When Saeed Durrani left Pakistan for England in 1953, he travelled as most people did at the time, which was by cruise ship from Karachi to Liverpool. These days international travel is a rather humdrum experience, but back then a three-week sea journey was full of adventure, fun and amusement as you can find out from this extract from the memoirs. Of particular note is the story concerning Saeed’s notoriously request-happy Uncle Nisar, who was then based at the Pakistani embassy in Cairo. As the ship was due to call at the Egyptian port, Uncle Nisar wrote to his sister (Saeed’s mother) instructing him to bring “a few things”, which included a sewing machine, a couple of canisters of ghee, a sack of Panjabi rice, three sacks of dhal, and a heap of other odds and ends. This section of the memoirs also includes an account of Saeed’s various embarassing social faux-pas during the cruise’s fancy-dress ball.

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