A passage to modernity

Pascale Ghazaleh picks her way through rubble in search of the missing link
BRIDGES AND CROWNS: clockwise from top, a rare shot of Abul-Ela Bridge open(Cairo Postcard Fund, courtesy of Pierre Sioufi); bits and pieces; awaiting reassembly
photos: Khaled El-Fiqi
Bulaq, 1908: Work begins on Abul-Ela Bridge. Bulaq, 1998: The job of dismantling the bridge is begun. Who could have predicted that it would last less than a century?
Given such a short, nasty and brutish life, it may be fitting, if a little sad, that Abul-Ela Bridge's main claim to fame was apocryphal. It was widely rumoured that Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel had designed it; when he realised that, contrary to plan, it failed to open to river traffic, he leapt from it in a grand gesture of despair, transforming the embodiment of his professional shame into the instrument of his death.
The story is appealing but, unfortunately, false on at least two counts: first, Eiffel did not design the bridge; second, it did indeed roll back to let ships pass between the northern tip of Zamalek and Bulaq every day except Sunday, between 12 and 12.45 noon, then again between 3 and 3.45pm. How long it continued to do so remains a subject of contention, however: some are sure that it opened only once, while others claim that it stopped functioning several years after its inauguration.
Clearly, though, it eventually closed for good, and for that, according to historian Samir Raafat, American engineer William Scherzer is to blame. "Not only did his Chicago firm design the Boulac Bridge," writes Raafat, "but it was Scherzer who invented its rolling bascules and the locking mechanism used for opening it to fluvial traffic." Two French companies -- Five-Lilles and Schneider -- manufactured the bridge's steel girders and beams respectively.
The Belgian-owned Cairo Tramways Company had partially financed the construction of the Bulaq Bridge. The company generated the electricity on which the trams ran, Raafat explains, and therefore could supply the 500 volts needed to operate the bridge's opening mechanism from its power plan in Bulaq. Among the final additions to the tram system was a line, inaugurated in July 1912, extending from Bulaq over the new bridge to the Gezira.
Abul-Ela thus came into existence as part of an unprecedented drive to connect the city ("the completion of the system of bridges," notes Janet Abu-Lughod in Cairo: 1,001 Years of the City Victorious, "made possible the expansion of the city onto the two islands in the midst of the Nile and, beyond, onto the western shore"); it passed away into nothingness for the same reason, a century or so later. It seems to have replaced an older bridge constructed in 1879 to link Bulaq with the Gezira, where according to early-20th-century historian Marcel Clerget "the pasha's castle, magnificent gardens, and a beautiful circular path were attracting attention more and more." In turn, it has been replaced by a bigger and no doubt more efficient bridge -- an affront to certain standards of beauty, no doubt, but who can say, after all, if Abul-Ela's imposing profile did not offend sensibilities at the time of its construction? Amin Sami, author of the monumental Taqwim Al-Nil (Calendar of the Nile, published during the 1920s and 30s), declared that the bridge's aspect "is not adapted to its presence within the city of Cairo."
Whatever its aesthetic value, Abul-Ela Bridge certainly suffered from structural deficiencies. Precisely why it ceased to open is unclear, however: Sami states simply that the pillars holding it up were not parallel to the river's course. It was therefore impossible for ships to navigate the 27m opening unimpeded, and they were forced to take the western branch of the Nile, called Al-Bahr Al-A'ma or "Blind Nile." Furthermore, sniffs Sami, although the bridge's construction had not been easy -- it was an unwieldy 274.5m long and 20m wide -- its foundations were not as solid as those of the new Qasr Al-Nil Bridge, which replaced Khedive Ismail's structure in 1933.
Its fate was still unknown when Abul-Ela was quietly opened to the public in July 1912, however. The entire government had moved to Alexandria in April, as it did every year to escape the summer swelter. Khedive Abbas Helmi II, Egypt's ruler (at least in name) was vacationing in Europe; Lord Kitchener (the country's de facto sovereign) was in Malta. Ismail Sirri Pasha, the minister of public works, cut the ribbon on their behalf.
The bridge had cost the considerable sum of 300,000 pounds to construct; at the time of its dismantling, it was rumoured that the Arab Contractors, the company responsible for pulling it to pieces, had received LE30 million for the task. Interviewed in 1998, Ibrahim Mihlib, then deputy head of the Contractors' board of directors, rejected this figure: the firm, he explained, had received only LE5.5 million.
The bridge's demise had been in the offing for several years, however; a budget had been allocated for its demolition as early as 1993. The reason, said Mihlib, was the corrosion that had attacked it due to lack of maintenance. It was so shaky that it had been officially closed to lorries and buses in the early 1970s, but the deterioration continued relentlessly.
Taking Abul-Ela apart was almost as difficult as assembling it had been, to judge from Mihlib's description: "One mistake in the removal work could have led to collapse," he said. "Everything was linked -- all the parts were riveted." Still, he seemed confident that the 1,200 tons of steel that had been moved upriver on pontoons could be put back together again "very easily."
Ahmed El-Gammal, head of the Abul-Ela/15 May Bridge project, concurred: "The bridge is being taken apart, not cut up," he stated as the work was nearing completion. From a vantage point on 15 May Bridge, it seemed clear that workers were using blow-torches on the steel girders; the rivets were so laden with rust that it would have been impossible to remove them. "The parts [estimated at around 4,000] were attached with rivets and have been numbered and stored," El-Gammal noted. The columns of Aswan granite were also to be marked and sliced into manageable sections, which seems to be the next task on the Contractors' busy agenda.
For the time being, the rest of the bridge is languishing in a heap closely resembling scrap metal near Imbaba Bridge, past the Conrad Hotel. Will it remain there until it disintegrates and finally dissolves into the river (now tamed -- indeed, reduced) it was designed to span so proudly? Will a wholesale dealer cart it off and melt it down? Grand plans were floated before the bridge was finally removed: it was to be put back together on one of the Nile's banks, parallel to the river, and transformed into an outdoor café, or an art gallery; it was to be taken to Media City and used as scenery. At present, it is still there, its dull gleam green against the bank's silt.
The columns, however, have more obvious decorative value. After a suitable interval -- memories are short in this city saturated with history, after all -- the rococo flourishes that once graced their apexes could be recycled: they are a little too bulky to adorn a fireplace, no matter how grand, and would be impractical as coat-racks, but they could look quite smart flanking the gate to a modest mansion in Mansouriya.
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