Free New Heavens by Boris Senior Page A

slouch off saying
madjnum
(crazy).
    I pitied the boys of seven and eight years, who spent their lives in the Mouski Bazaar making silver-filigree jewelry. When we traveled by train, we saw there was an ongoing battle between the railway police and the Egyptian boys, who rode on the roof without paying. Shoe-shine boys accosted us constantly, and if we refused their services when in a quiet street, they splashed our shoes with mud from tins they carried as marketing tools.
    Cairo is alluring with its Arab music, the men’s flowing robes, shops open until 11 o’clock at night, and trams like floating masses of humanity, with passengers clinging likelocusts to the outside of the car in such numbers that the vehicles are entirely hidden beneath them.
    The South African Officer’s Club was in the center of the city and a convenient place for us to spend time; it was a microcosm of the life of pampered South African whites with Sudanese staff who saw to your every comfort from the moment you walked in, running your bath, pressing your uniform, and serving drinks and food.
    There was little nightlife, only the Badia Cabaret with young attractive girls dancing on the stage, covered from tip to toe in gold paint. They were chaperoned by their mothers, and my request to meet one such beauty for a drink or a meal was firmly rejected by her mother who speedily interposed herself between us. It was also strange to see Egyptian men from villages and strange to the city and its nightlife getting excited by the girls’ dancing and rushing forward to the stage while blowing passionate kisses.
    In perfume shops the merchants seated us like maharajas and served Turkish coffee while we were induced to sample every fragrance in the shop. Many of us fell for the slick marketing trick, and our girls at home received small bottles of perfume often containing only colored tea.
    The color and the vibrancy of the great city with its millions was overwhelming for someone like me, shielded from the masses by the orderly society of South Africa with its smaller cities. I was also separated by the race barriers from the poorer blacks, their trials and tribulations hidden from us so completely that we led a sheltered and, in retrospect, unreal existence.
    To be suddenly thrown into the maelstrom of Cairo’smillions who tend to live a large part of their lives in the street was a shock to us, and we were troubled by the adversities of the people among whom we were stationed. Too often, however, we didn’t heed their situation and were contemptuous of what appeared to be their strange, sometimes even reprehensible, customs and morals. On one occasion, though, I visited the home of a girl who belonged to a wealthy family in the Cairo suburb of Zamalek and found that they had nothing to learn about luxurious living from the South African well-to-do classes. The rich and fashionable lifestyle in the luxurious villas in Zamalek and Gezireh were in stark contrast to the abject poverty and filth elsewhere in Cairo.
SPITFIRE
    After waiting impatiently in Cairo for news of an assignment to a fighter squadron, I was posted to a conversion course on Spitfires in Fayid, near the Suez Canal. There, I made my acquaintance with the legendary Spitfire. The Spit VB with the clipped wingtips was a small aircraft with a cockpit looking like an afterthought, everything cramped and seemingly added at the last minute. For example, the handle for retracting the undercarriage was on the right side of the cockpit down near the floor in an inconvenient place below your leg, demanding a change of hands at the critical times of takeoff and landing. The flying characteristics were superb, however, and the performance of the Spitfire was untouched in many respects by any fighter at the time. Ithad a rate of climb that surpassed anything in the air and could outmaneuver any fighter of the time. Its many idiosyncrasies demanded that it be treated with extreme