Franz and Zorka

My father, Franz Steinhofer, was an only child born in 1862 in Sopron, Hungary. In 1880 he became a student at the University of Vienna, studying for the priesthood. At that time, education had to be paid for by the parents, and to fail an examination was a terrible disgrace — some students went so far as to commit suicide or run away rather than face their parents again. Unfortunately Franz failed his Greek examination and could not face going home, especially to his father, a big, arrogant man. He never saw his beloved mother again.

From then on, Franz lived as best he could, travelling around Austria in search of work. He took a job as a butcher's boy — a far cry from his old ambitions — but that ended abruptly when the butcher's dog bit him. One day, wandering dejectedly along a road, he came upon a high wall. He climbed it to see what lay on the other side, and discovered a beautiful garden. The gardener spotted him and invited him to look around. Franz was amazed by what he saw: flowers of every kind and colour, tall trees, and fruit trees of every description. It fascinated him. Being a fine, strong young man, he was offered a job — what we would now call an apprenticeship, with a meagre wage — and he accepted it gratefully. At last, he knew he had found the work that would fulfil his life.

He attended classes, studied botany, horticulture and agriculture, and passed his examinations with flying colours. Ambitious as ever, once his apprenticeship was complete he was offered a post in the gardens of a castle belonging to an Austrian Count.

It was there that his path crossed with my mother's family. My mother, Zorka Matich, was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1870, the eldest of three children. My grandmother was widowed in her early fifties, but left comfortably well off. With three children to care for, and feeling rather lonely, she turned her thoughts to finding some occupation, and found work in a Schloss — a castle in the Austrian mountains — as lady-in-waiting to a Countess. Her eldest daughter, my mother, took up dressmaking, a fine career for a young woman at that time, since all clothes had to be made by hand. She became very proficient.

My mother came to know the gardener, Franz, very well, and the two became good friends. My grandmother, as she lay dying, asked Franz to promise that he would "woo" her daughter, Zorka. He gave her his word.

Franz and Zorka married, and their life together was blessed with eight children — four sons and four daughters, all healthy, which was rare for the time. Curiously, two of the girls and two of the boys had brown eyes, and two of each had violet eyes, inherited from their lovely mother. Zorka was not as well educated as my father, but she had great wisdom, a wonderful sense of humour, and deep religious faith. Raised as an Orthodox Serb, she became a Roman Catholic after her marriage, believing that two religions within one family would only cause upset.

The couple lived at the castle for a few years after their marriage — my mother working as seamstress to the Countess, my father tending the gardens.

A Home of Their Own

Eventually they decided they would like a place of their own. My father, knowing what hard times were, saved every penny he could, and my mother was left a small legacy by a relative. They settled in a small house near Belgrade, set on four hectares of land, and furnished neatly and tastefully with pieces left by my mother's mother. By this time her sister had died, and her brother had worked his passage to Australia and would never be heard from again.

My father put a great deal of thought into making the best use of the land, laying it out with greenhouses surrounded by flower beds. Ever ambitious, he planted tropical fruit trees and plants — I remember a photograph of him standing beneath a banana tree laden with fruit. This remarkable achievement earned him recognition in the horticultural journals of the day, and people came from all over the country to see the garden, much to his delight. For several years the garden flourished and they were very successful.

It was not to last. One winter — the worst they had ever experienced — brought them almost to ruin. The furnaces had to be stoked day and night as the cold deepened, and they watched in despair as all the plants and trees died. They prayed for the weather to break, but the frost and heavy snowstorms carried on through the spring, and with their finances nearly exhausted, they were forced to leave their home in great sorrow.

The strain of it all had taken its toll on my father's health, and the doctor ordered him to Portugal for at least a year to recover — the doctor suspected tuberculosis. He had to leave his wife and daughter behind. My mother knew it would be a long time before he could return, and she was naturally anxious for him, though she still had relatives in Belgrade, where she had been born, who helped and comforted her through the loneliness. My father spent most of his time in Estoril, bathing and taking the sun so necessary to his recovery. Once his strength returned he found some gardening work, but three years passed before he finally set sail for home. The hardest part of those years, they always said, was how long letters took to arrive.

My father found his daughter greatly changed — Mitzi had been only a few weeks old when he left, and as she grew, my mother made sure she never forgot her father, keeping his photograph in a prominent place. The day finally came when they went to meet him at the station in Belgrade, and he was overwhelmed with joy when Mitzi spotted him and ran straight into his arms.

The Royal Estate

Now fit and well, my father had to find work, and like everyone returning from abroad, he was required to report to the authorities. Asked what kind of work he wanted, he was offered a position suited to his qualifications on the royal estate of King Alexander of Serbia, which he gratefully accepted. He and the King were close in age, and in time my father became a trusted friend of his.

From what I remember my parents telling me, there was strong opposition to the King's marriage to his childhood nurse, Draga Masin. She was very beautiful, but considerably older than him, and people feared there would be no heir to the throne. Our family was housed at the King's summer estate in Niš, a hundred miles south of Belgrade. By then the family had grown to three daughters and a son, and I — the fourth daughter — was born on the estate in January 1902.

My mother told me Queen Draga often visited her at the estate; she was very fond of children, and once kissed me as a baby. I hope she blessed me! The estate itself lay amid deep pine forests, its gardens filled with exotic flowers and huge chestnut and walnut trees, and large tortoises roaming the grounds, which I found rather frightening — one, I was convinced, began to follow me one day, and I ran as fast as my feeble legs would carry me, fell over a rain barrel by the wall, and split my lip. My mother was distressed at the thought I might be left disfigured; the wound healed, but it left a small scar I carry to this day.

My parents were very happy there. My mother was proud that my father worked on the royal estate, and both of them felt it an ideal place to raise a family, amid such freedom and beauty. At last they had everything they could wish for, and it more than made up for the hardships of their earlier years together.

But the tranquillity was not to last. In 1903, King Alexander and Queen Draga were brutally assassinated by a revolutionary group known as the Black Hand, who considered the King too pro-Austrian — the same group historians believe was responsible, some years later, for the murder of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, which set off the First World War. We were fortunate to have been in Niš at the time; who knows what might have befallen us had we been in the capital.

When news of the murders reached us, there was nothing to do but flee. On the night of our escape, my father harnessed two horses to a wooden cart and packed only what was essential for our survival — warm clothing, blankets, down-filled mattresses to keep us warm through the long winter journey, along with food, kitchen utensils, and all the money we had. Banknotes were hidden inside the mattresses, with just enough kept in my father's pockets for the journey.

The road was dangerous. We might easily have run into hostile tziganes, or Gypsies, though when we did meet them, they were kind, giving us food and feeding our horses. The mountains, too, held danger in the wolves that roamed them, hungry enough at times to attack. One evening at twilight, as we crossed a stretch of snow-covered, barren land ringed by forest, my father heard wolves howling in the distance — and soon after, saw a pack of them racing towards us. Without a moment's hesitation, he cut one of the horses loose. The wolves gave chase after it, and we were saved.

Cold, exhausted, and with almost nothing left, we arrived at last in Osijek, in Slavonia, having travelled some two hundred miles — quite a distance for an open cart.

Settling in Osijek

We had gone to Osijek because we had friends there, who gave us food and shelter until my father could find work. The town was fairly small and picturesque at that time, and we soon settled in, happy and contented. My father was not long in securing a post with the government, responsible for the gardens, and the children old enough started school. Fortunately a house came with the post, and before long we moved in.

In winter, when snow lay on the ground, our feet got very cold and wet — we wore boots, but even the best of them let the wet in, and my mother used to wrap our feet in paper to keep them warm. We used to watch the shepherds come down from the hills to replenish their supplies for the winter, dressed in long sheepskin coats down to their ankles, their hoods and boots lined with sheepskin or made entirely of skin. To us children they looked so funny, yet so cosy in their attire.

At the bottom of the garden was a small lake, which froze over in winter, and the townspeople spent their leisure hours skating — some dressed so elegantly, the ladies in hats and ankle-length fur-trimmed coats, the gentlemen in hats and long coats too. Their skates were simple things, just an iron bar on an iron frame that fastened around the boot with straps, adjustable by a rivet and screw. Oh, how beautifully they skated and waltzed on the ice! We little children watched, wide-eyed, wondering how they ever managed to stay upright.

Spring

Spring was always so welcome after the long cold winter, and it was a special time for me. I would go and pick violets, my favourite flowers, which grew in great peeping clusters under the green hedges at the edge of the cemetery close to our house. I was always so full of joy bringing my mother a big bunch of them, and I hoped she would never learn where I had picked them — for it meant crossing a ditch about ten feet wide and several feet deep, on a very narrow plank. We were forbidden to cross it, but like all children, we sometimes disobeyed. The crossing was thrilling and frightening in equal measure; our hearts would thump in our chests and we'd fall silent until we reached the other side, and then have to face it all again on the way home, since there was no other way. My sister Anna once fell at the edge of the ditch trying to cross and landed in a patch of nettles — between the stinging and the scratching she was nearly in tears, and I hoped she'd get to bed without our mother noticing, for she'd have earned a good spanking if found out. Not far from the ditch stood a little fenced sanctuary, where we used to watch passers-by and travellers stop to kneel and pray by the crucifix.

Every spring, once the grass turned fresh and green, we went to a nearby field to catch tiny frogs, as green as the grass itself and no more than an inch long — sweet little creatures. We brought them home in preserve jars filled with water and grass, with a tiny ladder made of matchsticks propped against the glass: if the frogs climbed the ladder, it meant fine weather ahead; if they stayed at the bottom, rain was coming. They were remarkably good forecasters.

Our house stood in the fruit garden, and once a year a meeting of government officials was held in the large square in front of it, with tables and chairs arranged under the shade of an enormous walnut tree. I remember coming home from school on such a day and having to sneak in the back, neither to be seen nor heard, climbing through a rear window too high for us to manage alone — our mother had to pull us in. It was, all told, a happy and lovely place, with plenty of room to play and roam.

Dancing Lessons and the Ball

Looking back, there was always a good deal going on in our little town. Many dancing teachers set up shop, since everyone wanted to learn, and my sister Mitzi, now a teenager and very attractive, was a fine dancer — naturally with the best teacher in town, a Mr Weisman. At the end of each season he gave a ball for his pupils and their friends, and for one particular ball he wanted a very young couple, aged six to eight, to open the dancing. Knowing that Mitzi had a young sister of about six, he thought his own son, Fritz, and I would make the ideal pair. Many evenings of practice followed. I thought Fritz rather too short and too fat for my liking, but we danced beautifully!

I remember my mother making my dress for the occasion — a very special one, made entirely of broderie anglaise, the skirt trimmed with a layer of gorgeous white lace, a wide blue ribbon tied in a large bow at my waist and a matching one in my hair, with black stockings and black patent shoes to finish it off. I did think I looked rather nice, and my partner looked very handsome in a navy sailor suit with a big white collar embroidered with small anchors, and black boots on his feet.

It was my first ball, and how exciting it was to ride in a "fairy" carriage drawn by two horses, with my mother and Mitzi — Mother as chaperone, of course. We entered a ballroom already packed with guests standing around the walls, the ceiling decorated with streamers and ribbons of every colour. Fritz and I walked in hand in hand to great applause and out to the centre of the floor, and as the orchestra struck the first chord of "The Blue Danube," we opened the ball, soon joined by the rest of the dancers. At some point the streamers came loose and showered down over everyone. The ball ended at midnight, and we climbed back into our fairy coach and drove home under a beautiful starry sky, very tired indeed.

Winter Evenings by the Fire

What delighted us most, when we were young, was sitting around our mother on cold winter evenings by the glow of the fire, listening to her tell us stories of our childhood. Being the youngest, I was rather made much of, and probably a little spoilt — my mother always remarked on what a determined child I was.

Few houses had central heating in those days. In the corner of our main living room stood a tall furnace, floor to ceiling, wide and covered in pretty tiles, with its door set near the middle and fed mostly on wood. It was wonderfully efficient, keeping the whole house warm day and night.

My father never seemed to need much sleep, rising early every morning, summer and winter alike, to read, write, and drink his beloved black coffee, which he always prepared himself — a habit that never left him his whole life. The first thing he did each morning was stoke the furnace, and however carefully he tried not to disturb us, I woke at the slightest creak of that door. I was so restless that my mother would lift me from my cot and carry me down to my father, settling me in my high chair, where he'd fill one of my little china cups, decorated with violets, with coffee, and we would sit and sip together. My mother said I beamed with delight — and no doubt a good deal of self-satisfaction besides.

Summers were long and warm, and in the school holidays we had all day to play in the sunshine. We loved spending a day at a farm owned by friends of our parents, usually before harvest, when we were allowed into the fields of grain to gather wildflowers — poppies, cornflowers and marguerites — to bring home.

Easter and Saint Nicholas

Easter in Osijek always seemed lovely, with the birds singing and the trees putting out their first tender green leaves. Easter morning was very exciting — our parents made eight nests, one for each child, hidden under different trees in our large garden, and whichever nest you found was yours. Each held red and blue hard-boiled eggs and a little chocolate bunny filled with tiny almond eggs, and once the nests were all found, off we went to church. In later years the eggs were decorated with coloured transfers of chickens and rabbits, applied while the eggs were still damp, and they looked very pretty indeed.

We often wondered about the significance of dyeing eggs at Easter, and when we finally grew brave enough to ask — children weren't much encouraged to ask questions in those days — our parents told us the old story: that as a woman walked to Jerusalem with a basket of eggs on her head, she stopped a traveller to ask if it was true that Christ had risen, and he replied, "It is as true as the eggs in your basket will turn red."

The feast of Saint Nicholas fell on the fifth of December. That evening we cleared out the largest room in the house, stripping the floor of carpets and rugs and arranging chairs and stools around the walls for us children to sit on, along with many of the neighbourhood children invited to meet Saint Nicholas. We sat very quiet and still, listening for his heavy footsteps in the hallway, until at last he appeared — a lovely Saint Nicholas with a long white beard and a twinkle in his eye. "You have all been very good children this year," he told us, "and so I have come to give you the goodies you so well deserve." Then he swung the huge sack from his shoulder and scattered its contents across the floor — sweets, fruit and nuts of every kind — and we all scrambled to gather as much as we could, before settling down to sing songs and enjoy a very happy time.

Saint Nicholas was marked in other ways too. Many children set their boots on their bedroom windowsills, believing that the shinier they were polished, the more would be left in them — and while they slept, their boots were filled with fruit, nuts, sweets, and a toy. For many children, this was the main event of the season.

Christmas

Christmas in Osijek was particularly lovely. Snow usually fell steadily on the day itself, and at night the crisp frost and starry sky were so beautiful we imagined it must have looked the same the night Jesus was born.

On Christmas Eve we were sent to bed very early — I shared one large bed with two of my sisters, dressed in our very best nightdresses trimmed with ribbons and lace. A little before midnight, my mother woke us and led us downstairs to the main room, where a tall pine tree stood decorated with all kinds of sweets, walnuts painted gold and silver and hung on thin wire, and candles of every colour, all lit and shining brightly. My sister Mitzi, dressed as an angel, stood beside the tree, with toys — mostly made by our parents — arranged all around it. We stood in silence as our father said the Lord's Prayer, and then we sang carols in German, the language we spoke at home. "O Tannenbaum" was always my favourite. It was all so beautiful, and so long ago.

The highlight of Christmas Day came in the evening, when the one-man theatre was brought out — a little stage about four feet wide and three and a half feet high, its scenery and characters cut from coloured paper and glued to pieces of wood. My father, being well read in Shakespeare, spoke every part himself, whichever play he happened to be performing. The theatre only ever came out at Christmas, when friends of our parents and their children were invited to watch — a wonderful thing in those days, when people had to make their own amusements.

The festivities ended with dinner and all the usual trimmings — roast goose, cakes and wines, all home-produced and, of course, excellent. As soon as the performance ended, the theatre was quickly packed away until the following year, and we used to wonder where it went and how it all worked. The mystery was finally solved one winter's day when we were sent up to the loft to fetch apples, and lingered too long poking about among the tins of coins and other curiosities, until we came across a large cardboard box — and inside it, all the pieces of the theatre. Only then did we realise it had been our father speaking every part all along. The mystery was solved, but we kept it to ourselves.

Halley's Comet

In my lifetime I have seen technology advance far enough for men to walk on the moon and see its far side. Halley's Comet is nearing Earth again as I write this, and I still remember its last appearance, in 1910. People in Osijek were convinced the Day of Judgement was at hand — posters appeared all over town, even near the sanctuary, depicting the end of the world, and we little ones looked at them with real fear. But the comet passed, and all was well.

My Mother's Kitchen

I can still picture my mother in the kitchen, in her long dress down to her ankles, her spotless white apron drawn in at the waist with a great bow at the back. Around the kitchen stood wooden tables where she prepared the food — she used to boil straw in water and scrub the tables and chairs with it, which gave the wood a beautiful golden colour. Here and there on the walls hung white cotton panels, sewn in red thread with scalloped edges, each bearing a little motto. My favourite showed a butcher carrying a pig over his shoulder, with the words stitched beneath: "Man cannot live by bread alone."

My mother cooked on a big black stove in the middle of the kitchen, stoked with wood, with six rings on top and a border of bright, shining metal — and spotless copper pots hanging on the walls. With a growing family to feed, nothing was ever wasted; she loved making preserves and bottling fruit, which was stored in the attic. She was a wonderful cook and housekeeper, endlessly resourceful, and believed firmly that cleanliness was next to godliness. All her abilities and her virtues were soon to be stretched to their limit.

Leaving Osijek

We were nicely settled in Osijek — attending school, making friends, enjoying a happy childhood in a loving home. During our seven years there, three more boys had been born, and my father was content, tending his garden. Then one day he was told his services would no longer be needed: the cemetery was to be extended, and the land would be taken from the garden, leaving too little work to justify his post.

Having weathered hardship before, my parents knew they were equal to whatever came next. My father found two openings for an experienced horticulturist to develop land overseas — one in Natal, South Africa, the other in Egypt. My mother was not pleased at the news, but my father persuaded her it would be a challenge, and exciting to go somewhere they knew nothing about. She didn't like the idea of Natal, which seemed impossibly far away, so my father chose Egypt instead — the greater challenge, and the greater opportunity to prove himself. He was to start a garden on a deserted island in the Nile, about eighty kilometres south of Cairo, where there was nothing but sand and the spiky native grass called "hagney."

My mother worried about a great many things — schooling for the children, hospitals nearby — and though she spoke Serbian, German and a little Russian, she knew no Arabic. She would need all her courage, resilience, resourcefulness and faith. My father sailed for Egypt alone, certain it was the right choice, and before the rest of us could follow, he had to secure a clean, safe water supply, since the Nile water itself couldn't be drunk. He hired a water diviner, who found a source, and a deep well was dug.

Soon after, he sent for my mother and my sister Aurelia. My eldest sister, Mitzi, was left in charge of the rest of us in Osijek, where we were living in a rather miserable furnished house, and I think she was glad to be rid of the responsibility when we finally set sail, in 1910, for a country so remote to us. We never saw Slavonia again. Sixty years later, one of my daughters visited Osijek and found the match factory still standing, and the cemetery too — the town itself had changed very little.

The Journey to Egypt

We set off full of excitement, having never been on a train journey, never seen the sea, never set foot on a large ship. It took three days by train to Trieste, where we boarded the steamer S.S. Helwan for Alexandria. The train was slow and primitive, and so was the steamer, with its single long funnel — whenever we went up on deck for air, our clothes ended up covered in soot. There were no portholes, only small shuttered windows, and washstands with basins and jugs that rattled from side to side in rough weather, sometimes shattering, much to our amusement. Only when the sea was calm were we allowed up on deck, with Mitzi to watch over us, and we would lie in the cool evening air looking up at the clear, star-strewn sky, wondering what awaited us at the end of the journey — beyond, of course, the joy of seeing our parents and sister again.

The Mediterranean was calm and clear as we came into Alexandria, where our father was waiting. Everything was dry, dusty, and sandy — such a contrast to Osijek, with so few trees and so little green. But we were happy simply to be reunited.

Another long journey lay ahead, to Cairo, which was then a beautiful, clean city. The station square was crowded with fiacres drawn by beautifully groomed, harnessed horses, and none of the noise of the modern city. The streets were wide and paved in concrete, lined with fine buildings, grand hotels like the Continental and the Khedival, and famous restaurants such as Lyons and Groppi. An electric train ran out to Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb, and another to Helwan — lovely trains, their seats woven of fine straw for a wonderfully cool effect.

After a short tour of Cairo, we returned to the station to catch the train south to Luxor, in Upper Egypt. There were three classes of compartment: one for ladies, one for men, and one — with no seats at all — for native travellers of both sexes, who sat on the floor with their legs crossed and their baggage beside them. We rode in the ladies' compartment alongside some very grand Egyptian women, wives of Pashas and Beys, with their children. They were beautifully dressed, all in black silk and veiled in white silk or tulle — though the veils did little to hide their lovely pale faces and pink cheeks. Even then they wore lipstick, and their nails were manicured and painted with red henna varnish. What amused us most, though, was watching them produce silver cigarette cases and light up.

We were soon distracted from the ladies by the countryside itself, for the train stopped at every station and village along the way. We passed hectares of wheat, maize and native corn growing some eight feet tall, each stem topped with a cone of pink seeds, ground into the flour used for fellahin, or native bread — mixed with water into a dough, rolled thin, and fired on a hot stone. There were long stretches of lush lucerne, the only grass the animals had to eat, and palm trees to finish the picture. It was June and very hot, so we kept the curtains drawn against the sun; we had plenty of provisions and water our father had arranged for us, since the water the natives sold in oolas, however cool it looked, was forbidden to us.

Arriving at the Island

At last we were nearing our destination, watching for Matania station, where the rail journey would end. There, to our surprise, a line of donkeys stood waiting for us — none of us had ever ridden one, but we adapted quickly enough. It took about an hour to reach the bank of the Nile, along a dusty earth road, passing people driving their cattle home or moving them between fields, and children with sweet, grubby faces carrying baskets on their heads. To our astonishment, they were gathering dung from the path with their bare hands, hurrying to catch it before it hit the ground — we later learned this was the natives' only fuel, precious enough that it was often mixed with earth and straw into bricks and dried hard in the sun.

We reached the riverbank and dismounted, saying goodbye to the children who had followed us so faithfully — though it wouldn't be the last we saw of them, since the donkeys, and the train, were the only way to reach Cairo in the years ahead. We ran down to where the felucca waited, its huge white sail immaculate, the boatman standing beside it, smiling to see us. In the distance the island looked bare — nothing but sand dunes and native grass. What a glorious evening it was, crossing the water as the air cooled, the sun setting in flaming rays against a cloudless blue sky, the river calm and the breeze, after our long hot day, very welcome. When what little wind there was died away, the boatman tied a rope from the mast to his own waist and hauled the boat upriver on foot, so that once released, it would drift back down with the current, guided by the rudder, and in the shallows he poled us the rest of the way to the bank.

We were soon safely home. We had seen few birds along the way, so it delighted us to spot, in the distance, a pair of pelicans preening themselves for the night. Darkness fell quickly as we stepped onto the sandy shore, the sunset already gone from the sky. There wasn't a tree on the island — not even a palm — which felt strange after all we'd seen from the train. Across the water we could make out little mud houses in two small villages: El Saff on the east bank, Matania on the west, both of which would serve us well in the years to come.

Wading through the deep, still-warm sand, we spotted a lone figure waiting for us — our mother, happy to see us home safe at last. It was a long walk to the house, the sand hot in our shoes even after dark. After our emotional reunion, we children rushed ahead to see it: a large, white-painted bungalow with three bedrooms, a big sitting room, and a lovely roomy kitchen with an American stove our mother was delighted with. We sat down to a table laid with all our favourite foods — Hungarian goulash, French pancakes, apple strudel — and ate so much, so happily, that none of us slept well that night, though the excitement of having come so far probably had as much to do with it as the food.

Life on the Island

The house was built of native brick, cement-rendered inside and out, painted white outside and cream within. Each room had a long narrow window reaching almost floor to ceiling, fitted with green wooden shutters opened at dawn and closed again at sunrise to keep the house cool. The floors were laid with pale stone slabs from the Mukattam hills, wonderfully cool underfoot, with straw mats scattered here and there. There was only one proper door, at the entrance; the other doorways were hung with curtains held back on cords. Everything was designed for coolness, which mattered a great deal, since for three months of the year the shade temperature rarely dropped below a hundred degrees. Without ice or a refrigerator it took some adjusting to, but we managed — largely thanks to a great earthenware jar holding some ten gallons of well water, kept in the shade, around which butter, milk and other perishables were stored and kept cool.

At this time there were six of us still at home. My eldest brother, Miki, had stayed behind in Europe to finish a grocery apprenticeship he found deeply boring, and was still there when the First World War broke out; he was called up into the Austrian army and served until the war's end, after which he joined us on the island and worked with my father — agriculture suited him far better than the grocery trade ever had. My sister Mitzi took a position in Cairo with a wealthy Bey, who kept a beautiful house and five wives in his harem; her duties were to look after the ladies' needs and, drawing on her training in Osijek, to make special clothes for them. She had a very good and interesting time of it, going everywhere with them. My other teenage sisters stayed on the island, helping my father with the fruit harvest as it developed, and helping in the house, sewing clothes for the family.

The Convent School

Three months after our arrival in Egypt, my brother Alex and I were enrolled at the Convent of the Holy Trinity in Helwan, ready for the start of term. I had learned Serbian back in Osijek but had only a single year of schooling there; at home we always spoke German, as that was our parents' language. At the convent I now had to learn French as well, since that was the language of instruction. I was nine years old.

Even now, Palm Sunday holds a special meaning for me — it brings back palm trees and sand, and Easter Sunday services at the convent. We walked to church that day carrying a palm branch, dressed for the first time in our summer outfits: dresses of cream viyella, tucked around the yoke with a cream lace collar, and a cream panama hat, made for us by the nuns. As soon as we returned from the service we changed into our Sunday afternoon uniform — a blue-and-white striped cotton dress with a white collar finished in English embroidery, and a cape of light chocolate-coloured wool lined with red taffeta, which also did service on cool winter days over a navy serge dress and matching hat. I always thought the uniforms were lovely.

Our everyday uniform was quite different: a kind of overall worn over a skirt in winter, in black sateen with a yoke and box pleats, long sleeves with deep cuffs and two red buttons, and a white collar many of us embroidered ourselves. At the neck we wore a red ribbon tied in a bow, and a red belt at the waist. Our parents had to supply the rest — six of everything, nightdresses, petticoats, underwear, handkerchiefs, socks for summer and stockings for winter — along with one pair of weekday shoes and one for Sundays, always black; mine were usually patent leather with a strap across the front. My black stockings were fine crochet cotton, knitted by my mother, and were the envy of many of my friends.

Egypt at that time had a good many Europeans working there, and since the convent was the only Roman Catholic school in the country, its pupils came from many different nationalities. My closest friends were a Greek girl and a Swiss girl who was wonderful at sketching people and landscapes — I used to watch her and try to learn, without much success, I'm sorry to say. My Greek friend, Yvonne, was an excellent pianist, taught by one of the nuns who had trained at the Conservatoire in Rome. Pupils weren't allowed to sit in on each other's lessons, but on Thursday afternoons — our half-day off — Yvonne would let me know when she was due to practise, and I'd stand under the music-room window and listen. She always played "La Paloma" for me, since it was my favourite. Those were my happiest schooldays, I think.

Besides the school itself there were three other buildings: the church, which served the Catholics of Helwan; a house for the nuns and boarders; and, across the street, the boys' school run by the Brothers.

Convent Life

Life at the convent was very strict — talking, even quiet talking, wasn't allowed except on the recreation ground, where we played the games children everywhere play: skipping, marbles, roller skating, singing games. Our favourite was one where we formed a long line, each girl holding the waist of the one in front, the tallest at the head, while another girl played the wolf. We were meant to be in a forest, and sang, "Promenons-nous dans le bois, pendant que le loup n'y est pas — le loup est là!" — at which the "wolf" came charging at us, and however hard we resisted, caught us all in the end. Another game had one girl, our "Marguerite," standing at the centre of a ring while the rest of us formed a wall around her and sang, "Où est la Marguerite, dit le gai cavalier?" — to which we answered, "Elle est dans le château, oh gai, oh gai cavalier," and he replied, "Je veux enlever une pierre" (one girl), pulling each of us away in turn until all the "stones" were gone, and then Marguerite ran and the cavalier had to catch her. In the evenings, when it was cooler and the moon was shining as brightly as it only seems to in Egypt, we'd walk six abreast around the courtyard singing "Au clair de la lune" and other songs.

All our recreation ended too soon with the bell that called us to bed — though first we went to pray in the beautiful chapel behind the dining room. In the corner of the grounds stood an old apricot tree we had to pass each time, and there were usually a few fallen apricots we'd slip into our pockets to eat later — delicious, and sometimes a welcome relief, since we had nothing between meals. Breakfast was at eight: coffee, and as much bread as we liked, brought out in a huge basket of sliced French loaf — I always liked the crusty end pieces best, spread with jam. The midday meal was a main course and fruit, and at three there was a short break when we ran to our lockers for whatever "goodies" our parents had sent, usually cakes, biscuits and chocolate. Parents could visit once a week if they were able; mine seldom did, so my treats mostly arrived by post instead. After our two-course supper at eight, the rest of the evening was ours on the recreation ground.

The Dormitories and Daily Routine

Reaching the dormitories meant climbing forty steps. There were three, one for each age group — some children were as young as four — with a nun sleeping in each to see to the children's needs overnight. The beds were black iron, the linen crisp white, and each had a mosquito net tied back each morning with a coloured ribbon: pink for the youngest children, light blue for the middle group, mauve for the eldest. The dormitories looked lovely, every bed perfectly made. Beside each bed stood a small locker holding a Bible, toilet things, shoe brushes and Sunday shoes, and at the foot, an iron washstand with jug and basin.

We rose at six, washed, dressed, and left everything spotless before Mass at seven, followed by breakfast at eight and the washing-up after. The dining room was huge, seating two hundred children, with a rather bare, solemn feel to it — a crucifix above the door, blank walls, long wooden tables and benches. The nuns laid our places themselves, each with its own napkin bearing the child's number; mine was ten, and everything of mine was marked with it, though my napkin also carried my initials, embroidered in the corner by my mother. The napkin served two purposes at once — one corner spread on the table as a cloth, the other tucked under the chin — and we had to sit very still through the meal, or risk our soup ending up in our laps.

Lessons began at nine. Every day included an hour of sewing — tapestry, petit point, richelieu work and more — and the school day ended at three in summer, four in winter, though by three the summer heat was almost unbearable, with no fans or cooling beyond the wooden shutters that kept out the worst of the glare. Endurance, discipline and sacrifice were the hallmarks of our upbringing.

The bathrooms were primitive — a small room with a cement floor and a drain in the centre, a big iron pipe on the wall ending in a wide rose that showered water over us. How wonderful it felt in the heat! The nuns were fierce about hygiene, and illness among us was rare; everything was kept scrupulously clean. Our half-day off was cleaning day, when we washed each other's hair and worked paraffin through it to see off any unwelcome visitors — it left our hair clean, shiny, and, we thought, growing faster, which mattered, since long hair was very fashionable then. We had none of today's shampoos or conditioners, just soap and a great deal of brushing, and for teeth, only a box of carbolic powder our parents provided, meant to last the whole school year, so we brushed just once a day to make it stretch.

I was often asked to mind the smallest children on my half-days, getting them to fold their arms on their desks for a little sleep when the heat wore them out. I loved those little ones so much that I thought then I'd like to become an infant teacher, or a governess, when I grew up.

Helwan, and an Aeroplane

Helwan itself was, in those days, a lovely, beautifully kept little resort town, with large houses, electric street lamps and wide pavements, famous for its sulphur baths, which drew visitors from all over the world seeking relief from rheumatism and arthritis. As word of the baths spread, two large hotels went up, one on each side of town. We thought the Al Hayat the finer of the two — set among barren hills but brilliantly lit at night, with gazelles fenced into its grounds, bounding over the boulders for our amusement, among palm trees, cypresses, bougainvillaea of every colour, and a beautiful swimming pool fed entirely by a deep well. The Savoy, by contrast, struck us as rather dull — an enormous square building surrounded by nothing but sand, though its courtyard had flower beds and trees, and its pool was indoors.

One day in 1912 word reached the nuns that a French aeroplane was to land near the Savoy, and they decided the pupils should go and see it. It meant a very early start, since it was a long walk and the plane wouldn't stay long, but we were thrilled at the chance — aeroplanes were still a rare sight then. We set out at eight, the cloudless sky a great help to the pilot, who'd have to land on open sand with no one to guide him and no runway at all. After a long wait, the plane finally appeared, coming down slowly out of the sky like some huge black bird, painted dark brown and green with patches of bare metal showing through, two sets of wings and an open cockpit. The lone Frenchman flying it climbed out to speak with the nuns, then was off again just as quickly — cranking the propeller, swinging himself back into the cockpit, and away. We never learned where he'd come from or where he was bound, and could only marvel at what it must be like, up there in the sky.

The walk home felt long, though we'd enjoyed the outing, and the cups of coffee the nuns had brought along were very welcome. That evening we went to the chapel to give thanks for the lovely day, tired as we were — though not too tired to steal a few grapes from the vines along the dormitory verandah on the way in. I lay awake that night wondering where the plane and its young pilot might be by then.

On other half-days the nuns would take us walking up into the Mukattam hills, and once to see Egypt's only observatory, which we found endlessly interesting.

Homesickness

Many of the children were homesick, even those who went home for Christmas, Easter and the summer. I was less fortunate, going home only for the long summer break, and I missed my family and our island terribly — crying, when no one could see, under the bedclothes at night. The nun who slept beside me offered no particular words of comfort; the nuns believed each child had to find her own way through it, and left us to do so. Brothers were allowed to visit their sisters once a week, though never the reverse, so I did see Alex fairly often, and since the church services were shared, we saw the boys there too. There was a little Italian boy I rather liked, and he, I gathered, liked me back, since he used to pass me notes by way of Alex.

For all the homesickness, it was a happy life, and the nuns were truly motherly toward us. The one who slept beside me, Sister Martha, took the place of my own mother in so many ways — always ready with advice and comfort. I shall never forget her reaching a hand out from under her mosquito net whenever I had a troublesome cough, holding out a sweet and saying, "Prends cela, Irène — ce sera bon pour ta toux!" There were many nights I was glad to have her so close by. I thought our nuns' habits the loveliest I ever saw — black, with a white band at the headdress, a white collar with a few red silk-covered buttons, and a large crucifix on a red silk cord. They looked so serene, so elegant.

As the months passed we counted down to the summer holiday, which ran from mid-June to the start of September. The school year closed with a concert — singing, recitation, gymnastics displays, and little plays, often drawn from French history, Joan of Arc or Marie Antoinette among them, a different one each year — attended by parents and many of Helwan's residents besides. Afterwards, bags packed, we said our tearful goodbyes to friends we might never see again, since they came from all over Egypt and abroad. I still smile remembering the song we always sang before the last day: "Vive les vacances, point de pénitence, les cahiers au feu et les livres au milieu!" — though we liked to swap in "la maîtresse!" for "les livres." The education itself was of a very high standard.

The War, and Losing Mitzi

My schooling was cut short at thirteen by circumstances no one could have foreseen. During the summer holidays of 1914, the First World War was declared, and I was never to return to the convent — though the happy memories of it have stayed vivid in my mind ever since.

That same year, tragedy struck: my sister Mitzi died. It was a terrible blow to all of us, but most of all to my dear mother, who loved her so — her eldest child, her life ended at just twenty-one. My mother had had such hopes for her, for Mitzi was not only beautiful, with golden hair that glinted in the sun and violet eyes, but wise, intelligent, and possessed of a truly beautiful nature. Her death broke my poor mother's heart, and she was never again the happy woman we had known.

Building the Garden

My parents had gone to Egypt so that my father could create a profitable fruit garden for the island's owner. He bought two Nile boats, or feluccas — one for crossing to the El-Saff side of the river, one for Matania — and from those two villages he employed workmen, as many as two hundred at times, working year-round with no days off, and in summer from five in the morning until three in the afternoon. The cultivatable land — that is, the ground lying above the Nile's high-water line — measured roughly half a kilometre east to west and a kilometre and a half north to south.

His first priority, as I've said, had been finding clean water, which he'd secured before we ever arrived. Once the house was built, he set about flattening the sand dunes and clearing the coarse native grass, using oxen and the most primitive of implements, and beneath the dunes he found rich, fertile soil. Before anything could grow, though, the land needed irrigation. A canal was built along the island's southern end and continued its full length, north to south — cement, four feet high and four feet wide — with a pump at the southern tip drawing water up from the Nile. Every four metres, pipes could be opened or closed to feed the fields as needed, the water carried on through trenches and smaller gutters into plots divided by low earthen ridges. The native workmen had a genuine gift for it, guiding the flow into each plot with nothing more than the deft use of their feet.

My father wanted trees planted around the island that would stay green year-round, and sent to Australia for casuarina seed, which he propagated himself; the trees grew quickly and gave good shade — most of the casuarinas seen in Egypt today are said to trace back to that island. He planted cypress too, lining the walks and dividing the fields, giving shade to more delicate plants and helping conserve water. He employed a Coptic carpenter from one of the villages, a fine craftsman, who built pergolas and sheds and even furniture for the house. Grapes of many varieties grew along the great pergolas that ran the island's length, and trellises supported peaches, apples, pears and quince — these, with strawberries, were the only Northern European fruits grown. Asparagus was the sole vegetable, and a very profitable one. There was a large nursery area besides, and the rest of the garden was a vast orchard of oranges, mandarins, limes, grapefruit, mangoes, guavas, bananas, Cape gooseberries, melons, papaya and custard apples, along with fields of vines beyond those on the pergolas.

As the island began to bear fruit, a small wagon railway was laid along most of its length, the wagons pushed by hand down to the landing stage, where the fruit was loaded onto large feluccas bound for Cairo. My father, always fascinated by entomology — the silkworm especially — planted mulberry trees the entire length of the canal on both banks, feeding the worms' fussy appetites while also shading the water, which otherwise evaporated quickly in the heat.

The Houses on the Island

Landing stages stood on both banks, though the main entrance was on the west, since most visitors arrived by train to Matania station from Cairo. Steps led up to a path lined with dark green cypress hedge, through a rose garden, to the beautiful house we lived in until half the island had been brought under cultivation. Later, for my father's convenience, a second house was built at the island's southern end, so he wouldn't have so far to walk to work each day — three bedrooms, two living rooms, small windows with plain solid shutters, each cut with a diamond shape at the centre that always reminded me of Yugoslavia. The garden around it was ringed with casuarinas, the house itself set among beds of shrubs and flowers, with a patio running along the front to the edge of the trees. The canal ran close by, and at night the frogs serenaded us, while mornings brought the cooing of turtle doves settled in the casuarinas. The original house then became an office and depot for the fruit.

A third house went up later still — pre-fabricated, mock-Tudor in style, imported, I believe, and built of wood, with a balcony running the length of the upper floor, over which grew jasmine that filled the night air with its scent. This one was mainly for visitors to the island, and it was still standing when I returned there in 1975.

The Nile in Flood

When the Nile was in full flood it became a furious river, rising twenty-eight feet or more, and at its fiercest could carry away land, especially at the island's southern tip — one year we lost vines and whole banana plantations to it. My father ordered in hundreds of tons of large stones, ferried out by the big feluccas and dropped along the southern shore, which finally halted the erosion.

One night, when the river ran unusually high, my father told us to pack and be ready to leave the island; two feluccas stood by to carry us to the mainland, the water so high we could feel it squelch underfoot. The pump at the southern end was in danger of being swept away as the current undermined its foundations, and the workmen had to dismantle it in time. Our Sudanese engineer's house, close by the pump house, was lost to the river entirely, though fortunately no one was inside when it went. Some of the plantations flooded, and the water had to be lifted out by the old shaduf method; most of the crops, and the entire banana plantation, were destroyed. But the Nile had reached its peak for the year, and within days it began to fall, leaving behind its wonderfully fertile silt — much as Shakespeare has Mark Antony describe it to Octavius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra:

Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' the Nile By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth Or foison follow: the higher Nilus swells, The more it promises: as it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest.

No sooner had the water dropped than the native farmers came over to scatter seed on the patches of land they claimed had washed across from the mainland banks onto the island — a claim that sparked no end of argument as to its truth. They planted melons and cereals and could manage as many as three harvests a year.

It took five years of hard work before the island turned a real profit. That was when my father took on guards, called gaffirs, to watch over the island and the family — Bedouins to a man, living on the island in their tents, unfailingly faithful and honest, and one would always come along as a kind of bodyguard whenever we older children had reason to leave the island.

Pests and Wildlife

The rise and fall of the Nile was, at least, predictable. The locust plagues and sandstorms were not. One year word came that a locust swarm might descend on the island, and my father's first move was to round up as many boys as he could from El Saff, armed with every drum and tin can they could find, to make as much noise as possible and drive the insects off. Even so, the locusts arrived in a black cloud that darkened the whole island, stripping the mulberry leaves and vines bare while they fed. My father had the men dig long trenches and fill them with straw, where the locusts laid their eggs; the straw was later burned to kill them off. It was the end of the silkworms too, that year, since every leaf they depended on had been eaten.

Mosquitoes were a constant irritation — sitting out on the verandah in the evening cool was no great pleasure, with no sprays or ointments to be had, so we covered our skin and veiled our faces instead, uncomfortable as it was, always mindful of the risk of malaria. Even then, any stagnant water where mosquitoes might breed had to be reported to the government, who dealt with it quickly. Years later, back in Cairo, I once looked out of a hotel window and thought the gardens were on fire, thick with what looked like smoke — it was only the modern method of fumigating for mosquitoes.

Now and then some of the poultry would vanish without explanation. One night my father sat up with his gun and caught sight of two eyes glaring back at him in the dark — a wild cat. From then on he hunted them down whenever they appeared; how they'd come to be on the island in the first place remained a mystery. He had an interest in taxidermy and stuffed a few of them, and their skins made good rugs besides.

We were always fond of the little lizards that came into the house each evening, climbing the walls to settle in a corner of the ceiling, where they caught any insect that strayed too close — very efficient hunters, and gone again outdoors by morning. There were large sand spiders too, one species growing to about four inches — the first I ever saw was crawling on my mother's shoulder. One of my brothers caught a specimen and preserved it in a jar of spirit, building a little glass display case with a red velvet base to mount it properly, and was heartbroken to discover, not long after, that ants had got into the case and eaten it. Ants, in fact, were the real menace, getting into everything — each leg of the dining table stood in a dish of water to keep them from the food, and the sugar bowl and butter dish sat in water too, as an extra precaution. One species of tiny black ant fascinated us: a single "scout" would emerge from the nest and climb the wall, then return, and shortly after the whole colony would pour out after it by the hundred. It was cruel of us, I suppose, but we used to flatten our palms against the wall to crush them, and afterward our hands carried a strangely lovely scent.

The island, thankfully, was almost entirely free of snakes — the odd water snake turned up in the canal now and then, quickly dealt with by the workmen — and scorpions were rare. The real nuisance among the birds was the sparrow, and "sparrow catchers" would come over in the evenings, throwing nets over the lime trees where the birds roosted, tying them off at the base and hauling them in the next morning much as a fisherman might haul a net from the sea, full of exhausted birds, which the men killed by beating the loaded nets against the ground before shipping them off in baskets to Cairo market.

The Garden's Legacy

Within a few years of our arrival in Egypt, my father's hard work, knowledge and vision had turned a bare, deserted island called Dabsha into a lush, green tropical garden. Fruits never before grown in Egypt began appearing in Cairo's markets, and the island became something of a showplace — even King Fouad came to visit. After my father's death in 1937, the island's new owner had a statue raised in his memory. He was deeply respected by all who knew him, and dearly loved by his family.

Internment

Too young to know the full details, I still remember my father going to Cairo and coming back visibly troubled. We were Hungarian — at that time nationality followed the father, whatever country one happened to be born in — and so, as Hungarians, we found ourselves a family living in enemy territory, since Egypt was then under British rule. The authorities told him he'd be interned unless he took Egyptian or Italian citizenship; he chose to face internment rather than do as they asked. In the end they relented and let him and the family stay on in Egypt, but as prisoners, confined to the island. For the next four years none of us set foot off it, and our only word of the outside world came through the native workers. I lost touch with every one of my school friends and never saw any of them again. What worried my father most was our education, since none of us could go to school — we read and re-read our old textbooks until we knew them by heart. My two older sisters had already left school behind, and there was little chance for me to learn much beyond what I already had.

Four years is a long stretch, yet looking back, it's remarkable how quickly they passed. For music we had an old horn gramophone and a handful of records, mostly Strauss waltzes, played over and over. There were six of us at home, so we made our own entertainment. In summer we rose early, around five, and my brothers Joseph and Alex and I would run to the shaded stable to saddle our donkeys and ride the island's full circuit, which took a good few hours — we were never too hard on them and mostly let them trot at their own pace. I was riding out in front one day, quite unsuspecting, when Joseph kicked my donkey as hard as he could from behind; it took off at such speed that I was thrown violently onto the path. I was sore for days afterward and never got on a donkey again — though I couldn't resist a camel, years later, on a return visit to Egypt. One moonlit evening, some friends and I decided it would be lovely to ride around the Pyramids, and the camels stood waiting in a line for customers. I was enjoying myself more than I expected, until the animal let out a horrible roar, as only a camel can, and my confidence in it dropped rather sharply. A small native boy, perhaps eight years old, in a spotless white galabeya, led my camel and looked up now and then to offer the only English he seemed to know: "All right, Madam." "Oh, yes," I answered, my voice not quite as steady as I'd have liked. I was very glad when the ride was over.

Island Days

We were fortunate enough to have a tennis court, where we spent a good deal of our time, along with battledore and shuttlecock and various board games, and we walked a great deal besides. Winter mornings often found us sailing round the island with the boatman in the felucca. There were chores too, of course — helping in the house, picking fruit. All of us girls were skilled at sewing and embroidery and made our own clothes, down to the underwear; my father's shirts were all made by my mother, first on a Kayser sewing machine, and later, to her great pride, a new Singer. Material was hard to come by, so we made the most of what we had — flour sacks became tea towels, dusters, even handkerchiefs, which I liked to embroider to make them prettier. Alongside the housework and sewing, we plucked and prepared any poultry for the table, wasting nothing — feathers went into pillows and mattresses. The boys mostly tended the poultry we kept — ducks, hens, geese, pigeons — and we raised rabbits for the table too. We had no cows or goats, so milk, cheese and butter came from gamoosa, buffalo milk, brought over by boat from El Saff. We had a good Arab boy, Ibrahim, who helped my mother in the kitchen and had a knack for finding things we needed — salt, which came in large blocks, and sugar of the purest cane variety.

Pigs weren't eaten by the Arabs, but a man on the outskirts of Cairo bred them, and once a year we bought one. My father did the killing, my mother the butchering — the carcass went into a large tin basin, boiling water poured over it, and then everyone gathered round with metal spoons to scrape off the bristle. The meat was salted and smoked in a small mud shed built for the purpose, hung from the roof beams, and from the offal my mother made every kind of German sausage, using the intestines for casings, along with potted meat, and every scrap of fat rendered down and jarred for the year ahead. We loved the crackling best of all — nothing from the animal ever went to waste.

Most of our flour came from a mill owned by a Swiss family in El Saff, and my mother baked all our bread from it, rising well before sunrise to sift the flour clean of bran, which would otherwise have darkened the loaf. She bought yeast only once — after that, she kept a portion of each batch of dough wrapped in cloth to start the next — and would bake as many as twelve loaves at a time, along with sweet cakes and biscuits while the oven was still hot. A few weeks before Christmas she would begin fattening our small flock of geese, by a method that sounds cruel enough now but was simply how it was done — holding each bird firmly between her knees with a pail of soaked, salted maize beside her, and feeding it down their throats until they could hardly take more, the salt making them drink copiously, which helped fatten them further. We needed them not just for meat but for the fat, invaluable for cooking. With eight mouths to feed, nothing went spare — we even ate sparrows, so plentiful on the island, which my father would shoot and we'd pluck; only the breasts were used, so it took a good many birds to make a goulash or pie for the family, but they were truly delicious. My mother made all our jams, preserves, pickles and chutneys too, forever experimenting with the tropical fruits — her cape gooseberry jam was my favourite, and she seemed to succeed at everything she tried.

Two Nights to Remember

Little happened, on the whole, through those four years, but two nights stood out. In 1916 there was a total eclipse of the sun, which we watched through smoked glass — the birds fell silent all at once, the frogs in the canal stopped their calling, and the whole island took on an eerie stillness. On beautiful summer evenings we often lay on the banks of the Nile, looking up at the star-filled sky, and one night a sudden loud swoosh startled us all — a meteor, striking the river with a great splash close by. That gave us quite a fright.

We were never bored on the island, for all that it was a beautiful place to be imprisoned, and never afraid — probably the best-fed prisoners there ever were. Loneliness was never a problem either, since we loved one another and were, in truth, one big happy family. We couldn't attend church during those years, though my father, a devout Catholic who had once studied for the priesthood himself, kept up morning and evening prayers with us, along with a short grace before and after meals, always making the sign of the cross over the bread — a habit, I think, from his native land. One day we discovered a small altar my mother had set up in the corner of her bedroom. "At last," she said, "we have a place to pray." She prayed there daily, her little corgi, Molly, always at her side — a faithful companion who followed her everywhere. Once, when my mother had to go to Cairo for three days, Molly refused to eat the whole time and lay waiting at the gate until she returned; from that day on, my mother never left her behind again. She'd bought Molly, as a puppy, from an Arab boy in El Saff.

The Armistice, and Visitors

At long last word reached us that the Armistice had been declared, and that Cairo was celebrating. When we heard, we all knelt down together to give thanks that we were free at last. I was in my mid-teens by then, wondering what my future might hold — with so little formal schooling behind me, marriage seemed the only real prospect for us girls, the one way out of our close, sheltered life on the island. One of my brothers eventually went to California; Joseph began his schooling at eleven, alongside my brother Stephen, at the school in Helwan.

Through all those years there had been little excitement, as I've said — we saw no one but the native workers, no Europeans at all. Then one dark evening in November, not long after the Armistice, we were all gathered round the table reading and talking by lamplight when there came a sudden knock at the door. We looked at one another, wondering who on earth it could be. My father answered it to find a smart British Army officer standing there. He couldn't speak English, but he had a gift for grasping what people meant in whatever language they spoke, and the officer explained that he was in charge of a paddle steamer full of soldiers bound for Upper Egypt, ordered to anchor for the night since it was too dangerous to sail after dark with so many feluccas on the river — could they moor at the island until dawn? My father took his hurricane lamp and walked him down to the landing stage to see everything was in order, and told him they'd be welcome to anchor there any time they needed. Early the next morning we heard the siren's hoot as they got underway.

After that, more boats began mooring there, and my father took to inviting the officers up for a meal; we got to know a number of them well, and I think they were rather astonished to find such a family living out there, three pretty young girls among them. Once the post-war unrest in Egypt settled down, the officers and their boats were stationed near the Kasr el Nil bridge, by the Gezira Sporting Club, and from time to time one would write asking to spend a weekend with us. My father always welcomed them, and we were often invited to dine aboard in return.

Eventually they told us they'd soon be heading home, and we decided to give them a farewell dinner — we made up menu cards with silly names for each dish, and the men signed them, keepsakes we treasured for years after. After the meal came a sing-song, the men working through the old war songs — "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," "There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding," and more — and at the end they rose to their feet, smart in their uniforms, glasses raised, for "Auld Lang Syne." We felt very sad indeed as the boat's siren sounded all the way down the river.

As it turned out, they were still in Egypt some months later, and invited the three of us girls and my mother for a weekend aboard their boat, moored in Cairo. We had a wonderful time — seeing the sights of the city, a night at the Opera House. These men belonged to the Inland Water Transport, Royal Engineers — the I.W.T.R.E. — who ferried troops up and down the Nile, and as a keepsake they presented us with a German shell casing, engraved with one of the songs they used to sing to us so often, set to the tune of Hymn 618:

We are Fred Karno's army, We soldiers from the sea; We cannot fight, we cannot shoot, What earthly use are we? But when we get to Berlin The Kaiser he will say, "Och, och, mein Gott, What a jolly fine lot Are the I.W.T.R.E."

Beneath it were inscribed all their names.

After the war, many British troops found themselves stranded in Egypt awaiting demobilisation, and the officers among them were encouraged to spend the time usefully by studying — some attended an agricultural college nearby. One day my father received a letter from the officer in charge of the students, asking whether he might bring them to see the island, having heard so much about it. They arrived for the day, and we offered them our usual hospitality. As they were preparing to leave, two of the students slipped away from the main party — meaning, it turned out, to miss the boat on purpose, or at least one of them did. His name was Eric, and he and his companion, McKenzie, were the only two Scotsmen among them. When McKenzie learned what Eric intended, he was furious — an evangelist by conviction, he told Eric in no uncertain terms that he'd never see the gates of heaven for it. Eric told him to calm himself, look at the river and the sunset, and perhaps he'd judge his friend's dilemma more kindly. McKenzie eventually fell asleep, and Eric searched his own pockets for a scrap of notepaper, on which he composed the following lines for the young girl he'd met on the island, hoping for one more glimpse of her before he had to return to the felucca and the station at Matania — though in his heart, he knew he'd never see her again.

Eric

They talked of home in Scotland, and much later Eric told me he came from a small village called Kemnay, in Aberdeenshire. He'd had an adventurous life already — at twenty-three he'd left the family farm to take a job with a shipping company in Liverpool, shipping cattle out to Lagos and driving them on horseback as far as Lake Chad. In those days payment for the cattle came on delivery, which meant the long, dangerous journey back to Lagos was made carrying two heavy sacks of silver to deposit at the bank. That part of Africa was known then as "the white man's grave," and Eric caught malaria there, an illness that would return to trouble him for the rest of his life. When his contract ended he went home and joined the Gordon Highlanders at the outbreak of the First World War, serving with them at the front in France, where he was wounded and shipped home to an English hospital. Once recovered, he trained in the Artillery at Woolwich and joined the Royal Engineers, serving afterward in Italy and Palestine before ending up in Egypt just as the Armistice was declared.

While the two Scotsmen sat over their tea that day, I found I could follow a fair amount of what they said, thanks to the English I'd picked up at school. They were taken by boat to the station at Matania not long after, to catch the train to Cairo, and Eric began writing to me — though he was soon due to sail home from Alexandria. He could have stayed in Egypt had he found work, and he wanted to badly enough, for our friendship's sake. He had, I learned much later, fallen in love with me at first sight.

While he sat disconsolate in a restaurant in Alexandria one day, a gentleman came over and asked if he might join him — the owner of a cotton plantation in the Sudan, near Atbara, home on holiday from it, who asked whether Eric would care to manage the place while he was away. Eric accepted gladly, and the man handed him a cheque for £2,000 to buy mules and ship them out to the Sudan. Eric was astonished that a total stranger would trust him so completely. "I know when I can trust a man," was all the reply he got.

He was demobbed in Alexandria and came to the island soon after, staying a week before heading south. He was in love with me, and wanted to marry me, though he worried a great deal over how my father might take it, given how much older he was than I. It took him considerable courage to ask. But my father could see that Eric would take good care of me, and so we became engaged before he left for the Sudan — eighteen long months would pass before I saw him again. I had always dreamed of falling in love with a "Britisher," and now my dream had come true. I was very much in love.

Marriage

At the end of his contract, Eric made the journey down to Cairo — over sixteen hundred miles — and in the late autumn of 1920 we were married at the British Consulate. The wedding reception was held in the Ezbekieh Gardens; I changed into a white dress with pale green accessories, and we boarded the train at Bulaq Station showered in rice by family and well-wishers who'd come to see us off. We spent our first night at the Savoy Hotel in Port Said, and sailed the next evening aboard the liner Durham Castle, bound for our honeymoon in Scotland. From the deck I watched, with real sadness, the lights of Port Said dwindle and vanish beneath a deep, starlit sky, and threw my wedding bouquet gently into the calm waters of the Mediterranean.

Britain, when we arrived, felt like the far end of the earth — snow falling, bitterly cold; I hadn't seen snow since Osijek. But Scotland looked beautiful to me, and we were so happy simply to be together.

Epilogue

More than fifty-five years later, I returned alone to see the island where I had met the man I shared that long lifetime with — happiness mingled, too, with sadness. It was still a romantic place, full of lovely memories; the house we had lived in was still standing, and so were the tall casuarina trees. But it was not quite the island paradise my beloved had always called it.

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Since the building of the Aswan Dam, the island has become a peninsula, joined now to the west bank of the Nile. It is no longer called Ghezira Dabsha.