Flight Out of Egypt: A Medical Odyssey

By R. Paul Robertson

R. Paul Robertson is a recently graduated American physician and medical scientist when he is sent to Egypt as a United States Naval Medical Officer. His life and that of his young family are met with a fascinating and challenging culture in Cairo as he focuses on his medical work, which involves caring for pediatric patients with typhoid fever by using new experimental antibiotics. An important part of his experiences involves a several month assignment to Meknes, Morocco where encounters yet another new culture filled with political interactions with local French physicians and Hassan II, the King of Morocco.


This book focuses primarily on the impact of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War on Dr. Robertson’s research and his forced evacuation out of Egypt. During this time, he carried his valuable collection of typhoid fever bacteria which required strategic maneuvering with Egyptian police and custom agents. His telling of these experiences is filled with poignancy and gentle humor. After finally boarding his flight to Boston, he successfully completes his laboratory research under the tutelage of several famous infectious disease scientists, followed by his first publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823020664

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© 2024 R. Paul Robertson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  02/05/2024

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2067-1 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2066-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024900769

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Cover Image: Pharoanic Angel. Artist unknown

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Arabs Knocking at the Door

Chapter 2 The Fever Hospital

Chapter 3 Saving Face

Chapter 4 Assignment in Morocco

Chapter 5 The Arab-Israeli War

Chapter 6 Bacteria in Boston

Chapter 7 Out of Egypt

Chapter 8 Where Do Medical Scientists Come From?

Acknowledgements

For Donald C. Kent, MD, my greatest

mentor and unselfish friend.

Chapter 1

Arabs Knocking at the Door

Midnight in Cairo was stifling hot and eerie. Distant percussions sounded from Israeli bombs, and flashing tracers from Egyptian antiaircraft fire lit up the sky. Imminent danger. I was thankful my wife and young child had been evacuated to Greece a few days earlier. It was June 5, 1967. I filled my bathtub to conserve water and turned off lights, latching the shutters but leaving the windows slightly ajar to protect against implosions. The front door was bolted. After a short while, while perspiring in bed and wearing nothing but skivvies, there was pounding at the door. A group of Arab men at the door shouted, Enta Americani hena?

Fortunately, the door was made of thick timber with only a keyholed lock and no outside handle to rip off. I lay still as a stone, barely breathing until they finally left. Having no alternative plan, I remained in bed with a pounding heart, slowly drifting into and out of my memories. I remembered that I had been told by Capt. Donald Kent, the director of medical internships at the naval hospital in Long Island, to expect life to be very different in Cairo. However, I could not have anticipated how extreme these differences would be. In some respects, Egyptian values and the Western ways of life I had grown up during my first twenty-seven years were polar opposites. From the beginning, adapting to many differences—some large, some small, some humorous—was mandatory. On the surface, many things seemed the same as living in any big city in the United States: traffic, air pollution, dress, different nationalities and skin color, and a wide range of wealth. Yet many things I was experiencing daily were nothing like anything I had encountered before.

On a late summer night in Cairo two years earlier, in August 1965, my wife Peggy, our ten-month-old Andrea, and I stepped off a Boeing 707 onto the tarmac at Cairo’s airport. We were exhausted. Our flight began in San Diego, overnighted in New York, and then departed from JFK for a milk run with stops in Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and finally Egypt. When we first stopped in Madrid, our well-dressed pilots left us and were replaced by new ones in disheveled shirts with sleeves rolled and hats pushed back on their heads. After the short flight to Rabat, most American and European passengers disembarked and new ones in Arabic dress boarded, accompanied by flies that tenaciously refused to leave.

When we finally arrived in Cairo around midnight, everything seemed strange. Everywhere in the airport lobby were men dressed in what appeared to be blue or white nightgowns, the traditional galabia. They were sweeping floors, carrying bags, and pushing carts while all the time yelling friendly chatter to their workmates. There was a smaller number of serious-looking men dressed in dark suits trying to organize the chaos. The only women to be seen were passengers.

Once inside the arrival area, a gentleman approached us in a gracious manner and with a big smile, greeting us with "Ahlahan! Welcome to Cairo, Dr. and Mrs. Robertson. I hope your flight was a comfortable one."

He was a Coptic lawyer who represented the US Naval Medical Research Unit Three (NAMRU-3) where I was assigned for three years. He quickly ushered us to the head of our line and through customs. As we collected our luggage and walked to the street to get into his car, we saw hordes of men in galabias strolling and enjoying the late-night breeze. We smelled what would become the unforgettable and pervasive odor of human urine. We looked at each other and murmured, Welcome to Cairo.

Our first lodging was downtown in the iconic Cairo Hilton Hotel on the Nile. The next day, we were transferred to Maadi, a westernized suburb south of Cairo where we were given temporary quarters on the second floor of an apartment house. I recall dumping pails of water out our unscreened window to scatter the wild dogs that visited our courtyard nightly. This nightly chore and trying to protect our baby from mosquitos made for poor sleep and domestic discontent. Our furniture arrived from the States six weeks later, and we moved to a genteel space on the first floor of a newly constructed villa.

Those first days were filled with meeting new people working at NAMRU and other places, such