Barbed Wire Pictures

Children behind barbed wire

Between 1949 and 1951, my mother, my sister Hazel and I lived in a transit camp at El Ballah little about a mile from the Suez Canal. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by British soldiers. Whatever direction you looked, there was nothing but flat hard sand and occasional ship passing through the Suez Canal. For adults, it must have been hell and the only thing they had in common the desire to be everywhere, but El Ballah. For us children, however, it was fantastic. We only went to school in the morning and afternoon, were allowed to swim in the canal. We lived in shorts or a swimsuit and that we belong to church on Sunday. I could spend hours watching the freighters and cruise ships passing up and down the canal and dream about what it is like to work on them. The area had once been a large shallow salt lake filled with water from the Red Sea and narrowed to certain times of the year. The sand was still full of tiny seashells. Many biblical scholars now believe that Moses led his people to the Promised Land El Ballah and the "sea voyage took place just north of Camp.

Our mother worked as a professor of camp, but the school was for small children. Our school was about 20 miles south in a military camp near the city of Ismailia, on the shores of Lake Timsah. Timsah is Arabic for crocodiles, but I've never seen. Lake Timsah had a real beach and there were boats sailing that we could use. We travel to Ismailia in a canvas-covered three-ton truck or jeep small wooden benches for seats and there were no seatbelts. Once aboard the truck, the tailgate was bolted securely and get away from him where the driver braked suddenly. Sometimes, drivers climb through and sit beside them as there was little or no traffic on the roads of the desert. I even had to drive the truck but my feet could barely reach the pedals. Sometimes, the military police would shoot us because we were bored and scoot back to our seats Thus, drivers will not be borne. On one occasion we were stopped because a film was made. He was called to Cairo Roa and was about drug trafficking. The two main protagonists of the film, Lawrence Harvey and Eric Portman, stood beside the road passing.

The road between the two camps run along the Suez canal, a railway line and small canals. The canal was known as the Sweet Water Canal and was originally dug to provide fresh water to the men excavating the main channel. If there was a rule that we never broke, it was to swim or go into the Sweet Water Canal. The water was anything but sweet and contained numerous threats of living bacteria. Residents may have washed, bleached and defecated inside, but the Europeans had to avoid it like the plague (which was probably transported). In contrast, the Suez Canal was quite safe, with a current South Slow Mediterranean. Another rule that we never had broken a sudden stray dogs, especially when they froth at the mouth.

The highlight of my life in Egypt was a visit by truck to the Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza many miles away. I remember right in the center of the Great Pyramid and climb large blocks of sandstone on the outside. The Sphynx is almost buried in the sand, and Cairo was barely visible in the distance. Visit forty years later, Egypt, I was surprised that the city and its slums spread until they are at a stone's throw. The camel drivers and souvenir sellers, however, have all the same. Even as I write this, someone will yell at some Brit, 'Hello Johnny! Want to buy postcards dirty? You want my sister? When you live in England? Arsenal? Sheffield Wednesday?.