In 1983 I was detained for taking a photograph on the Red Sea Road to Hurghada which had recently reopened following the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. It was a glorious day, driving with my boyfriend in his new red jeep. The road ran so close to the sea you could see dolphins leaping as you whizzed by. When it got too hot we stopped to dip in the purest of seas, its coral reefs teeming with life, then drove on to yet another idyllic beach. As the day progressed, the setting sun painted the desert mountains shades of mauve, pink and molten gold; I wanted a picture and asked my friend to pull over.
Earlier we’d noticed a group of off-duty soldiers, fishing rods perched on their shoulders, riding the back of a pick-up on the otherwise empty road. Suddenly they reappeared, but the fishing rods had somehow become rifles. In focusing my lens on the mountains I’d failed to notice the presence of a state-owned oil refinery. The soldiers piled out of a truck and their officer demanded my camera. ‘Give it to him,’ my Egyptian friend said. ‘No way,’ I answered, incensed by his unseemly ‘surrender’.
