Aden: Random Memories 17c: The Return of The Natives: Egypt

I was told the ship was going to go through the Suez Canal, but we were going to disembark at Port Suez and go to Cairo. I felt slightly cheated that I wasn’t going to see the famous canal, but we were going to have an adventure and rejoin the ship at Port Said.

We got into the small boat that took us ashore, and already on board was a Gilly-Gilly man, or an Arab magician. His repertoire consisted mainly of regurgitating small chicks out of his mouth, removing them from a child’s ear and even, horrors of horrors, from out of my shorts! I have no idea how it got there for him to find it there. I didn’t even felt it inside my shorts.

We were ferried in a coach to Cairo across a flat landscape. It made little impact on me. Somewhere along the journey we were introduced to our Egyptian guide. He was probably called something easy for us to remember, a ‘typical’ Arabic name like Abdul or Mohammed. I can still hear him, especially the clear high pitch of his voice, calling us when he wanted us to gather together, “Memphis party, this way please.” Our round badges identified us, a picture of the Sphinx with Memphis written above it on the edge. In some of the boring parts of the journey he entertained us with comments like “I learned English from an American. See you later alligator!”

We followed a river, it was the Nile. It wasn’t blue or white, but a muddy brown. Nobody had taught us about the Muddy Brown Nile in history or geography. The city was vast, bustling, so much humanity. We were ferried to the Cairo museum. There we saw the treasures of the boy king Tutankhamen. Egyptian funeral rites were explained and shown to us. The famous mask for his mummified body was on show. It was a vast display.

No visit to Cairo would be complete without a trip to see the pyramids and the Sphinx. Our coach took us to the end of a road and we had the option to travel to the pyramids by camel or by donkey. I had already experienced riding a camel. I chose the donkey, not that it was more comfortable.

Nothing had prepared me for the majesty of the monuments. We were regaled with facts and history, part of which rattles about in my head and pops up from time to time. Alabaster was a word I heard a lot. So much was made of alabaster, covered in alabaster. They made such a fuss about telling us about alabaster, yet it seemed to be as commonplace as water as it was used so much.

We also went inside a mosque in Cairo, which I cannot recall but it was vast. We wore sacking over our feet as we walked around. It was a most stunning building. Yet again in my young life, I was facing something from another culture. Instead of a practical construction like the tanks at Crater, this time it was a religious building that could stand up against the cathedrals of Christendom.

© 2012 Gwailo54

Aden: Random Memories 17a: The Return of The Natives: Time to go

Hard though it was to believe, our time was soon up and we had to return to the U.K.. I don’t suppose I ever thought we would return. When I was an adult, my mother used to enjoy embarrassing me by retelling the story of when I asked her, ‘When are we going back home, mummy?’ after we had returned to the U.K. from the Far East. ‘Home’ was where aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents lived. It wasn’t home to me. That place was cold and had snow and lots of drizzly rain. Home was where I lived among people who were not like me.

My father was of the opinion another overseas tour was highly unlikely. It was 1964, the crisis in Aden had yet to explode and the ignominious retreat, the last nail in the coffin of British rule was just over three years away. If my father had been gifted with second sight, he couldn’t have been more accurate in his predictions. As this was our last opportunity to see the world, my parents decided we would return by sea. A voyage from Aden, up through the Suez canal, with a diversion through Egypt, then we would pass through the Mediterranean Sea to Gibraltar, where the ship would berth a while, and finally traverse the Bay of Biscay to Liverpool.

In preparation for our departure, my mother started knitting sweaters. As I swam and jumped and dived in the pool at Khormaksar, she sat in the shade knitting, day after day.

We must have also spent some time packing up all our belongings, but I cannot remember doing this. I had my own small wooden crate which contained my toys and books, but not my teddy bear. We left the flat, and spent our last night in Aden in some hotel. It seemed empty and uninviting. It was also the first time I had seen a bidet!

For some strange reason, both my mother’s passage and mine (a total cost of £142 10s 00d) were paid for by the government but my father’s (cost £95 exactly) wasn’t. I don’t know why this was. My father’s fare cost the equivalent of £1,500.00 today. This probably did not include the expense of the trips we made in Egypt and Gibraltar.

The tickets for our return to the U.K.

© 2012 Gwailo54