'THIM DAYS IS GONE' [‎106r] (211/248)

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Still, I feel that the concept of "ghanimah" is, deep down, still
there. And perhaps it rises to the surface of her consciousness,
when an Arab lady finds herself confronted with an apparently
unguarded pile of lovely undies on a Marks & Spencers counter!
In May 1944 came the pleasant surprise of home leave, just in
time to escape the rigours of another summer in the Persian
Gulf. It entailed an exceedingly uncomfortable journey to Cairo,
sitting on a drum of petrol in an R.A.F. transport plane, and a
delay of more than a week there while waiting for onward sea
transport .
The less said about the journey home the better : we were four to
a cabin, and the man in the bunk below me had about thirty years
army service and appeared not to have changed his socks since the
day he was recruited : my suitcase was rifled in the unloading at
Greenock and my best suit of clothes (irreplaceable in war-time)
was stolen. I found my mother sadly aged in the nine years since
I had last seen her and disorientated by the death of my father
and that of my brother - killed in action in the Western desert.
War-time living conditions in England were uncomfortable in the
extreme; but out of all these tribulations there came forth
bliss. At a dance at Rhodes House in Oxford I met her; and in a
few weeks we were engaged. No words could describe my sensations
and emotions : or rather there are plenty of words but they have
all been used far too often!