel when Algerian officials omitted a key item from the suite of the Egyptian raïs Gamal Abdel Nasser: Coca-Cola. Nasser, his entourage insisted, 'drank no other'.3
In the eyes of the Coca-Cola Company, Egypt's thirst for 'Cacoola' - as it was locally known - merited a single explanation: Coca-Cola represented modernity.4Coke's self-proclaimed commitment to Egyptian national development commanded much space in the cover story of the 15 May 1950 edition of Henry Luce's Time magazine. The drink's expansion into the Egyptian market single-handedly rescued locals from poverty, the article explained. Gone were the days when Egyptians bought 'sickly sweet, dirty concoctions from street vendors'. Modernization followed the Coca-Cola Company's trails,5which were 'dotted with shiny red coolers, many of them presided over by Egypt's old-time ice merchants who, thanks to the raised living standards caused by this minor economic revolution, now w[ore] shoes for the first time in human memory'. Coca-Cola reportedly engendered a transformation of traditional life in Egypt, generating the country's first steps down the linear path to modernity. As Ladislas Pathy, part-owner of Coke bottling operations in Egypt, boasted to Time, Egyptian society had 'become consciously and willingly intoxicated by Coca-Cola'.6
Yet roughly three years after Nasser's stay at the Aletti Hotel, Egypt's reported intoxication with 'Cacoola' drastically fizzled away when the firm consented to the opening of a bottling franchise in Israel in April 1966. Until that moment, both the Coca-Cola Company and...