Southbound

The Monday after Allie’s discussion at Akrotiri, 27 June, I had to travel to Nicosia for a bureaucrat to stamp an official Arabic translation in my passport. Apparently, the translation of my personal details would ease my forthcoming entry into Libya. Quite why I had to waste a hot, sticky day getting this stamp bewildered me, but ‘When in Rome…’

I recall marvelling at the skill of the old man that the chairman had hired to hack a path through the bureaucracy on my behalf. Like a seasoned scout hacking his way through dense jungle with a sharp machete, the old man edged into the high-ceilinged government office, waded through the line of citizens snaking out of the door, and made his way slowly to the one and only clerk. I walked in his wake with significant humility, seeing the queue of poor unfortunates who were waiting patiently to have their documents processed too. I smiled weakly with them. For the second time in recent weeks, it occurred to me that honesty with officials was indeed a sign of personal weakness.

After a few words of greeting and some handshakes all round, my translation approval request was in the system, ahead of everyone else’s needs. As I stood awkwardly to one side of the queue, I could feel the outrage radiating in my direction from those who’d probably been standing in the room since it opened, some hours earlier. As mothers and fathers tried to calm fractious children, I stood there aloof, trying not to appear ignorant of their disarray. Fifteen minutes later, another clerk appeared with my passport and its translation stamp. At the rate the queue was moving, I estimated that this was about four hours earlier than if I'd gone there alone and stood in line. I’d always loathed queuing, and queue jumpers even more so. Now though, I’d sampled the trappings of money, power and privilege, all of it belonging to the chairman of course, not to me.

On the same day, I had to secure a Libyan Entry Visa. This time, the chairman was my chaperone. On entering his country’s embassy in Nicosia, the officials greeted him and me warmly. Clearly, everyone held the chairman in high regard and respected this kindly man. I wasn’t at all surprised.

I admit though to being apprehensive about my presence in the Libyan Embassy, given my background in the British Armed Forces. According to Western perceptions, Libya was one of the world’s terrorist-sponsoring nations, a pariah state.

In 1984, British police constable Yvonne Fletcher was wounded fatally outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Two years later, the Americans believed that Libya was behind the bombing of a Berlin discotheque, a bombing that had caused the deaths of two US servicemen. In retaliation, British-based F-111 warplanes had struck Tripoli and Benghazi on April 18 of the same year, killing thirty seven people, amongst them the adopted daughter of Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qadafi. Ever since, Libya had demanded the trial of the US pilots concerned and their superiors. More recently, American and British police sought two Libyan agents in connection with the deaths of two hundred and seventy people over Lockerbie in 1988, on Pan Am Flight 103.

Perhaps this background explained why I was half expecting to meet some detached shady-looking men, sporting dark glasses and suspicious bulges under their armpits that morning. However, I didn’t see anyone like this. Everyone I met was pleasant and ‘ordinary’. They wore brightly coloured shirts and machine washable trousers, just like me: practical, everyday wear for a hot climate.

Tuesday 28 June 1994, the first day of my first overseas assignment for the chairman, couldn’t arrive a moment too soon, as far as I was concerned. During my trip, I was to visit our main customer, in Libya - the country where we conducted most of our business apparently. My primary objective was to consolidate a one-year contract that the chairman had signed three months earlier. My secondary objective was to become acquainted with our staff and procedures at our offices in Cairo, Malta and Tripoli en-route. A tertiary, but vitally important, objective was to develop new business with our customer.

After I'd said my goodbyes to colleagues at our office in Limassol, I donned my dark glasses and threaded myself into the chairman’s taxi, with a wad of American currency bulging suspiciously from a money belt around my waist. With luck, no one had penetrated my disguise of calm, assured maturity and sophistication. If they had, no one said anything. Beneath my disguise, I wasn’t James Bond at all. The real me was an excited, nervous innocent abroad, about to lose his ‘virginity’ in matters of business in the Middle East and North Africa. Reassured that my flimsy disguise was still intact, I felt very much like a senior representative of my company, off on a solo mission overseas to achieve important corporate objectives. How wonderful it was to feel special and important again.

Little did I know at this time: I was about to encounter some of the most awe-inspiring and abysmal places that our planet has to offer.

The short flight from Larnaca to Cairo was uneventful enough, except that I was surprised by the fertile nature of the Nile delta in mid-summer, and the sudden way that lush green vegetation gives way barren brown sand near the capital. Shortly before our landing, and after we passengers were strapped tightly to our seats, the pilot said that those of us sitting on the right hand side of the cabin had a wonderful view of the pyramids at Gisa. Needless to say, I was sitting on the left hand side of the cabin filling out my landing card. As I did so, I started worrying all over again that my supply of luck in 1994 had just ran out.

Once we had landed, our plane taxied to its stand, past huge jumbo jets and smaller executive craft. Clearly, security was tight. After a short coach journey, my fellow passengers and I reached the entrance to the Arrivals Building. Fortunately, a smart young man was waiting for me. He was a representative from my hotel and I was surprised to meet him before I had passed through passport control and collected my baggage. Thankfully, he soon sorted out my visa, reducing the size of the bulge strapped to my waist in the process, which was kind of him. The young man then accompanied me all the way to my hotel, where his colleagues took over the hospitality, and bulge-reduction tasks.

I must say that the hotel was luxurious. Five star knobs and whistles everywhere, so I decided to make the most of it. After watching the floorshow near the external swimming pool from my balcony, I retired to bed full of eager anticipation about the day ahead. Rested and relaxed, the following morning I headed for breakfast early, in case the geriatric French hikers had moved on to Cairo. If they had, they hadn’t got to my hotel yet, or they hadn’t risen yet, and so there was plenty of food for everyone.

As a waiter handed me a complimentary English newspaper, I was unaware that Allie was about to receive an important letter that morning, back in England. This letter confirmed her general suitability for the teaching job at Akrotiri, which was to be evaluated further at a formal interview in Cyprus on Monday 8 August. Although Allie’s employment would help us climb out of the financial hole that we had dug, I was concerned how easily we might fall back into it. The slime coating the walls of the pit was growing less slippery and clingy as the days went by, and the blinding mud had gone from my eyes, but I knew that one false move would put us back into the mire very quickly. In particular, we couldn’t afford to make any mistakes when buying a car or renting our long term accommodation.

To help make our financial position less precarious, I needed to save as much of my ‘per diem’ (the daily allowance paid to me during my business trips abroad) as possible. One way to do this was to avoid the need to ‘tip’ staff for tasks that I could perform for myself. Another way was to eat heartily from the breakfast buffet table, since my employer paid for my lodgings separately, on a bed and breakfast basis. All of the other meals during the day had to be funded from my per diem.

Therefore, whatever I couldn’t lodge onto my breakfast plate and eat there and then, I deposited furtively into my overnight bag and trouser pockets, to provide ‘free’ sustenance later in the day. Time and again, I trundled back and forth for cereal, fruit, fried eggs and bacon, cold meat, croissant, more cereal, coffee, fruit juice and so on. I was so bloated after half an hour’s gluttony, that I literally waddled back to my room with a tummy that sloshed and gurgled. My trouser pockets were so full that I looked like an inverted hamster. In fact, the stashed food restricted my leg movements so much that I had to use the lift, rather than the stairs, for fear of crushing my contraband. For this ‘wrinkle’, I hereby thank all French hikers of pension age.

The Egyptian manager of our Cairo office collected me from the opulence of my five-star hotel at eight o’clock sharp. Until the moment of our meeting in the foyer, I'd only spoken to him over indifferent telephone lines and I thought it funny that he looked almost exactly as I'd imagined. I recognised him straight away, without the need for an introduction. He was a middle-aged man, thin and good looking. His English was excellent and he was clearly well educated.

Within two minutes of boarding his bedraggled Fiat, we’d negotiated the speed bumps along the hotel’s shady drive, waved to the ubiquitous guards and left the quiet, sweet-smelling oasis that was the El Salaam Hotel. Beyond the archway at the end of the drive, we became embroiled in the hurly-burly that is Cairo. The noise and fumes caused by the calamitous traffic were nothing compared to the scorching brightness of the sun. Beyond these immediate sensations, occupying ‘centre rear’ of the stage before me, was a backdrop of drab grey housing blocks. These blocks simmered gently in the early morning heat, partly obscured by the dust swirling between them and the emissions of a thousand and one car exhausts belching merrily nearby.

We paused briefly at the exit from the hotel, like a Red Arrow jet on a runway, awaiting clearance to take-off from air traffic control. Our mission was to complete the seemingly impossible task of finding a gap in the traffic, preferably a safe gap. Then, with all the g-force of a full throttle, reheat, brakes off launch, the office manager propelled us at the housing blocks across the road. The command to shoot forward so quickly took the little Fiat by so much surprise that it let out a squeal from its tyres. There was no gap in the traffic in reality, at least not one that you or I would have noticed, but the office manager saw one. The driver who he obliged to swerve out of our way did so at the very last moment. With horn blaring, the driver disappeared into obscurity. Such was my welcome to Cairo traffic!

Our office in Egypt was little more than a two minute drive away from the hotel. It would have been quicker, possibly safer, to walk there. Having wedged the Fiat into the narrowest of parking spaces on the pavement and locked up, we turned towards one of the blocks. Passing a huge rubber tree that provided me with some welcome shade, and the children of a family living nearby, we climbed two flights of stairs to the office.

The slight exertion involved confirmed my suspicion that the clothes I was wearing were unsuitable for the tasks that lay ahead in the coming weeks. Given the temperature and humidity, I should have been wearing one of the loose flowing robes that the children looked so comfortable in, rather than the long trousers, collar and tie that I wore. The fact that I was a mad Englishman was no defence.

Despite the run down appearance of the converted flat that was our Cairo office, after an hour’s inspection, I concluded that it was a cost-effective asset, with a proven capability. The well-respected manager had assembled a strong cadre of local staff, mainly from nearby universities, as well as an extensive library of resources. To be honest, I was impressed. I’d seen many similar organisations in England and quiet a few didn’t meet the high standards of preparedness and execution that I saw.