Egypt’s dams help to power factories and feed country but have
Hamza Rasool cuts a forlorn figure as he sits in the bow of his motorised boat, keeping it steady in the choppy waters between the Aswan Low Dam and the High Dam – two giant structures built in the 1900s in an effort to control the flooding of the Nile Basin.
“For all I know there are maybe homes underneath this very water here,” says the 41-yearold Nubian.
“There used to be narrow water channels running between the mainland and the islands in this area, not this vast mass of water you see here.”
Abdel Rasool is a father of two who makes his living ferrying visitors and locals across the water in an area near the southern city of Aswan, known as the Reservoir. It’s a scenic spot of deep blue water from which visitors and local commuters can see hilly islands partially ringed by majestic rock formations and dotted with homes painted in cheerful bright colours – an enduring Nubian tradition – evidence of a unique way of life that was upended decades ago.
Tens of thousands of Nubians were forcefully evicted throughout most of the last century to make way for lakes behind the Aswan Low Dam – built in 1902 and enlarged in 1912 and 1926 – and the Soviet-built Aswan High Dam, which led to the formation of Lake Nasser in the 1960s.
The evictions linked to Aswan High Dam, the construction of which was completed more than 50 years ago, were by far the most extensive.
At the time, the government of nationalist leader Gamal Abdel
Nasser and the state media painted it as a process to which Nubians willingly agreed as a sacrifice for the nation’s greater good, so they could leave behind a life of deprivation and hardship and make an exciting, fresh start elsewhere. Nothing
could have been further from the truth.
Long before the evictions, leaving home in search of work in Egypt or farther afield in the Gulf region or Europe was an integral part of Nubian male culture, a choice they made to better provide for their families. But they regularly returned home, commonly referred to as the old country, or “el balad el adeem”, to visit family, wed a childhood sweetheart, look for a suitable bride or take a break.
When at home, they sought to relive the customs and hobbies with which they grew up, from swimming in the Nile and rowing boats to crocodile hunting and playing tambourines.
But leaving home involuntarily to never return was deeply traumatic for many in a community whose life was intertwined so closely with the Nile since time immemorial.
Their predicament, felt even by Nubians born in the diaspora, inspired endless angst-filled songs that spoke of a home lost for ever and many literary works. Just as importantly, it enshrined a sense of persecution or a culture under siege. “We still dream of returning,” says Fahd, a Nubian father of two in his late thirties, who wanted to be identified only by his first name. “But, I will be honest with you, it’s a dream to elderly Nubians much more than it is to young ones.
“Many of us sold the land near the 44 villages they had taken us to in the 1960s and left for well-paid jobs in the Gulf.”
Fahd was born in Cairo but is a fluent Nubian speaker. “I speak to my children about Nubia, the evictions and the sacrifices we made for the sake of our nation,” he says.
Construction of the High Dam and the creation of the Lake Nasser reservoir have been an invaluable service to Egypt in terms of regulating the flow of the Nile, safeguarding water security and providing sustainable energy.
Their positive outcomes are
widely perceived to outweigh the damage they did to the ancient Nubian community.
The dam and the lake combined to generate electricity to power homes and factories, vastly increased the nation’s farmland and put a stop to the destruction caused by the Nile’s annual flooding.
Just how vital the dam and Lake Nasser are to Egypt has come into focus again over the past few years after upstream rival Ethiopia began filling a giant dam it is building on the Nile.
The annual fillings – three so far – have denied Egypt about 20 billion cubic metres of water, but plentiful rainfall on the Ethiopian highlands meant that Lake Nasser has remained full to or near capacity, allowing the nation’s key agricultural sector not to be disrupted.
However, Egypt remains fearful that a reduced share of the Nile’s water may inflict untold damage on its agriculture, disrupting its food supplies and wiping out millions of jobs.
Nubians are an ancient ethnic group whose ancestral land stretches from southern Egypt to northern Sudan.
They became rulers for a period in the 25th Dynasty 3,000 years ago. Darker skinned than most Egyptians, their language and culture distinguishes them from the rest of the country and means they are sometimes discriminated against. Their bond to the river makes them the most Nilotic of Egyptians.
They baptised their children in the river’s waters. Grooms would bathe in the river before they wed. On holidays, they would float dishes of food on its current to the river’s mythical guardians.
Although Muslim, Nubians have kept traditions rooted in their Christian past, still praying for Jesus and Mary to bless them alongside their supplications to the Prophet Mohammed.
That past continues to motivate some Nubians to demand on social media – perhaps the only platform where a level of free speech is tolerated – to be resettled in the reclamation projects undertaken by the government in the desert on the banks of Lake Nasser near their old homes.
Construction of the High Dam and the creation of the Lake Nasser reservoir have helped to provide sustainable energy