, Page 00019 The New York Times Archives

There is a new road out of Cairo toward Saqqara, a great archeological site at the desert's edge. A year or two ago you drove through lush farm plots of grain and onions and beans. Today, for miles on both sides of the road, there are small crowded apartment blocks. The rich alluvial soil has been covered with brick and cement.

Seeing what has happened on the road to Saqqara makes it easier for the visitor to understand why President Hosni Mubarak says his most urgent challenge is economic. The outside world views Egypt as a critical diplomatic actor at a dangerous time in the Middle East. But here the pressures felt most keenly are those of population and employment and food.

Egypt has about 44 million people now, and it adds 1.3 million a year. On current trends its population will be a staggering 140 million by the year 2025. Where are they to live? How are they to eat? Already the millions who have poured into Cairo in search of work are desperately short of housing, and new building eats away at the limited amount of fertile watered land along the Nile.

Mr. Mubarak by all signs has established himself in office to a remarkable degree, given the traumatic circumstances of his assuming it last October. And his success evidently stems in good part from an understanding that Egyptians want their leader to focus on domestic concerns rather than to play a great role on the world stage. A shrewd observer put it:

''They're in an anti-heroic mood. People see that they have immediate problems: the economy, the crumbling infrastructure of the country. They want small solutions, not grandiose slogans and gestures. They don't want heroism and big ideas.''

It is certainly a low-profile presidency. Many pictures of Anwar Sadat are still on display in the streets and in Government offices; there are almost none of Hosni Mubarak. His wife and family get zero publicity. He does not make a point of his closeness to the American Government; he does not talk of ''Walter'' or ''Barbara.'' He understands what had begun to grate in Sadat's style.

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When President Sadat was assassinated, most diplomats took a pretty skeptical view of Mr. Mubarak. They thought he was a stolid military officer who would have trouble managing the turbulent political currents of Egypt. Now the general diplomatic view is that he has not put a foot wrong.

He has managed to avoid arousing what remains the most dangerous poten-tial source of opposition, the Islamic fundamentalists. So far, at least, they have not focused personal hostility on Mr. Mubarak as they did on his predecessor, even though five fundamentalists have been sentenced to death for the Sadat assassination and hundreds of others are in detention.

What is really impressive to an outsider is the way Mr. Mubarak has kept his cool - and kept the public calm -on the question of relations with Israel. He has continued to speak softly, and optimistically, despite Israeli policies that make it very hard to do so: the repression in the West Bank, the dispute about the Sinai border, the sudden insistence that autonomy negotiations be held for the first time ever in Jerusalem.

The obvious explanation is that Mr. Mubarak is determined to hold his tongue until April 25 - to do nothing that might provide reason for a holdup in Israel's final withdrawal from the Sinai. And so he has not reacted to what Egyptians see as moves by an innatelysuspicious Israel to test their peacefulness. ''Sometimes,'' an official said, shaking his head, ''I think Israelis wake up in the morning and say, 'Testing, testing, testing.' ''

But there is more to it than April 25. I have not found anyone here who thinks the Egyptian people want to go back to a state of hostile confrontation with Israel. Mr. Mubarak will not rush into warmer relations, but he is not going to turn back on the basic decision for peace.

He says that he can be more useful to Arab interests, especially those of the Palestinians, if he is a friend of Israel who can talk to her. And he couches his concerns in kindness. The troubles in the West Bank, for example, are a subject of real anxiety here, evoking unusually critical words in the press. When I asked Mr. Mubarak about the West Bank, he said he had raised the question in a letter to Prime Minister Begin. Then he added:

''He's a very experienced man and a wise man, and I'm just asking him to use his wisdom: not to let this problem escalate, for the sake of peace.''

When you ask Mr. Mubarak about possible changes in Egyptian policy, on Israel or other things, he waves the idea aside with gestures and jokes. The impression he leaves, and means to leave, is that everything is on course: all stable and secure.

It is convincing. The only thing is the road to Saqqara. What answers can Hosni Mubarak produce to the challenges of population and jobs and food? A low-profile leadership suits the mood in Egypt today. But sooner or later people will want some results.

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