Among the growing number of literary works that have (re)-imagined the character of late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, several Egyptian novels and autobiographies have represented him through the eyes of children, who, in one way or another, directly were affected by his personality, decisions, speeches, or ideas. The perspective of children offers these works a rare opportunity to approach Nasser in ways that the world of adults may not. It can indicate the incomprehensibility of the situation in which children find themselves vis-à-vis Nasser. Children's incomplete knowledge of the political context of their lives, these works suggest, may drive them to adopt different responses toward Nasser than those advanced by their families. More importantly, I argue that these works capture the children's developing awareness of the significance of Nasser at moments of severe familial crises, during which their fathers emerge as the most negatively affected ones. In so doing, these works place children in an uncomfortable, unsettling position where the father's place loses its unassailable authority. The tension is all the more aggravated when the attack on the father at the hand of Nasser's regime is accompanied by the child's growing respect and love for Nasser. As this article will demonstrate, these works pit biological fathers against Nasser—the figurative father of the nation, children included—and, at times, demand a certain belonging from children. They, in other words, corner children between filiation and affiliation, in Edward Said's articulation of the terms, where the forced absence of the father is juxtaposed with a sudden presence of Nasser in the child's world.