Free A World of My Own by Graham Greene

travelling companion as he continually suffered from headaches and other small ailments.
    I was dressed unsuitably in a sports shirt, and I began to apologize to the Emperor for my informal attire. The Emperor surprised me. He half ran, half slid into the room, a thin elderly man dressed in a black-tailed suit but without the tie. He was followed by some high mandarins in traditional dress, and after a few words they took us driving in the streets of Peking. At one moment the Emperor inexplicably left us, and a moment later we heard him calling from behind. We had not time to turn our taxi before he reached us in another taxi and transferred back to our car.
    I was tired of the streets and walls of Peking and suggested for the sake of Michael, who had never been in China before, that we might see a little of the country outside. ‘I remember among the rice fields a small green village around a temple, very beautiful.’
    The Emperor left us again and one old mandarin asked about my previous visit. I wanted to show him some lovely photographs in colour which I had taken, but I found in my pocketbook only grey sad photos of naked starving people (and a few of police violence which I shuffled hastily away). I couldn’t help showing him the others, but I tried to minimize the effect by localizing it in place and time. ‘They were taken,’ I said, ‘that year when there were bad droughts in Kyoto.’
Syria
    It was in June 1965 that I found myself in Syria during a horrible massacre of children, even babies. I had seen something rather like it once in Damascus on a feast day, but not on this scale. I was one of a party and I thought it unwise to go out in the streets, but I was overruled—there was said to be no danger for foreigners. Men were going around with knives, and later, when we were sitting at dinner, a woman came in with a baby on a platter, and she sliced it in half as you open a bag.
Australia
    In July of the same year I was travelling through Australia, a country I had never known in the Common World except for one day in Sydney. My car had got sunk in a stream and four men helped me to lift it out. I felt grateful until one of them started talking of the cost of ‘salvage’. He said that I owed them between eighty pounds and a hundred and twenty pounds. He was a real bully and I felt scared of him. In the end I paid out the eighty pounds. He took it grudgingly. He obviously hated the English.I knew that I couldn’t continue to live in such a country.
Liberia
    I seem to have been travelling a great deal in 1965, for two weeks after Australia I found myself in Liberia on a visit for the
Sunday Times
. It was more than thirty years since I had walked through Liberia with my cousin Barbara in the world I share with others. A great deal had changed in Monrovia, the capital. I found myself in what could truthfully be called a luxury hotel. My purpose was to interview various members of the government, and I asked someone how I could set about this. ‘Nothing easier,’ he told me. ‘Leave it to your secretary. She’ll manage.’ And manage she did. I found I had a rendezvous arranged with nearly everyone except the President—and I was very glad not to see him, for he had every reason to hate me, since he was Doctor Duvalier, late of Haiti, Papa Doc.
    The same month found me again in West Africa, where there was a dangerous situation with some villagers who were enraged against the whites. It was suggested that someone unarmed should go in and talk to them. Not without some fear, I volunteered.I joined another man and we went in together. Someone had questioned my qualifications and I replied that I had always liked Africans. The situation was tense in the village, but all passed off well. As we left, we met a group of nuns who were only too pleased to see us.
The U.S.S.R
.
    I was walking with four companions through Moscow at night, but a KGB car frightened my friends and they left me alone. I thought it best