The Sons of Adam

By Alan Mackie

A diary kept by journalist Alan Mackie in Cairo in 1973 during the 7 Day War with Israel and the effect it has had on present Egyptian politics and attitudes to the West.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muswell Press
• Release date: Nov 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9780957213685

Book preview

Prologue

This book is the product of a dream, the universal dream for home.

It begins in Beirut in 1965. It was never, I should immediately say, my intention to go to Beirut or to the Middle East for that matter. But in the manner sometimes of events, it happened that way. That summer vacation hitching to Greece my luck ran out in the southern Austrian town of Graz. I caught a student train which I imagined was bound for Athens; but somewhere in Yugoslavia it turned left, and went instead to Istanbul. Once there it seemed best to head east and, by way of Antioch, Aleppo and Damascus, I eventually landed up in Beirut.

It was August and Beirut was submerged under a pea soup haze which kept the temperature rock steady at eighty-four degrees and the humidity around 90 per cent. The city was deserted, anyone with the time and the money having disappeared to the hills. The place was creepy and I had no desire to stay. However, it proved more difficult to get out of Beirut than it had been to get in. I could find no boat leaving with deck class accommodation. I was stuck and running out of money. Linda saved me.

Linda Kanelous was American and then about twenty-eight. She had been at various times she told me a New York model, a secretary to a Senator and girlfriend to a baseball star. One day she had received an invitation to a girlfriend’s wedding in Baghdad. Bored with life she packed her bags and went. That was 1963. Linda’s first encounter with the Arabs made a deep impression on all concerned. She arrived at Baghdad Airport in a minidress, an experience she likened to stepping out at Idlewilde in her birthday suit. Thereafter, sensation was to follow her like a comet’s tail.

She had ended up in Beirut where she had met Farid, a small time mobster. He wooed her persistently and extravagantly. Linda succumbed. Before she knew it he had sent her home to collect the remainder of her wardrobe and set her up with a flat and a chauffeur driven car.

Linda thought she had met her Mr. Right, an unusual helpmeet you might have thought for an all American girl. But she soon found he didn’t just want to pay her bills but to tell her what clothes to buy and how to wear them. This was an attack on her liberty which brought out all her instincts for self-preservation. She had been well cast in the dye, a credit to her education. She defended herself as she would no doubt the Constitution, ruthlessly and vindictively. Farid was not only shown the door but booted out.

I caught her on the rebound. We met spasmodically in a number of cafés and at the swimming club of the St. Georges Hotel. It was there during one of my breathless monologues on the true nature of travel that I made the breakthrough. She was lying regally in a deck chair sipping a lemonade it had cost me my supper to buy when she suddenly raised her grey green eyes, cut me in mid sentence and pronounced: ‘We were travellers scattered around the world living our separate lives unaware that all paths led us back to the city.. It’s the Quartet, you know.’ I didn’t. ‘Justine, I think.’

The significance of the remark was other than its veracity or even its relevance to what I was saying. She was interested. And when Linda showed interest the earth moved. I was accepted. We resolved to leave Beirut together. I explained the difficulties.

‘You leave it to me,’ she said.

Next afternoon she phoned. ‘There’s a Syrian boat leaving tomorrow. I’ve managed to get deck class tickets. I’m afraid they’re $45 each; it was the best I could do.’

We set sail for Alexandria and Athens in high spirits. However, it soon became evident I was not to have her undivided attention. Her visceral dislike of Arab men engendered by her unfortunate entanglement with Farid, coupled with her aloofness, seemed only to excite them further. In the limited confines of the ship this caused problems and for me frustrations. The First Officer, a spruce, chunky Egyptian took an especial interest in us. The second night out he threw a party. It was a mixed success. Linda was the only girl amongst a dozen males; there were language problems. When the party broke up the First Officer suggested I might like to go up to the bridge to observe Orion and the Milky Way. Alone with Linda the First Officer proposed. It was a bad omen; by the time we arrived in Alexandria Linda was simmering.

Our reception in port didn’t help matters. No sooner off the boat than we were seized and borne like relics in a saint’s day procession. A horde of fix-it men fought fiercely for possession of us while a collective hand edged us towards a taxi and dumped us in. My introduction to the city of the Alexandria Quartet was a surreal drive to the station in a 1930 Austin Seven with no floor and random steering.

We reached Cairo about ten in the evening. Linda by then was beyond words and ready to explode. However, she had earlier intimated a desire to see the Sphinx. So we caught the last bus out to the pyramids. We found the Sphinx and a bewitching tranquillity which could not have been further removed from the hurly-burly of Alexandria and Cairo. The floodlights had been turned off, the stars glimmered and the desert seemed to float under a curtain of veils, infinitely mysterious, ethereal. From a nearby nightclub wafting over the still night air came laughter and snatches of the Beatles song ‘I want to hold your