TRAVELING IN STYLE : A FAMILY AFFAIR : IN 1935, THE FOWLER CLAN SET OFF FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND ONE 13-YEAR-OLD MEMBER RECALLS IT--A HALF-CENTURY LATTER--AS ‘THE MOST EXCITING TIME OF MY LIFE’

On the afternoon of April 2, 1935, my family boarded the ocean liner S.S. Exeter and embarked on an expanded grand tour of the Mediterranean Sea. To this day--a half-century later--I prize that Fowler invasion of Europe, Africa and the Middle East as the most exciting time of my life.

There were my father (Gene, Esq.), mother (Agnes), grandmother (Mumsie), brother (Gene Jr.), sister (Jane) and myself. I was 13. We visited Gibraltar, France, Spain and Majorca; we toured Italy from Naples north to Venice and Genoa. But the most eventful time of the trip was the month we caravanned into Egypt, Palestine and Syria. That was a dozen years before the birth of Israel--and a small collection of other Middle Eastern countries that have since popped up in the world atlases.

What excites the memory of this nostalgic traveler is an engraved single-sheet, fold-open, Luxor Hotel brochure depicting the heroic Egyptian monuments and edifices along the Nile between Alexandria and Wadi Halfa, just south of the Aswan Dam, still in the early stages of construction. It also displays printed, fanned-out lines emanating from the mouth of Egypt’s port city, informing the reader how long it took to reach various destinations by sea. Instead of two hours via jet to London, it reads “five days” and instead of 90 minutes to Trieste, it reads “three days.”

When one sailed from New York to Alexandria, it took about two weeks, rather than today’s nine hours by air. And the passengers had the absolute feeling that they, indeed, had traveled around a good chunk of the globe. We disembarked in Alexandria, and because of the building facades, the minarets and the sight of exotic characters hurrying about in long gowns and truncated red fezzes, I felt for the first time that I had been drawn into a mysterious new world. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Rudolph Valentino, charging over a dune, astride a white Arabian horse.

Entraining for Cairo, we were introduced--in the dining car--to a constant bland diet of mutton and boiled chicken. When we arrived in the capital city, a handsome, mustachioed young man in flowing silken robe approached us. “Mr. Gene Fowler?” he inquired of my father. He was Asher Ben Garbi, our dragoman. Asher guided us to the Continental Hotel in two limousines. The royal suite contained four bedrooms facing a magnificent living room with a grand piano. Our air conditioning consisted of two slowly revolving fans. Of course, there was no television; therefore artistic building exteriors remained pure in line, untrammeled by unsightly antennas.

After we had a short rest, Asher guided us through the city’s principal marketplace. There, our dragoman watched in wonder as my mother began to demonstrate her genius at bargaining. She was the quintessence and the sublimation of that great universal horror, the experienced tourist-shopper. Her equal was not known on land or sea . . . except for one person--Mumsie. It was all the rest of us could do to wrench these two women away from the Arab rug merchants, the silk peddlers and others. More important, though, Pop at last was in Egypt. The scholar in him emerged. He could not find enough hours in the day to prowl through museums and palaces and ruins, inspecting hieroglyphics and scrolls of papyrus.

The second day found the family inquisitively mounting a cordon of ill-mannered, spitting camels, to be directed to the Pyramid of Cheops near Giza.

“Good Lord!” Mumsie exclaimed after her camel settled in front of the Great Pyramids. “Did you ever see such a collection of rocks in your life?”

At week’s end, before boating up the Nile to Luxor, we cameled three miles into the Sahara with Asher to spend the night in a collection of large tents. After dinner, as the sunset transformed the desert’s hue to a fiery red, silhouetting the far-off Sphinx, a small orchestra played while a young, dark-haired belly dancer performed, rhythmically clapping her finger cymbals. As sister Jane joined in the dance, a sudden wind devil sprang up. In awe, the native servants and musicians swore on the spot that Jane’s soul was the reincarnation of a 13th-dynasty goddess of the dance.

From Luxor, we visited the temples of Karnak and Der El Bahari, and the Colossus of Memnon. When we visited it, I felt an affinity to the tomb of Tutankhamen, perhaps because archeologist Howard Carter had discovered it in 1922, the year of my birth. Unfortunately, the Egyptian government had meager funds; therefore, initial restoration of King Tut’s tomb--along with its temples and countless monuments--was not noticeable. As we departed, Asher selected from the 18th-dynasty tomb a two-pound sandstone hieroglyphic fragment with a blue moon thereon and offered it to Pop. (My father later placed the fragment in his study in our summer home on Fire Island in New York, where, in just two seasons, this artifact, now in a humid climate, virtually disintegrated.) Later my father and brother went on to Aswan alone. (I had been taken down with a high fever from the local waters after my brother, Gene Jr., had convinced me that the bathroom’s bidet was a drinking fountain for children.)

No common travelers we. Pop had leased an entire “aeroplane” for our trip from Cairo to Jerusalem. The plane looked like a collection of tin cans held together by a lower wing. There were two engines and two pilots, and the contraption miraculously got us to where we were headed in safety.

Things started out badly for me on the way through Palestine and Syria in our three limousines (one for the adults, one for the children and the third for luggage). Arriving at the world’s oldest civilized city, Jericho, Asher showed us a section of the wall that, the Old Testament tells us, Joshua blew down with the sound of his trumpet. Being an inquisitive kid, I couldn’t resist giving the wall a kick with my heel, dislodging a two-foot section.

nd that instigated the first of two occasions when threatening Arabs would descend upon us. We were fortunate this time. A generous amount of currency ameliorated the locals. The second confrontation came after we all had corked around in the waters of the Dead Sea. The location was an area on the banks of the River Jordan. I had a strong feeling for history and mythology, and on these banks I strayed away from the main party and arrived at a spot where, I was told, Christ had been baptized. Filled with inspiration, I shucked off my clothes, entered the stream and gave myself a solemn total-immersion baptism.

Then I dressed, wandered farther downstream and came upon an encampment of Arab families. Still feeling deeply sanctified, ennobled and purified by the Jordan’s waters, I began grabbing up the children and dragging them to the river to be baptized.

Their parents charged. Even at 13, I was a big boy, powerful of frame. Still, it seemed that everyone was on top of me, and they had me on the ground when the main force of Fowlers hove into view, searching for their lost boy.

Pop--a renowned barroom brawler during his days as a newspaper reporter on New York’s Park Row--leaped into action, followed by my brother, Asher, and the womenfolk. The enemy began falling like autumn leaves. Even Mumsie joined in the rioting, wielding her leather handbag loaded with weighty souvenirs and confiscated hotel ashtrays. One aspect of the riot, from the historian’s point of view, was the battle plan of sister Jane. Always the dancer, she now, without knowing it, brought a form of karate into play, using her feet as weapons. The manner in which she kicked adversaries in the chin, and elsewhere, thoroughly confused the enemy.

Fortunately for us, the great clouds of dust we had created became nature’s smoke screen. They worked to our advantage, and we escaped in our limousines and sped off in the direction of Damascus.

The remainder of our tour, following an ultimatum from Pop, continued on a comparatively tranquil level. I didn’t even complain in Pompeii when only my brother was allowed to view one of those murals of erotic works of art hidden behind Venetian blinds.

We drove north to Genoa to catch up with the S.S. Excalibur. And a few weeks later found me--dressed in silken robe and fez--striking a pose in front of my P.S. 99 seventh-grade classmates lecturing about my trip before my most proud teacher, Miss Grady. It was the last week of June, and when Miss Grady handed me my report card with an “A” in geography on it, that kindly old Irish lady kissed me on the forehead and said, “My gracious, Billy, you made us all feel as though we were there with you.”

Of course, I felt it the better part of valor to not tell them about the Wall of Jericho incident, or the trouble we encountered at the River Jordan. Wild camels couldn’t have dragged those secrets from me . . . at least not until after the final bell, signaling the end of the school year.