Free New Heavens by Boris Senior

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EGYPT
    The flight north to Egypt took five days in a Dakota [C-47] with four night stops: northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, Kenya, and the Sudan. Everywhere, Leon and I were looked upon as unique—two brothers wearing wings and flying together to a theater of war. We were more than once asked to sign a visitor’s book. The long flight gave us views of Africa’s changing landscape, changes only in degree, for it was just different kinds of bush all the way up to the Sudan. Thereafter, the expanse of desert and sand was broken only by the life-giving Nile, which kept us company for most of the time after Lake Victoria. During the long leg of 2,000 kilometers through the Sudan, the forsaken towns of Juba and Malakal were the only signs of civilization in the endless wastes of the desert.
    In Khartoum we stayed at the Grand Hotel for the night, and we noted with surprise the tall, jet-black Sudanese waiters dressed in white galabiyas with a red sash and red tar-bush headgear. I was introduced to the British way of coping with the heat of Sudan using many huge ceiling fans in the lounge of the hotel. In Khartoum I had my first experience of life in an outpost of the British Empire. That was in a nightclub on a roof, replete with a cabaret and tired girls from France, who were obviously at their last stop before moving to an older profession. After Khartoum westopped to refuel in Wadi Halfa, a dry desert town in the middle of featureless sandy wastes. A blast of heat like a furnace seared our faces as the door of the Dakota was opened.
    We eventually arrived in Cairo and headed to the air force camp at Almaza, some miles beyond the eastern outskirts of Cairo in the desert, a flat and uninteresting scene. We were housed in tents in the sand, and here we made our acquaintance with the huge Egyptian onions, which were fed to us interminably and which served also as the raw material for Stella beer. Commuting to the city from Almaza was by fast electric train, which looked like a line of oversized city trams. On the half-hour journey we got a good view of Cairo. The filth and backwardness was a shock. The people of the city used the gutters on the roads as toilets. No one paid attention as men in their galabiyas and women in their shifts simply squatted, deftly did their bodily functions, then got up and walked off.
    Our first confrontation with the families in the poorer quarters was when, through the train windows, we were puzzled at seeing babies with huge black eyes. On closer scrutiny we found that the large black patches were swarms of flies! The mothers holding the babies appeared to be oblivious to the danger of infection, and this is probably one of the reasons for the great amount of trachoma in the country.
    The Heliopolis tram terminus was where we alighted in downtown Cairo and where young boys waited to beg or sell us trinkets. I fancied a short leather cane, which was the fashion among British officers at the time. I had seen onelocally made that had a long sword cunningly hidden inside. A quick glance from me at one of the canes was enough to reveal my interest, and the boy asked for five Egyptian pounds. I had already learned not to react, and he followed me from place to place, reducing the price from time to time while I remained silent. After a week of his waiting for me at the terminus, we finally did the deal at thirty-five piastre, less than half a pound. Apart from their prices and shameless bargaining, however, the Egyptian boys were harmless and charming.
    Masses of people everywhere and the nagging vendors of everything from “nice French girl, very sanitary, very hygienic, sir” to perfume, ivory chess sets, and anything one could possibly think of were novel at first but became tiresome. I found it hard to avoid their pestering until an old Cairo hand suggested that when they name a price, to offer a much higher one. That proved to be the only way to be free of them for they would