up at a departing passenger ship, waving to their only child, who was leaving them for a doubtful and perhaps hazardous future in far-off Egypt.
The British ship blew its whistle furiously and moved slowly away from its moorings. On deck, Dorothy waved back at her parents, feeling sadness and joy, but mostly joy. She watched the quay as long as she could until the thick fog enveloped everything, and the quay and Southampton and then England itself disappeared from view.
Halfway across the English Channel the fog lifted, as though some giant hand had pulled aside a curtain, letting the sun shine gloriously through the fleecy clouds. At first the trip was uneventful as the ship steamed along the coast of French Normandy and southward into the Bay of Biscay, the large inlet of the Atlantic Ocean that carves a broad arc into the west coast of France and the northern coast of Spain.
The weather quickly turned again, as it does in the unpredictable autumn months; the ship heaved against the onslaught of ferocious, mountain-high waves and powerful winds, and the captain ordered all passengers to their cabins. By then, most everyone was seasick anyway and had already taken to their beds. But Dorothy loved the wildness and adventure of it all; she was the last one to leave the deck and seek the safety of her cabin, accompanied by one of the officers and a stern warning to obey captain’s orders.
On the way back to her cabin, the officer told her a story about this part of the Bay of Biscay. Years ago, he said, a sarcophagus containing the mummy of an Old Kingdom pharaoh had washed overboard and sunk in a terrible gale. The seamen believe there was a spell on this spot because every ship that passes close to the site of the sarcophagus is badly shaken, no matter whether the climate is normal or stormy. That night, Dorothy couldn’t sleep, fighting her own mal de mer, but also feeling terribly curious about the story of the sarcophagus and the fact of the awful turmoil outside. In the middle of the night she heard a strange groaning sound from somewhere inside the ship, then orders being shouted. If it was engine trouble, she thought, she would just have to swim to the Spanish shore.
By morning the sea had grown calm again, but the jarring mechanical sounds were louder. The now-disabled ship had managed to limp through the Straits of Gibraltar during the night. In the morning a small number of concerned passengers gathered in the dining room, and were assured by the captain that all was well. The ship was proceeding at slow speed to Marseilles, he explained, where it would dock for repairs for several days before continuing to Egypt. Most of the passengers took the news calmly, but there was one voice that would not be placated. “I must be in Port Said on Monday,” Dorothy insisted. “People will be waiting to take me to Cairo and I haven’t the slightest idea how to get there on my own.”
The captain promised her that she could not possibly lose her way from Port Said to Cairo; nonetheless, he offered to try to find separate passage for her once they reached Marseilles.
He was as good as his word. At Marseilles, Dorothy boarded the French luxury liner Esperia, along with an elderly Lebanese couple from her ship who were returning home to Beirut. This most fortunate arrangement had been accomplished between the British captain, whose French was atrocious, and the French port master whose English was no better, but who successfully negotiated with the French captain to transfer the three passengers to his ship. The Esperia, “Bride of the Mediterranean,” left port soon after.
Within a few hours the bright blue skies were again replaced by threatening weather. Not far from the Esperia an Italian troop ship was sailing eastward filled with recruits on their way to Abyssinia – part of Mussolini’s grand imperial plan to control the Horn of Africa. The young men were singing in a formidable patriotic chorus that carried across the water with the wind. As Dorothy leaned against the deck railing of the Esperia enjoying it all, the sea began to roll with 20-foot waves and she was thrown to the deck. The sympathetic crewman who helped her to her feet made a little joke about Mt. Etna flexing its power again, a sly reference to the passing troop ship and the fact that the sudden storm was coming from the direction of the Italian boot.
The tempest finally blew itself out and the sea was momentarily at peace. Dorothy glimpsed a hazy line along the southern horizon: the coast of Africa. If she could have turned herself into a hawk in that instant she would have, and soared high above the ship until she spied Egypt far to the east along that beckoning horizon.
On this same day, Imam Abdel Meguid boarded a train from Cairo bound for Port Said. Having received no recent word from Dorothy, he thought it best to go a few days early, just in case, and await her arrival. In Port Said he went directly to the office of Lloyd’s, only to be informed of the trouble with the British liner. The office had no information about Dorothy’s current whereabouts. Imam was not the kind of man who tolerated uncertainty, especially in this sort of situation; he demanded that every effort be made to locate his fiancée. Late in the afternoon the Lloyd’s office rang his hotel with news that Miss Eady would be arriving the next day on the Esperia.
As the French ship glided slowly towards the quay, a very impatient, very tall and handsome young man paced from one end to another, clutching a large bunch of flowers to his breast while the brisk wind whipped his overcoat about his legs. He scanned the ship’s main deck and promenades, hoping to pick out one beloved face from all the others. Dorothy saw him first and waved frantically.
At last the boarding steps were in place and passengers could debark. She rushed to throw herself into Imam’s arms, then pulled away and knelt to the ground, kissing it, murmuring her thanks to the gods. Imam stared and the passengers around her stared. In her excitement the flowers had slipped from her hands and Imam, completely at a loss, bent to collect them. When Dorothy stood again she saw the bewildered look on his face. “I am so sorry, Darling,” she exclaimed, “it is just so wonderful!”
Her odd behavior did not escape the sharp eyes of the customs officials. They had never witnessed such a scene, and from a well-dressed and apparently rich Englishwoman at that. Very courteously, they insisted on thoroughly searching her suitcases before letting her pass. But the mere fact that she was considered a suspicious character only added to Imam’s growing embarrassment. In all the to-do they had even forgotten to kiss. This was not the way Imam had imagined their first meeting after many months apart.
They exchanged but a few words as they sat together in the car that took them to the railway station. Imam knew she was overwhelmed by the new experience; he would give her time.
On the train Dorothy shut everything else out except for the wonders that were passing outside the windows on either side. The rail line paralleled the Suez Canal. Dorothy could see, on the far side of the canal in the direction of Sinai, a camel caravan moving in orderly procession over the golden sand. She had never seen a camel before, or Bedouins. Through the windows on the other side of the train car she was drawn into a panorama of an ancient time – ox-drawn plows, goats, a crystalline sky. Oh, my Lady Isis, she whispered to herself, this is all so very beautiful! I am glad you brought me home again, really I am!
The train made a stop in Ismailieh, a vast green park that was the administrative center of the Canal Authority, close by a row of elegantly arranged, tile-roofed villas where the canal pilots and other employees lived. An unexpected surprise awaited the couple on the station platform: George Wissa. George was too much of an old and sincere friend to refuse to accept, however reluctantly, Imam’s decision to marry Dorothy. He met the couple with red roses and the best wishes he could muster for their future happiness together. The train stayed only three minutes and was off again.
With her hand firmly in Imam’s, Dorothy sat hypnotized by the scenery around her – the donkeys loaded with grass, the waterwheels, the endless dark fields of the Black Land. Imam could only smile at her obvious joy. “Everything is taking my breath away!” she exclaimed, “I don’t feel a stranger at all!”
The train pulled to its destination in the highly ornamented
