bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987) — Spring 1987 // Printemps 1987, pp. 33–34
That Monday — June 5, 1967 — started like many others. I awoke to bird song: the bulbuls burbling in their inconclusive fashion in the casuarinas, and the coo-coo-coo-COO of the rock doves from the slender young mango tree close to my bedroom window. The sun had just risen, but it wasn’t yet hot, and I was comfortably aware of not having to get up to get the children off for school just yet. My two unfailing luxuries in Egypt were that every single day one wakened to bird song, and every single day there were flowers in the garden.
Speaking of gardens, just the day before there had been a big garden party at the home of Dr. Barlett, President of the American University of Cairo. Most of the University families were still about, but the crisis in the Straits of Tiran had caused the exodus of many embassy families (including Canadian), and those of various other organizations with representatives in Egypt. There were fewer children than usual for mine to play with, and a preponderance of men without their wives and children. People stood about in groups discussing the crisis, and we all intelligently concluded that with a hostile circle of Islamic countries around it the Israelis couldn’t be so foolish as to start something, now could they?
In the previous weeks we had seen the cortege of army trucks moving troops from desert bases east of el Maadi, where many in the foreign community lived in a satellite villa-and-garden suburb some 10 kilometres south of Cairo. Our own home at that time was a modest villa in the adjoining area of Digla, a little east of el Maadi, close to the Cairo American College Kindergarten. Digla flanks the eastern desert which stretches from the Cairo area to the Red Sea, a strange lunar landscape with ridges of fossilized clam shells, small pockets of sand with unexpected colours — sky blue and chocolate, sulphur yellow and terra cotta – and not too far from Digla an area of large fossilized logs from a long-vanished forest
The army trucks had not passed through Cairo unscathed. Poorly serviced, eight or ten of them were left derelict by the side of the Nile Corniche, the beautiful road running south from Cairo beside the Nile. The men in the trucks, semi-literate or illiterate peasants for the most part, were a cheerful bunch, but appeared as untrained as those who serviced the trucks.
My husband had been posted to the Near East Regional Offices of FAO in Cairo two years before, and the older two of our four children attended the French school of the Sours Franciscaines on the island of Zamalek in the Nile in mid-Cairo; the next was at the American College Kindergarten nearby, and the little one, just approaching her fourth birthday, was still at home with Mum.
Our villa had no telephone. I had become accustomed to using the phones of one or two hospitable American neighbours, but their houses were now firmly locked up. I still had access to the phone of a Danish friend married to an Egyptian, about a block away on the other side of Sharia as Sabba. Our car sat in the driveway under its dust cover. I had not obtained an International licence — perhaps just as well in a land where pedestrians trudge resolutely about with the sure knowledge that their people owned these roadways since time immemorial, and that meant their donkeys and sheep or Nubian goat herds and occasional strings of camels as well.
The children were picked up around seven forty-five, this week by the chauffeur of the Pakistani Embassy — it was their turn — and my husband had flown on Saturday to Beirut to deliver a paper at the American University, and was expected back tomorrow.
At nine o’clock I heard Israeli jets scream across the sky and bombs explode about 10 miles northeast in Heliopolis. The airport. The international airport and the military airport were just across from each other. We had heard much shooting and shelling recently, so I switched on the radio, and the local announcer exclaimed that Cairo had been attacked by Israeli planes, and a similar attack launched in the Straits of Tiran.
I wondered where Fatma, my faithful maid, might be — she usually arrived around eight o’clock. I thought of my children in school, considered brietly going to pick them up, but knew my Danish neighbour was out and it was a mile to the taxi stand. I was pretty sure the Cairo traffic would be thoroughly snarled, for all civilian vehicles were required to stop during air raids. I could imagine that I might reach the school after they had been taken
There was no mail delivery. Fatma arrived only around 11, having been stuck in a bus for four hours. I was appalled. I gave her a cup of mint tea, and told her she must start back for home and not return until the war was finished. She looked remorseful, but I gave her a hug and we told each other we’d ask Allah’s protection on each other.
The children arrived from school around one o’clock, bristling with indignation because theirs was the only mother who had failed to come to rescue her children (perhaps the Pakistan Ambassador’s children didn’t count). The Cairo American College had been closed earlier due to the evacuation of much of its student body and some of the teachers. I reassured the children that they had had their last day of school (general rejoicing) because, with recollections of World War Il stories, quite possibly the bridges to the island would be bombed. They were impressed.
With their father away and the air raid sirens shrieking every so often, we grouped everybody’s beds together in the large bedroom, so that if anyone should wake at night and need some comforting I’d be right there, and should a bomb fall we’d be together for better or worse. I also reassured them each time the raid sirens went off that it was the “all clear” this time.
There was strict blackout, so we used candles after the sun set, around 6:30, and kept the shutters closed. Friendly Egyptians had warned me not to let the children play away from home. Anti- American feeling was running high, and who can tell the difference between Canadians and Americans (except themselves)?
We listened to the radio, trying shortwave. It was eerie to sit by candlelight listening to an announcer hundreds of miles away recounting something that was happening almost on our doorstep. I wondered when and how my husband would be able to return.
Egyptian friends had also warned me to lock the gate, lock the house, not answer the door, never go out (neither I nor the children). This seemed to me too much like giving in to somebody else’s fears. I had to get to the shops, about a mile way, in order to get food. I did so by requiring the three older children to remain indoors – the eldest was 12-and took my bike with the youngest in her little seat behind me. The only incident was that once I was spat at as an “Amerikani” “, to which I primly demurred: “Leh, Canada”.
I went to bed at night shortly after the children so they would not be alone in the dark. When the sirens sounded (frequently enough that I suspected faulty wiring) one or other of the children would waken with a start. I wanted to avoid their being scarred by fears if I could help, and reasoning that the best way to banish fear is through laughter, set out to tickle their funny bones by singing foolish songs like “A Hundred and One Trombones” “, or “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago” “, or telling little jokes like the one of the chap who always dropped his boots on the floor one at a time at night, and one night dropped both together, causing his downstairs neighbour to sweat in anguished anticipation and finally yell out: “For Pete’s sake drop your other boot!”
The best way to banish fear is through laughter, by singing foolish songs like “A Hundred and One Trombones”, or “1 Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago”, or telling little jokes.
At the garden party an American friend whose family had been evacuated told me he was concerned for me and the children, and would make a point of coming each day to check up. I was touched The following evening he dashed in breathlessly to say that the American University staff were ordered evacuated, and asked me to please be careful — sorry he couldn’t stay. I told him I was quite calm, but thanks.
On Tuesday someone from the Canadian Embassy amazed me by coming by, asking that I phone the Embassy every day to check in to assure them I was all right. I thought: “He’s a dear, but he’s a goose; he knows I have no phone”. But I was moved. It’s at moments like that that Canadians appreciate their Embassy staff He repeated his request, seriously. I laughed and said: “Tell you what – put a notice around my neck saying if you happen to kill me please phone and let the Canadian Embassy know so they can wipe me off their worry list. He wasn’t amused and said hed try to get out again to check. Despite my flippancy I was grateful Canadians abroad tend to ignore their embassy except for crises and July Ist. Many of us affect to look down our respective noses at the “cocktails set”, but in a pinch know we can count on them and suddenly the faceless government seems like home. I gathered from him that ours may well have been the only more or less intact Canadian family in Egypt at the time.
By Wednesday it was clear that the Egyptian army was hurrying to cross the canal with the Israelis in sharp pursuit.
At one point during an air raid my younger son, aged 6, burst out “I just hate this war! Mummy, why do people make wars anyway?” I gave him a hug, thought a moment, putting aside the swift encapsulated history of the Middle East and replied instead: “Darling, war comes from people. People make war. Some people also make peace. The urge to make war, the wish to take from someone else and attack someone else is in most of us to some extent. When your big brother wants your things badly enough to grab them from you, or when you get angry and hit your little sister, that’s what makes war. It’s the anger and destruction in us, something we have to grow beyond, to grow up from. It doesn’t take long to hit out, it takes more effort and more time to try to understand and keep our love steady. If we all try hard enough though, we can do it.”
An Italian colleague from FAO stopped by to tell me that the UN had an evacuation plan, and did I wish myself and the children to be listed as going. He would let me know the details when it was clarified. Again I was touched
He asked if I had our passports. I searched but couldn’t find them. He promised to enquire from my husband’s secretary. Sure enough, they had been taken to the office for renewal of visas, so the next day they sent a car for me to come and get them. I took all the children wih me for I was determined not to be separated from them. A Jordanian colleague of my husband’s asked what I thought of the war. I spoke from my heart and said I see it only as a mother: many women’s sons and brothers and husbands are being killed; fine, healthy bodies are being smashed; little children are losing their fathers. I feel only a terrible sadness that this should be so.
The Embassy meanwhile had let me know that should the passports not be available they would issue duplicates the same day. Bless them! Some of our taxes are well spent!
The following day I heard the UN evacuation plan. Take passports and as much spare money as you can muster, along with food and water for 24 hours. Go to the central rail station on Ramses, then by train to Alexandria, transfer to bus to go east past el Alamein and Mersa Matruh to Saloun at the Libyan border, where they hoped there would be a UN official to receive us and take us perhaps to Bengazi where they hoped a ship might be available to take us to Cyprus or maybe to Greece. It sounded frankly appalling And the Libyans had been reported as over-turning and burning buses and cars. Nonetheless, not knowing what might lie ahead I indicated a wish to be included, with the proviso that we could cancel if the situation indicated. Other refugees had taken worse trips. But it was the vulnerability of the children that bothered me. I spoke of it lightly to the children, and said I could imagine our traipsing about for the next twenty years trying to find each other should we go. “Let’s see, is this China? Will one of you kindly skin up the Great Wall and look about and see if you can spot Daddy anywhere — and perhaps someone else could scale that tall pagoda and have a look.”
By the Friday evening I knew there was fighting on OUR side of the Canal, and reminded the children that the road past our house wandered right across the desert to Suez. Maybe there’d be Israelis in our garden by morning whistling ’Hatikvah’.
After the two little ones had been put to bed I took the elder two with me up to the flat roof to watch the rockets shooting up from Heliopolis — orange tracery against the black night sky. Suddenly there was shooting from the army base less than a mile away, and the roar in the dark unnerved them both. I hugged them tight, saying we would all stay together and be all right. It was probably the only war we would see. Exhausted by many night disturbances and by their fear, they were soon asleep. I took the occasion, an hour later, to pop over to my Danish friend, for I knew she was rather afraid To my surprise, her husband was home, listening to his radio with tears on his cheeks. President Nasser had just offered his resignation in the face of the shattering defeat. The war was over.
Next morning the son of one of my husband’s colleagues came by to check on our safety, and to ask if there was something he might do to help, promising to keep in touch regarding my husband’s return as soon as there was news. I asked him if he would be kind enough to send brief cables to each of my sisters — one in Ottawa and the other in Tokyo — assuring them we were all right. He came by later to say that the Beirut party would be returning the following day by train, and that FAO would have a car and driver at the station to meet them.
My Danish friend said that afternoon: “You know, it’s so strange. The sun is still shining and a war has been fought and lost and it’s just as if it all happened only in our minds, for nothing here looks any different.”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987) — Spring 1987 // Printemps 1987, pp. 33–34. Read the rest of this issue →
