Story - Salt and Gunpowder: A Hundred Days Behind the Barricades, Author -Abdel Latif Moubarak.

Salt and Gunpowder: A Hundred Days Behind the Barricades

Abdel Latif Moubarak.

At the dawn of October 24, 1973, the air in Suez did not carry its usual scent of iodine, but rather the smell of gunpowder and anticipation. "Abu El-Azm," a man in his sixties who spent his life in the shipyards, stood on his balcony in the Arbaeen district. The city, which thought the war had ended with the troops crossing East, suddenly found itself face-to-face with tanks that had slipped through the "Gap."

When the enemy tanks attempted to storm the Arbaeen district, houses turned into barricades. There was no difference between a soldier in camouflage and a mechanic in grease-stained overalls. Martyrs fell in the streets of the police station, and the blood of policemen mingled with that of the popular resistance. On that day, Suez closed its gates to the invaders, and the official siege began.

The first days passed, and water and electricity supplies were completely cut off. Suez became an isolated island. The hardest mission was searching for a drop of water. "Hajja Amina" organized a long queue in front of the last remaining water jar in the alley, while young men braved the shelling to reach old, abandoned wells.

The stocks of flour and meat ran out. The people of Suez began to innovate ways to survive. Fish, once abundant in the canal, became a distant dream as the shores were guarded by snipers. People relied on lentils, *bissara*, and whatever grains they had stored.

The small radio was their only window to the world. Dozens would gather around it, their voices hushed, listening to news of the "Kilometer 101" negotiations. When the announcer said, "And Suez is still resisting," the city's heart would beat faster, as if words were a substitute for food.

The enemy was not just in tanks; they were atop the minarets of mosques they occupied and the peaks of tall buildings. The sniper took lives indiscriminately. "Said," a passionate young man, fell to a sniper's bullet while trying to bring medicine to an elderly woman. Suez wept in silence that night.

The hospital turned into a beehive that never slept. Doctors worked by candlelight, and surgeries were performed with minimal anesthesia. "Dr. Ibrahim" washed his hands with salt water before operations. The spirit was strange; the wounded would ask the doctor to hurry so they could return to their posts.

In the Church of Suez and the Great Mosque, the spirit was one. The priest shared the few loaves of bread with the Sheikh. The siege did not distinguish between religions; it melted everyone into the crucible of being a "Suezian."

After a hundred days of a suffocating siege, news began to arrive of the imminent Israeli withdrawal following the disengagement agreements. Abu El-Azm looked out from his balcony to see pale faces and thin bodies, but eyes that gleamed with a victory that no regular army could achieve alone.

On the day the last soldier of the besieging force departed, the people of Suez poured into the streets. There were no loud celebrations, but a collective prayer of thanksgiving. Abu El-Azm looked at the ruins of the Arbaeen district and said to his son: "My son, cities are not walls; cities are people... and we have proven that the people of Suez are made of iron."