The Middle East
After the funerals
Peter Ackroyd
The first news of the first cease-fire came to Cairo without any token of either victory or defeat. There were no demonstrations, no excitement and apparently little interest. I walked through the city on the afternoon of the announcement, and came across only one large and seething crowd of Egyptians. They were waiting for a bus. Whatever the business of Cairo might be, it was clearly going on as usual. A line of people were queuing for the official newspaper, Al Ahram, but they were paying no attention to the villain of the piece, the American Embassy, which happened to be across the street. One solitary policeman guarded the embassy, and he was chatting quietly to a civilian. For although the placards in the main squares advertise films of popular militarism — " Liberation: The Greatest Tank Battle in the History of Wars" is now in its third week at the Cairo Odeon — there was very little ardour among the people.
But there are, of course, unmistakable signs that Cairo is a city at war. There are no tourists to be seen anywhere; the museums have been closed down, the pyramids look even more solitary than before and troops occupy the botanical gardens. There are soldiers on the bridges and the street-corners, and at night Cairo observes the war with a black-out. Shutters and curtains are drawn, all street lights are turned off. This does not, however, prevent the citizens of Cairo from strolling leisurely down the avenues in almost complete darkness, lit only by the lights of cars which drive as furiously and as erratically as they had during the day.
But if the black-out is a necessary precaution, it is also a minor One for a city so uncomfortably close to the lines of battle. And, in company with some other journalists, I was reminded that the reality of war was not too distant. On the afternoon after the announcement of the cease-fire, we were driven out of Cairo and towards the front-line. Travelling across the Nile Delta toward the northern section of the Suez Canal, the change in landscape is remarkable: At one place it looks as it must always have, with small villages where mules and goats roam the alleys, fields where oxen enjoy the pleasures of peace, and at the next we were within an area that bore the unmistakable signs of battle.
The desert immediately west of the canal, about four hours' drive from Cairo, was occupied by large numbers of Egyptian troops. Small tents were dotted among the sand dunes, and there were a number of tanks and cannon pointing east toward the front. Missile sites, where Sam 2 and Sam 6 missiles were being deployed, were located at regular intervals. As we passed, soldiers came out of their tents to wave at us. They were all young, and some of them seemed very young. A convoy of soldiers was coming back from the front, and when they saw us they put their arms in the air with the V sign for victory. Most of them seemed pleased with themselves, but all of them looked tired.
Within two miles of the canal, the road became very rough. At this point the sand gave way to trees and vegetation watered by the canal, and there was a brief sensation of driving through any countryside anywhere. This was, of course, dispelled at the sight of the canal. We were driven up to its bank, and to the most northerly bridgehead which the Egyptians had established, near the town of Kantara. Although soldiers and vehicles were crossing over to the eastern bank in a steady stream, we were not permitted to drive over the same track. Our own crossing was to be further north, next to Kantara, and our transport was to be by dinghy: the same dinghies which the Egyptians had used in their offensive against the Israelis. But the soldiers' efficiency at this juncture momentarily deserted them, and they had a great deal of trouble in inflating the dinghies. One of the soldiers put his 'bayonet through the rubber. Collapse of war-effort. Propaganda was obviously at a higher premium than expertise, since the soldiers who eventually ferried the dinghies across were more concerned to point out their flag, which fluttered on the eastern bank, than to row towards it. The canal is approximately fifty yards across, and the trip took ten minutes.
Kantara had once been a small town which straddled both sides of the canal. Now the twin-town was a twin ghost-town. The first sight of its eastern sector is of a mosque hit by a mortar. We stepped out of the dinghies on to barbed wire .and broken masonry. "Watch out for boobies," was the guide's warning. The streets of Kantara east were entirely gutted; not one building was completely standing and most were demolished, there was not one space which had not been marked by a shell or bullet. The small streets were littered with fragments of glass, wire and masonry. A child's exercise book was torn and lying on the ground. There were several packets of Israeli cigarettes, one of the few visible signs that Israelis had been there at all, and a flattened tin that bore the legend ' Processed Cheese by courtesy of the people of the United States.' Slogans in Hebrew had been scrawled over the walls in blue paint, but no one could decipher them. The trees had been blackened and charred, and there were large craters dotted over the ground. Some birds were singing, but it was difficult to know from what place.
Kantara east has been established as the headquarters of the Egyptian army in this region, and the soldiers had made temporary barracks out of the ruins. They wandered through the broken streets of this town like the ghosts of cowboys from some ancient Western. And it was in a small room along the ruined main street of the town that the Brigadier of Kantara, now the military
governor, held his first press-conference. He would not give his name, nor' would he be photographed. He claimed that the Israelis had been driven back some eighteen or twenty kilometres from the bank of the canal. Would we be permitted to drive to the front line, or what was now nominally the ceasefire line? "No. I think of your safety." The Egyptians had captured eighty-two and had killed two hundred Israelis in this area. How many civilians had been killed? " I cannot answer this question." Could we talk to the soldiers? No. Might we photograph them? No, no photographs please. End of interview. Outside, in the street, two Egyptian soldiers saw each other, embraced, and began to cryThey seemed surprised to see each other alive. Other soldiers gathered around them, showing very little emotion. It may just have bees exhaustion, but they did not have the look 'of men who have won a major victory. Yet it was clear that it was a kind of victory. The ruined tanks and fortifications of the Israelis littered the outskirts of Kantara east; most of the tanks had suffered direct hits and had keeled over into the sand. Egyptian soldiers posed on top of them for the photographers; they grimaced and pointed their rifles down the turrets, and they posed for a group portrait beside a particularly burnt-out case. At one point, an aircraft passed overhead. " Here is an Israeli reconnaissance plane," said the guide, "please photograph you like." But it passed at some distance 'ano flew off; six or seven seconds later there were two bursts of anti-aircraft fire. These were the first sounds of war that I heard. It was sunset by the time we had reached our bus on the western bank, and that Per' ticular blood-red colour had spread over the horizon of sand. We waited while our driver and guide prayed. As we drove away, there were distant sounds of artillery fire. It was coming from within Egypt, but as we drove back toward Cairo the gun-shot died away. It had been the last sound on the first claq of the cease-fire.
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