Wakako Kumakura: To Whom Does That Water Belong?

2023/10/20

For about the last 10 years, I have been researching the history of water management in Egypt. Unlike land, water is elusive. While it is something that changes shape and disappears, it is indispensable to human life. What sparked my interest in water was an event during my time in Doctoral Programs. After finishing two years of study in Cairo, I supported myself by working part-time as a production assistant for a television program until I submitted my doctoral dissertation. Whenever there was a shoot, I would fly to Egypt to handle on-site interpretation and logistics management.

A shoot inside the pyramids in August of one year was grueling. We were filming inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest of the three famous pyramids, where a narrow, steeply angled corridor leads from the entrance to the King's Chamber. Large equipment had to be carried in. This task was handled by locally hired Egyptians. I explained to them what to carry where and took on part of the on-site direction. Even in an arid region, the interior of the pyramids in midsummer is humid from human sweat and has a strong odor. Everyone sweated as they repeatedly carried heavy equipment up and down.

Once the work was finished, the workers gathered around me, asking for water. At my feet, plastic bottles were chilling in a cooler, but those were drinks for the actors and staff from Japan. I wanted to give a bottle of water to each of them after their grueling work, but I was stopped by one of the staff members next to me. When I apologized to them, I heard a voice from among them say, "Is the water only for you people?" As if in response, everyone started saying, "This is the desert; if someone is thirsty, giving them water is just what humans do, isn't it?" I waited for a moment when the staff left the site and handed them the plastic bottles.

After returning to Japan, I couldn't get this incident out of my head. Even though we were looking at the same thing, it bothered me that on one hand, a plastic bottle was nothing more than an expense, while on the other, water was life. It was an ethical issue and, at the same time, an issue of ownership. At the time, I was engrossed in the history of land systems, but this incident led to the question of who managed and used the water drawn to the land in the first place. You never know where the seeds of historical research might fall.