Читать книгу Travels With My Hat: A Lifetime on the Road - Christine Osborne - Страница 6

I was seated in the Colony Room in Soho with Haile Selassie’s grandson who was passing a dummy cover of my book around the drinkers, a mix of actors, artists, publishers and PRs. Muriel Belcher, the butch bar-owner was pouring us whiskys. At two in the afternoon. Somewhere between then and midnight I made it home. I have no recollection of how I came to be out with Ethiopian royalty and Muriel was too acerbic to call to inquire if anyone had handed in the cover which I’d lost. She’d referred to me as ‘Missy’ but she could just as easily have called me ‘c...y’, her favourite name for drinkers of either sex in her London watering-hole that managed to be louche, yet fashionable at the same time.

The Gulf States and Oman that took me two years to write was published in 1977 by the fledgling team of Croom Helm. Filled with facts for business visitors, the book examined the remarkable changes linked to the discovery of huge oil and gas fields in the eastern states of the Arabian peninsula. Travelling up and down the Gulf, at a time when there were no tourist offices and few hotels, I had been humiliated, propositioned, frightened and led up the garden path on so many occasions, that it was a miracle I’d finished the book at all, but illustrated with my pictures, it attracted good reviews in the Australian media as well as the Gulf News, the daily paper in Bahrain. Elizabeth de Stroumillo called it a ‘riveting read’. A further review said ‘... her text is good...clear and brisk...but depth is given by her truly remarkable photographs showing a traditional people on the brink of an unimaginable future ...’

The book lent clout in the competitive world of freelance travel writing in London. I received commissions for articles on the Middle East, and the prestigious photo-agency Camera Press agreed to market my pictures. Tom Blau, the Hungarian photographer who founded Camera Press in 1947, called me into his rabbit warren office in Russell Square. It was stacked from floor to ceiling with photographs of every conceivable news-making event, those of popular film stars, rock bands and royal persons. Cecil Beaton and Lords Snowdon and Litchfield were just three of its celebrated photographers.

‘See these pictures,’ Mr Blau pushed a sheet of contacts across his desk. ‘We’ve made this American photographer £500. Your pictures might do even better.’ He gave an encouraging smile.

With the Gulf States on sale, I returned to travel journalism and in the autumn of 1977, I was invited to Egypt with a party of scribes from the London dailies. Among them were Shauna Crawford-Poole, the travel editor of the Times, Reg Grizell from the Daily Express and the historian and former war correspondent, Tom Pocock. Our program included sightseeing in Cairo, Luxor and Aswan, where staying at the Old Cataract Hotel, Agatha Christie penned her murder mystery Death on the Nile. I would not accompany the others on the return flight to London. I was to visit Hurghada on the Red Sea coast, a small fishing village, that was being groomed for package tourism and the diving facilities to be offered by a new Sheraton Hotel were of special interest to me.

The underwater world has been a lifelong passion. On holidays at my aunt’s house on Lake Macquarie, I would be up at dawn, netting baby squid, prawns, miniature jellyfish, and other fascinating creatures from the weeds (to everyone’s horror, I once innocently caught a small, but deadly blue-ringed octopus in my hand).

Encouraging this early interest in ichthyology, my parents gave me T.C. Roughley’s Fish and Fisheries featuring colour plates of every species of fish in Australia. On my thirteenth birthday, I received The Silent World by Jacques Cousteau, the famous French diver who pioneered the aqualung. Under the Red Sea, written by the Austrian diving team of Hans and Lottie Hass, was a prize received for coming first in biology at Temora High School and holidays away from the wretched hospital were spent diving on the Grande Recife off the island of New Caledonia, a two-hour flight from Sydney.

I was already familiar with Hurghada. Arriving in Europe in 1964, I had embarked on a marathon journey with Ruth Bicknell, a nursing colleague from Royal North Shore, when we’d hitchhiked from London, down through France and Spain to Morocco, and across North Africa to Cairo. Wearing sunfrocks! Ruth, a slightly built brunette, wore the same pink frock, washing it every evening, all the way from Morocco. Naïve young Australians, we’d shared many adventures on the way, but nothing untoward had occurred until we reached the Red Sea coast of Egypt.

Some people aspire to attending the Vienna Opera Ball, or Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, but it had been my dream to dive in the Mare Rostrum, as the Red Sea was known in antiquity. Informed that Hurghada lay only 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of Port Suez, I begged Ruth to come. Although we’d had several spats, as most travellers do, Ruth was an easygoing companion and seeking similar company in later life, I was to find that people like her are hard to find.

An alert to two young females hitchhiking brought the Suez police speeding down the road with their siren wailing and their blue light flashing.

‘La!—no hitchhiking,’ admonished a sweating officer ticking off the reasons why, on lecherous fingers: bandits, a breakdown in the desert, and above all, the Red Sea coast was a military zone. He flagged down a bus, two passengers were ordered to surrender their seats, and we were bundled on board.

But the bus proved serendipitous. Among the veiled women and men—Ruth and I thought they were wearing pyjamas—we discovered four Anglo-Egyptian students from the University of Alexandria. They were going on a diving holiday in Hurghada and we could join them.

‘You’ll be safe with us,’ assured Morris, a lean, green-eyed medical student.

Hurghada had none of the historical attractions of other towns in Egypt. A small coastal village, it was never more than a meeting point for Saudi fishermen selling dried fish to camel caravans from Upper Egypt. A score of coral stone houses were built around a tiny mosque and surrounding them were palm frond shacks likely to become airborne in a strong khamsin, the hot, sand-laden wind blowing off the Sahara.

‘Al Ghardaqah has one tree and no water,’ announced a passenger using Hurghada’s Arabic name. ‘Most of us work in the fish factory owned by a businessman from Cairo who drives around like God, in a grey Jaguar. That is where tourists stay.’ He pointed to a white circular building on the seafront.

The Red Sea Tours Hotel was a luxury that Ruth and I could not afford. On our journey across North Africa, we’d never spent more than five shillings a night on accommodation and on several occasions, because we were the first Australian visitors, we were not charged anything. For us it was the Hurghada Youth Camp where canvas stretchers in an army tent cost only five piastres (about one shilling) each.

MY PICTURE IN THE EGYPTIAN MAGAZINE HURGHADA, 1964

As we were settling in, a middle-aged Egyptian bearing an old Eastman bellows camera waddled up and introduced himself. A magazine in Cairo was doing a destination feature on Hurghada. He would like to take our photographs. ‘I’ve got a German girl here on a diving holiday for the cover. But I need more pictures to show that tourists are trickling back since the Suez crisis,’ he explained politely.

We were photographed beside the skeleton of a dugong and a large leatherback turtle in the Hurghada Museum, a small wooden shed. I also posed in my bikini, with a lacquered red lobster on the beach. With a cheap camera bought especially for our trip, I had no inkling that one day I would become a professional photographer. And the event was to be of major significance for the German cover girl.

With the photo session over, Ruth and I set off to buy supper only to find Hurghada’s three stores all sold the same thing: onions, over-ripe tomatoes,khoubz (Arabic bread), and tins of Chinese corned beef. Dug out with our penknives, the latter made a meal of sorts as we sat on the wharf watching fishermen preparing their nets. On hearing us chatting, a whiskery old chap announced he used to work for the Suez Canal Company, nationalised by President Nasser in 1956.

WITH RUTH IN HURGHADA MUSEUM, 1964

‘Things were better under the British,’ he said. He looked up from baiting lines. How long were we staying? Had we seen the museum? ‘Dugong weigh 300 kilograms (660 pounds). Our boat catch,’ he said proudly.

We wandered back to the youth camp for an early night, but I’d barely closed my eyes when I heard someone fiddling with the tent flap. A turbaned man slipped inside and crossing to my stretcher, he ran rough hands over my breasts.

‘Hey!’ I yelled, but jumping up, I was tripped by the regulation youth hostel sheet that is sewn across the bottom and the intruder, running across the sand, leaping here and there over odd bits of detritus, made his escape.

Curiously for a former night nurse, Ruth slept through the fracas, but I explained what had happened next morning when a row of Arabs was seated cheekily outside our tent. Clearly one was the culprit and he’d brought his friends to laugh at my expense. For the first time on our travels, we felt unsafe, and after a brief discussion, we decided to return to Cairo. This news dismayed the boys.

‘We know of another great diving place where there is no one to bother you,’ said Sharif, a muscular engineering student with a mop of chestnut brown hair.

‘It’s a great bay called Dishdaba. The Germans were there a few days ago making underwater movies,’ Morris chimed in.

‘But how do we get there?’ asked Raouf a small youth who was studying law.

‘Hitchhike,’ Ruth and I chorused.

The Red Sea coast being only sparsely populated meant there was little traffic between Hurghada and Dishdaba, but finally a truck slowed down and pulled up. It was delivering bags of concrete to Safaga, a port under construction farther south.

‘Y’alla. Let’s go,’ called Morris scrambling up beside the driver. The rest of us climbed on the back with Sharif and the fourth boy, Muhammad, taking care not to spill our precious tin of water.

The journey south was thankfully cooler than our wait by the boiling tarmac. I estimated we had driven about 25 kilometres (15 miles) when the driver suddenly turned left onto a track in the dunes, but after travelling only a short distance, the truck shuddered to a stop and standing on the cabin roof, I saw we were marooned in seas of sand.

As night dropped its skirts over the Sahara, we jumped down and the men began digging us out. An hour passed, then two hours, until with the six of us pushing, the truck jumped free, but without even a wave, the driver reversed and we watched its tail-lights disappear back up the road to Hurghada. Morris quickly assured us he had paid the man to return with water, but at this point, we had no alternative but to walk, and helping each other on with our haversacks, we began trudging east, the direction of the coast.

Bored by the delay, at first we made steady progress, but our feet soon ached from walking in the soft sand. Stopping a moment, Ruth and I threw away our sleeping bags to lighten our loads. Ahead the boys strode on manfully under the stars, but finally, they too called a halt. Putting down the tin of water, Morris and Muhammad discarded their flippers for some puzzled Bedouin to find. And despite his protests, Raouf agreed to abandon his tent. Checking my watch in the moonlight, I saw it was 3 am. We’d been walking for six hours and especially tired after last night’s episode, I sank down for a few minutes sleep only to be jolted awake by Morris shaking my shoulder.

‘Get up. We’ll fry if we don’t reach the sea before sunrise,’ he told me.

By 5 am, we were crawling on hands and knees when the boys let out a shout.

‘We’ve made it! I can see the sea,’ Morris called back over his shoulder and after staggering up a final dune, there was the Red Sea, spread out before us like a dark-blue satin bedspread.

‘Yippee,’ we cried, running down and plunging into the water just as the hot eye of the sun popped onto the horizon.

We’d emerged from the desert at one end of a vast bay, desolate except for a concrete house, once a weekend retreat for expatriates working in the Egyptian capital. Now it was just a shell, its walls covered in swirling Arabic graffiti. The rooms had lost their doors—probably used as firewood by Bedouin, but they would afford Ruth and me a degree of privacy. The roof would also shield us from the sun, if not the heat. Carrying in the water tin, the boys placed it reverently in a corner, but on opening the lid, I found it was only a quarter-full of very rusty water.

‘It’s the youth camp garbage-bin,’ said Muhammad, a serious third-year veterinary science student.

This was awful news. Ruth and I had only a bottle of water each to last until the driver returned. To be thirsty was one thing, but to get a stomach upset was unthinkable. We’d been laid up with dysentery in the Mahdia Youth Hostel in Tunisia; our lavatory in Dishdaba was a shit-pit in the dunes.

But we’d made it. Pulling on my mask and snorkel, I followed Morris out into the bay where I looked down on an underwater Eden. Corals covered every inch of the reefs. Some were soft pink and yellow ‘flower’ corals, feathery tentacles waving in the current as they sifted in plankton from water around their colony. Others were hard, limestone corals— mosaic, organ-pipe, brain and grass coral interspersed with lacy sea fans. Still others like the light brown stag-horn coral, tipped in blue, were the size of small cars. Moreover, the abundance of fish was extraordinary. Now I appreciated why Cousteau was so enthusiastic about the Red Sea where marine biologists have recorded more than 1,200 species of fish and invertebrates.

In the first minutes, I spotted a school of black-white-and-yellow butterfly fish, red banner fish, rainbow-coloured wrasse, yellow striped goatfish and a cheeky blue-and-black mottled triggerfish. As I was admiring this colourful galaxy, a giant silver trevally rose up from the deep. A member of the Caranx genus of fighting fish beloved of anglers, it swam slowly towards us as Morris placed the butt of his speargun in his belly and drew back the rubbers.

Unwilling to see such a regal fish killed, I gave him the diver’s ‘palm down’ signal not to shoot.

‘There’ll be others,’ I said as we both surfaced for air, then dived again.

Visibility was good. A wall of soft corals dropped 5 metres (16 feet) to a plateau bristling with coral like the antlers of a highland stag. I spotted a red hawkfish resting in the branches of an orange sea fan, a graceful angelfish hovering above a cluster of lemon-coloured anemones and green-and-mauve parrotfish grinding coral polyps with pharyngeal teeth. A school of eight squid, my favourite marine creature, jetted through the water like a team of Red Arrows. When I swam after them, they flushed brown, then yellow and green, and the last animal squirted a defensive puff of sepia-coloured ink. Surfacing again, I was brushed by a soft, brown and turquoise-trimmed nudibranch (gastropod mollusc) known as a badia in Egypt for its undulating movements resembling those made by a belly dancer.

Swimming farther out over the trench, I observed a brown mass hovering in the distance. Surely it couldn’t be a whale shark? As the mass moved closer, it resembled a swarm of bees. It was a quivering bait ball of millions of immature anchovy, which sprayed out in all directions as they were attacked by jack and bonito. Sensing my presence, the ball moved away, forming, re-forming and exploding like a catherine-wheel each time a predator zoomed in. Then suddenly it vanished, leaving a few silver scales drifting slowly down to the bottom.

Morris and the other boys speared several fish, but there was no wood to build a fire to cook them. More than a thousand years ago, the Baghdadi scholar Ali al-Mas’udi had described the Red Sea coast as barren, so unlike the Pacific Ocean there was no driftwood on the tidemark. Ruth and I had brought a tin of Chinese corned beef, and a packet of biscuits from Hurghada, but they would not stretch far when shared between six of us. The boys had brought nothing at all.

‘How can you go camping without even a little primus stove?’ I asked with astonishment.

‘Mother gave me one for our holiday, but it was thrown away on our walk,’ said Raouf wistfully.

Muhammad and I decided to check if the Germans had left anything at their camp-site. We returned with leaves of rock-hard khoubz, a lump of dried-out salami, some rotting grapes and a sandy, but unopened plastic bottle of mineral water. We shared this for supper, and later I lead the smokers in a treasure hunt for cigarette butts. That evening saw us happy, if slightly peckish. As the sky darkened we scooped out holes in the sand for our hips and shoulders and lay down to sleep among the ghost crabs.

Next morning found us thirsty enough to start sipping water from the garbage-bin, but diving acted as a remedy of sorts. I ventured out again with Morris and Ruth accompanied Sharif and Muhammad, leaving an increasingly miserable Raouf by the house.

This time we swam further out to where the coral was anchored around 20 metres (65 feet) deep. Morris, who said he dived in the mouth of the Nile, easily reached this depth on a single breath, stalked and shot a fish. At one stage a bronze shark, accompanied by an escort of remora suckerfish, glided out of the green, but when we swam towards it, it vanished with a flick of its tail. I watched a spotted eagle ray wing past, and to my delight, a big blue-green Napoleon fish swam up to goggle at me.

After an hour or so, we were snorkelling back to shore when I spotted a solitary barracuda zooming in behind Morris. Its jerking sideways movements indicated a possible attack. Turn around, screamed a voice inside my head, but before I could signal, a wave washed me onto the reef and I was bowled over and over in stinging fire coral.

As I stood there spluttering, Morris scrambled up behind me.

‘Sharks don’t bother me, but I don’t fool with old man barra.’ He grinned, but his smile faded at the sight of scarlet wheals across my back.

With nothing to relieve the pain, suddenly Dishdaba had become quite threatening. We rationed the last water and at Sharif’s suggestion, we began chewing raw fish whose salty taste exacerbated our increasing thirst. When midday passed without sign of the driver, we reluctantly accepted he wasn’t coming back, and little Raouf, the youngest among us in his red, white and blue striped bathing trunks, began to cry.

Habitually uncomplaining, Ruth seemed unaware of our plight, but I was now seriously concerned. How would we explain that we had gone off with strange men in the desert and without food or water? Trifling things assumed importance. An anemone swallowing a shrimp, or a crab missing a claw brought us running to look. Muhammad complained of a headache, that Ruth and I agreed was due to salt loss: we were all sweating profusely in a temperature of more than 40° Celsius (104°F).

That evening, Sharif did not join us on the beach. Instead, he headed off in hope of encountering the camel corps that patrols the Red Sea coast for smugglers. He returned at dawn, his brown curls were full of sand grains, and his eyes were bloodshot with fatigue.

‘Mahfeesh,’—nothing, he said and flopped down beside us.

On the third day we were seriously hungry. Clearly someone had to walk back along the coast to Hurghada. But could he make it under cover of night? Morris snapped some matches and the boys drew lots. Morris picked the shortest one and would set out at dusk. We agreed he must have the last sip of water, but going to the tin, I found only a dry orange crust.

All that morning we lay in the tepid sea. Around 3 pm, a dhow passed 800 metres offshore, but its crew gave no indication of seeing our frantic waving.

Exhausted by the heat, Ruth and the boys stretched out on the concrete floors of the house, but I pottered along the water’s edge. Stooping to pick up a spider shell, I was startled by the sight of a camel in the distance and after making sure it was not a mirage, I let out a cooee. The rider had discovered Sharif’s footprints, and believing him a smuggler had come to investigate. Dropping down from the saddle, he listened to Morris’ explanation of our improbable situation. Then eyeing Ruth and me in our bikinis, he loped off to radio Hurghada from his lonely camp-site.

We had changed into our sunfrocks long before two officers bounced up in an army truck and accused us all of being spies. But following a vigorous exchange with the boys, they were finally convinced we were tourists of sorts, and we were driven back to Hurghada.

Our first bite to eat was a khoubz wrap of onion, over-ripe tomato and Chinese corned beef, but washed down with tins of Indian mango-juice, it was little short of a feast. There was no chance to rejoice, however, as the police put us all on the night bus to Cairo. Our travels from London to Dishdaba had taken four months: a rich experience, though possibly not to have been undertaken without adequate preparation, or at the height of a North African summer.

Back in London during the winter months, I earned a living working as a waitress at The Contented Sole, a trendy fish-and-chip restaurant in South Kensington. Gerry, its Irish chef, smoked like a chimney and the batter around many a sole contained a liberal sprinkling of his cigarette ash. We waitresses wore straw boaters, frilly white blouses, and tight black skirts, and sang along to a honky-tonk piano. It was hard work singing and running up and down the stairs, but within six months, I’d saved enough to spend the summer in Spain.

In Malaga one day, I was leafing through an old copy of Hola! the Spanish news and celebrity magazine when, among articles on film stars and bullfighters, I chanced on a story of some German tourists who had perished while on holiday in Egypt. The four men, a woman and her poodle had been attempting to visit a remote archaeological site in the Western Desert, but travelling by minibus, they had run out of petrol and water and had succumbed to the August heat. Eventually located, their bodies were found to be withered like prunes, the last to die being the woman who’d kept a diary of their agonies. At this point, my eyes flew to a small picture obtained to illustrate the feature: it was the cover photograph from the Egyptian magazine of the German girl at Hurghada.

***

Thirty years had passed since my Red Sea adventure and I imagined Hurghada would now be a mass of hotels, shopping malls, and seaside restaurants. The British writers had just departed and I was waiting for a friend, a former stewardess with BOAC¹⁴, who had taken a few days off to visit Hurghada with me. We’d packed evening wear for cocktails and I’d thrown in a mask in hope of a dive. Our hosts, the Cairo Sheraton, had advised that their hotel was still under construction, so our accommodation was to be a bungalow. Everything seemed to have been well-organised and I was looking forward to Aileen’s plane that was due in behind a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight from Amman.

As our departure to Hurghada was not until the following afternoon, I left her asleep, and took a taxi to the City of the Dead, the huge cemetery in northern Cairo where I needed to shoot some photographs for a book on Islamic art. The Mamluk sultans, rather like latter-day pharaohs, had selected this area just outside the city walls as a suitable burial ground to erect magnificent monuments to their dead. The dusty heritage included the funerary complex of Sultan Sayf ad-Din Barquq, who founded the dynasty in 1382, the mausoleum of Sultan Qaitbey, and the Qaitbey Mosque that features on the Egyptian one pound note.

Over the years, due to Cairo’s chronic housing shortage, many poor families had taken up residence in the necropolis. A spooky place, at the same time it resembled a village community, though lacking the amenities enjoyed by the city’s more affluent citizens. I passed women hanging out washing on lines strung between headstones, children drawing pictures using the tombs as desks, and youths kicking a football among madrassas (religious colleges) more than five hundred years old. A dead black cat lying outside the funerary complex of Sultan al-Ashraf Barsbey was an ominous sign.

Over lunch in the Cairo Sheraton, we heard British guests earnestly discussing an incident of the previous evening, but unable to establish the cause of their concern, we left for the airport.

DEAD CAT LYING IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD WAS AN OMINOUS SIGN

‘There seem to be lots of police about,’ said Aileen, an attractive woman in her early forties who had flown as Cabin Crew Superintendent with various members of the Royal family on their worldwide jaunts.

The flight to Hurghada took an hour and as we approached the coast, I was surprised by the lack of high-rise. Had we come in further south over Dishdaba? Our mood had been upbeat until we disembarked onto a windswept runway where three young men from the Sheraton Hurghada greeted us wearing jeans, gym-boots and zipped puffer jackets. When I remarked on the cold, one boy who identified himself as the Sheraton-to-be-sports-monitor, told us the inclement weather had been around for weeks.

The short drive into Hurghada took us through a bleak landscape punctured by abandoned motor vehicles and one or two tanks, casualties of the 1967 war with Israel. As we neared signs of urbanisation, I was appalled by the sight of feral dogs worrying a dead companion. A large husky-like animal was tearing at the dog’s head while another animal dragged on its haunches. It was macabre start to our visit and I suggested that Aileen, a rather prudish Scot, should look the other way.

‘Hurghada,’ announced one of the boys.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Aileen. ‘I can’t even see a Kentucky Fried Chicken.’

The grafting of a Sheraton onto the old Red Sea Tours Hotel had acted like a beacon. Bedouin from as far away as Sinai had pitched their tents and around them lay the trappings of civilisation: discarded generators, broken television sets, polystyrene packing cases, plastic bags and mountains of soft drink cans. Hurghada was a slum. Only the old white-washed mosque showed any sign of care.

‘There’s the Sheraton,’ said one of the lads pointing to a large construction site.

‘We can see it tomorrow. I think we would like to change for dinner,’ I replied politely.

We ascended a stony plateau devoid of vegetation, a monotony relieved only by a row of shabby wooden shacks on stilts. When the driver stopped outside one of these splintery structures, I realised with dismay it was our accommodation. Far from obtaining the keys to a seaside bungalow, we were staying here; but the future sports monitor had remade our beds and stacked his gym-boots in a corner of our room.

‘When is the next flight back to Cairo?’ asked Aileen, plonking down on her suitcase.

‘I’m sure there is a daily service,’ I said, less than enthusiastically.

Presently there was a knock on our door. A pimply faced youth wearing a Second World War cowhide flying helmet, a helmet he was to wear day and night for the next three days, informed us dinner was served. It was only 6 pm, but joined by the boys, we sat down to a meal of boiled eggs, foule (fava beans) and a limp salad. A bottle of Cleopatra wine thoughtfully provided by the Cairo Sheraton was consumed in ten minutes flat.

When efforts at conversation petered out we retired, but growling dogs beneath the floorboards made sleep impossible. Getting up to close a shutter, I pulled off the entire window frame, which clattered onto the ground outside.

‘Who’s attacking?’ cried Aileen, sitting up in bed so violently she knocked a photograph of Manchester United football team off the wall.

‘No one. Lie down and pull the rug over your head,’ I told her.

At dawn, a wind was blowing in the window and peering out I saw it had begun to rain. We were dressed by seven—neither of us had attempted a shower (the bathroom was ghastly)—when members of the Town Council arrived to welcome us to Hurghada. By the time they left, our breakfast of boiled eggs and foule was cold and going into a tiny kitchen in hope of heating it up, I found the youth in the flying helmet peeling potatoes into an overflowing bin, and a fish on the sink was crawling with little black flies.

Backing out, I suggested to Aileen that we might go to see the Sheraton—the purpose of my visit—but we arrived to find the hotel at that stage when it was impossible to make a complimentary remark. Wires protruded from the plaster, workmen were laying tiles, and there were holes in the corridors through which one could fall and end up in Melbourne. Ankle-deep in building rubble and cigarette ends, I tried my best to imagine it filled with sun-tanned guests enjoying candle-lit seafood dinners, gentle music, and the pat of tennis balls, as notebook poised, I tramped about, trying hard to appear awestruck.

When the weather lifted a little, the boys suggested the swim for which I was hoping. Aileen who did not so much as put a toe in water (she claimed to have nearly drowned during a stopover in Sri Lanka), would find a sheltered spot to sit on the beach, however, excrement dotted the sand wherever we looked. Deciding one of the bunkers might be a good spot out of the wind, she disappeared inside only to emerge foul-mouthed and ashen-faced: it seemed the entire Egyptian Army had been stationed in Hurghada during the Six-Day War.

With sunbathing out, we were taken to the Hurghada Museum where I found the same specimens looking older and dustier. A few bones had detached from the dugong skeleton and the coiled womb of a stingray and young floated in a jar of milky-coloured fluid. Opening the comments book with a flourish, the caretaker asked us to sign our names and flicking back a page, I saw R. Bicknell and C. Osborne 25.8.64, with precisely twenty signatures between then and now.

Dogs and the banging shutter disturbed our sleep on night two and with no prospect of a flight out of Hurghada for another day, we discussed possible escape routes.

‘There’s a new road link to Luxor, but it’s 500 kilometres (310 miles), so a taxi will cost a fortune,’ I said. Leaving early would also offend our Sheraton hosts, so how could I most effectively spend my time? One day Hurghada might be a fantastic resort, but right now it was a dump.

‘What about a feature on how the locals feel about impending tourism?’ suggested Aileen. Would it corrupt their Muslim moral values? Would Hurghada become another Limassol or Torrelmolinos?

‘Good idea,’ I replied, endeavouring to ratchet up our mood.

Next morning, we drove into town where I pounced on a man selling shells on an up-turned oil-drum. What would he likely be doing when Hurghada was crawling with tourists? Might he open a crafts shop or shrewdly switch to Dunkin’ Donuts? Raising my camera to take his picture, I was stopped by one of the men from the Hurghada Town Council.

‘No pickchiz. Hurghada military zone.’ He slapped a hand across the lens.

Since there was no point in arguing with such a mentality, I suggested a fishing expedition. Provided we caught some fish, Aileen could pose as a photographic model, as I had in Hurghada all those years ago.

We set sail in a small launch, Aileen, the future sports monitor of the Sheraton and our two minders. At first choppy, the sea soon grew rough, and the smaller minder leant over the rail and vomited. Seated downwind Aileen turned pale again, but the boatman, averted a potentially ugly situation by landing a large Spanish mackerel.

‘Hold it up while I take your picture,’ I said.

‘No pickchiz,’ said the security man who had not succumbed to mal-de-mer.

Frustrated and depressed, we decided to wait for our afternoon flight in a café below the plateau. With torn parasols flapping against a slate coloured sky and shabby cane chairs stacked around us, the setting was grim and hardly surprised that it did not sell alcohol, we managed to convey the message that we wanted two Sprites.

THE BOATMAN, AILEEN AND OUR MINDER, HURGHADA, 1977

‘T’nin Sprite,’ I held up two fingers, emphasising the Arabic word.

A child aged about ten, eventually brought out two lukewarm bottles with straws. Wiping our table with his sleeve, he set them down and stood back looking at us. Were we the first Western women he had ever seen? Overhead the sun disappeared and from being simply melancholy, Hurghada assumed a sinister air, but happily our flight arrived on time, and I left the Red Sea again, my cocktail dress unpacked, without a tan, and without the slightest regret.

Landing in Cairo for a final night in Egypt, we noticed that police were still milling around the airport and a uniformed official carefully recorded the licence plate of our taxi. But what bliss to be back in civilisation. Checking into the Sheraton, we poured ourselves huge gin and tonics from the mini-bar and ran a bath. While Aileen soaked off Hurghada, I went downstairs to buy an airmail copy of the Daily Telegraph whose main article highlighted the continuing investigations into the death of David Holden, the chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Times.

Reading down, I learnt he was a passenger on RJ503, that had landed ahead of Aileen’s flight on 6 December. He’d had his passport stamped at immigration, collected his Samsonite off the carousel, cashed $200 in traveller’s cheques and strode out of the airport to catch a taxi. Eight hours later, his body was discovered by the road near al-Azhar university, not far from the City of the Dead—the labels had been cut off his jacket, and a single bullet had entered his back.

Who killed David Holden? Referring to the murder in his book My Paper Chase, Harold Evans—then editor of the Sunday Times—advances several theories. That Holden, whose own book Farewell to Arabia I’d read, was a case of mistaken identity. Had he been confused with David Hirst, the Guardian correspondent whose articles about the extravagant lifestyles of the Sadats had infuriated the Egyptian president? Was the fifty-three year old journalist who had known Kim Philby, the homosexual KGB agent in the blurred world of spy and counterspy in Beirut, an undercover agent? Like other shootings, notably that of Lee Harvey Oswald, suspected assassin of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November, 1963, it is unlikely we shall ever know.

***

In December 2008, seeking an escape from Arctic winds sweeping England, I surfed the web for a winter sunshine break. Turkey wouldn’t be warm enough, Zanzibar was too far away, and while Aswan was ideal, getting there involved several changes of aircraft. Suddenly my eyes hit upon Hurghada. Dare I return? Due to the credit crunch, the fare was half the normal price and I was suddenly curious as to what may have happened to Dishdaba.

By extraordinary coincidence, it was exactly thirty years to the day when the captain switched on the seatbelt sign for landing. Peering out of the window, I saw winking turquoise swimming pools and a string of lights stretching all the way down the coast. Was this the same Hurghada where I slept in a shack all those years ago?

On this occasion, I was to stay at the exclusive Oberoi, which had been voted The World’s Best All Suite Hotel. Its VIP list included Arab sheikhs, prime ministers, and fashion designers, but indecision was kicking in. Suite 119 which I was allocated, didn’t feel quite right. Even I couldn’t believe it.

‘Which direction is sunrise?’ I asked Ibrahim, the gangly front office porter anxious to please, but thrown into a state of confusion by the question. He revolved, rather like a slowly whirling dervish.

‘Out there,’ he said, pointing vaguely into the night.

I attempted to explain feng shui: how I prefer to sleep in an end room and with my head aligned to the rising sun. And please, not next to any Saudis, or Kuwaiti families (I remembered an Arab who had beaten his wife, in the room next to mine in Dubai). Or indeed any children, of any nationality.

We eyed each other across the beautiful tiled suite with its Arabic-style arches, Egyptian wall-hangings, private courtyard, two televisions and elegant furniture imported from Mumbai, the headquarters of the Oberoi chain. Then retrieving my suitcase, Ibrahim replaced it on the golf buggy and we motored back to reception, a domed edifice with a huge display of Strelitzia reginae—Bird of Paradise—flowers by the fountain.

Bounding up the steps, he returned with keys for suites 110 and 222, and an assurance that all 102 hotel suites were identical.

‘Except the twelve Grand Suites each of which has a private swimming pool. But all face the same direction,’ he assured me.

We were now standing outside suite 110, an end suite as I had requested. Ibrahim inserted the key in the lock and flung open the door. Televisions were switched on, minibar doors were opened and the procedures for locking my valuables in the safe were explained in detail.

‘The swimming pool, gym and restaurants are just across there,’ he said, swinging an arm like a weather-vane. ‘Or if madam prefers suite 222, she can then simply walk down to the beach.’ He wrung his hands in desperation.

It was now 8 pm. We had been motoring around the Oberoi site for nearly an hour and pulling up outside suite 222, I observed that Ibrahim had developed a rictus smile.

‘This will be fine,’ I said, feeling a burden lift from my shoulders. And I should think so, I told myself. The bed was heavenly and after a swig of Scotch, I was sound asleep, ready to renew my acquaintance with Hurghada next day.

I had steeled myself for change, but the humongous hotels ranged along the road into town left me speechless. The Mamoluk (sic) Palace, the Aladdin Beach, Jasmine Village, Pick Albatross and the Aqua Blue Resort—apparently modelled on the sixteenth century Mughal fort of Fatehpur Sikri—were an architectural soup of Pharaonic, Indian and Islamic-style elements in gut-wrenching colours: turmeric yellow, ox-blood, biscuit, vanilla and Sea Island sauce pink. But there was no sign of the Sheraton Hurghada.

‘I want to find the Funduq Sheraton,’ I told my taxi-driver, a young man wearing designer stubble and a red number 7 David Beckham football shirt. ‘Road closed.’ His brow knitted in the rear vision mirror.

‘Izmi Hurghada thirty years ago,’ I tapped my chest with a certain pride since I had clearly graced Hurghada before he was born. But he was right. The old road was blocked by a rusty, corrugated-iron fence plastered with posters advertising an ‘Eid Concert’ at the Ministry of Sound, and other extravaganzas for Eid el-Fitr, the imminent Muslim feast of sacrifice.

‘Funduq Sheraton,’ he suddenly exclaimed as we pulled up beside a crumbling circular building surrounded by leaning lamp posts and dusty trees. Grey, shabby and clearly unloved, I recognised it as the old Red Sea Tours Hotel, a large Marriott that had risen beside it being one of 160 new hotels.

Hurghada’s long main street was still known as Sharia Sheraton, even though a new Sheraton had re-located to Soma Bay, far away from bungee jumping, kite-surfing, glass-bottom boat rides, submarine tours and other entertainments for holidaymakers flocking to the Red Sea resort. Wherever I looked there were hotels, cafés and shops selling tourist tat, but a sign, ‘Harrads Hurghada’, captured my attention.

On the pavement outside, glass water pipes, brass trays, wooden animals, leather pouffes, and camel-shaped backpacks were displayed beside baskets of karkady, the dried red hibiscus flowers that Egyptians make into tea. As I raised my camera to take a photo, an intense-looking man who clearly hadn’t shaved for days, got up from a dirty plastic chair.

‘Everything inside 1 GBP,’ he said, holding up a finger.

Going into his shop, I picked up a fish from a display of onyx marine life. ‘Fish 4 GBP,’ he corrected himself.

Removing the stopper, I sniffed one of the pee-coloured flagons of perfume.

‘Perfume 10 GBP for 100 grams.’ He cleared his throat. Then all of a sudden he flew into a rage.

‘Tourist just lookin’. No buy anythin’. Flecks of spit appeared in the corners of his mouth as he shouted. ‘Every tourist fuggin’ Russhin’. Old woman wantin’ sex. Fuggin’ rubbish. Only lookin’. Pay nothin’. Russhin’ fuggin’! Fuggin’! Fuggin’! Oh Allah. What we do?’ He clasped his hands together and concerned my presence might bring on a seizure, I left him shouting to continue my walk along the Sharia Sheraton.

Every second shop was stuffed with souvenirs. In the window of a leathergoods store, a lizard skin handbag, including the head, half-chewed away by insects, was marked 145 Egyptian pounds. I wanted to buy a plain white T-shirt, but everything had either a shark or a pyramid on it. There were hotels that looked like mosques and mosques that looked like hotels. Hundreds of vacant tables and chairs stood on the forecourt of a pink edifice called La Pacha. Cafés were also empty; the only tourists in sight were two old babushkas dragging cheap orange suitcases across the road.

Halfway along, I came to a tiny public garden where faux-Pharaonic statues, including a replica of Ramses II’s broken feet from Luxor, lay among the weeds. Sitting down on a concrete bench, I took out my plastic bottle for a drink of water; it was at least 20° Celsius (68°F) warmer than the temperature in London.

‘The last time it rained in Hurghada was 1966,’ said a man seated on the bench opposite me.

Abdul Rashid was a former diving instructor who had injured his back and could no longer wear a heavy SCUBA tank. ‘But the fish have gone,’ he said. ‘Too many divers and the Russians break off coral. They are stupid people. I go to collect them at seven o’clock and they are drinking vodka. Good for diving. They tell me.’

‘Is the old fishing wharf still here?’ I asked hesitantly.

‘Now we have new Hurghada Marina. Come. I show.’

Turning off Sharia Sheraton, we followed a lane covered with flattened soft drink cans, fish backbones and used phone cards, where mournful sheep awaiting slaughter, stood tied up outside the shops. Before leaving London, I’d asked Aileen whether she would like to return to Hurghada. I was thankful she had decided not to come.

But Hurghada did have a new marina, crammed with yachts registered in ports such as Guernsey and Bermuda, and designer shops and restaurants, where the cost of a grilled sea bass would feed a local family for several days. We passed Timberland, Inter Moda, Jackie B. and a dive shop where Abdul Rashid stopped to stare at the window display.

‘We never had such things in old days,’ he said, refusing my offer of a coffee as he obviously felt uncomfortable in such surroundings.

Back at the Oberoi, I decided that Dishdaba must be further down the coast in the area now known as Sahl Hasheesh. Hasheesh is rather confusing. It’s Arabic for grass, rare green grass, beloved of a wee grey-and-white bird known as Abu Fasad, which scurried about the hotel lawns like a winged mouse.

With no transport this far from Hurghada I had started walking when a small silver sedan, driven by a bespectacled man wearing a suit and tie, pulled out of the hotel gates.

‘Where are you going?’ I called across.

‘Sahl Hasheesh Resort,’ he replied, and without being asked, I ran over and jumped in beside him.

Forty-four years on and I was hitchhiking to Dishdaba again, but this time we were driving along a tarmac road lined with street lights and date palms.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ the driver asked.

‘No of course not,’ I said, noticing his top lip had beads of perspiration. ‘This is a small community and I have a very jealous wife,’ he said, nervously ashing his Marlboro out the window.

‘You must promise not to tell anyone I have given you a lift.’

‘I won’t breathe a word,’ I said, aghast at causing such anxiety.

There was a tense moment as a security guard checked his ID card at the entrance to Sahl Hasheesh, but waved in, we pulled up in the parking lot of the Pyramisa Hotel, 28 kilometres (17 miles) south of Hurghada.

‘I work in the hotel bank,’ said the nervous man. ‘Do you mind if we don’t go in together?’

‘Not at all, thank you so much for the lift.’ I moved to shake his hand, but he hurried up the steps.

If Hurghada’s hotels were frogs, the Pyramisa Sahl Hasheesh was a cane toad. Its 815 rooms overlooked swimming pools, water slides, children’s pools and poolside bars, all interconnected by tiled walkways and hump-backed bridges. Taking one or two pictures, I tiptoed down to the beach where hundreds of obese Russian tourists lay stretched out on sun-beds. Some were sleeping, others were stuffing their mouths with pizza and ice-cream, and all, including those asleep, were swatting flies.

Instantly I recognised Dishdaba. The behemoth was built at the end of the vast bay where we had slept on the beach, and the desert hinterland where we’d walked for our lives that summer, was now covered in hollow-eyed construction sites. As I stood there reminiscing, a water-skier streaked across the water where we dived all those years ago and suddenly I missed my old companions: Morris was probably a wealthy doctor practising in Alexandria, and Raouf could well be on the Supreme Court bench in Cairo. I was lost in thought, when four women emerged from a swim, and snapping out of it, I asked could I take their photograph.

‘Where are you from?’ I addressed them in a friendly fashion.

‘Russe,’ replied the largest woman while drying herself with a yellow beach towel.

‘What you doing here?’ she asked, since clutching my spiral notebook, I was clearly not on holiday.

RUSSIAN HOLIDAYMAKERS AT THE PYRAMISA HOTEL DISHDABA, 2010

‘I came here forty-four years ago,’ I said, feeling rather strange.

‘You from where?’ she asked.

‘Sydney,’ I replied.

‘Australia is nice?’ She shook her wet hair like a dog after a bath. ‘Yes, you should go there.’ I smiled.

‘Are many Russe in Australia?’ She was becoming interested.

‘No, but they seem to be everywhere else,’ I muttered, though uncertain if she appreciated the joke.

Dear old Dishdaba. The Pyramisa Hotel was even larger than Cheops pyramid, and I learnt that the Sahl Hasheesh Resort would eventually have ten hotels, with banks and boutiques along the 12.5 kilometres (7.5 miles) corniche planted with hibiscus shrubs and baby date-palms. Counting an ‘old town’ médina, a marina, four golf courses and villa-type housing for a projected population of 200,000, it was billed as the biggest, splashiest resort in the Middle East, but I wouldn’t be buying there: the Dishdaba from our young, free-spirited days had been laid to rest.