Road to ‘peace-keeping’ force in Sinai a unique motoring battle

Press, 27 September 1982, Page 17

Road to ‘peace-keeping’ force in Sinai a unique motoring battle

NZPA staff correspondent Phillip Melchior, Cairo

At midnight in the desert on the Sinai side of the Suez Canal, things were not going well.

We had survived a car crash and a long spell in an Egyptian police station. We had waited for hours to cross a military pontoon' bridge over the canal. Now one rear tyre was flat and so was the spare. The crushed front of the car had one remaining headlight and that pointed vaguely in the direction of the clusters of dates high in the palm trees. It was pitch dark, and El Gorah. where we were heading. was still 200 km away.

As epic journeys go. perhaps it did not amount to much. Lawrence of Arabia certainly would have sneered at it.

But getting to see the New Zealand servicemen with the multi-national "peace-keep-ing" force across the Sinai almost at the Israeli border, was a memorable experience.

A former Israeli fighter base of El Gorah, where the Multinational Force and. Observers (M.F.0.) is based is about 350 km from the Egyptian capital. To get- there, you drive through the desert to- the lush oasis of Ismailia beside the famous ship canal. You head north alongside the canal to El Qantara where you cross by ferry, and then through the desert again, past the stark metal litter of war, to the Mediterranean coast and the seaside town of El Arish, a World War I battle ground for the Anzacs. From there, it is a mere 35km to the M.F.O. base.

-It was supposed to be a simple, if boring, journey. What follows is a diary of why it was not: At 3 p.m.. right on time, a car and driver, hired by the Egyptian government press centre from a pool of owner/ driver vehicles, collected me from the faded glory of Shepheards Hotel overlooking the Nile in downtown Cairo. The driver,, a university student in his late teens, named Tariq, drove as- if certifiably insane — like all the Cairo drivers in this traffic-packed city ‘ of 12 million people and many cars. But he did it with some panache, spoke a little English, and liked rock music in the car stereo, rather than what, to Western ears, is the tortured wailing of popular Arab music.

Facing a deadline of 6 p.m. before the canal ferry shut down 150 km away at El Qantara, we made reasonable time getting through the perpetual traffic jams and headed out to the suburbs.

Tariq wanted to collect a change of clothes for the two-night stopover and tell his father where he was going, so we called at his home — an, apartment block on the north-east outskirts of the city. At that stage, things started going wrong. The “five minutes only” became 10 and then 15 as the sounds of 1 a dispute issued from elsewhere in the apartment.

-The father, it became Slater, had decided that ly way that safe pasthrough the military )f the Sinai could be d was if he — a 1. army officer — came • smooth the way. lanations about passes, ; of . introduction, and assurances from the Ministry of information grade no difference, The deadline was fast apMoaching and it was clear' tfet if I was going to get to Bl Gorah — the main point df 1 a trip halfway round the |prld — Tariq’s father was Coming along, too. ©Angry words and much feving of hands and pointing a-C watches got us all back on We ■ street and into Tariq’s Neish 2000 cc Fiat 132. This time, Tariq’s father wa§, behind the .wheel driving with rab same insanity but without his son’s style.: fiiAs we hurtled across the

desert at speeds of up to 180 ' Jqji/h‘ (ignoring, like everyone else, the'9o km/h limit), hSrn blaring constantly to clear the way, it began to Ibbk as if the deadline would still be met. EjWe slid gently off the road after approaching a corner two fast, but reversed back eg to the tar seal and carried Sa undaunted. /sThen,- as we honked and Accelerated our way through Sffe small town of Ismailia, waster. 'struck. ®As Tariq’s father whipped wirough a set of traffic lights about 70 km/h on the wrong side of the road to ®ss slower cars, a boy leading a donkey began to step &ut on to the road. Tariq’s father swerved successfully, failed to notice that a par had begun to turn left Across our path 50m in front ■ s us - "• ' ■ .•►Tariq and I shouted,the father braked madly, and we skidded and-skidded before crunching into the back and; side of the turning car. 1 there had been an. inevitability about it all, S&Only pride .and the two • grs were hurt, and as the argument raged around trie •>» incomprehensible Arabic I Retired to sit beneath ,a tree. « returned to the fray briefly Jas blows were about to be exchanged to say what I poped were a few calming words in .English — equally.

incomprehensible to them. Eventually, the traffic police (one of about five varieties of Egyptian police) arrived. The argument raged on. the skid marks were paced out and the damage inspected. Bits of cars were prised away from where they were rubbing against the tyres now. and we adjourned to the police station.

There, like a scene from a movie, the argument continued before a sweating, overweight. , senior police officer in a sparse room, with bars in the open windows, dirty yellow walls and a slowly revolving fan hanging from the ceiling. On the wall was a legacy of a clock, bearing in English the words “police stores” in a hangover from the British, and stuck permanently at 5.45 p.m. although my deadline had long gone and it was now past 8 p.m.

The captain of police, a man in his late thirties in spotless white with reasonable English, arrived for a chat as I waited outside beneath a statue celebrating Egypt's military prowess during the crisis which followed the nationalising of the canal in 1956.

One of the crowd of locals which had quickly gathered and travelled on to the station-had suggested that I had been driving but, being the guilty party, had now escaped.

We both laughed. Escape,. I said. If only I could.

The captain suggested a way. Matters would soon be sorted out, he said, and there was a pontoon bridge which was manoeuvered across the canal at El Qantara and was open from 9 p.m. until midnight or until the last truck was across — whichever came first.

Eventually we were on our way again. At this stage there were still two headlights although the one pointing at the road rather than the sky was rather loose. We swung on to the canalside road and went through a military checkpoint with an I-told-you-so look from Tariq’s father, although the guards there had made no attempt to stop us from going on after a cursory inspection of the car. At El Qantara, some small notes of mine changed hands and we jumped to the head of an enormous queue of trucks and taxis, the latter crammed with people and suitcases. Soldiers steered the two halves of the long bridge together and locked them in place, and the priority traffic from the Sinai side began the slow journey across the 150 m or so of the canal.

By midnight it was our turn. Gunning the engine. Tariq’s father was first on to the swaying, creaking, metaldecked bridge. In spite of the shouts and gesticulations of the soldiers manning the bridge, he insisted on weaving from side to side, apparently in an attempt to find a smooth way across the rough surface, but instead went off the specially aligned tracks several times. On the qther side we drove up the hill and on to the sealed road. It was quickly apparent that something was wrong. The right back tyre was totally flat. A minute later it became clear that the spare was no better.

What to do? The queue of vehicles that Tariq’s father had bribed his way to the head of left us in their dust. Then an army jeep drove up. Arabic conversation followed and Tariq and the soldiers jumped in the jeep with the two tyres and roared off

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down the road

“You see," Tariq's father told me in halting English, "we have problems. I, an officer, have fixed." He did not appear to understand when I suggested that had Tariq and I been on our own, we would have crossed the canal before 6 p.m. by ferry and I would have been at the hotel in El Arish fast asleep. Soon after 1 a.m.. the jeep returned. The soldiers had awakened the tyre repairman in the village ahead and persuaded him to apply his skills. As two soldiers put the wheel back on. the officer took it upon himself to try to make the loose headlight more secure.

It fell out on to the sand, and could not be reinstalled. But we were on our way again. The rest of the trip was uneventful. We struggled through the dark down a road pitted with potholes and occasionally reduced by the drifting sand to a narrow strip of tarmac.

At 4 a.m.. I was left at the Sinai Beach Hotel at El Arish, while Tariq and his father set off on the return journey to Cairo to get the car repaired with instructions to pick me up in two days time.

At the duly appointed time, having made the journey between El Arish and the M.F.O. base several times without incident. I

waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually the blue Fiat pulled up in a cloud of dust. Tariq's father. smiling broadly, was again behind the wheel having again decided that the possibility of military interference demanded his personal presence.

The car had been panelbeaten back into shape but this time it was minus any headlights at all. "We must hurry to get to Cairo before it is dark." Tariq said. “Are you ready?" I had been ready for more than an hour. We rushed off, stopping only to buy a dozen sparrow-like birds from a bedoin boy who had trapped

them by stringing nets between date palms. Tied by the feet, the birds, still live and flapping, were put on the floor in the back. Four-and-a-half hours later we were back in Cairo, driving by the light of the street lights and other cars. Nothing much happened. The birds got free and flew round the car for a while until we could catch them. We missed one corner, drove into the sand and had to be helped out. But at least we drove-very slowly through Ismailia .. .

and on the proper side of the road.

I can-report that the road to El Arish is indeed free of military interference.