Adli Bishay: Opportunity knocks

And with the right approach it can be sustained

By Yasmine El-Rashidi

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'I'm a firm believer in not going about saying I have done this and have done that. You do your work, and you do it diligently, and eventually it pays off and speaks for itself and speaks for you'

Adli Bishay gets right to the point.

"First, you need to tell me if you want me to just talk, or if you have specific questions to ask," he begins.

"And then I want you to tell me a bit about yourself, your studies, your interests, your background," he tells me, barely pausing to take a breath.

"And then," he says, a half-smile transforming his face, "I can talk to you about myself."

For 15 minutes Bishay continues his casual questioning and chit-chat, nodding, smiling, tilting his head, raising his eyebrows, widening his eyes. When he is ready he slows down, takes a deep breath, fiddles with the papers on his desk, then smiles again.

"Okay", he says, in response to my lengthy pause.

"Low profile," he smiles.

"I am often told we should have more public relations people telling the public what we do," he continues, "but really I prefer for people to see what we are doing and then talk about it."

Bishay is talking, in part at least, about the Friends of the Environment Development Association (FEDA).

"It's probably a different philosophy," he offers, "but I'm a firm believer in not going about saying I have done this and have done that. You do your work, and you do it diligently, and eventually it pays off and speaks for itself and speaks for you."

"I am a member of the Specialised National Council, headed by Atef Sidqi," he resumes, "and a member of the environment committee of that council. Well," he continues, apologising for the use of I, "they were choosing topics and someone said 'what about desert?'"

"It was then one of the members, a doctor actually, pointed to me. And then the same thing happened on the same committee when they were discussing sustainable development."

"It is only now, many years on, that people are beginning to recognise and refer to my work in that field," he says. "Of the people familiar with the American University in Cairo's Desert Development Centre (DDC) only a handful know that I founded it. And sustainable development too -- now people are beginning to remember that I introduced the sustainable development concept to Egypt many years ago, at a time when nobody in Egypt was talking about it."

"I like to start new things, I like to build them and nurture them and watch them grow. Many years later, when they've developed and spread, then been copied, people will look back and say, 'yes, Bishay was the one that planted this'. That," he nods, "makes me happy."

For someone who generally avoids press interviews and media appearances, the turn his talk is about to take is fluid, concise and deceptively media-savvy.

"If I go back and reflect over my life I clearly remember specific things."

Like the fact that he was groomed to take over his father's place as the doctor in the family, being called doctor from his childhood.

"At the time doctors could get their children in to the Faculty of Medicine without needing specific grades," he recalls. "But I finished my secondary certificate and insisted on enrolling in the Faculty of Science. Not because I wanted to be a doctor," he points out matter-of-factly, "but because I was in love."

One year later the object of his affections married someone else, and Bishay was left to fend for himself.

"That was that," he laughs. "It's funny how things change, but that is the reason I ended up in science. I'm not upset about it, on the contrary: it opened up gates that would not otherwise have been opened. And I suppose that is the same reason the lady married someone else -- for other doors to open."

Science did not, perhaps, inspire him from the start, and Bishay graduated a few notches down from the top of his class.

"So I wasn't appointed as a lecturer at the university and instead was offered a job teaching in a Beni Sueif secondary school. Which I took, and went off very seriously. But three months later there was an exam and I caught someone cheating. So I took his exam, and..."

He picks up an imaginary paper and proceeds to tear it into shreds. "Well, I got a call from the headmaster who informed me that I was in terrible trouble," he says. "I was told to pack my bags and leave. The boy I had failed was the son of the strongest man in Beni Sueif."

With enough money for a three month stay he found himself in the UK.

"The first thing I did was go to the Egyptian Educational Bureau, where I met one of my former demonstrators who was doing a PhD. He suggested that I go to Sheffield, though he made me promise I would join a department other than his, his argument being Egypt could only afford one specialist in his field."

But at the bed and breakfast where he was staying, and on the first morning, another door opened.

"I happened to be sitting next to a man who was a professor at the department in which my friend was studying. When I told him my story he arranged an appointment for me and the next day -- exactly 15 days after my arrival -- I was enrolled."

The specialisation was glass technology.

"And here,'' he says, changing his tone and softening his pace, "is where Mursi Saad El-Din had an effect on my life. After working for about a year in that department I discovered that my professor had a theory, and that his intention was that his post-graduate students would prove the theory."

Among all the post- graduate students only one had reached a set of results that failed to confirm the professor's hypothesis. Bishay was set to fail.

"A week later I get a letter from Saad El-Din, who was acting head of the EEB in London, asking me to come to his office," he recalls. "I told him the story and he was very nice about it. He said 'be flexible. Tell him that maybe my results are exceptions to the theory, and of course every theory has exceptions."

Having received a lesson in diplomacy, with a PhD and at last a wife, Bishay returned home. There he struggled in the shadow of his English wife who was offered a job at each of the 35 schools to which she had applied.

"I was supposed to begin work at the Yassin glass factories but when I returned I found that my Egyptian colleagues had already taken the consultancy post with them and then, to top it all off, Yassin was nationalised."

Six months later, after a string of opportunities that failed to materialise, and nearing the point despair, Bishay found himself in an office in the chemistry department at AUC.

"I was lucky because it was a time of change at AUC. The new president and new dean were determined to up academic standards. I'm so glad I didn't get any of the jobs I was fighting over for six months," he says, thumping the palms of both hands down on his desk, "because this position gave me the opportunity of a lifetime."

From there his career at last took off -- both at the university and during a lengthy leave in the States.

"The sabbatical started in Missouri. Well, it was nice," he recalls. "I almost got divorced," he laughs. "There was nothing to do in Fulton Missouri! I eventually applied and got a position in Chicago, at the Argon National Lab for US Atomic Energy -- the place where the first atomic bomb was created."

"I got a post in the remote control engineering division," he says, promptly interpreting his scientific jargon. "If you are working with radiation material you cannot go into the room where the radioactive materials are. So you have to put them in certain rooms -- which we call hot cells -- and in order to see what you are doing you have extremely thick glass, which is full of lead because lead can prevent radiation from going through but at the same time is transparent."

With time, however, the glass windows started to colour, a problem Bishay focussed on solving and in the process gathered four US patents to his name.

"And then I was faced with a choice," he says. "I would have to give up my post at AUC if I did not return. My wife was the one who was ready to return to Egypt, and so we did."

He returned to establish a master's degree programme in solid state science, the first of its kind in Egypt.

"When I returned I requested a science building with equipment," he backtracks. "And I eventually got my building -- what is now the science building. But that too has a story."

It turns out to be a story of lack of funds and muddled priorities.

"They wanted to build six floors, and then when more funds came in, get the equipment. Well of course I said no, I had been working in Chicago, at the Atomic Energy Centre, with the best equipment in the world but in pre-fab buildings." The compromise: building the first three floors, the shell of the next three, and purchasing the equipment instead.

And so science at AUC was born and international conferences were brought to Egypt.

"Like I said I like to start new things. Such as the visiting professor programme, the conferences, sending students to universities abroad, expanding the department to include the other sciences and engineering."

A year in San Paulo was followed by yet more opportunity.

"It was 1973," Bishay says. "I returned just at the time Sadat kept repeating 'let us go to the desert.'"

And the country's experts dutifully trekked to the desert.

"The engineers said they would build buildings, the social scientists that they would study the desert, the agricultural engineers that they would plant the desert. But something," he asserts, "was not quite right. I thought all these elements had to come together and work as one. What we call the integrated approach."

Hard work, he reiterates, pays off: the DDC was founded upon 10,000 acres of land donated by the government.

"And that is how I ended up in this field."

Over the course of the years he has created not so much a name but a national approach to development.

"The integrated approach means not only agriculture but also technological aspects like renewable energy, solar and wind, special architecture for the desert."

The DDC was the first venture to tackle the issues in such an integrated way. FEDA was next.

"I had to retire from AUC," he says. "But before I did I made sure that the centre would be sustainable. I got funding and initiated a training programme to make sure that when I left the DDC would run as smoothly without me."

With that mission accomplished Bishay was content to move on, creating FEDA. That was almost ten years ago.

Since then FEDA has prepared and implemented projects upgrading fragile eco- systems, with the goal of improving the quality of life of residents in coastal areas (Rosetta), desert areas (Wadi Al- Natroun), and historical areas (Fatimid Cairo).

It is, perhaps, the Al-Gamaliya project which has had the most important impact.

"The philosophy behind our project is that there can be no sustained development [in mediaeval Cairo] without clear commitment to preserving the environment, promoting the rational use of resources and at the same time putting historic buildings to good use."

The first phase of the project involved technical studies and the cutting of red tape. The project zone lies south of the Fatimid walls of Cairo, within the area marked by Shari' Al-Muizz to the west, Shari' Al-Gamaliya to the east, Shari' Al- Dabayiah to the north and the alleyway south of Al-Darb Al-Asfar to the south. The area is home to mosques, sabils, souks, homes and a conglomerate of workshops.

To work around them was no easy task.

"You are talking about relocating a community," Bishay says. "Even though you are offering them safer, more hygienic and modern facilities it's no easy task. It continues to be hard work."

One building has been cleaned, gutted, and renewed in part. Families have been relocated, compensated, enrolled in classes and workshops. Faulty sewers have been repaired, workshops have been upgraded, a children's playground built.

"There is a training centre for the eradication of illiteracy, for youths and young adults," Bishay says. "Labourers at workshops are encouraged to join the classes and are enthusiastic about reading the instructions on new machinery. Young social workers have been sent to four different zones of Al-Gamaliya to raise awareness among the local population of the historic area in which they live, as well as to address more specific needs like establishing a computer centre."

"The project promotes the rational use of resources, and at the same time seeks to put historic buildings -- mosques, sabils, madrases, souqs, hammams, wekalas, religious schools, and hostels -- to good use."

"The framework for conservation, development and self-reliance is extremely complex. It touches on history, architecture, infrastructure and sociological and morphological factors. In our case it necessitated study of the social condition of the people in the area, their percentage of literacy, the distribution of the workshops in the project area. We had to determine which were environmentally-friendly and could remain functional, and which contaminated the air."

"When you tackle a problem, whatever it may be, you have to tackle it fully. You have to look at this side and that side. The inside, outside. Every angle you look at you must inspect. And then once you've done that you have to look for the loopholes. Once you've tackled the problem, and solved the problem, how do you make sure that it will not come back?"

An issue Bishay himself is facing these days.

"Sustainability," he laughs. "The science department I created has sustained itself, the DDC has sustained itself. I look back and I'm pleased with the things I've created and there is lots more to be done," he says. "But I realise I am not getting younger."

"And I also realise, as one of my friends told me, that every ten years I change my skin. After ten years of work with FEDA I have started to host workshops, to discuss the future of FEDA, to assess where we are moving, what needs to be done, what our weaknesses are. I am doing this to ensure FEDA's sustainability," he says.

"And that is my story."