Tehran
My first positing abroad came after eighteen months, to Tehran as Second Secretary, Commercial. Letters from there between July 1947 and June 1949, my first term there, were preserved.
Commercial air travel was still in its infancy and I went there by ship, boat, taxi and bus. In the old Diplomatic Service, officers were left to organise their own travel, and it was said that the post rarely knew when a new man would arrive, as it was customary to stay with friends across Europe on the way and at their tolerance. Post-war conditions made such leisurely progress difficult, and I was given passage on a troop ship, the ss Ascania, which normally had been a Cunard liner plying from Britain to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was carrying reinforcements and recruits to the Army and
Police Force in Palestine where Jewish resistance to the British administration had begun. Its first call was at Gibraltar, then Malta and Algiers, but disembarkation was at Port Said. From there it was up to me to find my way to Cairo, by train, where I spent half a day being shown the sights by a venerable Englishwoman of the expatriate community, a Mrs Williamson?, who specialised in tours for the military and other officers seated with her in her horse-drawn carriage, parasol in hand.
To Alexandria by train, from where the Embassy had arranged for me to go by boat to Beirut.
The 'Horizonte Azul' proved to be little more than a launch and its engines broke down an hour or two out. The sea was rough and the journey very uncomfortable. From Beirut I took a taxi to Damascus where I obtained a seat on the 'Nairn Bus'. Well known at the time in the Middle East.
Πόρος [Δελφίνι, Αλκυών - Sumar, Horizonte Azul, Poros, Delphini, Alkyon]
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Αρχική Δημοσίευση από Nicholas Peppas
