Word: nile
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most Egyptians the Nile still rules, and a peasant from pharaonic days would find life little altered along much of the riverbank today: land is still divided into tiny plots, and the precious water is still raised from the river by having a cow or blind-folded water buffalo turn a primitive screw or a crude wooden lift balanced by a weight of mud. The ordinary meal of an Egyptian fellah still consists of foul beans; moulekieh, a soup made of the greens that grow among cotton plants, is a dish reserved for special days...
...looked upon as a panacea for most of Egypt's ills. True, it has doubled the country's electric power output and improved the productive capacity of 900,000 acres of land, guaranteeing water to farmers in upper Egypt. But the dam has made some old problems worse. The Nile's silt, which enriched the delta through the millennia, is now trapped behind Aswan's concrete; farmers must buy artificial fertilizer to do what nature in the past provided free. Because of the dam, the Nile waters flow more slowly now. More Egyptians than ever are infected with schistosomiasis...
...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 included new cities as well as tunnels to carry Nile water under the canal to the parched Sinai beyond...
Hundreds of test wells have been drilled in the desolate desert west of the Nile, and scientists have discovered what they think is a vast underground network of rivers and reservoirs, possibly with enough water to irrigate half a million acres for 700 years. Egyptian officials call this area "the New Valley" and predict that one day it may rival the Nile Valley itself. One hundred thousand people have already been resettled at the Kharga Oasis, at the southern end of this underground water supply...
...irresistible still, magnets for tourist dollars, marks and yen that Egypt must have to help surmount its present problems. "Egypt is a dusty city and a green tree," said Amr ibn al As, the Arab general who conquered the country for Islam's warriors in the 7th century. "The Nile traces a line through the midst of it; blessed are its early-morning voyages and its travels at eventide...