ISMAILIYA 's schizoid
character is defined by the rail
line that cuts across the city.
South of the tracks lies the
European-style
garden city
built for foreign employees of the
Suez Canal Company, extending to the
verdant banks of the Sweetwater
Canal. Following careful
restoration, its leafy boulevards
and placid streets of colonial
villas look almost as they must have
done in the 1930s, with bilingual
street signs nourishing the illusion
that the British empire has just
popped indoors for cocktails.
North of the train tracks you
move into another world of hastily
constructed flats grafted onto
long-standing slums , and a
quarter financed by the Gulf
Emirates that provides a cordon
sanitaire for the wealthy suburb
of Nemrah Setta (Number Six).
This Janus-profile reflects the
city's twentieth-century history
, when two disparate sons of
Ismailiya had a lasting effect on
Egyptian society. Hassan el-Banna
created the Muslim Brotherhood that
was the bane of the British, and has
vexed Egypt's rulers since
independence. Two generations later,
Ismailiya became synonymous with Osman
Ahmed Osman , a self-made
millionaire contractor whom Sadat
appointed as Minister of Housing and
Reconstruction in 1975. As Gulf
investments poured into the Canal
Zone, billboard-sized pictures of
Osman began to outnumber those of
his patron, who finally agreed to
opposition demands for an audit. By
the time it was discovered that
millions had been stashed in Swiss
banks, Osman had fled the country.
Subsequent investigations into his
political connections proved
inconclusive and he is now back in
business.
The Town and around
Ismailiya's carefully restored old
town is a pleasure to walk or bike
around, shaded by pollarded trees.
Most of the sights can be reached on
foot within ten minutes, although a
couple of places outside town
warrant renting a bicycle in the
backstreets...
read
more >>
