Suffering Bastard

Gin, bourbon, ginger beer, and lime — Joe Scialom's 1942 Shepheard's Hotel Cairo creation to revive British soldiers suffering through the North African campaign.

The Suffering Bastard was created in 1942 by Joe Scialom, the head bartender at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, during the height of the North African campaign of the Second World War. Shepheard's was one of the great colonial-era luxury hotels of the Middle East — founded on the Nile in 1841 and rebuilt after a fire in 1899, it served as a social hub for British officers, correspondents, and officials throughout the desert war against Rommel's Afrika Korps. Scialom, who held multiple European and American citizenship documents, created the drink in response to a specific and pressing problem: British soldiers arriving at the hotel bar were suffering the effects of severe dehydration, desert sun, and whatever they had been drinking in the field, and required something that could simultaneously settle a disordered stomach and restore enough function to face the evening. His solution combined gin with Cypriot brandy — the spirit most readily available in Egypt at the time — with ginger beer, lime, and bitters. The drink's name was a candid description of its intended drinker. Bourbon became a standard American substitution for the Cypriot brandy as the cocktail traveled out of its wartime context. Cocktail historian Jeff Berry — Beachbum Berry — later researched the drink's origin through interviews and archival work, including contact with Scialom's daughter Collette, recovering the authentic wartime recipe and helping restore the Suffering Bastard's place in the documented cocktail canon.