Riding the Wind of Change: Trans-Africa and Europe Trek, 1960 by Peter Hardy

Author:Peter Hardy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-07-20T12:08:56+00:00

A castle on the sea front of Alexandria, Egypt. March 1960.

I decided to explore the corniche, the area around the coastal road and the promenade close to the seashore where I came across an Arab fort. The Arabs, from what is now Saudi Arabia, had swept across North Africa by seven hundred A.D. They converted to Islam the populations that they settled among including the Egyptians. Their Mosques proliferated.

A romantic date in Alex

I visited the tourist office in Alexandria and met there an attractive, slim, young woman with black hair and of French descent. Bernadette was on the staff of the office. She kept pushing her bosom forward no doubt in an attempt to attract my attention.

I asked her, “Could I take you out this evening?”

We went to the cinema in the city. I snuggled up to Bernadette. She seemed to enjoy this but her occasional sniff made me self conscious. I was aware of how soiled my clothes must have seemed to Bernadette, resulting from my epic journey, without opportunities to clean myself up.

In the film interval Bernadette told me, “I had an English fiance but we broke off the engagement recently.”

“I can’t imagine how that could have happened,” was my heartfelt reply.

Bernadette, I thought, had told me about her broken engagement to elicit sympathy. Young ladies are adept at that kind of thing. I learnt this over the following years!

While walking Bernadette home after the film she said, “The French here feel vulnerable in an Arab country with strained relations with Western Europe. I feel this even though I was born in Egypt. My family have substantial business in Alexandria.”

Such is the tangle that colonisation brings to those who venture far from the confines of their ancestral country. At the time Egypt was self governing but had a colonial French and British past. It was not surprising Egyptian Arabs had a mistrust of foreigners particularly those with British and French ties. My association with South Africa revealed by the Union’s flag on my rucksack probably did not help. South African forces were prominent in the Allies success in the 2nd World War in maintaining their control in Africa.

I only got as far as her front door. She did not ask me in! Perhaps that was conditional on me proposing to her!

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