an Embassy anecdote

Not to poke fun at the Embassy, because the story I’m about to tell comes from pre-Embassy days.

One of our former administrators first came to work at AUC in 1973. The October War as Egyptians call it, or the Yom Kippur War as Israelis call it, began just weeks after his arrival. The war ended within a few weeks.

A month later, our former administrator received a call, not from the U.S. Embassy (there was no still such thing in ’73, given the very poor state of Egyptian-U.S. relations then) but from the U.S. Interests section in the Spanish Embassy in Cairo.

Those people told our administrator (and remember, the war had already ended) that there was a war going on, and in view of the circumstances, they were making him a special offer: a one-way bus ticket, for $300, to Libya.

The moral of the story, I believe, was this: always have your own evacuation plans when living abroad.