It was our seventh wedding anniversary. Next week would have been our twenty-third.
That night we had dined in one of the Hilton Cairo’s restaurants, sitting on low cushions and eating mezze while being entertained by Egyptian music, singing and belly-dancing (photo courtesy of Alison). To round off a wonderful time, we took the lift up to the hotel’s 36th floor, where there was a small cocktail bar with breathtaking views across the city and the Nile. We found an empty table at one of the windows and decided to share a bottle of champagne. The waiter we gave our order to performed the usual champagne ritual – bringing an ice bucket and two flute glasses to the table, then bringing the bottle I had selected for me to approve, leaving the bottle in the ice bucket for a while, and finally returning to open the bottle. It was when he was carrying out the last task that he asked, “Excuse me, sir and madam, but are you celebrating something special tonight? Your anniversary, perhaps?” I was quick to reply. “Naw, naw,” I smiled, “we’re just enjoying the view, thank you.” After the waiter opened the bottle, poured the champagne and left, Alison and I looked at each other questioningly. Something was dawning on us. “What date is it?” asked Alison. I thought for a moment. “Twenty-second of April,” I said. We both raised our glasses. “Happy Anniversary!” we laughed together.
It was our seventh wedding anniversary. Next week would have been our twenty-third.
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The chap standing on the right in this photo is my Dad in the Ex-Servicemen’s Club in the Ferry. The photo must have been taken not long before he died in 1965, because he has that hunted look on his face and his clothes are hanging on him. I remember round about that time a neighbour saying to him: “Christ, Derry, you’re like somebody just oot o’ Belsen.” Having helped to liberate that camp, the neighbour knew what he was talking about. I also remember Mum laughing about an earlier time in the Club when Dad went there with his best pal, Jock Bell. At the end of the night when the National Anthem was played and everyone was expected to stand, Dad and Jock decided to stage a two-man protest by keeping to their seats. They were barred from the Club for that sacrilege, of course, but, the Ferry being the Ferry, the ban didn’t last very long. Dad was such a gentle and easy-going man, I don’t know what would have got into him that night. A skinful of whisky, perhaps. And if the same incident were to occur today, I wonder how many others would join the protest. Saor Alba.
On the first full day of our visit to Cairo in April 2002, we hired a taxi to take us to and from the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, which Alison had been itching to wander through. The taxi driver’s name was Abdul. We liked him so much that he became our personal driver for the duration of our visit, waiting outside the hotel for us in the morning and bringing us back later in the day. Abdul was a quiet, dignified, silver-haired chap with a dry sense of humour. Much more than a driver, he was our guide, our minder and our companion in that vast metropolis of eight million people. Alison snapped this brilliant photo of him waiting patiently behind a string of camels in downtown Cairo. On the morning that he took us out to Giza to see the Sphinx and the Pyramids, a camel, its driver clad in full Arab headdress and robes, came thundering towards us on the long, dusty approach road through the desert. “Wotcha, Abdul!” the driver shouted in a thick Mancunian accent as the camel galloped past the taxi. Alison was incredulous. “Do you know him, Abdul?” she asked. “Who is he?” Abdul gave a wry smile. “Just a Bedouin,” he replied.
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