by Rita Pomade
But even then, I was already looking at an illusion or the last remnants of what may have been a gentle world. Civil war had just broken out in the south of the country, although we didn’t know it. Soon after, the conflict escalated into a blood bath of massacres, rape, and enslavement. The country’s plight became so horrendous the UN declared that the war against the country’s non-Arabs constituted genocide. I feel sad every time I read about Darfur or the Janjaweed militias.
We didn’t stay in the port long. After buying a few twigs to use as toothbrushes (never figured out how), we headed back to the Santa Rita for the next leg of our journey. On our return, we discovered that Barbie and Ken had jumped ship. Our joy, however, was short-lived. We were headed towards some of the most troubling experiences we were yet to have, distress we couldn’t have imagined.
Chapter 23
UNDER THE GUN IN EGYPT
Spring 1984: Along the Coast of the Red Sea
Fear is as deep as the mind allows.
— JAPANESE PROVERB
Off the coast of Sudan, the wind picked up to gale force and the erratic movement of the yacht shook and jerked us in all directions. We were trapped in a sandstorm that forced grit into our ears and mouth and coated our skin with salt. I could hardly see, and coral was everywhere, waiting to tear out the bottom of the keel. French sailors call the Red Sea the Merde Rouge because its narrow passage makes the waves short and unpredictable.
We had one advantage over the majority of yachts trying to make it through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea. We had no high-tech equipment aboard. There was no satellite system that could clog with sand, no short wave radio to go awry, and no electronic log that could fizzle out while measuring speed and distance.
Bernard got his bearings by using a sextant to measure the angle between the horizon and the sun — something many of the pleasure sailors couldn’t do. The only damage that might have befallen our equipment would be the sextant falling overboard, which never happened — or fish biting through our log line, a one-inch steel cable pulling a bomb-like hunk of steel that measured the speed of the boat. A fish had done that earlier when we were crossing the Indian Ocean; judging by the power of its teeth, probably a barracuda.
For two days, we made little progress against the wind. On the third day, even with full throttle of the engine, the Santa Rita inched backwards. We decided to wait out the storm by taking shelter off El Quseir, a small town mid-way up the Egyptian coast. Within minutes of our dropping anchor, two clean-shaven but tough looking men motored out to us and demanded a harbour fee.
“Any port in a storm,” Bernard said. He refused to pay. Fees are not asked for when you anchor offshore in a storm. This was common sailing courtesy.
The men weren’t happy. They returned at daybreak carrying machine guns and took Bernard away. Fear cut my breath. I felt pressure in my chest. For how long he was gone, I couldn’t say. It could have been an hour, two hours, maybe five. It felt like an eternity. At no time was it ever clearer to me that my never having learned to use a sextant or the two-way radio could endanger our lives.
Later in the day, my heart jumped when I heard a dinghy motoring towards us. I raced on deck and waited anxiously for the boat to pull aside the Santa Rita. A wave of relief came over me when Bernard scrambled aboard, and I actually smiled at the two men as they took off.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked.
“No,” he said. He sort of smirked. “When I saw them coming, I knew what it was for and stuffed some money in my pocket. They took me to a shack near shore, sat me in a chair, and demanded that harbour fee. I took out what I had and gave it to them. They wanted more, but I told them it was all I had on board.”
His coolness astonished me. I watched in awe as he took out his pouch of tobacco, rolled a Gitane cigarette, stuck it into the side of his mouth, and then took out the chart for the Red Sea.
“Where next?” I asked.
“Hurghada.” He pointed to a speck on the chart. “It’s a larger town up the Egyptian coast and has a marina.”
On entering Hurghada’s harbour, we spotted Cloud Nine, a familiar yacht from Singapore. The captain had the reputation of being a Captain Bly for the strict way he dealt with his crew, but they were an interesting mix of people. One was the actress who played Miss Moneypenny in a James Bond movie. Another, a dead ringer for the actor Richard Widmark, was a young guy from Wisconsin with whom we had become friendly.
As soon as we dropped anchor, “Richard Widmark” motored over to exchange stories about the Red Sea. Everyone knew it was a bitch to navigate, and everyone had a story or knew someone who did. Over several refills from Bernard’s store of saki, we told him about the money grab in El Quseir.
“Speak to Captain Borai,” he said. “He controls this harbour and has good connections with the police.”
We contacted Captain Borai and lodged our complaint. His outrage at our extortion endeared him to us. The following day he boarded the Santa Rita with half the money Bernard had lost the day before.
“I couldn’t get it all,” he said. “I came too late and half of it was gone. They’re a gang of criminals that control the southern part of the coast. We know who they are, and we’ll get them.”
When we related the incident to the captain of one of the other yachts in the marina, he told us Captain Borai was in a turf war with the hoodlums to the south. He said Borai had control of the northern part of the coast and had ambitions to take over the whole area. “Getting your money back,” he went on, “was to show them he had more power. He probably pocketed the missing half before returning the rest.”
Two days later Captain Borai came aboard the Santa Rita with an interesting proposition.
“You’re Westerners,” he said. “You haven’t our fear about crossing the desert. I have an engine that needs to be taken for repair in Alexandria, but my men are superstitious. Deliver it for me, and I’ll send you with a note for my brother to be his guest at his villa. Stay as long as you want. He’s a generous man. I’ll look after your yacht.”
I couldn’t believe our good fortune. Laurence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet danced through my head. I remembered Durrell’s sensuous description of the city during the 1940s with its host of exotic characters set against a background of poetic decay. And now I’d actually get to see this ancient wonder with its famed library and historic ruins, already cultured when the West was still ploughing through the last days of the Iron Age.
With Captain Borai as our neighbour and a guard with a machine gun at the entrance to the port, we felt safe in Hurghada’s dreary, makeshift marina. For the first time since we started this adventure, Bernard was willing to leave the yacht for more than a day.
At sunrise we were on Captain Borai’s luxury yacht waiting for him to finish writing a note to his brother so that we could get started. Two of his crew stood behind him watching him pen the note. The one on his left snickered which made me suspicious. The note was in Arabic so there was no way I could tell what it said.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
Captain Borai looked up and smiled. “I’m telling my brother what nice people you are and asking him to extend you the most hospitable of receptions.”
He handed Bernard the note, shook our hands, wished us a safe journey, and then walked us to a derelict pick-up truck punctured with bullet holes that he explained were sustained during the Six-Day War with Israel. Bernard balked.
“I can’t drive that!”
“Not to worry,” Captain Borai said. “The gas tank leaks, but there’s plenty of fuel.” He pointed to a number of jerry cans that had been packed in the back of the truck along with the boxed engine.
Bernard seemed to nod his approval, and that reassured me.
“One last thing,” the Captain said. “There are checkpoints along the way. Drive through quickly. No one will stop you.”
Bernard nodded again, as though this were an everyday occurrence, and jumped into the t
ruck. I jumped in beside him. If it was all right with him, it was all right with me. I believed Bernard had a sixth sense about danger and would never put us in harm’s way.
As I was about to shut the door, two of Captain’s Borai’s henchmen pushed into the front seat beside me. Neither man spoke French or English. Body language told me I didn’t want lengthy conversations with them anyway.
Bernard looked at Captain Borai.
“They’ll accompany you,” he said. “It’ll be safer. They know the desert.”
Didn’t he tell us locals were afraid and that’s why he was asking us to go? Still, I was desperate for this experience and wasn’t willing to back out now. Bernard must have felt the same way because a moment later he stepped on the gas pedal and we were off.
It took a day and a night to drive through the Sahara with nothing to see but paved road, sand, and the occasional checkpoint that we sped through — unmolested as Captain Borai had promised. The day was blisteringly hot and we froze at night. I sat stiff, upright, squeezed thigh-to-thigh with the two silent men whose only conversation was to shout in English “go, go” as we neared each checkpoint. The man to my right kept moving his hand over various parts of my leg while I strained to get as far to the left as possible.
Our only stops were to relieve ourselves behind the truck and refill the gas tank; that is, until we came to the last checkpoint before entering the outskirts of Cairo at about five in the morning. Two soldiers planted themselves on the road in front of our headlights. They each held a machine gun pointed at our windshield.
“Go, go,” one of the brutes with us shouted.
“Are you crazy?” Bernard said.
I was beginning to think they were — as well as the two of us.
One of the soldiers asked for Bernard’s driver’s license. He looked at it upside down and declared it not to be a license. Back then there were no photos on Canadian licenses, and this was unheard of to the guard. He yanked open the truck door and beckoned Bernard to follow him into the guardhouse. Our two passengers went along. I was left with a small, pudgy looking soldier who couldn’t have been more that seventeen or eighteen.
Pudgy pointed his gun through the window towards my stomach.
“Baby, baby,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered. “Two babies — big boys now.” I gestured with my hands to show “big.”
He shoved the gun further toward my stomach and shouted this time: “Baby, baby.”
I suddenly had the shocking revelation that he was planning to rape me. A few days earlier, I had learned that ballpoint pens were new in the area and the locals were fascinated with them. There was a pen on the dashboard, and I picked it up.
“Pen,” I said. I held the pen in front of his face and kept repeating the word while taking off the cover and putting it back on. Each time he said baby, he brought the gun closer to my stomach. I forced a smile and kept repeating “pen.” I was trembling and at the same time out of my body watching my idiotic behaviour. I felt foolish but couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Finally, my ploy took hold. The soldier put down his machine gun and grabbed the pen from my hand. “Pen,” he said over and over while repeating my act of inserting and removing the cover from the pen.
Shortly after, Bernard, the soldier, and our two unwanted passengers came out of the guardhouse. They were accompanied by the commander of the check point, a dishevelled man in blue and white striped pajamas with scuffs on his feet. He watched as the men scrambled back into the truck and then in French wished us a safe journey. There were “feel good” smiles all around, and we were waved on our way.
The first half of our adventure was behind us. I braced myself for the next leg of our journey. About two hours later, on the outskirts of Cairo we found the highway heading towards Alexandria. On our right was a drive-in coffee shop, the first of many that dotted the barren, sandy landscape along the road.
“We stop for coffee,” Bernard said.
“No, Go. Go,” the two men demanded, vehement in their insistence, the moment so tense I was sure they were going to throw us out of the truck and drive off. But they didn’t. They fell silent and sat, immobile, like two hunks of granite. And then it dawned on me. They probably couldn’t drive.
In the ensuing silence Bernard let them know he was exhausted from having driven all night without a break. “If I don’t get a coffee, we won’t make to Alexandria,” he told them.
The men didn’t respond. Bernard got out and returned with four espressos. The two men drank their coffees with obvious relish. I couldn’t figure them out. I was guessing wildly as to why they were with us, and knew I wouldn’t rest easy until they were gone.
The drive to Alexandria was harrowing. The wide highway stretched before us with no lanes and no speed limit. Littered along the sides of the highway were animal carcasses, some huge, bleaching in the sun. Crowded in among the animal bones were abandoned wrecked cars, rotting with rust. The landscape had the dream-like feel of a Dali painting. The traffic was so chaotic that I suspected no ambulance ever got to any of the accidents in time to save anyone. I was sure bodies still sat in the cars, desiccating in the heat.
Although Bernard and I couldn’t speak freely, I felt his tension and knew he wanted to dump our escorts and the engine as fast as he could. Still, the carrot of that villa in exotic Alexandria held us.
As soon as we entered the city, Bernard asked the men to take us to Captain Borai’s brother.
“Machine shop,” one of the duo said.
“Borai’s brother,” Bernard said.
“No, machine shop. Go. Go.”
Bernard pulled over to the side of the street. “First, Borai’s brother,” he said.
“Machine shop first. Go. Go.”
Bernard didn’t move.
The two men, after a short conversation in Arabic, relented.
“Okay, okay. Drive.”
They led us through some of the worst slums and filthiest streets I’d ever seen. Through the windshield, I could make out a number of once stately homes, now derelict, their beautiful doorways and balustrades covered in grime and in disrepair from centuries of neglect. We passed blocks of broken down storefronts in cement block edifices with ragged children and surly looking men squatting in the doorways.
Where was Durrell’s Alexandria? Could it have changed so much since the Second World War, the setting for the Quartet? Recently, I re-read Justine, the first of the four volumes of the Quartet, for some hint or foreshadowing and found ... unaware that their mother city was dying, the living still sat there in open streets like caryatids supporting the darkness, the pains of futurity upon their eyelids. The message had always been there, but embedded in so much florid, descriptive prose that I hadn’t seen it. The dusty, deathward drift of the city, he wrote.
And now I saw it, and if I were to read the complete Quartet again, it would be with different eyes. The city I had envisioned as wickedly alluring with its patina of antiquity was not so much decadent as decayed — in fact, a rotting corpse.
Finally, on one of those bleak, squalid streets, Bernard was told to stop the truck. One of the men pointed to an unpainted, concrete building that had a large sign in Arabic over the entranceway and motioned to him to go there. My first thought was that perhaps it was where Captain Borai’s brother worked. Bernard took the letter Captain Borai had given us and disappeared into the building. He was out in less than five minutes.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s a youth hostel,” he said. “The director is an old friend of Borai’s, and the letter tells him that we’re two hippies looking for a place to stay for the night. It suggests that he put us up.”
Stories we’d heard about Captain Borai from people around the port came back with full impact. Stories I had dismissed because of Borai’s elegant appearance and perfect English, and because stories of his outrageous criminal activity were unimaginable to me. The worst was the one about his luxury yacht
belonging to two Italians who had mysteriously disappeared. The unclaimed yacht was seized by Borai. Everyone assumed that Borai had them drowned, but that seemed too much like a Hollywood thriller to me. I dismissed it all as jealousy and hearsay.
I should have known better. I’d already been witness to stolen yachts and disappearing people. It was inexcusable that I would be taken in by this gangster — and just because he returned half our money.
“We’ve got to get back to the yacht fast,” Bernard said.
My head was spinning with questions. Why did Captain Borai send us on this trip? What was really in that boxed crate in the back of the truck? Was he planning to seize the Santa Rita? I’d never know the answer to the first two questions, and I feared that the third could be true. It was obvious that Bernard had the same thought.
He drove the truck to the garage at full throttle. Once there, the two thugs refused to let us drive the truck back. We didn’t argue. We left as soon as we could and searched for the fastest way out of Alexandria. I no longer had any interest in this run-down city. It had lost its soul a long time ago. I wondered if Durrell’s Alexandria ever existed.
We eventually found the local airport, but when we got there, we learned that planes flew out only twice a week, and this wasn’t one of the days. There were no trains or buses to Hurghada. We located a taxi and were gouged fifty American dollars to be taken to the nearest town where we could catch a bus. When we got into the taxi, seven men piled in after us.
“It’s a private taxi,” Bernard said to them.
“These men are going where you are going, but they can’t afford the fare,” the taxi driver explained. “You are doing them a favour.” A quick glance at the characters told us it would be best not to push the subject.