War and forced migration in Egypt: the experience of evacuation from the Suez Canal cities (1967-1976).

THE MIDDLE EAST HAS PRODUCED more than its share of stories of refugees, displaced persons, evacuees, and other victims of politics and development. Of course the deplorable plight of the Palestinian refugees in countries neighboring Palestine is by far the most striking example. But there are others. As a contribution to this history of flight and resettlement in the Arab world, this article analyzes the story of the Egyptian "migrants" from the Suez Canal zone who fled between 1967 and 1976 as a result of the Six-Day War in June 1967. This analysis of the "forced migration" experience in Egypt is a contribution to a broader understanding of the contemporary processes of response to war and disaster in the Arab world.

The case of the displaced and the evacuees from the Suez Canal cities illustrates the social processes of the creation and absorption of refugees. As in many other cases of forced migration, people's flight was caused by unexpected warfare, but this Egyptian case has some unique features. In particular, the story shows the three phases of flight, adaptation, and return (or integration into the host setting), and it illustrates the situation where the migrants and the hosts share the same basic culture, and where the hosts played a supportive role in the beginning.

The Suez Canal became the temporary Egyptian frontier when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. Many Egyptians departed the Canal cities and villages to avoid the combat zone in 1967, and with the heating up of the "War of Attrition" (beginning March 1969 through summer 1970) the remaining civilian population left or was evacuated (Waterbury 1973). Altogether nearly one million people were displaced from the three Suez Canal cities of Port Said, Ismailiya, and Suez, and their vicinities. Janet Abu-Lughod (1985:180-181) refers to this as a 'war-induced migration of urban people.' The peak of migration from the Suez Canal area to the rest of Egypt was in 1967-1969, and with the Egyptian recovery of the Sinai through treaty after the 1973 war, a return movement began in 1974 and continued until about 1976. Abu-Lughod relates that the return was as unforeseen as the flight. Thus at the time of the movement of the internally displaced in the late 1960s no one could anticipate that the possibility of return would occur so soon: as usual with refugees, people did not know what to expect.

The original flight was a result of a war with an external enemy, rather than as a result of an internal conflict, and the civilian population was pushed into the Egyptian heartland as the Israelis appeared on the east bank of the Suez Canal. People were fleeing warfare and not occupation and expulsion. The displaced and their hosts were politically on the same side, confronting a foreign enemy. Those who left their homes and jobs remained within Egypt, and within a decade were able to return to their starting point, although this outcome was not known at the beginning. The host population provided substantial assistance, especially in the beginning. The Egyptian administrative system remained intact, and played a key role. Those with government jobs retained them or were transferred to similar posts. The reception and integration of the displaced was handled entirely within the Egyptian system, with no foreign aid. Egyptian authorities tried successfully to avoid the word 'refugee,' to escape the parallel to the Palestinian case, and instead spoke of 'migrants' to cover both the displaced and the evacuees. Finally, one can note that this episode has not become part of a national mythology even though those affected by it remember their histories quite clearly.

There are certain features of the Egyptian handling of the case that can be seen in a wider context. The official policy was to distribute the displaced as widely as possible rather than to use camps. The same practice occurred with regard to the treatment of the Palestinian refugees from the late 1940s (Dajani 1986; El Abed 2003) and the sub-Saharan African refugees today (Cooper 1992). Refugee camps did not emerge. One consequence of this is that most refugees (or displaced persons) end up in the major cities which can best absorb a stream of individuals. Of course, this scattering also corresponded to the paths that fleeing individuals took, since many of them sought out their relatives and friends elsewhere in Egypt.

Since the Suez Canal migrations were circumscribed in time, our analysis can cover the full sequence of moments in the experience of displacement. In the chain of events we can see the different stages, from the initial flight to the eventual return, including the absorption of the displaced into a new setting, involving housing, schooling, work, and eventually marriage and the continuation of the normal family cycle, and then a second version of the same processes as people returned home. The uncertainty and the sense of loss of the displaced is part of this broader picture.

The Six-Day War also aggravated a refugee situation to the east of Israel, where roughly 400,000 Palestinians crossed the Jordan River (Dodd and Barakat 1969:5; Abu-Lughod 1971:163). Additionally, Syrians were displaced by the occupation of the Golan Heights. Moreover, the Israeli conquest of the Sinai meant that many Egyptian citizens fell under foreign occupation (Lavie 1990). The Egyptian story that we present here is distinct from the story of the Palestinian refugees, and from the experiences of the Sinai population under occupation.

The number of displaced from the Suez Canal was roughly equal to the number of Palestinians who fled from their homes during the period of the creation of Israel in 1947-49 (Abu-Lughod 1971; Morris 1987). In Egypt, both the authorities and the people had the Palestinian parallel in mind and were determined to avoid it. There were some similarities in the way people fled--like the Egyptians, the Palestinians rarely went straight to another destination, but moved several times; they often attempted to return home when they thought they could; they tried not to cross the border out of Palestine. Dodd and Barakat (1949) have analyzed the reasons for the flight of West Bank Palestinians in 1967 : fear of physical harm, the psychological pressure of dealing with the occupying army especially with regard to the honor of the women and the senior men, destruction of homes. Of these, the first was the most obvious in the Egyptian case. Since the Egyptians always remained on the Egyptian side of the front, the question of honor was not a factor in Egypt in 1967-1970. Apparently also notions of honor were much less important in the Palestinian reaction to the Six-Day War (Farsoun 1997:134-136). Direct contact with the Israeli occupier was restricted to the people in Sinai who remained there.

The forced migration of three-quarters of a million people to Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt for a period of five to seven years, and then their return to the war-torn cities under reconstruction, remains an untold story. It is largely a story of displaced urban populations representing the full range of the social spectrum, although the farming villages between Ismailiya and Suez were also involved. Moreover, both the refugees and the host population were Egyptian, sharing cultural expectations, personal relations, and even kinship. Some parts of the process were organized by the Egyptian government, while other parts relied on individual and personal links. This is thus an account of the process of social change in Egypt, notably the expansion of individual horizons through movement around the country.

METHOD

There are many ways to approach this moment in Egyptian history. In this article we focus on the accounts of the "migrants" themselves. The history of the efforts of the Egyptian government to cope with the human needs of the population of the Canal cities and villages, and at the same time to pursue its foreign policy goals of recovering lost territory, are analyzed elsewhere (Baker 1990:95-96; Smith 1996:217-220).

Our study draws primarily on the personal testimonies of people who fled, and then either returned or remained. We assume that everyone is an expert on his or her own experience and feelings. We use this material not to reconstruct history but rather to construct a composite picture of personal pasts. Of course these personal pasts are also constructed in memory, so there are multiple layers. The comments refer to the past but they reflect contemporary values. The data are illustrative rather than demonstrative. They also of course provide a commentary on Egyptian society, particularly the ebb and flow of internal migration and the formation of relationships of utility and trust. The approach is broadly anthropological.

In 2001, over 30 years after the migration, we began to assemble information on the human dimension of the forced migration. One of the authors conducted 81 interviews with migrants in either the places where they had settled after migration, like Zagazig, the capital city of Sharqiya governorate, or in the original cities and villages in the Canal cities to which they had returned. Most of the interviewees were between the ages of 40 and 65, and were of low to middle social-economic standard. The group included 13 women (16%) and 68 men (84%). Some of the interviewees were children or teenagers at the time of migration, while others were already adults. The age range in 1967 was from small children to people in their forties. The interviewees were selected using the snowball method--each interviewee led us to others. This produced a certain clustering in the sample--a cluster from the Railways Organization in Zagazig or a cluster of farmers from the villages south of Ismailiya. The interviews were taped, transcribed, and translated: the texts should be considered as paraphrases. The secretary of the Arab Socialist Union, Egypt's single party, announced that the people who left the Suez Canal zone should be called "migrants," and that terminology is followed in this paper.

Our focus here is on the circumstances under which people left their homes, what happened to them where they came to rest, what their relations with their hosts were, how they dealt with such issues as marriage and divorce, education for the young, continuity of property rights and occupations, and how they returned. Many of these concerns are ones that people would have had anyway, but are colored by the trauma of forced migration. We have chosen excerpts from the full data set in order to illustrate these issues. The testifiers are identified by year of birth and place of origin.

THE SUEZ CANAL ZONE

The three Suez Canal cities are Port Said, Ismailiya, and Suez. Port Said is at the Mediterranean terminus of the canal, and Suez city at the Red Sea terminus. Ismailiya, in the middle, serves as the headquarters for the canal operations. These three urban governorates had a population of just under one million people in both 1966 and in 1976. This time period brackets the moment of displacement and return, the dip and the recovery. In 1976, at a time when the reconstruction of war damage was still only beginning, especially in Suez, the population of the three was 810,700 or 2.2% of the national population of 36,626,204. The 1976 breakdown was 353,975 in Ismailiya, 262,760 in Port Said, and 193, 965 in Suez. The Port Said figure was slightly lower than ten years previously, while the Ismailiya figure was slightly higher, and the Suez figure could not be easily compared because of a change in boundaries (Ahmed 1984). It was probably a bit lower.

The population in 1966 included many immigrants, so that the locally born were 69% in Port Said, 61% in Suez, and 54% in Ismailiya. The place of origin of the non-locally born showed the same general pattern in both 1960 and in 1976. Overall, the non-locally born were heavily either from nearby areas or from Upper Egypt. In both periods, the two best represented governorates for Port Said were adjacent Damietta and Daqahliya, for Suez they were the two upper Egyptian governorates of Sohag and Qena, and for Ismailiya they were the neighboring governorate of Sharqiya and the Upper Egyptian governorate of Qena. The top two in each case contributed from one-third to one-half the immigrant population. Suez also drew some population from other Red Sea ports, notably from the Sudan, while Port Said had residents from other Mediterranean countries such as Greece or Lebanon. Much of the economic activity in the Canal area of course related to the Canal itself, ranging from bureaucrats and technicians to workers and peddlers. The closing of the Canal through war halted much of the economic life of the zone.

MIGRATION AND FLIGHT

The June War between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, including Egypt, lasted for six days from 5 through 10 June 1967. By 8 June the Israeli army was on the east bank of the Suez canal. Some skirmishes continued after the formal cease-fire. The first wave of migrants left during or shortly after the war. Originally, no one had wanted to leave:

   This was a time when people were still holding to their lands.
   They all rejected the idea of migration. No one wanted to
   leave. They thought only cowards would leave, while they
   should hold on to their lands and protect them. The number of
   victims was increasing every day. Ambulances were not
   enough. The injured were carried on stretchers, while the dead
   were moved on donkey-carts. Even schools were targets for
   air raids; fortunately there were no students. Things were
   getting worse, the army needed space to deploy the soldiers
   and strike back. Residents had to leave (Hasab 2001:32).

An Israeli bombardment of Suez, Ismailiya, and al-Qantara on 4 September 1967 led to a decision to evacuate the non-essential residents on September 5.

   On 5 September 1967, the governors of Port Said, Ismailiya,
   and Suez attended a meeting in which the Ministerial
   Committee for National Security announced the immediate
   migration of the unemployed. A few workers in the public and
   private sector were kept in the city to serve the army, while the
   rest were forced to depart..... These were the symbol of the
   city, they kept Suez alive (Hasab:2001:32).

Here is the point of view of the participants, a woman who as a teenager moved from a rural area outside Ismailiya to a village in the Delta:

   I migrated with my family to Mit Abu Khaled, because it was
   my father's fatherland. The government forced us to migrate,
   as we did not want to. The officials asked us about the origins
   of our family, so we told them we were from Mit Abu Khaled.
   They drove us to Zagazig where they dropped us ... We went
   to Mit Abu Khaled on our own. We stayed at my uncle's for a
   short while, then we rented a house. We didn't take any
   belongings with us (Nadia, born 1943, Serapeum, Ismailiya).

The migration experience differed according to location and status. The employees of the Suez Canal Organization, together with their equipment, were transferred to Cairo, Alexandria, or elsewhere. By mid-October, the press estimated that about half the population of Suez had migrated, and an even higher percentage in Ismailiya, where women, children, and the elderly had disappeared from the streets. In both towns some life continued, as 'essential' residents remained. Next to Suez city, Port Tawfik, where all the residents worked for the canal organization, was completely evacuated. Meanwhile, in Port Said life retained some degree of normality, and the residents faced the dilemma between migrating or staying home. The ports in Suez and Port Said were blocked, so the port workers had nothing to do.

The sponsored migrants were assembled through public announcements and with the help of men from the resistance forces or from the Arab Socialist Union. They were provided with free travel documents, free transport, and the transfer of belongings. Government employees received their salaries while others received a small subsidy from the government. The government planned to distribute the migrants widely throughout the country, although some effort was made to keep neighbors together. For instance, people from Al-Ghareeb district in Suez were transferred to Beni Suef, people from Al-Monakh district in Port Said were transferred to Gharbiya, and people from Abu-Sultan were transferred to Daqahliya. Fishing families from Port Said or Ismailiya often tried to locate where they could continue fishing or selling fish. Farming families were transferred to new lands farming areas such as Abis outside Alexandria. Outside some towns, clusters of settled migrants became known as "migrants" villages.

At their request migrants from farming villages were moved to other farming areas, mostly in new lands areas west of the Delta such as Mudiriyet el Tahrir or Abis. However, many of these farmers also tried to continue farming their Canal Zone farms by travelling in and out. That situation lasted until 1969 when a total evacuation order was issued. At times, it was impossible for them to enter the zone to check upon their land due to the frequency of enemy air raids.

Officials were concerned that too many migrants would end up in Cairo. Cairo with a population of four million was already considered overcrowded. However, some did go to Cairo, especially as the period of migration lengthened. Abu-Lughod sees this migration as having accelerated the growth of Cairo to new levels: "it was undoubtedly a major factor in pushing Cairo's population substantially over the projected figure of 5-6 million by the early 1970s" (Abu-Lughod 1985:180). The middle- and upper-class migrants were most likely to move to Cairo.

Many migrants settled in Zagazig, the nearest major city to the Canal area. Zagazig received 56,000 migrants from the Canal area. This would have been about 6-7% of all migrants, and represented 38% of Zagazig's population at that time. Most of the migrants settled in three districts in the northeast part of the city, with nearly half in the single district of Al-Nahal. They were overwhelmingly low-income and settled in the districts of the city in which mud-brick and dilapidated houses were prevalent; access to markets was good but to schools was poor (Rabie 1994:83).

A village in Asyut governorate, Upper Egypt, initially received about 500 "migrants." By 1981, only 72 remained in Musha village, under the care of the Ministry of Social Affairs. Musha had long had ties with Suez in particular, and very likely most of those who were evacuated to Musha had some family ties there. Nevertheless, only a few re-established roots in the village after the evacuation. After the resettlement of Suez, Musha people continued to work and live there, including both returnees and new migrants (Hopkins 1981).

The migrants were a restless lot. After the initial migration, many migrants paid brief return visits to check on their property, housing, and other interests, and some tried to return to their homes as soon as they thought the situation allowed. The migrants wanted to return because they had initially calculated they would only be away a few months. Also they ran into poor treatment and high prices in the migration destinations. Officials discouraged this return flow, in order not to interfere with the war effort.

In the migration destinations, the government organized shelter in schools, sports fields, youth centers, or village guest houses for the migrants who had no relatives or were too poor to manage on their own. For instance, a classroom might be shared by several families. A bed sheet or a very thin piece of wood separated them from each other. "Every four families shared a classroom, and only a bed sheet separated them. It was a very tough life" (Saeed, born 1956, Suez). Others were provided tents set up in sports fields. The government provided those families with flour, sugar, and blankets, as well as a financial aid that never exceeded a set amount regardless of the size of the family. Usually the heads of family often took the initiative to rent flats or even rooms as an alternative to this situation.

EXPERIENCES AND TESTIMONIES: THE DEPARTURE

There were several phases in the evacuation of the civilian population of the Suez Canal cities. The first wave were those people who were directly in the line of the Israeli invasion, such as Al-Qantara and in Ismailiya, in the first days after the outbreak of the war on 5 June 1967.

   We left Al-Qantara East on the 8th of June 1967. It was a
   horrible day. I expected death at any time. All of my family
   (my mother, my brother and my sister) accompanied me. I
   wasn't married at that time. We didn't carry any of our
   belongings along with us, because it was a matter of life or
   death. We either stayed behind and died, or ran away for
   survival. Our first stop was in Al-Qantara West [across the
   Canal], where we spent the night at the house of one of our
   relatives. I still remember the frown on the face of our
   relative's wife, when her husband told her to prepare a room
   for us. She stood still and was about to say no. That's why we
   couldn't stay longer and I suggested that we'd move to
   Zaqaziq. On the 9th of June, we traveled to Zaqaziq in a car,
   which transferred several families along with us. Those who
   stayed behind in Al-Qantara, after the first four days of the
   war, were trapped inside and couldn't leave. The people who
   were trapped there were forced by the Israeilis to go to Al-Arish
   (Mohamed, born 1938, from al-Qantara East, i.e., on the
   Sinai bank of the canal, now living in Zagazig).

Particularly our respondents from Ismailiya reported that Israeli shelling precipitated their departure. Several told the story of a trainload of people that was hit and destroyed by Israeli shells in July 1967. Chronologies of the period note "artillery duels and air fights" around Ismailiya on July 15 and 16 but without mentioning the railway station; an Egyptian official informed visitors to Ismailiya that 106 civilians had been killed, and 194 wounded (Arab Report and Record 1967:255).

   I migrated at 5 p.m. on the 14th of July. Many people from
   Ismailiya migrated on that day. We lived close to the train
   station, so we ran to it to escape death. A lot of civilians and
   animals pulling carts were dead in the streets. We got on the
   train to go to Cairo. We took the 5 o'clock train. An hour after
   our departure, exactly at 6 o'clock, the train station in
   Ismailiya was destroyed. That migration was according to our
   personal initiative. It wasn't the one initiated by the
   government, which started in September; when people were
   transferred to camps in schools or to rural areas (Abdelfattah,
   born 1930, Ismailiya).

During this phase, some people needed for work or for the military stayed behind, while their families were evacuated. Permits were required to live or to visit the canal area. The affairs of the migrants were monitored through committees established by the Arab Socialist Union, which played an intermediary role between the displaced populations and the government officials.

ADAPTATION

Whether they fled or were evacuated, migrants ended up in a variety of different situations, mostly reflecting their various family situations. Some returned to their relatives, whether in villages or urban areas. Others were initially evacuated to locales chosen by the government, which tried to distribute the migrants around the country, but then moved to be nearer their families or their jobs (or, more generally, their source of income). In some cases, entire government offices were transferred outside the Canal cities to other towns and, in these cases, the employees generally followed. Especially after the evacuation order of September 1967, many evacuees were housed in schools and mosques, but few remained there long because of lack of comfort and privacy. As the period extended, migrants had to think about more permanent housing. Also finding schooling for the children was a major concern. In these areas the government helped by making housing available to migrants, by facilitating the registration of migrant children in schools even when they had lost the necessary papers, and by sometimes favoring the children in terms of grades and promotions. Some interviewees reported that teachers gave them private lessons at a lower rate. They were not always charged a fare on trains and local transport. Those who wanted to start new businesses were given facilities in terms of permits and loans.

A good many men and some women continued to be assigned to jobs in the canal cities. In such cases, they reported that they would work for two weeks or so and then return to their families for a period of rest. Such people had a strong incentive to keep their families relatively near by, certainly no further than Cairo. For Port Said, the most common site was Matariya, and for Ismailiya it was Zagazig and other Sharqiya towns.

Most of the ex-migrants we interviewed had in fact migrated to various towns and villages in the Delta. Often they had a kinship link, but not always. Others went to Cairo, and a few went initially to Upper Egypt. Some whose roots were in Upper Egypt made a point of saying that family quarrels prevented their return there. Almost everyone reported living in two to four different places during the period of migration. A simple move to a place, a stay, and an eventual return was the exception. The typical pattern was to go first to relatives, or to a locale chosen by the government, and then to move further in search of work or a more comfortable situation. For instance, Mohamed (born 1952, Suez) went with his family to relatives in Shabalnaga (Qalyubiyya) for 40 days in 1967, then returned to Suez until evacuated later in 1967 by the government to Tanta. The family remained three years in Tanta and then relocated in Shubra al-Kheima, greater Cairo, before returning to Suez in 1975. Nagah (born 1955, Ismailiya) went first to Sharqiya, then returned to Ismailiya before being evacuated to Tell el Kabir and Abou Hammed. Later the family relocated in Cairo before returning to Ismailiya. Al-Sayed (born 1955, Port Said) was evacuated to Kouta (Fayoum) by the government at first, then after a year resettled with relatives in Cairo before returning to Port Said. Those who were children at the time of migration moved least; adult men and some women tended to be more mobile.

Several migrants from Suez to Cairo reported squatting in vacant apartments built by the government or by private companies such as the Ideal Company for their staff. Later the migrants acquired property or rental rights in these apartments. Some said they had the tacit or active support of the president or of the minister of interior (this was Sharawi Gomaa, who had previously been Governor of Suez and acted as their main patron).

   Whenever the migrants were told to leave a fiat they had
   seized, Sharawi would say, 'leave the migrants from Suez
   where they are' (Khemais, born 1947, Suez).

   Sharawi Gomaa interfered in favor of the migrants and
   communicated with the President, who issued immediate
   directions for the special treatment of the Suez migrant
   students (Abdel Halim, born 1929, Suez).

   Actually our settlement in Hadayek al-Qubba (Cairo) was
   accidental, as the buildings were locked even though they
   were ready. So talk about those buildings began to spread
   among the people. All the migrants moved into those
   buildings to stay, by force. The Central Defense Forces comes
   to oblige us to leave those fiats. President Gamal Abdel Nasser
   immediately stated that those buildings should be left for the
   migrants. He said that since the migrants were forced to leave
   their cities, they must be provided with a place to live in Cairo
   (Ayman, born 1958, Suez).

Migrants generally reported that they were well received by the people in the host communities, though they were also careful always to establish their own independence in housing and income so they would not be dependent on their hosts. The most common complaint of the hosts was that the influx of migrants caused a rise in prices. Many of the migrants in turn underlined that social relations were often reduced to money. Another problem arose because of the relatively liberal attitudes of the urban dwellers from the Suez Canal cities in contrast to the often conservative rural settings where they ended up. This particularly involved the behavior of young men and women towards each other.

   We had an effect on the original people of El Makhazna. As
   far as I remember, they always wore "galabiya"--the
   traditional Egyptian gown--meanwhile we wore pyjamas.
   Later, we tried to imitate them and we started wearing a
   "galabiya" like them. However, they started wearing pyjamas
   like us. Also, at the beginning they used to make fun of our
   accent. So we tried to talk like them, meanwhile, they did the
   same--they started talking like us.... Migration occurred
   during the best years of my life. Even though it was a very
   painful experience, it's still part of me (Samir, born 1958,
   Suez, referring to Al-Makhazna village, Qena).

   The main problem we faced during migration was a cultural
   one. The people of the Canal cities migrated to rural area,
   which had very conservative attitudes towards the relationship
   between boys and girls. Meanwhile, the migrants saw nothing
   wrong if a young man spoke with one of the local girls. The
   situation would usually end up with the father of the migrant
   hitting his son to satisfy the original people of the place. In
   other situations, the original people would forgive the
   mistakes of the migrants. If a migrant boy was caught stealing
   sugar cane from the field of a farmer, the people would tell the
   field owner to release the boy, on the grounds that he is a poor
   migrant (Ahmed, born 1957, Ismailiya, referring to Sirs al-Layyan,
   Minufiya).

   One of the negative consequences of migration was that
   people returned with bad attitudes from the places to which
   they had migrated. The people went to different places during
   migration, and were much affected by that experience. We, the
   people of Ismailiya, became much more nervous than before.
   The young men started staying out of their homes to a very
   late hour. The young girls became used to talking freely to
   young men. Our society never witnessed these phenomena
   before" (Khaled, born 1961, Ismailiya).

Many of the migrants reported that the period when they were away from their own homes was a bitter and difficult time. This is partly because of material deprivation, and partly because of the need to cope with unfamiliar social settings--to be away from their "home town," to be a stranger. They reported a strong sense of belonging to their home town, and a feeling of alienation when elsewhere. This was probably reinforced by administrative measures, in that they received their ration cards and other documents as a function of the place they were from, which is where they were registered. Some reported periodically examining their identity cards to remind themselves of where they came from. People sensed some hostility from their hosts and often said they did not blame them for that.

   I never thought of settling in Cairo because home is very
   precious to oneself. Nobody can live outside his homeland,
   even birds couldn't. People are usually comfortable in the
   place where they were raised, amongst family members and
   friends (Ahmed, born 1933, from Suez).

   I didn't want to stay in Wasta town because one always feels
   as a stranger away from home. We migrants were always
   fearful of the fact that one day we'd be homeless like the
   Palestinians ... (Abdel Halim, born 1929, Suez).

   A person loses his dignity and self-esteem when he abandons
   his homeland (Fawzia, born 1941 Port Said).

   Some people used to insult us and call us names. Some went
   as far as telling us: "O migrants, go and eat grass with cattle."
   Such comments used to hurt us a lot (Eid, born 1958,
   Ismailiya).

   We, the migrants, were a burden on the people who lived in
   the places we had migrated to, hence it was inevitable for the
   latter to hate us. I couldn't realize that earlier because I was
   young, but now I understand it clearly (Amr, born 1962,
   Suez).

RETURN OR STAY

Many of the migrants in our sample stated that they returned to their homes as soon as the government allowed them after the October 1973 war, which resulted in the return of the Sinai to Egypt. Life in the cities slowly resumed during 1974 and the following years. This process was slowest in Suez because of the greater physical damage. Although a successful war for Egypt, the October 1973 war also ended with Israeli troops on the west bank of the canal between Ismailiya and Suez, so for some people in these areas the return home came shortly after the Israeli pull-out in 1974.

Again, the government provided certain facilities in terms of transport. Government employees who returned were given a bonus to encourage them. Some found their houses intact, while others found the houses in need of repair or completely destroyed. They set to work to remedy that situation and create new homes. Some were worried about the terrible events that might have occurred in their homes while they were away. For instance, one woman in Port Said worried that someone might have been killed in her apartment leaving a ghost behind, while an army officer in Suez actually found the dead body of an Israeli in his newly assigned flat.

   We returned to Suez in May 1976 after we received the fiat
   we're in now. We didn't return to our old house, because it
   was totally destroyed ... We took the current flat as a
   compensation for our destroyed house. We reported to the
   police that our house was destroyed by air raids. The police
   told us that we'd be compensated, and that is what actually
   happened. We took that fiat from the share of the Railway
   Organization, for no money except the monthly rent. The days
   of migration were so bitter because we had left our homes and
   all of our belongings behind (Farouk, born 1937, Suez;
   railway worker).

   We returned to Ismailiya in 1974 because of our land. Our
   land was the main reason that made us not to think of settling
   in El Faramawi. (Ali, born 1960, Abu Sultan, Ismailiya).

   When I returned to my old house in Ismailiya. I found that it
   was ruined and that the soldiers had used it as a kitchen. I
   applied for a new fiat instead of that one. I didn't receive any
   compensation money. Instead, I bought a piece of land from
   the governorate, and built the house where I now live
   (Ibrahim, born 1936, Ismailiya).

For those who returned, the period of evacuation was a parenthesis in their lives. The desire to return was based on a sense of a return to a home town, or perhaps simply a desire to pick up where the war had interrupted their lives. Property often played a role. However, many did not return. They had established new lives in their place of migration, and in the end chose to remain there, with their new businesses. As one man noted, 'my home town is where I earn my living.' The most common reason for remaining were a good job, marriage with a local spouse, and the establishment of new kinship and family networks. Some did not have strong ties to the Canal cities in the first place, while others were discouraged by the high cost of living in the Canal cities.

Conversely one man asserted that he avoided marriage in the place of refuge in order to be able to take his wife back with him:

   I always wanted to marry someone from Port Said, because I
   believed that we would be home soon. I was afraid that if I
   married someone from some place else, she would refuse to
   stay with me in Port Said. However, since my wife is from
   Ismailiya, she shared in migration and its suffering just like
   the people of Port Said [she was also his sister's husband's
   sister] (Mohamed, born 1945, Port Said).

In some families, part returned and part remained, so that patterns of visiting and other interchange were established between the Canal cities and the rest of Egypt. Brothers were somewhat more likely to return than sisters who remained with their husbands. In many cases, both the decision to migrate and the decision to return appear as joint decisions of husband and wife. Those who returned sometimes found difficulties, particularly with property. They found that others had squatted in their apartments, that property had been looted or destroyed, or that there were new challenges to their ownership or occupancy. Farmers reported losing land to government and military projects. On the other hand, the government often facilitated access to new apartments for those whose houses had been destroyed (especially in Suez) or for those who had lost family members in the war. It somewhat erratically paid compensation to those who had lost property (the Ministry of Social Affairs ran a large bureaucracy to examine claims). The declaration of a customs free zone in Port Said also attracted many returnees and new migrants.

For some people, the choice to return was a complicated one involving calculations of kinship, income, and bureaucratic complications.

   We considered settling in Cairo for good, since my parents
   and my uncles all lived there. However, I had to return to
   Ismailiya because of the two years when I was assigned to
   Suhag. If I had asked to be assigned to Cairo the
   administration would have definitely rejected my demand. I
   received a document from the administration of Ismailiya
   stating that I was a migrant. I submitted that to the
   administration of South Cairo. They didn't recognize it and
   demanded a letter from the Ministry of Education. Of course,
   the Ministry was in chaos, so I went to meet the Governor of
   Ismailiya. His wife was a consultant to the Ministry where I
   worked. I told her that I wanted to be transferred back to
   Ismailiya since I was a migrant. She sent a letter to the
   governor which he approved and signed immediately
   (Kamiliya, born 1935, retired from the Ministry of Education,
   Ismailiya).

Although the population of the cities quickly regained its pre-war numbers, the residents were not entirely the same people: some never returned, while new people came in to take advantage of new opportunities. Many of our interviewees complained of the new migrants who came after the war and took advantage of the government's incentives to resettlement.

      I never considered settling in Cairo, and I decided to
   return to Port Said. I was very uncomfortable in Cairo. Even
   though my wife's parents pressured me a lot to stay in Cairo,
   still I couldn't and I took my wife with me to Port Said.

      We never received any compensation after our return.
   The government gave compensation only to those whose land
   the government had taken to construct one of its projects. Also
   it compensated those whose houses were totally ruined. We
   had lost everything during migration. We--the people of Port
   Said--had lost our generosity, bravery, chivalry and decency,
   which were typical of the people of Port Said.

      After our return, we found that strangers had returned
   to Port Said with us. They had lots of money, while we had
   nothing. Those strangers, who came mainly from Damietta
   and Al Manzala, bought the houses and the lands. They
   outnumbered the people of the city themselves.

      I returned to my old address, I stayed for two years
   there with my family. Later my wife and I moved to another
   flat. I suffered humiliation, poverty, and hunger during
   migration. I wish they would never come again. Now, I
   believe that if a war occurs, I'd never leave my home town.
   I'd rather die here, than leave it and get lost in another place
   (Samy, born 1949, Port Said).

   Nowadays the people of Sharqiya have come in huge numbers
   to settle in Ismailiya. They consider Ismailiya to be their
   homeland and they have better job opportunities in it than the
   people of Ismailiya themselves. Accordingly the people of
   Sharqiya now in Ismailiya have a lot of money and power.
   Whenever I apply to get a job for my son, my request is turned
   down, and job is given to someone from Sharqiya. People
   believe that the people of Ismailiya are not hard workers. They
   should try them first before judging (Mohamed, born 1928,
   Ismailiya).

   Suez has changed a lot, as the original people of Suez are a
   minority, while those from outside Suez make up about 70%
   to 80% of the population. Hence, in the past it was easier for
   the people to be well acquainted with each other (Hassan, born
   1960, Suez).

Among those who returned, even after a period of years, many migrants asserted that in case of another war they would not leave their cities. They had suffered too much during the period of migration. Few people categorically referred to the period of migration in positive terms.

   All the migrants were as poor as myself. Nobody defended us.
   If a migrant was hit or insulted, he'd never answer back,
   because he's a stranger. Everybody was involved in his
   problems and suffering. They were tough days, I hope they
   never come back. We always say that we hope that the
   President never gets engaged in a war because we're the ones
   to suffer mostly. We have been through that experience before
   and we know how bad it is. As they saying goes, 'those whose
   hands are in cold water don't suffer as much as those whose
   hands are in fire' (Rashad, born 1937, Ismailiya).

   Migration was a very painful experience because we had to
   leave our place and our belongings to run for our lives. Even
   though the people were nice to us, we still suffered a lot
   because of the financial problems we had. The Ministry of
   Social Affairs provided poor families with blankets and
   financial assistance. Still, imagine yourself living in a
   classroom with other families, separated from each other only
   by a blanket. There were frequent arguments between the
   migrants because of such conditions (Samir, born 1960,
   Ismailiya).

   Because of the migration I got used to bearing responsibility at
   an early age. However, this made me feel that I'm much older
   than my age. I feel that I didn't enjoy my childhood and my
   youth like all my mates, who didn't experience migration.
   That was an advantage and a disadvantage, but I feel that it
   was more a disadvantage. Up till now, I still suffer some pain
   deep inside of me, due to that experience (Ali, born 1957,
   Suez).

CONCLUSION

This material on the migration of people from the frontline cities of the Suez Canal is consistent with, and amplifies, material on forced migration from other times and places. Notably, a comparison with the Palestinian experience in the late 1940s reveals similarities and differences. Within the general framework of forced migration, our material shows some enduring Egyptian values and practices. Among these are the importance of family continuity, linked to education, housing and home, a job and an income. People are close to their family of orientation, but relations beyond the nuclear family can become utilitarian. The material shows the Egyptian inclination towards self-help and capacity for individual action. In addition to being characteristically Egyptian, all of these issues are considered important in the adaptation of refugees and displaced people in general.

The Egyptian government, both directly and through the political party, played a major role in support of the migrants, probably more than these testimonies of the individual experiences reflect. The major decisions were to disperse the migrants in multiple locales and to provide them with material aid. Camps were avoided, as they were with the waves of Palestinian and African refugees entering Egypt. Government employees continued on the payroll. Our data illustrate the somewhat ambivalent relationship that Egyptians have with their government--government is at once relied on and unreliable. On the one hand, people are quick to establish links to the centers of decision through powerful patrons, and on the other they are deeply suspicious that favoritism plays against them.

Among new features cited by our informants is the importance of money. For some the migration experience brought home the salience of the money economy. This interpretation was not specific to the migrants, and many studies report that Egyptians look back at an earlier epoch of cooperation and good will that has since disappeared (Hopkins, Mehanna, and el-Haggar 2001:133-134). At a more personal level, many of those who were young adults during this period had a sense on the one hand of having lost their youth, and on the other of increased responsibility and excitement. A greater sense of the wider Egyptian society is perhaps evident in the new visiting patterns that emerged as families scattered, and the satisfaction with the patterns of solidarity and assistance that emerged. Many people had their sense of local patriotism reinforced, as they felt slightly ill at ease in parts of Egypt that were strange to them, and where they were in some sense outsiders. Whatever their individual experiences, many of our informants articulate a wish not to relive this part of their lives.

The combined efforts of government and people-in-families allowed Egypt to cope with the dislocation of the war while also maintaining a military posture towards Israel that culminated in the 1973 war. The success of this war for our informants is that it allowed them to return home, and within seven years. But the underlying war situation persists, notably in Palestine, despite peace along the Canal. As some of our respondents pointed out, they feared the fate of the Palestinians, and they managed to avoid it.

Compared to other experiences in the region and elsewhere, this episode was relatively circumscribed. The displaced, although forced out of their homes by war, remained in their country, were relatively well received, and were able to return to their homes within a few years. Nonetheless, the experience was felt as a negative one, unnatural and uncomfortable. Pressures towards social change were strong, even if not that radically different from those that occurred elsewhere in Egypt. The experience of evacuation represented for the evacuees a certain loss of innocence, expressed as dismay at the commercialization of society.

The social and cultural responses to migration and return may serve to throw light on other, more harrowing, experiences in the Arab world, which continues to undergo the wars and internal turmoil that produce refugees, internally displaced, and disrupted lives. In that sense, the attitudes and reactions expressed here may prove instructive to others concerned with flight and return.

REFERENCES

Abdul Qadir, M. Al-taghayarat al-ijtima'ivya w'al nafsiyya lil-usr al-muhajjara min muhafazat al-qanat. [Social and Psychological Changes in the Migrant Family from the Canal Governorates]. Cairo: National Center for Social and Criminological Research, 1974.

Abu-Lughod, J. "The Demographic Transformation of Palestine" in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed., The Transformation of Palestine. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974, pp. 139-163.

Abu-Lughod, J. "Recent Migrations in the Arab World" reprinted in N.S. Hopkins and S.E. Ibrahim, Arab Society: Social Science Perspectives, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1985, pp. 177-188 , from Human Migrations: Patterns and Policies, ed. William H. McNeil and Ruth S. Adams, Indiana University Press, 1978, pp. 225-238

Ahmed, F. "Migration of 1967 War--Egypt." Masters thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1984.

Arab Report and Record. London: Arab Report and Record, July 1967, pp. 1631.

Baker, R.W. Sadat and After: Struggles for Egypt's Political Soul. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1990.

Cooper, D. Urban Refugees: Ethiopians and Eritreans in Cairo. Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, 15(2), 1992.

Dajani, M. The Institutionalization of Palestinian Identity in Egypt. Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, 9(3), 1986.

Dodd, P. and Barakat, H. River without Bridges: A Study of the Exodus of the 1967 Palestinian Arab Refugees. Beirut: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1969.

El Abed, O. The Palestinians in Egypt: An Investigation of Livelihoods and Coping Strategies. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 2003.

Farsoun, S.K. Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1997.

Hasab, H. Al-Suwais: tajrubat madina. [Suez: A City's Experience. Resistance. Blockade. Victory]. Cairo: Dar al-mawqif al-'arabi, 2001.

Hopkins, N.S. Unpublished field notes, Musha village, Asyut, Egypt, 1981.

Hopkins, N.S., S. Mehanna and S. el-Haggar. People and Pollution: Cultural Constructions and Social Action in Egypt. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001.

Lavie, S. The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Morris, B. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Rabie, M. "War Migration and Physical Changes in Receiving Cities: Zagazig in the Aftermath of the 1967 War" in Seteney Shami, ed., Population Displacement and Resettlement: Development and Conflict in the Middle East. Staten Island NY: Center for Migration Studies, 1994, pp. 83-84.

Smith, C.D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Third edition. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Waterbury, J. "The Crossing" in Egypt: Burdens of the Past, Options for the Future. Hanover NH: American Universities Field Staff. Northeast Africa Series #17(6), 1973.

Mohamed Abdel Shakur, Sohair Mehanna, and Nicholas S. Hopkins are affiliated with the Social Research Center, American University of Cairo. The authors are grateful to Barbara Harrell-Bond of AUC's Program in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies for her support. Hoda Rashad, Director of the Social Research Center of the American University in Cairo, provided the funding for the field work. Graduate assistants Mona Ghander and Rasha Abdel Moneim handled the translations from the Arabic.