Egypt - A defining experience. 1963 to 1964. By Dee Taylor

Egypt

Events of the next year became some of the most exciting and transformative of my life. Upon arrival in Cairo we stayed at the new Nile Hilton. Our rooms overlooked Tahrir Square to the East. The Nile was to the West. The square was always teeming with undisciplined cars, jammed buses with kids hanging on the back and commuters out the door. There were donkey carts and foot traffic heading to work, kiosks selling newspapers and magazines, galabiya clad hawkers vending juices from five-gallon bottles, and touristy pedestrians walking into and out of the Egyptian Museum. The din of it all seemed to capture the whole of Egypt.

To the north were the Arab League buildings. To the west was the island of Zamalek, the floating Omar Khayam restaurant, the 26th of July Bridge and the Kasr el Nil Bridge. The tallest structure in Cairo, the Cairo Tower, was on the south end of the island. Along the Corniche Avenue bordering the Nile, there was noisy car traffic combined with the donkey drawn carts and the overfilled buses. The warm air was redolent with the blending of many aromas. Inviting reddish, clay tennis courts were at the south end of the hotel and I remember hitting the ball with the “pro” several times. At a welcoming dinner there, we and our Ford Foundation group were entertained by, at least for me, a minimally clothed belly dancer. I think I felt a little uncomfortable, but much to the delight of our group, she gyrated right next to me and flung her sash over my head. My face went red with embarrassment.

After a few weeks at the Hilton, we moved to Sharia 83 Ismail Mohamed on the island of Zamalek. Our first apartment was a penthouse with a two-floor layout on a seven story building. We had a long somewhat narrow balcony facing west where Steve and I were able to play catch with a baseball and our mitts. Our cook and housekeeper was a jolly, stout and older Nubian fellow named Abdul. He wore a white galabiya with a turban and a dark vest. He referred to Steve and me in his pigeon English as the “chuldrun” and my mother as “Lady.” He had cooked for expatriate families for years and we were happy to have him. We enjoyed his baklava, homemade shredded wheat and stuffed green peppers. We visited his humble family shanty and were laughingly and unexpectedly surprised when his wife and daughter sprinkled perfume on all of us as a traditional welcoming gesture. Rather than a dog, which is not well looked upon in Muslim culture, they had an in-house goat.

We were also afforded a driver named Mohammed. He was short, and slight with a dark complexion. He always wore a white shirt, suit and tie and was helpful in all things. Our building, like most others, had a “boab” stationed at the front entrance to attend to the residents and guests as they entered and exited the building. Food and drink vendors would pass on the streets in the morning with their pushcarts shouting their wares throughout the surrounding neighborhoods. “Spathis!” the national soft drink, became a familiar echoing cry each morning. Unlike the grimy, dusty, litter-filled, crowded city which Shana and I visited in 2020, Cairo of 1963 was less filthy, more exotic and clear-skyed. Colorful jacaranda trees and pungent eucalyptus lined the thoroughfares. Jasmine fragrance was in the air on the warm muggy evenings. Signs of Nasser were plastered everywhere.

My brother contracted a case of hives during our early months and his only comfort was to completely disrobe, wrap himself in a sheet and ceaselessly walk groaning through all rooms on both floors of our two-floor apartment. The Ford Foundation had a recommended doctor for our ailments. His name was Dr. Doss. My mom, with me in tow, took Steve to the good doctor where he was given a shot of something. The reusable needle and syringe looked more suitable for a horse. Anyway, the hives went away. Fortunately, I don’t remember anyone having to go back to Dr. Doss again.

School had not started yet and I began spending much of my time at the Gezira Sporting Club. The place had been established by the British decades before and had retained its popularity with expats and well-heeled Egyptians. I spent hours playing golf, tennis, and swimming at their facilities. I had never played tennis on clay courts and it was eye-opening to see the courts twice daily maintained with sweeping and striping. Young barefooted ballboys were at your service and at a cost of a few piastres they retrieved the tennis balls during play. I often played with my father who always beat me by playing a controlled, steady game while I played a take no prisoners style committing multiple unforced errors punctuated with my Wilson Jack Kramer racket being flung to the ground or into the net. Strategically, I was the hare, my father the tortoise.

The nine-hole Gezira golf course was a great part of my fun at the club. I would often take a taxi from home to the course with my green stamp set of Wilson clubs where young caddies would heft your bag. They gave tips and provided course knowledge. Because of them, for years after, I still used my 5-iron for short chips around the green according to their instruction. Usually, I played alone with a caddy although I often played with my father. When going alone in a taxi, the drivers spoke no English so I began picking up some “kitchen Arabic” including how to give directions. “Yemeen,” “shamal,” and “alatool”— left, right and straight became often used parts of my taxi vocabulary. Sometimes after swimming or tennis I would just hang around the club staying out of the heat playing ping pong, swigging ice cold bottles of Coca-Cola with a young French kid named Jean Marc.

School began and I boarded a Cairo American College (CAC) school bus each morning walking a few blocks to the west side of Zamalek. It was there I met a fellow ninth grader, Jill Strachan, who became a good friend. I remember her most for the cat-eyed glasses, short hair, and her plaid skirts. Her father, a distinguished looking, white haired, English accented gentleman, worked for the State Department. The bus trip took about a half-hour. Cairo American College, in the Cairo suburb of Maadi, was a K-12 school with a multinational student body. I interacted and made friends with kids from the US, Philippines, Spain, Finland, the UK, Romania, Hungary, Sweden, and I’m sure other countries. Egyptians were not admitted. Some teachers came from the US on short term contracts. Others might be American women married to Egyptians. Mrs. Noor, a memorable history teacher, was married to an Egyptian. They all seemed to me to be very good. I remember taking English, Algebra, World History, Science, and French. Mr. Adams was my English teacher and an Armenian, Jack Kalpakian, was my algebra teacher. The French teacher was French, a stern thin woman with glasses and short reddish permed hair.

The building’s main entryway was through a high metal gate lined with palms and leading to a two-story building which surrounded a large courtyard. An outdoor basketball court was on the north side. As basketball was a favorite sport, I spent a lot of time on the clay court with friends, and a school boys’ team came together under Coach Fisher, our Science teacher from Kansas. The team members came from Spain, Liberia, France, The Philippines and of course the U.S. The top rivalry was a Presbyterian school—Schutz—in Alexandria. They historically trounced CAC but we were determined to beat them. We bussed up to Alexandria to play on their court. We won that game as well as the return contest in Maadi. I think our girls’ team was victorious as well.

Concerning basketball, a touring group of NBA players came to Cairo to play an exhibition game against the Egyptian national team. The outdoor stadium at the Gezira club was the venue. I must have gone with my brother and we saw some of the greats including Bob Cousy, Bob Havlicek Oscar Robertson, Bob Petit, Jerry Lucas, and Elgin Baylor. Red Auerbach was the coach. I got most of their autographs after the game. Soon thereafter was announced the coming visit of newly crowned heavyweight champion Cassius Clay, the Louisville Lip. A few months earlier, Sammy the Liberian and I were shooting baskets on the CAC school court listening to reports of Clay and Sonny Liston’s heavyweight battle on 2-25-64. Following Clay’s victory, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. He followed his victory with a visit to Muslim Africa where he was idolized. One afternoon my parents and I were enjoying an ice cream sundae at the Nile Hilton coffee shop. In runs Sammy shouting “Dee! Dee! Hurry! Hurry! Cassius Clay is in the lobby!” I grabbed the small table centerpiece card and hustled to the hotel reception area where Clay and his brother Rahman were holding court. I was able to get his autograph and shake his hand. He signed the centerpiece card: “Muhammad Ali World’s Champ”. He and his brother later put on a sold-out boxing exhibition at the Gezira stadium which my brother and I attended.

Speaking of stadiums, the country had just completed the construction of a national soccer stadium on the outskirts of Cairo. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited the country and along with Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser gave speeches to tens of thousands at the new stadium. The USSR had replaced the US as the dominant ally and was in the midst of constructing the Aswan High Dam. At the end of the fiery speeches, the crowd exited the stadium to find that some of the gates were not opened leading to a crush of people wanting to get out. It was a scary moment for little ole me but we finally exited without injury. Another international political luminary we saw was Communist Chinese leader Chou-en-Lai in a black Cadillac with China flags leading a motorcade near the Kasr al Nil bridge on Zamalek.

After two or three months we moved from our Zamalek apartment to Garden City, where the roomy flat of the former Ford Foundation director became available. It was in an upscale area close to the American and British embassies. Our sixth-floor penthouse apartment faced the east side of the Nile. The spacious balcony was alive with fragrant jasmine, potted plants, ferns and vines. We overlooked a neighborhood park and just a block away the coffee and cream-colored Nile flowed. A large fountain had been built recently in the middle of the mile wide river which spouted a towering plume of water hundreds of feet into the cloudless sky. In the distance were the Giza pyramids. To the south was the Belmont Building, a tall, thin skyscraper with large signs advertising Belmont cigarettes and Coca Cola at the top. On the street below our balcony, I would throw locally made marble sized “cracker balls” to hear the pops and to see young kids in the neighborhood trying to catch them before they exploded.

Just before leaving Zamalek a tragedy occurred in our apartment building. An American family, the Prestons, from Ames, Iowa, lived on the other side of the building from us on one of the upper floors. There were three older kids, two boys who attended upper grades at CAC and an older daughter. The father worked in some agricultural capacity with USAID. Early one morning we were notified that the daughter had thrown herself from the balcony to the street below. It was here I learned of my dad’s great ability to offer comfort, spiritual perspective and meaning to the grief-stricken parents. We didn’t know the family well but I’ve always remembered chaplain-like empathy shown by my father.

I gobbled up all sorts of newspapers and news magazines. I still have a November 23, 1963 edition of the English language Egyptian Mail headlined with the assassination of JFK. I would read the weekly editions of Time Magazine, Newsweek and when available the International Herald Tribune. I read a number of paperbacks though the only one I remember was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Always a history fan, I was mesmerized by Egyptian history. We got connected with who I think was a Fulbright grantee, a curator of the Egyptian collection at the Brooklyn museum. He would take a group of Fulbright people as well as those of us who were interested from the Ford Foundation and visit historical sites off-limits to the usual tourist. Among other ancient wonders, we entered fascinating and colorful tombs in Giza and Saqqara and visited digs in process and less known pyramids as far away as Fayum. At the “bent pyramid” in Dashur we got our Ford station wagon stuck in the sand and it took some effort to push it out.

We made many visits to the pyramids of Giza. We rode camels, entered the inner chambers of the largest pyramid, Cheops, and fended off the many little kids asking for “baksheesh.” My brother and I were able to scale to the top of Cheops where we saw dozens of etchings in the limestone of names and dates going back a few hundred years of those who had “summited” this ancient wonder of the world.

It was at Giza where the desert road to Alexandria started. The most travelled road to Alexandria went through the Nile delta. On the faster but less scenic desert road, I learned to drive. We would take our Ford station wagon a ways out from the pyramids and I would take over the controls. The car had a standard transmission so I mastered the shifting routine. My brother had given me a few chances with his emerald green ‘56 Chevy Bel Aire in Provo but I never got the clutch action down.

I don’t remember why, but in Garden City I began to sometimes take the train to school. It was cheap and from the downtown Bab-a-Luk station took us to the stop in Maadi where we disembarked and walked on dust covered streets three or four blocks to school. Both the train and the bus passed by onion warehouses and outside storage areas. In my mind I can still smell the unpleasant aroma of rotting onions. We also passed by the new white colored Maadi military hospital. On the bus on one occasion we were returning home from school and an argument broke out between the diminutive French boy Jean Marc and an older, bigger, dark curly haired Hungarian by the name of Mishka. Jean Marc pulled out a switchblade threatening Mishka. Mishka parried the slash from Jean Marc but was stabbed in his forearm by the knife. As he jerked his arm away, the knife was flung and stuck in the upholstery of a nearby seat. The driver broke up the spat and I don’t remember if there were any consequences.

Maadi was an outlying Cairo suburb and the home to many expats. My good friends—Pat Lerch and Kip Shane—lived there. Dad’s Ford Foundation colleagues the Brummets, the Parishes, and the Lipscombs lived out there as well. I stayed overnight at Pat’s a few times and we would go to outdoor evening movies at the Maadi country club. Pat was from Columbus, Ohio, and had a brother a few years older. His father worked at the embassy and during my year there he got a new black Mercedes 220. I felt like a real diplomat when riding in it. Pat had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and would obtain tapes with the latest US hits. We spent hours listening to the latest Beach Boy, Jan and Dean, The Four Seasons, Lesley Gore, Petula Clark, and Beatles hits. Upon returning home, and following Pat’s example, I bought a tape recorder and would spend hours recording hits off the radio. Kip, from South Dakota, was a smart kid but lazy in his studies with no real interest in sports. I think he played the guitar. In a conversation with him I pronounced the word “indicted” as “indickted.” I was embarrassed when he corrected me as I thought I had a sophisticated vocabulary. The three of us explored the Mokattam hills to the southeast where pyramid stones had been quarried. We jumped off limestone cliffs onto a sloping sand base. “Ya Salaam!”

It was popular among the Maadi crowd to have parties featuring the latest US hits and lots of gab. Some older kids smoked and drank beer and I think there was some dancing. Chubby Checker and the “Twist” were popular and I remember doing a little bit of that. I was afraid of girls but they all seemed pretty nice. It seemed like Sonia Gutierrez was sweet on me and grabbed my hand once. Pretty uncomfortable.

I learned many Arabic words and phrases. They were useful in our treks around the country, Among others were Aywa (yes), La (no), Sayeeda (hello), Sabah al Kier (good morning), Mafeesh feloos (I don’t have any money, a phrase good for answering the interminable asking for “baksheesh”) Ana tekalam arabi (I speak Arabic), Ana awez moya (I want some water), quice (good, nice), bint (girl) waled (boy), maleesh (never mind), bokra (tomorrow) Yallah! (Get moving!) I won’t forget Lerch, Shane and I being approached one evening near the Kasr al Nil bridge by a galabiya dressed guy asking “Enta awez quice bint?” (Are you interested in a nice girl?). I don’t remember if we said “mafeesh feloos,” or just peeled out of there.

At our apartment, two things took me unawares. The first was one night I was awakened by the urge to pee and walked out into the hallway near the kitchen. I flipped on the light and jumped out of my skin when it seemed like hundreds of cockroaches scurried in all directions over the tile floor. They wouldn’t be the last cockroaches I saw. The other thing was when walking into the kitchen at mid-day I came upon Abdul in the middle of his prayers. He had his prayer rug on the floor and was kneeling prostrated while praying. I didn’t say anything and quickly backed away not wanting to disturb his worship. While I was not unfamiliar with Muslim worship in a mosque, it was a surprise to come upon an individual petitioning Allah in the privacy of his workplace.

We held our own worship service on Sundays. We read a chapter from Talmadge's Jesus the Christ and on occasion were joined by LDS travelers. Boyd Ivory was one there for a few weeks from Spanish Fork. I think he was the father of the Ivory twins who played basketball for Spanish Fork. Other visitors were my parents’ good friends Grant and Rose Calder, Bert Harrison with wife and son, and Stewart and Sarah Grow.

My mother was a one in a million when it came to greeting, hosting, befriending and reaching out to people of all stripes. She made friends with everyone. She was well known for her visits to the souk or Muskee, the Cairo bazaar where narrow and winding alleys, fragrant with a thousand aromas, were lined with small, colorful shops. Sold were wares of all types. Her best merchant friend there was Mohamed the “Muskee man” from whom she and accompanying friends must have bought merchandise in the thousands of dollars. Brass, leather, and glass were favorite purchases. We bought brass trays, hassocks, camel saddles and luggage. Mom should have received a commission.

Shortly after the move to Garden City, my mom tracked down a piano teacher for me. He was an Italian living in Cairo by the name Professor Pissarro. He played violin in the Cairo Symphony and also in the opera orchestra. We rented a nice upright piano and soon the professor would come for weekly lessons. Sometimes we would go to his apartment in central Cairo for the lesson. He was very focused on the fundamentals and I would constantly be playing scales and arpeggios from a Czerny music book. The Professor’s apartment was near a more upscale section of Cairo with modern shops and boutiques. We often would pass by Groppi’s which had changing window displays, delicious ice cream and other goodies.

Steve was a trombonist and he had brought his horn to Egypt thinking it might be of some use. One of my mother’s fondest memories was of Steve and me playing “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve at the Lipscomb’s in Maadi.

I had learned to play the piano by ear and enjoyed fingering popular songs when I could. I recall a birthday party at Jill Strachn’s where in the background of party noise I played “Rhythm of the Rain” by the Cascades and a few other recent hits on Jill’s spinet piano.

Steve was into jazz and he had brought several albums and I learned to enjoy listening to Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton and other jazz artists of the day. We had a small GE phonograph hooked up to two speakers and I always had fun conducting music a la Eugene Ormandy and George Szell, particularly classical pieces like Beethoven symphonies and Ravel’s Bolero. Beethoven’s 6th Symphony—-The Pastoral—- has been my favorite Beethoven symphony ever since.

Cairo’s music scene was diverse. We only frequented Western musical performances at the historic Cairo Opera House. This hall had been dedicated in 1867 at the completion of the Suez Canal. The first performance at the new opera house was the debut of Verdi’s “Aida.” The opening opera of the 1963-64 season just happened to be “Aida” and Rahmades’ “O Celeste Aida” has remained a favorite aria of mine. My opera glasses were my humongous Tokyo binoculars, a little out of place. Egyptian music was interesting to listen to but the only word I could understand was “habibi” which meant a dear one or loved one to include girlfriend, boyfriend, fiancée and other manifestations of affection.

Films were shown at Cairo movie houses and we first went to Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape.” The theater was jammed with Egyptian men, almost all of them smoking throughout the film. The hall was filled with smoke but we could still see the screen. The packed house stood and cheered as McQueen vaulted the barbed wire fence on the motorcycle. Another good movie we saw was Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” My parents enjoyed the Montgomery Clift movie “Freud,” not a favorite for me.

Trips to Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel were very memorable to a 14-year-old kid always fascinated by history. The British-built Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan was steeped in history though we stayed in the New Cataract Hotel, an adjacent wing built in 1961. We also stayed in the new Amun Hotel, built on an island in the Nile. It was close to the Mausoleum of Aga Khan III. A fresh red rose was placed by his wife at the foot of his tomb every day, a practice started by his wife which continues to this day as we saw on our 2019 trip. In 1964, it was a beautiful white marble mausoleum built on a barren hill above the Nile. Fifty-five years later, it had turned a dusty brown with years of wind-driven desert dust. Near Aswan was the village of Kom Ombo where we saw magnificent temples and visited a community of resettled Sudanese and Egyptian Nubians whose homeland would be inundated by the coming Lake Nasser.

The massive new Aswan High Dam was under construction by the Russians and I marveled at the huge dump trucks being used in the project. After our tour of the dam, Steve stayed behind and would make his way back to the hotel via a bus carrying Russian workers. It would be a few years before the river would be backing up to create Lake Nasser. Abu Simbel was 150 miles south of Aswan and was best accessible by hydrofoil. A bouncy ride delivered us to the incredible site in a couple of hours and it was very impressive. Several years later, of course, the temple was miraculously moved to higher land so as not to be covered by the rising waters of the lake. I wished we could have continued up the Nile less than 50 miles to Wadi Halfa so I could say I’d been to Sudan.

In Luxor, we stayed at the Winter Palace Hotel, another 5 star hotel built in the British colonial era of the early 1900’s. A ride in a donkey-pulled carriage took us to a small launch which ferried us across the Nile. From there we were driven to the Valley of the Kings and saw the amazing hieroglyphics and still vivid colorful pictures and hieroglyphics within the tombs. To illuminate the tomb interiors, large mirrors were positioned to reflect light from the outside to the chambers within. Amazingly, it had only been 42 years since Howard Carter discovered the Tut tomb, many of its artifacts now displayed in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. We returned to Cairo on an overnight Hungarian built train where we had cramped sleeping berths. The train ran on a narrow gauge track. There was a fair amount of jerking and rattling owing to the uneven track bed.

Among our visitors was the Calder family. Rose, Grant, and their three children Kent, Greta, and Scott had spent the last few years in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and were returning to the States. We had a fun couple of days with them which included a trip to El Alamein on the Mediterranean coast. We stopped at the British, German and Italian cemeteries and war memorials commemorating the great WWII battle fought there. People were warned not to step out into the battlefield area as there were still unexploded mines. Some shells of destroyed tanks still littered the brush covered desert landscape. Returning to our apartment, Kent and I threw cracker bombs off the balcony to the young kids on the street below.

My parents and I took a side trip to Beirut and Damascus during our Cairo stay. Beirut had been a stopover on our way to Cairo. These several months later, we returned to the beautiful Phoenician Hotel. The next day, accompanied by a personal guide, we ascended the winding mountain highway en route to Damascus passing through the area of the storied Cedars of Lebanon. When the highway descended to the east, we entered the fertile Beqaa Valley with its green cultivated fields and toured the Roman ruins of Baalbek. In Damascus we saw the house of Ananias, the Street called Straight and the supposed location where Paul, in making his escape from Damascus, was lowered from the city wall in a basket. I searched for a good crusader sword in the souvenir shops but could not find one.

Other trips were equally exciting. On an invitation from one of my dad’s students, we drove to Port Said, the northern entryway to the Suez Canal. We stayed in a nice hotel and the next morning were treated to an excursion of the port aboard a large motor launch. Later, we drove the length of the canal which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and divides Africa from Asia. From Port Said south 125 miles to the city of Suez we saw many ships making the one-way passage north. A berm separated the road from the canal and as vessels passed we saw only the upper deck and the funnels of the ships. Most recognizable were the Russian ships where the funnels were painted red with a yellow hammer and sickle rising above the desert landscape. We made a rest stop in the city of Ismailia, continued to Suez, and after a dip in the Red Sea, returned to Cairo on the bumpy two-lane highway.

On two or three occasions we drove to Alexandria where my dad held conferences at the Salamlek Palace. It was formerly a palace of King Farouk, a dissolute, hedonistic, obese, though very wealthy ruler until his abdication in 1952. My mother and I stayed at the Beau Rivage Hotel on Alexandria’s Corniche. I would cross the boulevard and swim in the Mediterranean Sea. Near the Salamlek Palace, now a hotel, was a private and mostly deserted little beach where I would entertain myself in the tidal pools.

The beaches on the coast west of Alexandria were spectacular. At Sidi Abdul Rachman, the sand was white and the azure water so inviting. We stayed in a beachfront accommodation and as I wandered along the beach, I was shocked to see a topless young sunbather soaking up rays on the sand. Sorry to say, but I think I walked back and forth a couple of times. Further west was the famous and more established beach at Mersa Matruh. We didn’t make it that far.

It was tough to leave Cairo after a year which started with apprehension and uncertainty. I had been transported to a different world where I melded into the culture, customs and history of a fascinating land. I had made great friends and experienced memorable episodes of seeing and learning that would forever enrich my understanding and appreciation of the world. Here was a place where great societies flourished thousands of years before America was discovered. On a lighter note, how many at my age could say they’d had a cook, housekeeper, chauffeur, a caddy and ball boy at their service? I would return to Provo, Utah, with a store of knowledge and experience, understanding and feelings that could never be replicated through books or travel. I almost didn’t want to go back. What a year!

Our return trip was through Europe, the first stop being exotic Istanbul. My brother and the two Parrish boys—Laurie and David—made their own way back to the States. I felt bad I couldn’t join the big boys and make some more exotic stops, cities like Isfahan and Persepolis in Iran. It worked out okay though. Istanbul was a magnificent stop. Topkapi Palace, St. Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazaar were highlights. Along the Bosphorus, we drove to the Black Sea, another sea/ocean I could claim to have swum in. Athens, Rome, Zurich, Berlin, Paris and London were the other stops. My dad bought a red VW convertible in Germany which would be shipped to New York. He and Steve would later pick it up and drive out to Utah.

Dee Taylor