From left to right: President Nasser, Ambassador Droubi, wife of the Ambassador Mrs. Ihsan al-Bayat. Droubi, an ardent Arab nationalist and admirer of Nasser, befriended the Egyptian President during his tenure as Syria’s ambassador to Cairo. He reportedly cried when presenting Nasser with his credentials, saying that it was very painful to deal with Syria and Egypt as two separate entities when they had been one republic in the Syrian-Egyptian Union of 1958-1961.