In September 1952, a formerly obscure stage actor named Raʾfat Shalabī took on his last role: mastermind of a vast and sinister conspiracy against the nation. It was not a role he had chosen for himself. Hauled in front of a special military tribunal, Shalabī stood accused of plotting to overthrow Egypt's junta, which had come to power less than two months earlier in what was yet to be officially proclaimed a ‘revolution’. The junta's representatives in the media cast numerous aspersions on his character: he suffered from ‘megalomania’; he ‘intermingled promiscuously with people’; he liked to ‘wisecrack’ and ‘wax elegant’; his ‘masculinity was suspect’; and he had previously been accused, but not convicted, of involvement in the murder of a ‘sexual deviant’. Most damning, however, was a voice recording of the actor, allegedly intended to be broadcast upon his seizure of power, in which he declared, ‘This is Raʾfat Shalabī, leader of the new movement.’

Shalabī was given a life sentence, later reduced to fifteen years of hard labour. A number of contemporary and subsequent observers deemed him innocent, the trial absurd, and the evidence – if not concocted by the junta's own incipient intelligence services, who proudly admitted to bugging Shalabī's home – no more than the spontaneous performances of a regular clown. To be sure, sundry plots and power plays were being authored and authorised in the clubs, barracks, and smoke-filled rooms of Cairo, as well as the world's other major capitals, both for and against Egypt's new leaders. After all, as a secret society, the Free Officers had themselves prevailed through such means. But the trial of Raʾfat Shalabī showed that, sometimes, alleged conspiracies against the state were simply a matter of misinterpretation, embellished and exaggerated through carefully staged drama. To the critical observer, what had been so scandalously exposed was not the hidden agenda of a hapless actor, but the innate paranoia of his accusers, their eagerness to find scapegoats for their own missteps and inner squabbles, and their ability, through technologies of surveillance, propaganda, and brute force, to impose their version of events.