Egypt's high dam: 50 years on: The taming of the Nile
Taha Abdel-Alim looks back on childhood memories of the epic construction of the Aswan High Dam
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The Aswan High Dam and the early phases of its construction. Nearly 35,000 workers and engineers had participated in the building of the dam
On 9 January 1960, I was at the scene of the construction of the High Dam, just south of the Nile's first cataract at Aswan. I was 10 years old at the time, and I found myself being held aloft by Egyptian workers celebrating the start of this mega project. President Gamal Abdel-Nasser was delivering a speech to mark the laying of the new dam's foundations. I was in fourth grade, and, like most children of my age, I took pleasure in memorising and chanting slogans praising the dam and the president.
Yet, curiously enough this wasn't my first insight into major national events. At only seven years old, I had marched in a children-only demonstration in Suez in which we had walked the streets chanting slogans against the 1956 Tripartite Aggression. I can still recall singing a patriotic song that went more or less like "is the canal part of their land, or have we taken it from them?"
I had also taken part in a demonstration of children from the Abul-Rish village in Aswan, for which the rallying cry was "God is great, greater than the wiles of the aggressors, and God is the best supporter of those who have been wronged."
I can recall visiting a small sports and social club on a hill overlooking the Nile that was used by the families of the French, and later German, experts working at the power station at Aswan. Later on, this club was used by the families of Soviet experts.
I can also remember the Temple of Isis on Philae Island, which used to rise up above the water level in the summer months when the gates of the old Aswan Dam were opened before being submerged again in winter when the water in the reservoir rose up again.
Crossing the Nile between school on the east bank and home on the west bank, I used to see workers closing the gates by hand, before opening them again as need be to allow the water, white and thunderous, to gush through and irrigate the Nile Valley. My parents, who were working on the High Dam at the time, would also tell me stories about the strength of the new dam and how it has been designed to store water in a great lake in the desert after it was finished.
At preparatory school in the oft-maligned 1960s, I can recall seeing signs in public squares that told passers-by of the number of days to go before the opening of the new dam. Part of a countdown to the dam's opening, these signs read something like "builders of the dam, there are only such and such days to go before the Nile is diverted."
Then the big day itself came. On 15 May 1964, the diversion canal was complete, and the course of the river was altered forever. This was the end of the first phase of construction, and Egyptian workers, helped by Soviet machinery and know- how, were soon to finish the mega project.
In high school, a visit to the High Dam was part of the curriculum. Pupils were taken on field trips to the dam and shown projects made possible by the electric power it generated.
I can well recall such visits and how in geology classes we were told about the eras in which the rocks around the dam had been formed. In chemistry classes, we would visit the Kima factory, which produced fertilisers using electricity produced by the dam, and in physics classes we would go to the new power station, which was working at full capacity because of the steady flow of water made available by the dam.
Later in the 1960s, I met several workers and engineers who had worked on the construction of the High Dam. I was a key member of the Youth Organisation in Aswan at the time, and we used to hold regular discussions about national, Arab and international issues.
After the 1967 war, together with other students from Aswan I volunteered for active service. I was given an old Lee Enfield rifle and told to stand near the pylons feeding the country's electricity grid. A dozen or so friends of the same age stood nearby, also standing guard.
I used to visit the High Dam often when I was a student at university in the early 1970s. By that time it had finally been completed, and visits would bring back memories of childhood.
Years later, visiting the Toshka project and the Salam Canal in northern Sinai, both among the country's most-celebrated contemporary projects, I would think about how these large projects, like other urban projects conducted during president Mubarak's time, are the continuation of efforts started with the High Dam.
As a result of the dam's construction for the first time it became possible to reclaim and cultivate every inch of cultivable land, and it has also become possible to extend Egypt's inhabitable area beyond the Nile Valley.
Every time I read the works of Gamal Hamdan, Suleiman Hozayen, or Emil Ludwig, I think about the High Dam. The truth is that the dam enabled Egypt to control its share of Nile water for the first time. Anyone who controls the sources of the Nile can threaten Egypt with either flood or drought, which is why Egypt's decisions to build the High Dam and to nationalise the Suez Canal were so momentous.
Hussein Fawzi writes that "good governance would save Egypt from the evils of flooding or of low water levels." As a matter of fact, despite the pitfalls of the 1952 Revolution the construction of the High Dam is evidence that the men of the revolution wanted to do the right thing for the country.
"With the building of the High Dam, the regulation of the Nile in Egypt entered a new revolutionary phase that was completely divorced from the previous history of regulating water in the country," writes Gamal Hamdan. I totally agree. The building of the High Dam is not just a "story of war and conflict between us and imperialism," as the song by Abdel-Halim Hafez has it.
In fact, the building of the High Dam was a landmark in Egypt's history, a moment of truth in the epic struggle between the river and those who benefit from it. As a result of the building of the dam, Egypt was freed from the whims of the river. The terror of the Old Kingdom and the curse of the Middle Kingdom were finally no more. The Nile had been tamed.
