I was then, as I am now, absolutely captivated by other cultures and the atmosphere of foreign lands. This includes Scotland, Ireland and Wales. I have visited all three of my neighbours and find their beauty and charm as remarkable as those of any other country in the world. I have already said I have Irish ancestors. Indeed, I also have Scottish ancestors. My sister-in-law is a Scot and my daughter-in-law is a McKenzie and therefore my grandchildren are part-Scottish. We are becoming, in the United Kingdom, not a box of all sorts, but a wonderful blend which includes those more recent arrivals from other corners of the globe.
~
This is probably a good place to state my religious beliefs. I was raised a Methodist and in my twenties and thirties sometimes attended services with the Church of England. However, I have never been wholly convinced by orthodox religions and in my late forties I found a spiritual home with the Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers. Here I intend to stay, since I have always needed to contemplate spiritual matters and the Quakers are good at meditation. They are tolerant, not requiring any sort of fundamentalism, even to the point of accepting nontheists who are prepared to honour the main principles of Quakerism. Nontheist Quakers see ‘God’ either as a symbol of human values or simply accept it as significant to others but not themselves.
At the Meeting House we have the Silence, lasting for one hour, which I find challenging, but also cleansing. There are no readings, no spoken prayers, no surmons, no liturgies, no sacraments, no rituals. There is no Quaker hierarchy of priests: a clerk, usually in office for three years, presides over the meeting. He or she is supported by elders who are also in office for the same period. They are required to oversee pastoral matters i.e. informing the meeting of any illnesses or hard times amongst the members and other such issues.
There is no vote and actually no consensus taken on issues that need a decision. After hearing the fors and againsts, the ‘feeling of the meeting’ is offered by the clerk as a decision. In nearly twenty years of attending meetings I have never yet known any dissention once that decision has been announced. In debates, a member is permitted to stand and speak his or her mind on the subject only once, thus eliminating cross-floor quarrelling and descent into heated arguments. You have your one say and that is an end to your particular input into the discussion. Again, I have never witnessed anyone leaving a meeting disgruntled. It may have happened, but not in my experience.
This may sound a very negative place to take your spirit for recharging, given all that Quakers do not have and do not agree with. In fact Friends are doers. They have the Four Testimonies to guide them: Peace, Equality, Simplicity and Integrity. With these ideals in mind – though of course they are ideals and therefore not easy to adhere to – the best of them attempt to resolve conflict by non-violent action wherever they can in the world; support the eradication of poverty as far as they are able; try to assist where there is injustice; and influence various other ‘concerns’. Quakers are not a perfect bunch of people by any means and their success in these endeavours is limited by their numbers.
One of the Quakers who attends my meeting is now in his eighties. In his time he has been instrumental in helping to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa – not from a distance, but by being there. Until very recently he has flown to the Eastern regions of India and talked with warlords in Nagaland to persuade them to lay down their weapons. These I know of, but I am aware he has been involved in many other such actions. There are more than a few like him, working in conflict resolution, in the eradication of poverty, in the fight against injustice, whose courage and determination puts my own feeble efforts to shame.
It was Mally Ross, a colleague and friend of Annette’s, who introduced us to Quakers. She and her husband, a financier and mountain climber, have been close friends ever since Annette trained alongside Mally to become a social worker. David is not a Quaker. He satisfies his spiritual needs by ascending to places with a high topography.
Having been a warrior, it may seem strange to others that I have thrown in my lot with the pacifists, but it is precisely my experience with military action that led me to them. Yes indeed, I write books about war, not to glorify it but to show it for what it is, an abomination. Read All Quiet on the Western Front or The Naked and the Dead. Of course, I’m no Remarque or Mailer, but I like to think my novels share the points of view these authors reflect.
The question as to why human beings indulge in the destruction and misery of war is one which has puzzled several philosophers and many ordinary people since Man had understanding. As an activity it is time-wasting, money-wasting and, above all, life-wasting. We seem as a species to be unable to operate without doing so within an hierarchical structure. Such organisations allow for the rise of maniacs to unassailable positions in society and once there they wreak havoc upon those who were responsible for their ascendancy to power. It is a bewildering thing that with this rigid structure we lose control of our own destiny, carrying innocents with us into the dark depths of carnage and desolation.
3. Aden
I’ve already written of my voyage to Aden in the MV Dunera in my novel Standing on Shamsan, but I will repeat a little of what is in that supposed work of fiction. The Dunera was around 12,000 tonnes and in 1954 was being used as a troopship. On board were forces and families travelling to the Middle and Far East, where Britain still had the remnants of an empire. Dad was already in Aden, having got there by way of Suez, where there had been some bother. I’m not sure what he did in the Suez emergency, being a clerk by work and nature, but I’m sure he gave it his best shot. Now he was stationed at RAF Khormaksar and on arrival my life took on an excitement I’d yearned for ever since I had heard other sons of servicemen talking about their time in Bulawayo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and such exotic places.
As soon as I got on board the ship and was shown my cabin (thankfully well away from my mother’s) I met Max. Graham Maxwell, a Welsh boy, was to become my best friend for my time in Aden. We would become inseparable, even sharing a chaste but sweet love affair with Rosemary Burns, a thirteen-year-old lass from Kilmarnock in Scotland. Max had already lived in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, so his status in my eyes was high.
It was evening when we set sail. The first thing Max and I did was go into the communal wash room and put a tin mug under the fierce shower. The ways of youth are strange and unfathomable. The tin mug under force made a terrific ringing noise which echoed throughout the lower decks. Looking back on it I think we just did it because the tin mug was there, handy as it were, and the shower water was coming out like lead shot. Anyway, we enjoyed making a din for about ten minutes, then left the washroom, only to find people rushing about with their lifejackets on.
‘Quickly,’ cried my mother, on seeing us, ‘get your lifejacket on and follow me to the muster station.’
Women and children, and men too, were milling around wearing faces the colour of flour.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, still a bit bemused by the panic.
‘Din’t you hear it?’ shouted my brother Ray, gleefully. ‘The alarm bell’s bin ringin’. The ship’s sinkin’ down in the water, I expect.’
Ray seemed rather pleased about the fact that we were all going to go to the bottom of the North Sea.
The ship wasn’t sinking, of course. It was the brutal shower water on the hollow tin mug that had imitated the ship’s alarm bell. Naval officers came and assured the families that it was a false alarm, though they too were puzzled by what had actually caused the ‘ringing’ noise. No one ever discovered the source of the sound. Max and I certainly weren’t going to own up to causing a panic among the passengers and it would have been a very astute person who could guess what had happened. We went to bed in our respective cabins shortly afterwards and I don’t remember that Max or I ever mentioned the incident again.
We entered the Bay of Biscay, famous for storms, and seasickness overwhelmed me for two days. Once I was able to leave my bed, I went up o
n deck and stared out over the vast ocean. Sailors have a unique spiritual adventure, every time they go to sea. It has probably been so since the beginning of time, when Man first left the sight of land behind. Water, water everywhere, and always changing shape, always altering colour. Sometimes choppy and churning, sometimes giant waves, always a momentous swell. Various shades of green, grey and blue, depending on the state of the surface, the time of day and the light. The planet’s fluid coat. It fascinated me, even as a twelve-year-old, with its endlessness and variability.
We were supposed to go to school on the MV Dunera, but the idea that we would have to suffer classes during this wonderful experience of our first ocean voyage left us boiling with indignation. I think Max and I went to about two hours’ worth, before losing ourselves between the decks. My brother Ray went a little longer, but then he and his new friends soon followed suit. Derek was only six years old, so he did as he was told. We ignored ‘school’ for the rest of the voyage, arguing that there was much more to be learned from the world at large.
We reached Gibraltar after a few days and entered the Mediterranean Sea, which was sunny and warm after the wintry Atlantic weather. I had a Brownie box camera with which I recorded our progress through the Med. Mostly they were photos of Max standing on his head, or pretending to throw up into a lifeboat.
We passed Malta and Crete and were approaching Egypt’s Port Said when our captain received an emergency SOS call. Another British troopship, the SS Empire Windrush, was on fire somewhere in the Med. However, we were too far away from the tragedy to assist in the rescue operation. The passengers of that ship, service families like us, had taken to the lifeboats. Eventually the crew did the same and the rescue ships that reached the area attempted to tow the fiery hulk to Gibraltar, but apparently this was unsuccessful and the Windrush sank. This was all grist to the mill of my imagination. I did at last feel I was living the life of Kipling’s Kim and that daily crises would be the norm.
I awoke one morning to the sounds of a bustling port. There were cries all around the ship, with dogs barking in the distance and the hum of a busy harbour at the entrance to the Suez Canal, which led to the Red Sea. Port Said. When I went up on deck I found passengers leaning over the sides of the ship. Down below were the owners of small craft known as ‘bum boats’, these vessels full of goods such as gambia knives, bullwhips, wooden carvings, brass trays, and all sorts of paraphernalia, casting lines up to potential buyers on the main deck.
There was a basket tied halfway along these lines into which the Arab sellers were putting their wares. These would be hauled on board and the buyers would then put the price of the item they had purchased into the basket to be hauled down again. A certain amount of trust was required of the passengers, who could if they were of a criminal nature not bother to put the money into the basket. There was no way the Arab seller could get on board to demand his money. However, I don’t recall any problems of this kind. I do remember fierce haggling going on, before the purchase of the goods, but once the price had been agreed then honesty seemed to be the order of the day.
One of the baskets which I observed being used was lined with an Egyptian newspaper. I was fascinated by the Arabic writing with its centripetal swirls and alien flourishes. Not just a foreign language, an exotic one with (to me) an unintelligible alphabet. I was given that newspaper by the vendor, who flashed me a golden smile and told me to ‘Keep it – a present for you!’ I treasured those pages as I might have done diamonds. Here was ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’, the ‘Thief of Baghdad’ and ‘Sinbad the Sailor’. This was the land of bedtime stories and I was in it, living it, part of it. Amazing.
Over the flat rooftops of the whitewashed square houses of Port Said strode Johnnie Walker. The Johnnie Walker sign was a huge two-dimensional man in top hat and coat-tails, carrying a cane, caught in eager mid-stride. It did not seem as incongruous then as it does to me now. A giant whisky advertisement in a land where alcohol was banned by religious edict? Egypt was not then a European colony, though of course it had been at one time, but Johnnie must have been up there for the benefit of ships like ours. At the time, to me, it was just another one of those wondrous symbols of the Middle East, like the newspapers and the bum boats, not to mention the Gully-Gully Man.
The Gully-Gully Man was an institution in Port Said and I had been told by ex-Aden boys back in England to expect him.
The Gully-Gully Man visited most passenger liners that stopped in Port Said. He was quite simply an Egyptian magician who performed amazing feats for the grown-ups and children from a dull and insipid land: doves came from his nose, silver coins that glittered in the Eastern sun came from between his toes, bright ribbons and scarves came from his ears. His body was a treasure trove which required only the magic words – abracadabra, open sesame, zebristi – for that body to mysteriously relinquish its contents. He entertained us for a whole afternoon. In the evening young Arab boys swam out to surround the boat, yelling for coins. Passengers threw them in the water and the boys would dive down, retrieving them from the depths. I was twelve years of age and didn’t know whether those boys were collecting coins because they were starving or because they were – as I had been when selling home-made lemonade to passers-by outside my house in England – simply earning a bit of pocket money. I didn’t know. I still don’t know, but I suspect they relied on those tossed sixpences and shillings to eat.
Next day we entered the Suez Canal and glided gently through that magnificent waterway. On the banks of the canal were fields being worked by Arab farmers. I could see men drawing water using Archimedean screws to fill their irrigation ditches, and donkeys turning wheels with pots on them, doing a similar job. Between the ship and the banks of the canal were hundreds of feluccas, some fishing, others carrying bales of goods. There was a dusty, musky smell to the air which pervaded everything on board. The East was enveloping us, packaging us in its sights, sounds and smells. I was entranced by the whole biblical scene. It was as if one the pages of my Sunday school books had suddenly sprung to life before me. There were the palms that were spread before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.
Suez was the line between a pleasant temperature and an uncomfortable heat. Once we entered the Red Sea we were in the furnace. It didn’t bother us kids as much as it did the adults, who complained constantly about the heat, just as they had complained about the cold and wet back home. There was no satisfying grown-ups. We knew that from experience. If you had offered them the best climate in the world, they would probably have called it boring.
The Red Sea voyage confirmed my sense of wonder in the Middle East. We passed Ethiopia, the Yemen, and went on down to Somaliland. One morning the deck was covered in silvery flying fish. On another Max and I were looking down into the water and saw giant manta rays cruising just below the surface. Then there was the occasional shark, when the ship’s butcher threw offal into the water. And of course dolphins that played around the bows and in the ship’s wake.
All this is commonplace now, in the 21st Century, but back in 1954 very few working class people left the shores of Britain. There were those on passage to Australia of course, and one or two shipping out to India and Hong Kong, but for the most part the experience I was having was a rare one. I felt very special and also privileged to be able to see such wondrous things and come into contact with such exotic cultures. I don’t think my parents appreciated it as much as I did. They enjoyed what they were doing, but I believe they were more impressed by the cheap alcohol and the fact that we – a common-or-garden family – would have servants in our new home. We had been raised to the status of imperialists simply by leaving our own shores and by being British.
It sounds very high-colonial, but my parents were people of their time, ignorant of any wrongdoing. Their government ruled a foreign land and they had not the mental tools to question it. They were not unkind, that I can state emphatically, nor were they arrogant, being too close to their own peasant roots for that. My
dad’s father still scythed the grass on the byways of Essex. My mum’s mother still gutted fish in Harwich fish market. Mum and dad were the offspring of parents whose work was similar to that of Said, the Somali cook-bearer we eventually employed.
Said was an African. He came from a land with deeper, richer smells. Musk and animal dung and the earthy odour of coming rain. A place where the sunrises enveloped the landscape, enfolding it in a blanket of swirling colour, mostly dark and fiery reds. Where the sunsets could cause one’s heart to skip a few beats. Africa had shaped his tall, shiny-black, angular body and had formed his sharp mind. I was always, as a child, very much in awe of this quiet, secretive man who, it always seemed, found me faintly amusing and in need of guidance in life. Said had a family but rarely spoke of them. His work and his loved ones were separated by the Red Sea, an impossible commute.
Mum’s daily orders to Said were very occasionally overridden by us boys, since she was a female. Said much preferred to receive his daily duties from a male member of the family.
Once, mum said, ‘We’ll have lamb today, Said.’
When she’d left the room my brother Ray, who hated fatty meat at that time, whispered, ‘Change that to egg and chips, Said.’
We duly got egg and chips, but rightly so it wasn’t Said who got it in the neck, it was us boys.
We rarely did countermand our mother’s orders for dinner or other things, since mum was definitely the head of the family and a very fiery-tempered head at that. Dad was a meek fellow, not given to confrontations, and was happy for mum to rule the roost. I never blamed him for that. Despite being five feet two inches tall and weighing six and a half stone, mum was a veritable termagant when crossed. We were all afraid of her. I loved her of course, as did my brothers, for she could be as fierce in her love and protection of her sons as she was in the condemnation of their wrongdoings.
On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer Page 3
