Word: canals
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Brave words. In fact, Egypt's poverty makes it a ward of the rich Arabs. The Six-Day War of 1967 devastated the econ omy; among other blows, the closing of the Suez Canal cost Egypt an estimated $2 billion in vital revenue. Capital investment was diverted to acquire military hardware; arms spending currently absorbs 28% of the Egyptian national budget. After becoming President in 1970, Anwar Sadat began to dismantle Gamal Abdel Nasser's cumbersome socialist state and once again invited foreign investment. But the response has not even been as loud as a whisper. Last year, in order...
Despite these potential ecological hazards, Egypt, given a few decades of peace and stability, still has a chance to become a prosperous, viable nation. Two years ago, in a gesture signifying his interest in peace, Sadat reopened the Suez Canal, which had been blocked since 1967. It is once again one of the country's biggest money earners, bringing in $500 million a year. Sadat also decreed a massive development scheme, largely financed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, to rebuild the cities along the canal, which were almost totally empty for eight years. The ambitious plan...
...introspective Sadat is at the same time a dramatist. He likes pomp. After his 1975 decision to reopen the Suez Canal, Sadat dressed up in a white admiral's uniform and rode down the canal for four hours on the deck of a destroyer. As a young man he wanted to be an actor, and for a brief period, he now relates somewhat uncomfortably, he did perform on the Cairo stage. He answered an ad in the newspaper for a theater job and sent in his photograph, declaring that he did both tragedy and comedy but preferred comedy. Even...
...treacle has arrived," announces the local crier in the alleys and squares of our village: my grandmother rushes outside, dragging me along beside her, toward the canal where a ship loaded with treacle has just arrived from the nearby Kafr Zirqan. The road is not long, but every step fills me with joy and pride: men stand up as we pass to greet Grandmother. Though illiterate, she is a haven for everybody; she solves their problems and cures their sick with old Arab concoctions of medical herbs unrivaled in our village or in any of the neighboring ones...
Everything made me happy in Mil Abu el Kom, even cold water in the winter when we had to leave at dawn for the flush canal?a canal filled to overflowing for no more than two weeks, our "statutory" irrigation period, during which all land in the village had to be watered. We worked together on the land of one of us for a whole day then moved to another...