From My Notebooks In 1973: Alexandria and Cairo

Before we get to the notebooks…

Listen, I know you’ve been enjoying these notes. At various times I’ve asked for feedback, and some of you have been very articulate. I don’t have a very large email list but it’s stayed fairly steady for the three years I’ve been doing this – and of course a lot more people have been reading me through social media.

Now I have to ask myself, why am I doing this? It’s work – quite a lot of work. I justified it originally by the books I was selling through the site, but the truth is you’re not buying them from me any more, probably because you’ve got them already – and I’m grateful for that, of course – but still I feel the need to be acknowledged in a practical way. The plain truth is it costs more to maintain the web site than I get from it in income.

I’ve heard from many of you over the years. I feel I know you. I think some of you would like to contribute, and it’s up to me to give you a way to do that.

Several of you have said you’d like to see the diaries as a book. It’s an interesting challenge – “The Real Motorcycle Diaries” perhaps – but much more difficult than my autobiography and probably more expensive. So here is what I propose (I’m trying to banish the word ”deal” from my vocabulary):

You send me $100 (or your local currency equivalent) to reward me for three years of wonderful story-telling. Let’s call it a One-time Subscription. That seems fair to me. You’ll find the offer on the books page of my web site.

If it all adds up to enough to finance a book, or some other solution, I’ll do my best to make it work. And if you have other ideas about what to do with these diaries, let’s talk about it.

Meanwhile, there’s all of Africa still to look forward to.

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS IN 1973: Alexandria and Cairo

November 14th

My day for sightseeing starts poorly. Showers spill fresh floods across the roads. Visit the tourist office and meet with bovine response from ladies assembled there. To garage first, to find a spanner and manual gone. They give me another spanner, but the manual! So easy to think STOLEN. Still brainwashed by tales of thieving Arabs. But the younger of the men – that charming, soft-spoken best of men who wears the khaki overalls reminds me that I took it to the petrol station to buy oil. Of course! My own stupidity, but on their faces only great relief and pleasure. We march off together in the rain and find not only the manual but the spanner also. Once again virtue triumphs and my Western paranoia put to shame.

Drive to Montasah Palace (King Farouk’s summer house). Fine marble staircase – with rooms arranged in tiers around space open to roof with cheap-looking stained-glass partitions off floors. But light is very good. Otherwise, expensive bad taste. Bathrooms lined with alabaster tiles, but sanitary equipment and design ugly. Foolish trinkets in cabinets. Empty house, empty lives.

Fascinated by the showers. Cage of hot water pipes, showers from above, jets from below. Perfect Edwardian plumbing miracle in that ‘chromed’ metal with dull sheen – was it nickel plating?

Gardens just an ostentatious display of date palms and small firs. Rough lawn. Best of a bad job. Back to hotel for lunch. News of discord between Israel and Egypt disturbs atmosphere. I decide to leave after lunch, rather than stay another night. Aat end of lunch a telegram arrives. It’s for Pacaud. He opens it and takes a sharp breath.

“Mon fils est mort! Je le savais. “ [My son is dead. I knew it.]

His grief is profound and inconsolable. There is a short story to be written about us four at the Normandie. (Mme Mellasse.)

Road to Cairo. Groups of mud houses, dripping hay from the roofs. What are the round cupolas? To collect water? Stables also. Some beautifully made of mud columns, spaced to exclude bigger animals. Huge sails of barges, tall as houses (sixty feet) rising out of the railway line must be road, fill with wind but still require two men pulling. Sail tattered. Many of them stretching out in line ahead. Hard to tell whether there’s room to pass, but must be.

Cairo and the road in blackout. With only my polaroid goggles to protect me from flying sand and diesel soot, it becomes difficult to see where the road is or what’s on it. Bullock carts, donkey carts, cyclists, all unlit, appear on the verge. I catch a lift behind a fast taxi and as an act of faith follow him blindly into Cairo. An hour at 50-55mph. Not comfortable. But Pacaud’s description of route serves me well. Only the one-way systems finally cause difficulty.

Golden Hotel is a bit intimidating at first. The upper floors resemble Alcatraz.

I don’t know now who recommended the Golden Hotel but it was an inspired choice, despite the cockroaches.

Thursday, November 15th

To Reuter Office. Dullforce is middle-aged, lean, grey-haired, unsympathetic. Wife likewise. Brisk, and busy.

Write about arrests. These bureau people are much like the police (in fact all daily newspaper people). Received the minimum of help, much disapproval. It’s the worst kind of arrogance, but I find myself largely immune to the consequences.

Pass on to the Cairo Information Centre, for permission to drive to Aswan.

Eat at Estoril Restaurant in alley off Tallaat Harb. Not very good.

Meet two young girls outside Suez Canal Co. offices. Birds are singing loudly in trees. Animated conversation with men through the bars. Egyptians always good for a laugh. Very warm people. After an attempt at lessons in Arabic, go for an endless walk through ‘garden city’ with Youssef, an accountant with Nile Transport Co. who described himself as “economist.” Earns 35 Egyptian pounds a month. (i.e. £6 a week). In five years’ time he will earn £8 a week. Says he likes the security. Went to East Berlin in Egyptian Youth delegation. Conversation oozing with emotion, empty of content. Leave girls and speed off in a taxi to something resembling an outdoor Peabody Building. Dodging from bloc to block until suddenly, without warning, into small flat bright with several hundred watts and solid with people. I counted over sixty with difficulty. Drums and tambours banging away. Two families celebrating the betrothal of two young people. Immense gaiety, no alcohol, ‘belly dancing’ by men and women (with scarf tied around hips). “Mucho Corazón”

Friday, November 16th

Gizeh pyramids. It’s a general holiday. Pyramids are at the edge of Cairo. West of Nile, on a raised area. A throng of guides, horses and camel drivers make an appreciation of the pyramids impossible. To have first stumbled upon them must have been marvelous but I can find no sense of awe for these lumps of stone. Less barbaric than Teohuacan, but still a monumental egoism. The marvels are all abstract – geometry, astronomy, etc.

I can’t resist the importunities of a guide who is clever enough to be less clamorous than the others, but he shows me very little. In a tent he gives me good tea made on a primus stove by a pretty wife dressed in pink. She boils the water and tea vigorously, decants it, boils it again, decants it again. How the sugar got in or where the tea leaves went I have no idea. Hard upholstered couches on two sides.

Walk away to pyramids. Into second pyramid (Queen Sharfeen?) One tomb with hardboard partitions. Graffiti early 19th Century. G.R.Hill and Scheistenberger etc.

To first pyramid. Meet two unintelligent lads, but girl with them is more aware. Into Cheops. Inside like something out of [the film] Metropolis. All scaffolding and duckboards.

Jack Hulbert was a much-loved actor and comedian in the prewar days – with a big chin and a twinkle in he eye – you can see the resemblance, though how Faris the camel driver knew about him remains a mystery.

Ready to leave when I give way to camel driver, and now my reward. Because he gives me a great ride, over an hour, into the sand dunes, on “Jack Hulbert” [that’s the name of the camel.]

He is bright, humorous, great fun. We take a roll of pictures. Him and his mate.

But what in God’s name does the average package tourist get out of it all?

I really rode that camel, rein, switch and heel. My thighs were aching from the unaccustomed movement. JH lurched and swayed and hobbled along, with brief bursts of crazy trotting. I crossed my legs, Arab style, over his shoulders. He is six and will go on probably until he’s twenty-five or so. Sacks of ‘clover ‘at his side under heavy embroidered cloth. Take two sets of pix. First roll failed to attach to spool. Drivers called Faris Hamse (No. 62) Mandor Shahat (77).

I’m disturbed by my failure to respond to the pyramids and question the quality of response in others. I know perfectly well that if I want I can whip up a storm of fancies and imaginings but I was determined to let the pyramids do the work. As props for a mind hungry for sensation they do very well, no doubt, but as objects to inspire pure awe or wonder I think they fail. Man has demeaned them in scale and industry. Rockets can be built taller than Cheops, more intricate, by more people, and sent to the moon. They have been surrounded by bric-a-brac, haggling, and petty detail.

I’ve been told that it’s better to see them first at night, through ‘son et lumière’ and that it’s a very good show. I quite believe it, but that’s a different matter. With sufficient skill at my command I believe it would be possible to illuminate the history of mankind by “son et lumière” in my kitchen.

The pyramids have an absolute virtue, but depend, like all other earthly things, on perspective. When the perspective is altered, whether by a persistent camel driver or a new catch-penny museum built up against the face of the pyramid itself, the pyramids fail and it is up to the individual to supply, by an act of imagination, what has been stolen. I refuse, because I feel I will become an accomplice of the despoilers.

[I seem to have gone through a rather arrogant phase. Perhaps it was the only way I could find to deal with such a short exposure to such an extraordinary phenomenon.]

If you’d like to reward me for three years of wonderful story-telling with these notebook extracts, you can send me a one-time $100 subscription.