Struggle Over the Nile

Arif Gamal: The lost kingdom of the Nile

Despite the trauma of displacement, Nubians have done their best to keep alive their traditions and language.

At the push of a button, water levels behind the dam rose rapidly. In May 1964, Jamal Abdul-Nasser, the Egyptian president, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev attended celebrations marking the start of the second stage of building the Aswan High dam.

The project was on track. But at the expense of over 120,000 Nubians – in both Egypt and Sudan – who were forced to move.

Arif Gamal, a Sudanese Nubian, was a child when the displacement occurred. Today he teaches African history in the US.

He says: “After 50 years, when you look at the new land that was acquired by the Nubians, or where the Nubians were displaced to is miserable reading where you have an enormous amount of health problems … you have very bad logistics and again massive migration but this time they look like refugees.”