Beneath Me
Was The Native Village, In The Heart Of Daylight Dusty And Unkempt,
But Now Becoming Charged With Velvety Beauty, With The Soft And Heavy
Mystery That At Evening Is Born Among Great Palm-Trees.
Along the path
that led from it, coming toward the avenue of sphinxes with ram's-
heads that watch for
Ever before the temple door, a great white camel
stepped, its rider a tiny child with a close, white cap upon his head.
The child was singing to the glory of the sunset, or was it to the
glory of Amun, "the hidden one," once the local god of Thebes, to whom
the grandest temple in the world was dedicated? I listen to the
childish, quavering voice, twittering almost like a bird, and one word
alone came up to me - the word one hears in Egypt from all the lips
that speak and sing: from the Nubians round their fires at night, from
the little boatmen of the lower reaches of the Nile, from the Bedouins
of the desert, and the donkey boys of the villages, from the sheikh
who reads one's future in water spilt on a plate, and the Bisharin
with buttered curls who runs to sell one beads from his tent among the
sand-dunes.
"Allah!" the child was singing as he passed upon his way.
Pigeons circled above their pretty towers. The bats came out, as if
they knew how precious is their black at evening against the ethereal
lemon color, the orange and the red.
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