Salvaging Suez

On the outskirts of the city of Suez stand twin six-foot portraits of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Saudi Arabia's King Faisal. The pictures symbolize Egyptian hopes that Arab oil money will finance the reconstruction of the war-ruined Suez Canal Zone and eventually convert it into a thriving agricultural and industrial region. One tangible result of this dream is "King Faisal City," a suburb of 3,000 housing units that is being built behind the portraits. Another is the announcement, expected imminently, that salvage operations in the canal, which has been closed since 1967, have been completed.

Since clearing of the canal began last February, more than 700,000 explosives, ranging in size from hand grenades to rockets and aerial bombs, have been disarmed by Egyptian, American, French and British divers. The task force, which is headed by U.S. Admiral Kent Carroll, has salvaged the wrecks often large ships and more than 100 small boats and barges along the 101-mile waterway. Though the clearing operation is all but complete, the canal will not be reopened for commercial shipping until next March. Whether or not ships will be able to use the canal, however, depends in large measure on further progress in Middle East negotiations.

As dramatic as the clearing of the canal has been the restoration of the main cities that line it. Since the 1967 war, Port Said, Ismailia and Suez had been part of the Arab-Israeli battleground, and most residents had fled for safety to such cities as Cairo and Alexandria. After the Israeli pullback from Suez last March, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave priority to a $7.2 billion renovation plan for the Canal Zone --in part to create a visible symbol of Egypt's desire for peace.

Since then, some 275,000 people have returned to the canal's northern terminus at Port Said and 280,000 to Ismailia. Suez, which was 80% destroyed during the October war, will not be ready for full repatriation of its 264,000 residents for another year. Even so, the population has swelled from 8,000 to more than 100,000 since June.

"The influx of people gives the impression of great hustle and bustle among the ruins," reports TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn, who recently visited Suez city. "Three knocked-out Israeli tanks are gathering rust at the entrance to the city, with little children playing soldiers on them. In a building still blackened from being burned out, a baker pulls trays of flat bread out of the makeshift oven, while a shop opened beneath twisted iron shutters offers transistors and domestic appliances. Above the din of the crowd, there is the hum of bulldozers and the clatter of sledgehammers as workers battle to clear the debris of hopelessly damaged buildings.

Gutted Mosque. "In an anteroom of the old government house, Mohammed Mahmoud and his wife Ayesha, a couple in their 60s, sit quietly while a clerk checks their documents to be sure they are eligible to come back home. The yellow, tattered papers prove that until five years before, they had lived on a little farm just outside Suez. The clerk makes out a form giving Mahmoud permission to return to his farm, and he 'signs' it with a seal engraved on a ring.

"In El Kedr Street, not far from the port, a woman hangs out laundry on the edge of a gaping hole in the wall that was once the window of her second-story apartment. Next door a few men pray in a gutted mosque, while turbaned workers, faces streaked with grime and dust, take a coffee break at Mohammed's Cafe. At one of the tables that sprawl halfway across the muddy street, Aly Rashid sits drawing honey-flavored tobacco smoke through the long tube of his pipe.

" 'Before 1967,' he recalls, 'I made a good living selling Egyptian souvenirs. I had a shop here in Suez, and I had a boat for going out into the harbor to hawk souvenirs to passengers and crews. But when I came back this summer, I found my apartment, my shop and my boat all completely destroyed. Now all I can do is spread a few souvenirs on the street in front of the Bel-Air Hotel and sell a few things to United Nations soldiers. If they can only make peace and open the canal again.' It is the hope of everyone in Suez these days."

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