Many of us were taught during our history lectures at university that it was the trade of spices, tea leaves, tobacco, silk and cotton that lured the British into colonising our nations in South West Asia and North Africa, and the discovery of oil in the 20th century that turned us from colonies into British protectorates. But how many of us have paused to think that there is a far bigger resource in our region that drove British imperialism and which, if not under British control, threatened the end of its expansionist policies? In These Bodies of Water, Egyptian-British playwright, poet, and…