DERGRADUATE PAGE
hange of Status
J. H. MORRIS (Christ Church, Oxford) UST a year ago, when I was working as a journalist in the Cairo office of a news agency, I announced that I was going to end my contract and spend the next two years as an undergraduate at Oxford. My announcement was greeted by my Egyptian leagues with profound consternation ; not because my services uld be particularly missed—indeed, I was rather out of favour at time because of some things I had written about the Imam of the men—but because it was considered highly undignified and in btful taste to exchange the high calling of a journalist for the nial status of a student. I noticed a definite cooling-off of the osphere. Our translators no longer introduced me quite so somely to their friends ; no longer, I fancied. did the messenger
s spring quite so smartly to their feet to open the door for me.
or I had insulted a well-established order of social precedence t gives the journalist in the Middle East a quite unique and hly enviable position among his fellow-beings. On the Continent, m told, though for the life of me I have failed to find any signs it, the Englishman enjoys a certain hereditary respect, partly for own honesty and decency, chiefly for his father's money. In Middle East rather the same kind of mystical adulation is orded the European journalist, whatever his newspaper, what- r his politics. He is considered a figure of mystery and glamour, t spy, part politician, part scholar ; nobody can afford to displease , and yet nobody is in a position to get anything very positive of him. He is thd representative of a foreign Power ; and yet has those attributes of individualism and self-dependence that ry man of Arab stock instinctively admires.
e result is that while not all European journalists are sincerely corned at the Embassies of the Middle East, they are treated as oured guests by the mass of the Arab population. Cairo's uristic new Press Club, a marvellous glass and concrete thing stilts, has opened its influential arms to British and American rna;ists in the area ; and a strangely assorted company has en advantage of the gesture.: A curious collection of people y may seem to us But to the ordinary Egyptian every one of m is, if notA king, at least a power behind some throne or other. d this was the status I was to abandon in favour of the rags and dries of student life! Clearly the whole affair jarred on the sibilities of my Egyptian confreres.
ne very senior member of our staff found cause for satisfaction my decision. He assured me that I was doing the right thing, ce the University of Oxford would undoubtedly benefit from experience as a newspaperman. He was an expert in both ds ; for he enjoyed, in the coffee-houses of the city, the reputation a sage, with a knowledge of the stars and the universe as well of the prosaic techniques of newspaper life. Sages could very I be reporters, for all reporters were potential sages ; and it was in the least fanciful to suggest that a newspaperman could teach t old University of Oxford a thing or two.
ut, of course, this aspect of the case occurred only to the most etrating brains of the office ; and I was still pestered by redulous sub-editors crying " You, Mr. Morris! You going back 'drool! " And at twelve o'clock each morning, when the cinemas ned and swarms of young men from Fouad I University ght for tickets—then, as often as not, I would catch a glimpse somebody in the office looking first out of the window at the thing queue, and then, with a rather bewildered air of disappoint- nt and reproach, across to me in my swivel chair. It would be, y felt, an altogether unworthy exchange of occupation ; and, a my soul, there have been times in the bar of the Union when ave been inclined to agree with them nd the situation was, perhaps, rather aggravated when I ided, shortly before the end of my contract to spend a week-end Beirut—and to travel there, for reasons which will be familiar ugh in this heart of an Empire, as a deck passenger on a Turkish steamer. A celebrated Egyptian reporter volunteered to see me on board ; and I shall never forget the look of utter shame that blushed over his face when, at the top of the gang-plank, the purser took one look at my ticket and contemptuously handed me over to the care of the dirtiest and nastiest-looking sailor in sight.
I am glad, for their sakes, that members of the Cairo Press Club did not see me on the journey. The word " deck " in " deck passage " does not apparently mean the kind of deck that has given its name to those comfortable garden-chairs. Far from being ushered into the airy sunlight of the ship's upper parts, I was guided deeper and yet deeper into its dark and unpleasant bowels, until at last, bruised from the steel ladders, soaked from the water which flooded the passages, daunted by the oily smell and scared stiff by the great thug in whose charge I was, I found myself in a vast and filthy cavern with my fellow-passengers. The first looked, to me, identical with a girl reporter I had known in Bristol ; but she indignantly denied it, and as she only spoke Rumanian I was forced to believe her. The second was an elderly American in a hand- painted tie, quite the most prosperous-looking person on the ship, who told me he was in the oil trade ; it would not surprise me to discover that he owned the entire oil industry of the Middle East, and it surprised me even less when he unaccountably won most of my money from me at poker. The third was a likable Chinese dwarf whose wizened face was notable for its air of inconsolable melancholy. There were probably others too ; but so gloomy were the corners of the huge metal room that, although from time to time I thought I heard muffled cries and baby noises, I could see no one.
Let me be frank with you. I did not enjoy the journey, and I was glad when, having been kicked upstairs by the purser's assistant, I found myself, at Beirut, the subject of an entirely different kind of attention. My friends in Egypt, deeply disturbed by the circum- stances of my embarkation, had done their best to ensure that I was treated with due courtesy at the other end of the voyage. Waiting on the quayside for me was a Lebanese dignitary of high importance ; on board to usher me through the formalities was a smooth and courteous aide ; the purser's face was a picture of baffled scorn as I was taken to the head of the first-class queue and, with a whispered word to the customs officers, swept ashore.
" But come now, Mr. Morris," said the high Lebanese dignitary as I waved goodbye to the Chinese dwarf, "there's a political pur- pose behind your voyage, isn't there ? Travelling on deck, indeed —you, a journalist ! You can't expect me to accept that so easily ! "
For it was as unthinkable that a British journalist should be hard up as it was to imagine him hurrying in cap and gown down the High to the Examination Schools ; and it was shocking to my good Arab friends to imagine me in either situation. Let me assure them now that I am comfortably established on a generous Government grant ; that I am much too busy at twelve o'clock in the morning to join the cinema queues ; that I am doing my best to give Oxford the benefit of my special knowledge ; that I have no political purpose in becoming an undergraduate ; and that as the editor of the under- graduate magazine, Cherwell, I enjoy, if not quite the same status as the one accorded me in Cairo, at least a certain notoriety all its own. And let me thank the anonymous official who, by plastering the word "Journalist" all over my embarkation card, allowed me -to take so many delectable things through the customs on my way home.
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