Travels With My Hat: A Lifetime on the Road. Christine Osborne
gave no indication of seeing our frantic waving.
Exhausted by the heat, Ruth and the boys stretched out on the concrete floors of the house, but I pottered along the water’s edge. Stooping to pick up a spider shell, I was startled by the sight of a camel in the distance and after making sure it was not a mirage, I let out a cooee. The rider had discovered Sharif’s footprints, and believing him a smuggler had come to investigate. Dropping down from the saddle, he listened to Morris’ explanation of our improbable situation. Then eyeing Ruth and me in our bikinis, he loped off to radio Hurghada from his lonely camp-site.
We had changed into our sunfrocks long before two officers bounced up in an army truck and accused us all of being spies. But following a vigorous exchange with the boys, they were finally convinced we were tourists of sorts, and we were driven back to Hurghada.
Our first bite to eat was a khoubz wrap of onion, over-ripe tomato and Chinese corned beef, but washed down with tins of Indian mango-juice, it was little short of a feast. There was no chance to rejoice, however, as the police put us all on the night bus to Cairo. Our travels from London to Dishdaba had taken four months: a rich experience, though possibly not to have been undertaken without adequate preparation, or at the height of a North African summer.
Back in London during the winter months, I earned a living working as a waitress at The Contented Sole, a trendy fish-and-chip restaurant in South Kensington. Gerry, its Irish chef, smoked like a chimney and the batter around many a sole contained a liberal sprinkling of his cigarette ash. We waitresses wore straw boaters, frilly white blouses, and tight black skirts, and sang along to a honky-tonk piano. It was hard work singing and running up and down the stairs, but within six months, I’d saved enough to spend the summer in Spain.
In Malaga one day, I was leafing through an old copy of Hola! the Spanish news and celebrity magazine when, among articles on film stars and bullfighters, I chanced on a story of some German tourists who had perished while on holiday in Egypt. The four men, a woman and her poodle had been attempting to visit a remote archaeological site in the Western Desert, but travelling by minibus, they had run out of petrol and water and had succumbed to the August heat. Eventually located, their bodies were found to be withered like prunes, the last to die being the woman who’d kept a diary of their agonies. At this point, my eyes flew to a small picture obtained to illustrate the feature: it was the cover photograph from the Egyptian magazine of the German girl at Hurghada.
***
Thirty years had passed since my Red Sea adventure and I imagined Hurghada would now be a mass of hotels, shopping malls, and seaside restaurants. The British writers had just departed and I was waiting for a friend, a former stewardess with BOAC14, who had taken a few days off to visit Hurghada with me. We’d packed evening wear for cocktails and I’d thrown in a mask in hope of a dive. Our hosts, the Cairo Sheraton, had advised that their hotel was still under construction, so our accommodation was to be a bungalow. Everything seemed to have been well-organised and I was looking forward to Aileen’s plane that was due in behind a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight from Amman.
As our departure to Hurghada was not until the following afternoon, I left her asleep, and took a taxi to the City of the Dead, the huge cemetery in northern Cairo where I needed to shoot some photographs for a book on Islamic art. The Mamluk sultans, rather like latter-day pharaohs, had selected this area just outside the city walls as a suitable burial ground to erect magnificent monuments to their dead. The dusty heritage included the funerary complex of Sultan Sayf ad-Din Barquq, who founded the dynasty in 1382, the mausoleum of Sultan Qaitbey, and the Qaitbey Mosque that features on the Egyptian one pound note.
Over the years, due to Cairo’s chronic housing shortage, many poor families had taken up residence in the necropolis. A spooky place, at the same time it resembled a village community, though lacking the amenities enjoyed by the city’s more affluent citizens. I passed women hanging out washing on lines strung between headstones, children drawing pictures using the tombs as desks, and youths kicking a football among madrassas (religious colleges) more than five hundred years old. A dead black cat lying outside the funerary complex of Sultan al-Ashraf Barsbey was an ominous sign.
Over lunch in the Cairo Sheraton, we heard British guests earnestly discussing an incident of the previous evening, but unable to establish the cause of their concern, we left for the airport.
DEAD CAT LYING IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD WAS AN OMINOUS SIGN
‘There seem to be lots of police about,’ said Aileen, an attractive woman in her early forties who had flown as Cabin Crew Superintendent with various members of the Royal family on their worldwide jaunts.
The flight to Hurghada took an hour and as we approached the coast, I was surprised by the lack of high-rise. Had we come in further south over Dishdaba? Our mood had been upbeat until we disembarked onto a windswept runway where three young men from the Sheraton Hurghada greeted us wearing jeans, gym-boots and zipped puffer jackets. When I remarked on the cold, one boy who identified himself as the Sheraton-to-be-sports-monitor, told us the inclement weather had been around for weeks.
The short drive into Hurghada took us through a bleak landscape punctured by abandoned motor vehicles and one or two tanks, casualties of the 1967 war with Israel. As we neared signs of urbanisation, I was appalled by the sight of feral dogs worrying a dead companion. A large husky-like animal was tearing at the dog’s head while another animal dragged on its haunches. It was macabre start to our visit and I suggested that Aileen, a rather prudish Scot, should look the other way.
‘Hurghada,’ announced one of the boys.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Aileen. ‘I can’t even see a Kentucky Fried Chicken.’
The grafting of a Sheraton onto the old Red Sea Tours Hotel had acted like a beacon. Bedouin from as far away as Sinai had pitched their tents and around them lay the trappings of civilisation: discarded generators, broken television sets, polystyrene packing cases, plastic bags and mountains of soft drink cans. Hurghada was a slum. Only the old white-washed mosque showed any sign of care.
‘There’s the Sheraton,’ said one of the lads pointing to a large construction site.
‘We can see it tomorrow. I think we would like to change for dinner,’ I replied politely.
We ascended a stony plateau devoid of vegetation, a monotony relieved only by a row of shabby wooden shacks on stilts. When the driver stopped outside one of these splintery structures, I realised with dismay it was our accommodation. Far from obtaining the keys to a seaside bungalow, we were staying here; but the future sports monitor had remade our beds and stacked his gym-boots in a corner of our room.
‘When is the next flight back to Cairo?’ asked Aileen, plonking down on her suitcase.
‘I’m sure there is a daily service,’ I said, less than enthusiastically.
Presently there was a knock on our door. A pimply faced youth wearing a Second World War cowhide flying helmet, a helmet he was to wear day and night for the next three days, informed us dinner was served. It was only 6 pm, but joined by the boys, we sat down to a meal of boiled eggs, foule (fava beans) and a limp salad. A bottle of Cleopatra wine thoughtfully provided by the Cairo Sheraton was consumed in ten minutes flat.
When efforts at conversation petered out we retired, but growling dogs beneath the floorboards made sleep impossible. Getting up to close a shutter, I pulled off the entire window frame, which clattered onto the ground outside.
‘Who’s attacking?’ cried Aileen, sitting up in bed so violently she knocked a photograph of Manchester United football team off the wall.
‘No one. Lie down and pull the rug over your head,’ I told her.
At dawn, a wind was blowing in the window and peering out I saw it had begun to rain. We were dressed by seven—neither of us had attempted a shower (the bathroom was ghastly)—when members of the Town Council arrived to welcome us to Hurghada. By the time