I do not find in Egypt any more the strangeness that once amazed, and
at first almost bewildered me. Stranger by far is Morocco, stranger
the country beyond Biskra, near Mogar, round Touggourt, even about El
Kantara. There I feel very far away, as a child feels distance from
dear, familiar things. I look to the horizon expectant of I know not
what magical occurrences, what mysteries. I am aware of the summons to
advance to marvellous lands, where marvellous things must happen. I am
taken by that sensation of almost trembling magic which came to me
when first I saw a mirage far out in the Sahara. But Egypt, though
it contains so many marvels, has no longer for me the marvellous
atmosphere. Its keynote is seductiveness.
In Egypt one feels very safe. Smiling policemen in clothes of spotless
white--emblematic, surely, of their innocence!--seem to be everywhere,
standing calmly in the sun. Very gentle, very tender, although perhaps
not very true, are the Bedouins at the Pyramids. Up the Nile the
fellaheen smile as kindly as the policemen, smile protectingly upon
you, as if they would say, “Allah has placed us here to take care of the
confiding stranger.” No ferocious demands for money fall upon my ears;
only an occasional suggestion is subtly conveyed to me that even the
poor must live and that I am immensely rich. An amiable, an almost
enticing seductiveness seems emanating from the fertile soil, shining
in the golden air, gleaming softly in the amber sands, dimpling in the
brown, the mauve, the silver eddies of the Nile. It steals upon one. It
ripples over one. It laps one as if with warm and scented waves. A sort
of lustrous languor overtakes one. In physical well-being one sinks
down, and with wide eyes one gazes and listens and enjoys, and thinks
not of the morrow.
The dahabiyeh--her very name, the _Loulia_, has a gentle, seductive,
cooing sound--drifts broadside to the current with furled sails, or
glides smoothly on before an amiable north wind with sails unfurled.
Upon the bloomy banks, rich brown in color, the brown men stoop and
straighten themselves, and stoop again, and sing. The sun gleams on
their copper skins, which look polished and metallic. Crouched in his
net behind the drowsy oxen, the little boy circles the livelong day with
the sakieh. And the sakieh raises its wailing, wayward voice and sings
to the shadoof; and the shadoof sings to the sakieh; and the lifted
water falls and flows away into the green wilderness of doura that, like
a miniature forest, spreads on every hand to the low mountains, which do
not perturb the spirit, as do the iron mountains of Algeria. And always
the sun is shining, and the body is drinking in its warmth, and the soul
is drinking in its gold. And always the ears are full of warm and drowsy
and monotonous music. And always the eyes see the lines of brown bodies,
on the brown river-banks above the brown waters, bending, straightening,
bending, straightening, with an exquisitely precise monotony. And always
the _Loulia_ seems to be drifting, so quietly she slips up, or down, the
level waterway.
And one drifts, too; one can but drift, happily, sleepily, forgetting
every care. From Abydos to Denderah one drifts, and from Denderah to
Karnak, to Luxor, to all the marvels on the western shore; and on
to Edfu, to Kom Ombos, to Assuan, and perhaps even into Nubia, to
Abu-Simbel, and to Wadi-Halfa. Life on the Nile is a long dream, golden
and sweet as honey of Hymettus. For I let the “divine serpent,” who at
Philae may be seen issuing from her charmed cavern, take me very quietly
to see the abodes of the dead, the halls of the vanished, upon her green
and sterile shores. I know nothing of the bustling, shrieking
steamer that defies her, churning into angry waves her waters for the
edification of those who would “do” Egypt and be gone before they know
her.
If you are in a hurry, do not come to Egypt. To hurry in Egypt is as
wrong as to fall asleep in Wall street, or to sit in the Greek Theatre
at Taormina, reading “How to Make a Fortune with a Capital of Fifty
Pounds.”