Egyptian Teen-Agers Take to Desert Water Park : Cairo: Crazy Water took four years and $12 million to build, and it’s a splash.

Egyptian teen-agers grow up with jeans, sneakers and portable cassette players, but have never seen the like of Crazy Water, an entertainment park of splashy fun in the dry Sahara.

Sherif Abdel-Hamid, 15, screamed his way down Kamikaze, a daredevil water slide. “Great fun!” he declared, and headed for The Big Wave, man-made surf enhanced by gusting desert winds.

Bringing the water park to conservative Egypt took four years and $12 million provided by nine businessmen, most of them former military officers, who wanted to do something different.

“We’ve had so many wars,” said Moheb Farahat, a retired navy captain. “Egyptians have a lot of daily problems. We want to let Egyptians forget for a bit, allow our youth to have clean fun.”

The youth in question are the privileged young who must balance an affinity for things new and Western with the old, traditional Muslim beliefs.

Farahat said there is nothing anti-Islamic about the park: “We’re Muslims too.”

Mustafa Mashhour, deputy head of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, said such a park does not violate Islamic teachings in itself because “Islam encourages sports.”

What happens in the park could be a different matter, however. “We do object to swimmers mixing,” Mashhour said, “because it might lead to temptation.”

Using that criterion, Crazy Water squeezes by. Most amusements, like water slides, are experienced individually. Sexes may or may not mix at The Big Wave, where artificial surf bounces swimmers about.

Crazy Water’s customers don’t seem bothered about such things, perhaps because Egypt’s financial elite tend to be more liberal than the masses.

A day at the park costs 10 Egyptian pounds ($3) for adults and 7.50 pounds ($2.25) for small children. It’s a bargain by world standards, but steep for Egypt’s middle-class families, whose monthly incomes hover around $90.

Many young customers are from families with money created by billions of dollars in development aid the United States has provided Egypt in the last dozen years.

They spend much of their time at private clubs or watching videos with friends.

Farahat described them as restless, ripe for something shocking, and the investor concluded: “A water park in a country that’s 97% desert had to be a smash hit.”

“Most of these kids have never left Egypt,” he said. “They don’t know that what they’re enjoying comes from the United States. They only know they’ve never seen anything like it, and they love it.”

Young people give rave reviews to the park, designed by an American firm. Even before its formal opening in late September, Crazy Water had more than 800 visitors daily, and up to 4,000 a day are projected for next summer.

Most visitors are aged 12 to 20 and come with friends. The park also lures many families, including Persian Gulf Arabs on holiday and foreign residents of Egypt. It is an hour’s drive from downtown Cairo on the road to a new desert town called October 6 City.

Among Crazy Water’s 13 attractions are six water slides, two of them 50-foot thrillers, an Olympic-sized pool and a video arcade.

The water--39,000 gallons daily--comes by pipeline from October 6 City or is trucked from the Nile for filtration and recycling.

Abdel-Hamid, the enthusiastic 15-year-old, figures that Crazy Water will offend some people. “If a pious Muslim comes,” for instance, “he’ll definitely say it’s wrong.”

The “wrong” can be found in rules that every bather must wear a swimsuit.

Some Muslim women insist on swimming fully clothed. That is not allowed at Crazy Water, but it does permit the “Islamic-style” costume: a swimsuit over a leotard.

A blend of swimwear from bikini to Islamic can be found at the park.

Muslim girls should not wear bikinis, young Abdel-Hamid said, “but it’s not the suit that’s wrong. Girls shouldn’t use bathing suits to show off their bodies.”

Mohammed Makram, a park official, reported only one complaint about the swimsuit rules, from an American Muslim who said swimming in bathing clothes is sinful. She did not swim, he said.

Instead of people avoiding Crazy Water because of the rules, Makram said, “we’re seeing women who used to wear Islamic suits switch to Western styles.”

That’s fine with Tarek Sakr, 11, who doesn’t think the Muslim style belongs in the park.

“To wear these clothes is not right if you want to go to Crazy Water, an obviously Westernized place,” he said. “It makes those of us wearing bathing suits uncomfortable, men and women.”