Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Ezzat Adel: Changing channels Can one love an international waterway? The Canal seems to have left him no choice Profile by Amira Ibrahim

His mind is full of memories; sifting through them is tantamount to fingering the very warp and weft of Egypt's modern history. Exhibit A: 26 July 1956. Ezzat Adel is driving along the banks of the Suez Canal. He is not admiring the sun as it glints off the water, however; he is listening to Nasser's voice on the radio, waiting to hear the president say "de Lesseps," the code word that will mark the beginning of the operation aimed at making the Canal fully Egyptian.

Born in 1925, Adel had two brothers and a sister. Their father was a judge who ruled on such sensitive political cases as the assassination of British Sirdar Sir Lee Stack, and the cases of Prime Ministers El-Nuqrashi Pasha and Ali Fahmi.

"My father resisted pressure to rule against his conscience," Adel recalls. His father's impartiality and refusal to be swayed by political interests is part of family lore, passed down to the children by their mother. It is she, too, who named him Adel -- "the just."

Still, he never wished to study law. He entered Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering to satisfy his fascination with mathematics, thinking he would make a good aviation engineer; soon, however, he decided that civil engineering would teach him quite enough about the field. Fate then dealt its first hand. In a graduation project, Adel studied the feasibility of extending six pipelines beneath the Suez Canal to irrigate some 30,000 feddans in Sinai. "That was my first ever experience with the Canal."

from top: with President Hosni Mubarak and the late François Mitterrand; Anwar El-Sadat; Mubarak and Yasser Arafat; the late King Hussein; Jimmy Carter; post-nationalisation

On graduating in 1950, he was prepared to work only at the French-owned Suez Canal Company -- or in the Armed Forces' Engineering Corps. Of course, the graduation project indicated his first preference; besides, the high salaries and advantages the Canal employees enjoyed were a non-negligible attraction.

He presented himself for an interview with a French manager of Lebanese origin, who told him that he fulfilled all the job's requirements, except for fluency in French. "I could not understand how they could use French as the company's official language when it operated in Egypt, but that is how the company was run -- as a state within the state," he says, shaking his head in bemusement. Still, Adel had no regrets; nor does he now. Had he got the job, he reasons, he would have missed out on a world of rich experience.

It was to be the Armed Forces, then. His imagination was fired by the achievements of the German troops during the Second World War, which he believed were due to the efforts of the engineering corps. "Hitler would never have won a battle without the engineers. I really admired the way they prepared the battlefields, the defence lines and the auxiliary structures, the way they crossed the minefields... Their ingenuity may have been a factor in my decision to join the army."

In six months, he had qualified as an officer and was appointed commander of the explosives wing at the Academy of Military Engineering. Until now, Adel had remained an observer of the political turmoil surrounding him. He heard the stories of the royal family's decadence and the king's "treason," but stayed on the sidelines, unwilling to join any of the political movements that sprang up during these ebullient years.

Following the 1952 Revolution, he was astonished to see Gamal Abdel-Nasser sitting side by side with the soldiers and sharing their meagre rations. His optimism, and the polarisation of the political situation, meant he could no longer be a mere observer, but it was not until 1954 that he and two other military engineers were ordered to penetrate British lines in Suez and destroy petrol refineries there. His companions on this dangerous mission were Mahmoud Younes and Abu Bakr Abdel-Hamid; the three were to become inseparable friends.

The mission was cancelled, however, and he was sent to London to study the chemical applications of petroleum technologies. While there, he was shocked to discover that he had been forced to retire from the army. He and Abdel-Hamid were appointed as deputies to Younes, who became head of the Petroleum Authority. It was thus that Adel gave up his short military life to start a long career as a civilian. He was no less a warrior for all that.

He returned to Egypt in June 1956, a month before the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. On 24 July, Younes called him and Abdel-Hamid and informed them of Nasser's intention to nationalise the Suez Canal. "I could not make up my mind for hours. It was the first time I had heard the word nationalisation. Then I started to feel what a serious step we were about to take. We were heading toward confrontation with Western powers. What would the consequences of failure be? "

Younes, Abdel-Hamid and Adel had 50 hours in which to draw up a complete plan. How would the operation be carried out? How could they get access to the company's records? "I could neither sleep nor eat. Fear? I felt no fear. After all, I found working with explosives normal."

He was only 30 at the time, but never did the idea that he was too young for such a task cross his mind. Absolute secrecy, he remembers, was of the essence. Civilian and military engineers, administrative personnel and academics were chosen to participate, but none knew what the grand plan actually was.

On 26 July, the group -- 27 in all -- headed to the Canal Zone in three vehicles. Only one person in each knew the real purpose of the trip. "When Younes announced the purpose of our mission, the civilians were disturbed, but we were ready to deal with any one who showed signs of backing out. Fortunately, no one did."

President Nasser was delivering a speech in Manshiya Square in Alexandria, as he pronounced the code word "de Lesseps," the three groups moved to occupy the company's headquarters in Suez, Ismailia and Port Said. A fourth group headed towards the company's Cairo office. The takeover, of course, was successful. Adel's trip to the Canal was to last far longer than he had planned, however -- 40 years in all.

The young engineers worked around the clock, desperate to show that the Egyptian administration could control navigation, and to refute Western predictions that shipping would collapse. The weeks passed rapidly, yet sailing was anything but smooth. A little over a month and a half after the takeover, the French company ordered its foreign employees to stop working under the Egyptian management, threatening them with the loss of their pensions and other financial privileges.

"We had maintained the employees' salaries and other benefits. Then we started to smell a conspiracy: the employees who had been on vacation in Europe did not return, while those who were still in Egypt were selling off their apartments and furniture and preparing to depart."

The problem was that at the time of nationalisation, not a single Egyptian employee had enjoyed decision-making status. The company reserved its highest positions for foreigners. Clearly, immediate action was in order. A number of naval officers were summoned to the Canal, and advertisements for pilots were placed in European newspapers. "We also managed to persuade seven Greeks to stay."

The incident was to go down in the annals of Suez's history as the September crisis. During those days, Adel met President Nasser for the first time, and formed an immediate opinion of the leader as "a simple Egyptian with a charismatic personality. His achievements can never be denied. Two in particular will immortalise his name: the nationalisation of the Canal and the construction of the High Dam."

Adel is convinced that the September crisis was an attempt to justify the West's plans of domination. When it failed, he argues, the Western powers resorted to outright aggression, in the form of the 1956 Suez War. As an engineer and a nationalist, he was devastated by the closure of the Canal, which he seems to have taken as a personal blow. "We had to sink a number of ships to prevent Britain and France from establishing control over navigation," he says, still visibly distressed at the memory.

The canal was dredged soon after the fighting ended, however, and navigation recommenced as early as February 1957. "We then worked to enhance the Egyptian presence, hiring employees, setting up a research and training centre and sending study missions to Europe." Nasser awarded the heroic trio first-class state merit awards for the role they had played in nationalising the canal and running it safely during the following months.

Bitter times were to follow, however. Adel pauses to remember the 1967 War and its aftermath. "We could see the Israeli soldiers across the Canal. I used to wish I had never been born." With Israeli bombs raining down on the Canal Zone, equipment was transferred to Alexandria. The Canal Authority employees were kept well trained and ready with plans to rebuild after the conflict. In the meantime, there was the war effort to occupy every waking hour. "We set up an operations room to provide the troops with information: water levels, tidal variations... We formed teams of engineers and workers who helped construct the platforms the Egyptian tanks used to bomb Israeli targets behind the Bar Lev barrier."

He firmly believes that "the Israelis would never have left Sinai if they had not been forced to. Had it not been for the 1973 victory, those of my generation would have bowed our heads in shame."

In 1975, the Canal was opened once again for navigation. Development requirements had been estimated at $1.3 billion. The government, unable to foot the bill alone, called for Arab and international assistance. When the first tankers entered the Canal following the completion of the development projects in 1980 and the Authority's revenues shot up by 25 per cent, Adel believes he must have been the happiest man alive. He was awarded a state merit award by President Sadat for the role he played in reconstruction and development.

In 1984, he was appointed head of the Canal Authority. Peacetime brought its own challenges. Maritime transportation had changed dramatically during the years of conflict, with giant containers becoming the norm. The Canal could not accommodate all of these; for many, the trip around the Cape of Good Hope proved financially more attractive given the dues they had to pay on freight.

"I had to decide whether to remain static and maintain dues for passage through the Canal, despite the changes that had occurred, or to be flexible and offer discounts according to freight. I decided on the latter." Members of the board, however, did not take kindly to an idea that seemed sure to cause financial losses. The move could have ended his career tragically, but Adel saw no other way out of the Canal's quandary. "Eventually, it became clear that I had made the right decision. I spent 12 years in charge of the Authority, and not once did the government offices responsible for its control and supervision make a single remark related to finances."

Adel retired in 1996. Two years later, however, he accepted an offer to work as a consultant for an engineering company -- after making sure it bore no relation to the Suez Canal. He is 75 today, and has only two regrets. "I never had the time to see my children grow up. Every single moment of my time was devoted to the Canal." Today, he will have lunch or dinner with his children once or twice a week.

He also blames himself for not having been more generous with his employees. "The Canal's family could have enjoyed a bigger piece of the pie, but I always believed that the profits we reaped were Egypt's, not ours." Perhaps, then, this second regret does not count? At any rate, Adel has peace of mind: "Until the day I retired, my salary was the same as any manager in the Authority."

photo: Khaled El-Fiqi

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