Aside from the hype of propagandists and the attempts to by antagonists to put you off, both of whom are sides of the same filthy coin, today is a big day.
I say this because I know very well what the Suez Canal and what digging a parallel waterway to it means, having spent six months cruising it up and down on a speed boat or a container when I worked as a doctor of epidemic diseases in the quarantine of the Suez Canal, examining crews before I would issue permits for them to pass.
The canal was not only dug with pickaxes
At that time, I almost saw in the water the faces of the hundreds of thousands of our ancestors who were forced to dig this marvel of marvels that is no less striking than the Great Pyramid. I could almost see those half-naked feeble men looking back at me in silence.
I almost know by heart Abdel Aziz al-Shenawy’s book “Forced Labor in the Digging of the Suez Canal” that tells with pain and grief of the violation of the rights of the simple Egyptians in the yoke of short-sighted dictators and arrogant, racist foreigners.
But when I visited the Port Said Arsenal, the descendant of the Port Said Workshop that was set up by the canal company at the start of the digging, I saw how it was greatly developed since forced labor was abolished in June of 1864.
Note that the cost of developing the workshop with technology was paid from the fine that Emperor Napoleon III of France had levied Egypt for abolishing forced labor, which amounted to half of the budget of the Suez Canal Company at the time.
This prompted the company to call on inventors and scientists in Europe to help compensate the loss of arms with machines for drilling. And thus, the era of mechanization emerged from the Suez Canal to develop into automation and civil engineering in the rest of the world.
Back then, when I dreamed of writing a literary work inspired by my profession — among many dreams that time has faded away — I compiled a library about the history of the canal. When I had stopped over in Paris before my trip to Senegal, I looked for books about the canal. I found a book that tackled the technical side of the digging, parts of which my French speaking friends had translated for me. I was happy to learn later that Ain for Studies of Humanities and Social Sciences has translated the book in collaboration with the French Cultural Center in 2005 under the title of “The Suez Canal, the project and the implementation (1859-1869), a study in the history of technical work.”
The book was the summary of a PhD thesis by Nathalie Montel, who won the French Academic Award. It is an objective book by a courageous author who praised the French scientific and technical contribution to the digging of the canal, but did not forget to condemn Western imperialist dual behavior towards oppressed countries.
Although the book sheds light on a past a century and a half ago, it also casts light on our reality of today as far as science and technology are concerned. For without them, we would not have completed the work in just one year full of risk and achievement.
Four times the old canal
I will talk about one aspect, which is the wet dredging or drilling under the water. This was the hero of the work. For in the old canal, 75 million cubic meters were dug, of which 75 percent was dredged wet, while the dredging of the new canal alone reached 250 million cubic meters. We cannot lie about these figures because they were dredged by international consortiums.
In other word, we are talking about four times the old canal, which makes the claim by antagonists that it is but a small branch a despicable absurdity. For digging a whole parallel channel without making use of the existing lakes makes no sense.
When I was working for the quarantine, I had to wait for long hours for a convoy to complete the journey. That is why I used to jump on a speed boat and board the ships while crossing in order to examine the crew and save time. The security personnel had to do the same in order to thwart smuggling attempts.
My generation will remember the deliberate smuggling of giant rats in an act of sabotage, whereby those rats spread from the Suez Canal into the Delta and cost us money, time and a lot of effort to combat. Let alone the smuggling of weapons and explosives to terrorists today, which would not be detected if the security personnel had no time to inspect the ships.
Lord of hearts and peoples
Of course I am against hastiness in development projects, but this one was done well despite the short deadline for a reason that I believe was divine. I believe God has answered the prayers of the innocent and ordinary Egyptians who aspire for a better living. God has not deceived them, for he is the Lord of hearts and peoples.
But it was also done in a scientific way. The US satellite Landsat 8 recorded on March 2, 2015 large quantities of water in the sedimentation basins to which sand saturated with water was transferred through pipes or pumps. This salted sand and water could be hazardous to the arable land around the canal and could impede projects to develop the area. But the scientists amazingly dried the sand and let the water return back from the sedimentation basins into the canal, a simple yet highly innovative idea.
Great optimism
The project will achieve many targets, one of which is thwarting the channel that Israel intended to dig between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, which it has filled with stolen water from Arab rivers flowing in it so as to raise its level to that of the Red Sea.
This is a big day, then, that we have the right to celebrate it without exaggeration. We still have a lot ahead of us, but we are more optimistic now.
God save Egypt and its people from the criminals who try to disturb our joy on this great day.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
