I recently wrote an article in one of my blogs titled Bangkok, Then and Now, comparing life in 1980 Bangkok during the time of my novel, US Embassy Bangkok Confidential and the present. It got me thinking how life has changed since I had worked in and visited several cities around the globe during my engineering career. Usually one character or incident epitomized my stay. Here are a few of my experiences compiled in a tale of five cities.
When I was in East Africa as a young soldier years ago His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie was the emperor of Ethiopia and the city of Asmara was part of his realm. I worked at the US Army base, Kagnew Station, and drove around town in a youthful 1949 Willy’s Overlander Jeep (most of the vehicles there were over fifty years old) that I had purchased from an Army Security Agency sergeant at the base.
Sgt. Johnny was an original Asmara “free spirit” and although married he had a penchant for stealthily dressing up his Habeshah (Eritrean) house girls and treating them to dine and dance at the Nyala Hotel nightclub. As far as I knew Johnny had no other vices and was a pleasant rascal to be around but it was no secret he loved Asmara more than his wife.
Johnny’s spirit showed up in my novel, Asmara’s Anomaly, and I often wonder what became of him after he left the ASA. Today, there is grave distrust between Eritrea and Ethiopia and Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, sits precariously at the forefront after decades of conflict between the two countries.
During my career in the Foreign Service Baghdad was one of my first stops. We didn’t have a US embassy there at the time and our engineering team installed a high frequency radio system at an annex, called a US Interest, which was part of the Belgium Embassy. We worked twelve hours a day and at nighttime visited the Casablanca nightclub where the cost of a beer was an unheard of six dollars and a bottle of Jack Daniels for two hundred dollars entertained our group of six engineers along with two belly dancers and an incredible variety show.
Acts from Europe and America descended upon the Casablanca Nightclub in Baghdad to entertain Iraqi businessmen and expats. My favorite group sang and danced (on roller-skates) to the theme song of Star Wars, complete with light sabers.
Today, well, I don’t have to say much on that topic.
I arrived in Berlin a few months after the wall came down to help engineer the first GSM cell phone system in Europe and learned that the West Berliners had coped all those years thanks to the US Army’s armed forces radio station that played rock music 24/7. One of the German engineers whom I nicknamed “Alabama” knew the lyrics to every Lynyrd Skynyrd tune, including his favorite, “Sweet Home Alabama.”
We had to drive all over west and east Berlin to search for potential cell tower antenna sites and Alabama made sure that the car was playing “Saturday Night Special,” Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” or “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin as the car full of engineers sang along.
Today, Berlin is the capital and lifeblood of a unified Germany.
In 1979 at the newly erected US Embassy Dar Es Salaam the Communications & Records Unit manager named Mary was a Foreign Service “character.” She ran the code room on the top floor of the embassy like Desert Storm General Schwarzkopf would run a beauty parlor. Every afternoon the local third country national employee would bring the unclassified telegraphic traffic up to the code room and Mary would look at him and say, “Ziggy, why are picking your nose and scratching your balls at the same time.” The Pakistani man would smile and sample a chocolate candy from the dish she kept full by the Dutch door o the code room.
In 1998 the US Embassy Dar Es Salaam was completely destroyed by terrorists.
My assignment to the US Consulate General Karachi, Pakistan coincided with the hanging of the moderate president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the coming into power of General Zia-ul-haq, who introduced harsh Muslim rule to the country. I moved into a bachelor apartment in an area called Clifton and hired a servant named Bashir, whom I will never forget.
Bashir had worked for many years serving British and Americans attached to the embassies and I soon learned that he was an excellent cook. He was a man of many habits, one of which was to hide behind the doorway and watch me eat. We would play a game where I would sense his presence, turn quickly, but never fast enough to catch him. Another habit was to drink strong, sweet tea. He and his fellow servants would sit out in the yard and begin sipping “cha” as I drove off to work and sometimes they would still be there when I returned in the afternoon. They would be sitting there smiling so full of caffeine that their smiling heads wobbled back and forth uncontrollably.
After I left Karachi, General Zia-ul-haq was killed in a mysterious plane crash and Ali Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, a popular politician in Pakistan was assassinated.
A tale of five cities could be a tale of a hundred cities and I’ll attempt to touch upon some of them in future articles.
