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LIVING WITH TONY 2023/05/22
Tony’s father, Alexander Eustathiades, died suddenly in late 1959, leaving a mess. The family had been living in Sudan for years, being part of a large Greek community there. Tony had been born in Alexandria in Egypt, another city with a large Greek expat presence, and had only lived in Greece for a few years when he went to private school on Skopelos 1.
Alexander owned and ran the largest trucking company in the country. Before 1965, him dying wouldn’t have been a problem, other than Tony having to take over the business, but after Sudan declared its independence in ’65 2, the government began nationalizing companies owned by non-Sudanese. That meant that when he died, as the business was not in his wife’s name, the government took it over. Tony and his family went from being quite wealthy, not Onassis 3 wealthy, but definitely up there, to a way more modest life-style.
I am still not quite sure why we had to go to Sudan in the late summer of 1960, but we did. I was really excited, not only because it would have been my very first plane ride, but mostly because I wanted to see Africa.
What I knew about Africa was what I had read about—Kilimanjaro 4, Victoria Falls 5, the Serengeti 6, lions, giraffes, rhinos, and vast herds of other animals, wildebeests, zebras. Instead, I got the desert, the Blue Nile 7, dust, and mud streets. Even in Omdurman, on the street where the goldsmiths worked, where we went to buy me a wedding present, a bangle made of 24-carat gold, it was on a dirt road, muddy because of the rain, which would come every day for an hour or so, and then stop, leaving everything glistening, and the humidity would rise.
The family lived in Wad Madani, 190 km south of Khartoum, where they had a large house built by Tony’s grandfather. The family part was upstairs and downstairs was the Greek Club, where we all went every evening, to chat, gossip, visit and where I had my nightly treat of fried cheese.
I wanted to go to Juba 8 to see the wildlife, but was told the roads would be washed out from the rains (I also had no clue it would have been a 4-day drive). The Greek women, friends of the family, didn’t work, but instead would visit each other’s homes in the morning, have coffee, gossip, take a nap in the afternoon and then, in the evening go to the Greek club, to do the same. There were no books around, nothing to read, but they did have an old hand-cranked Singer sewing machine, which needed fixing (which I did) and I made dresses for Fiona; one was a blue poplin 9. I scalloped the hem and the cap sleeves. Another had a floral pattern which I smocked 10. Hussein, the family servant, was amazed I knew how to sew.
When we got back to England, Tony found an apartment on Burnt Ash Hill in South London, in the basement of a late Victorian house. I birthed Zoe there, in the bedroom. When Tony went to work, I would bathe and dress the girls, put Fiona outside in the garden, barricading her in, put Zoe on the front porch, in her pram to sleep, and I would go inside to be by myself.
One day, there was a knock on the door. There was this large policeman with Fiona. She had worked out how to get out of the garden, and was found crossing a large main road, by herself with her scooter, her favorite toy. She had left to go find her father, who was nice to her. I wasn’t. I was quite calm when I spoke to him, thanking him, then closing the front door, I don’t even remember getting angry or upset at the time.
Looking back, I think it was just one more event, one more stressor, another thing to manage that I had no skills to deal with. Hindsight says I was struggling to make sense of what was going on with me, was putting one foot in front of another, going one day at a time, with my brain in a fog. I was in a situation I had no intention of getting into, that I didn’t like or want.
Tony and I talked about emigrating to Australia or New Zealand. I thought it a great idea, so one day we went to the New Zealand embassy on Haymarket, and, I thought, to start the emigration process. Tony said he was going to take care of the paperwork. He lied, saying we had been refused and I believed him. Later, it slipped out he hadn’t done anything about it at all.
So, in ’62 we went to Greece instead.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skopelos
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Sudan_(1956%E2%80%931969)
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle_Onassis
4 Kilimanjaro is a mountain in Tanzania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro
5 The Victoria Falls are in Zimbabwe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Falls
6 Serengeti National Park is in northern Tanzania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serengeti_National_Park.
7 Blue 7 Nile joins the White Nile south of Khartoum to become the Nile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Nile.
8 Juba, now the capital city of South Sudan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba..
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poplin
10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smocking
The photo is of the two Niles coming together, the Blue Nile on the left and the White Nile on the right. www.pinerest.com.