Only last december, we were touring Egypt. On way back to Cairo from Alexandria, drove to the Suez Canal. Its such a small strip that can accommodate mostly just a single huge vessel at any one time. May be ships take turn to pass through this canal. The access to the canal was through a boating club for which we got permission to enter. Local families seemed to picnic by the beach side. No sooner we reached there and were clicking pictures, a police van arrived and our bus driver and tour guide were interrogated. On showing relevant papers, we were asked to leave the spot immediately. As we were famished, we requested from the officers, a little time to eat at McDonald near the place. The cops escorted our entourage for over an hour and made sure we left the place by evening 6-7. They waited outside the restaurant to make sure all of us exited and boarded the mini bus. They turned back only on our joining the highway to Cairo, tracking us from behind for close to half an hour enroute. Really even that scared me totally. We had been warned to skip Egypt for security reasons before this tour. But our own experiences and good times in Egypt made us shrug off any discouragement as we made up our mind to return for Luxor next year – which is not going to happen sadly, because of the developments in the Middle east and our own leaving Qatar, our second home for 20 years, for good.
Two things I realized at the Suez Canal:
- The sensitivity of the canal itself even if it looked nothing scenic or extraordinary; it was just calm waters without much of action; as we watched, a merchant vessel or whatever sailed through. the beach we were in was a manmade one obviously; yet it saved ships from sailing around entire African continent until a half a century ago;
- The canal is hardly a mile or more in width but look how it is represented in the world map; it is shown as a much larger strip; obviously the scale used to represent it in globe/atlas is misrepresentative. We have to go by the geographic location that’s all and scales don’t matter. The small and insignificant size of the Suez Canal in reality really had me thinking. Yet it was wide enough to permit a huge vessel to cruise through; may be only one vessel at a time could make it through the canal and ships queued up to take their turns before entering the canal; I have absolutely no idea how the system was monitored or managed; But the regulation reflected it was serious business and was of paramount security concerns.
Egypt hardwon the right to levy duties for using Suez Canal from the French; the French whose idea it was and who dredged and executed it using the Egyptian labour did deserve the initial concessions for 100 years; Egypt still let the French company dredge their territory; its a super vision, of an unparalleled level; I never thought much about it all until then; in school history text books, we learn where this Suez canal is and how significant it is, nothing more; Now Suez Canal is a major source of income for Egypt apart from tourism industry. Of course it was a very tough and backbreaking labour in which many Egptians lost their lives; Equal consideration for the French engineers whose brainchild it was. Many nations vied for the project though, that which was won by the French.
All this came to my mind as Hormuz strait makes waves in recent news. It can’t be of such a huge scale as represented in maps. Rather it has got to be a far narrower strip, still assuming strategic importance in geopolitical settings as we are witnessing now. To my knowledge, access to the strait has remained free. Now unnecessary complications may make it a commercial venture. Nations may be staring at a future tariff imposition – if and when normalcy is restored. This strait matters to the middle eastern nations that export oil & gas through their ports situated in the adjoining coastlines of the Arabian peninsula.
When flying back from Egypt, our flight was mostly over Iran. Suez canal presented such a clarity from the low level flying as the plane took off. I think I have pictures taken of this small strip of manmade canal that is saving valuable time and energy for the world nations.
vijiravindran's 