What is all this about Suez Canal, Granny?

By Padma EDIRISINGHE

In my childhood that belonged to the last Century and the last millennium I remember pestering my mother asking for details about Reuter.

Open the newspapers and he was all over it and he seems to know so much.

My mother though a school teacher could not help me. She got rid of the problem by asking me to contact Lake House where these papers were printed. No rival newspaper then. Lake House held the monopoly. Better said than done for we lived swathed in the mists of distant Mathurata off Rikillagaskade about 120 miles from Lake House where my father was stationed.

Write to Lake House? Well. no one knew the address. Of course it was there in the newspapers but everybody around me and I myself were so "idiotic" that no one knew it was there.! Later of course I met a relative of Reuter in my own low country village where we descended down during vacations.

Reuter

Incredible, I hear you say. But yes, she was known as Reuter akka for she was the one who spread news in the village.! So Reuter just receded to the background in my childhood memory.

This episode came back to my mind recently when my grandson asked me, "What is this Suez canal, aththamma? It is always in the news".

This time what intrigued Shaveen was not the newspapers but the TV news scaring people with the news that the Suez canal was fast becoming the catalyst for the Third World War with Iran and Israel seemingly flexing their muscles across it. And ominously December 21 of the Maya calendar that predicted that the world will be no more after this date is only a few months ahead .

One show of Iran's nuclear power and off we go. But till life lasts we have to be accurate and duty bound by our young ones. So, unlike my own aththamma in the blues about Reuter , I live in the dawn of the 21st century. I sat before the computer and opened the internet and sought the help of Google for my grandson's sake.

Doomsday

The information gathered might make any reader informative till December 21, 2012 if we are gullible enough to believe in Doomsday falling four days before Christmas. So here we go or not go for it is an Asian grandma on an academic quest.

Well, I entered "History of the Suez canal" very optimistically expecting a tale neatly laid out in the orthodox way, first things coming first and last things, last but now last things were coming first.

It informed me facts that I already knew, that tensions between Iran and Israel have been simmering with Iranian warships entering the Mediterranean in a show of might. Biased reporting? Anti-Iranian and pro-Israel? Not so much this point but that this fact of the Iranian onslaught was being reported to the point of irritation.

I could however gather these facts.

That it is a modern architectural feat, responsible for shortening the travel time of ships between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean sea.

Who initiated the project? I had to infer that from an irrelevant reference to the Panama canal whose builder was Ferdinand De Lesseps, a French man. It informs we that Lesseps built the Suez canal too.!

Some luck there. So the Europeans were the interested party. You have to admire the Internet. It believes in those interested in inferring info not imply copying it.

I bounce again (as my old bones would allow) on this stray fact that the length of the Suez canal is 166 km traversing the Ishmuz of Suez and linking the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez.

I am getting nearer Suez which I happen to infer is a city near Port Tawfiq and the ships can now sail from Port Said to Port Tawfiq. Perhaps having the old people I mind,the Internet gives the length of the canal in miles too which is 103 miles.

Grey Hound buses

That reminds me travelling in the USA in the 90s in Grey Hound buses (I hope the name is correct for the 90s belonged not only to the last century but the last millennium too) I was surprised to see giant signboards looming here and there giving the distances only in miles. Come to little Sri Lanka,I wanted to cry out with national pride surging within me, and learn the new KM system. We have outpaced you at least there in the sphere of modern innovations.

To compensate for the lapses in the wizardly info mechanism , I began along story that initially led to Lesseps and party constructing the canal.

Power

It included the bloating of power of a little country in Europe named Portugal, a king there establishing a school for seamen improving their navigation skills, students reaching out to the ocean and cruising far off strange seas, finally an adventurer named Vasco da Gama rounding the vast continent of Africa to land in India, other Euro countries getting jealous and planning a much shorter cut as a highway to India.

Two events

Final result-the Suez canal. But my grandson had fallen asleep.

Now he awoke to ask me to tell him to wake him up just when the Iranian ships were attacking the Israeli ships on TV.

Prediction

I told him that might take some time like the prediction in the Maya calendar that the world might end on the eve of this year .Maybe the two events would synchronize.

And is that going to be the end, asks the boy.

"Hope not. At least let us pray that for the sake of young lives like you, it will delay a lot". I say sincerely to allay the fears of death and destruction bothering him

"To whom shall we pray?"

Though semi-aethist myself, I say naively "To the gods"

But apochcha told me that one Dawkins has written one whole book explaining that there is no God".

Way out

Ah! The young ones know too much.

I find a way out.

"He is referring to the Abrahamic God. Not to the pantheon of Hindu and Buddhist gods. Who matter most in our country"

Does he say so,the child wants to know.

Excuse me I say, ask your father. I am not that thorough with this Richard Dawkins except the fact that his ancestors made fortunes out of the slave trade.

Well, aththamma, what he says of God has nothing do with his ancestors.

I agree fully. He is after all 13 years while I am about 13 days close to the Maraya!.