For The
Tourists Each Year Are But An Episode In Upper Egypt.
Still the
shadoof-man sings his ancient song, violent and pathetic, bold as the
burning sun-rays.
Still the fellaheen plough with the camel yoked with
the ox. Still the women are covered with protective amulets and hold
their black draperies in their mouths. The intimate life of the Nile
remains the same. And that life obelisk and king have known for how
many, many years!
And so I love to think of this intimacy of life about the temple of
the happy dancers and the humble little wives, and it seems to me to
strike the keynote of the golden coziness of Luxor.
IX
COLOSSI OF MEMNON
Nevertheless, sometimes one likes to escape from the thing one loves,
and there are hours when the gay voices of Luxor fatigue the ears,
when one desires a great calm. Then there are silent voices that
summon one across the river, when the dawn is breaking over the hills
of the Arabian desert, or when the sun is declining toward the Libyan
mountains - voices issuing from lips of stone, from the twilight of
sanctuaries, from the depths of rock-hewn tombs.
The peace of the plain of Thebes in the early morning is very rare and
very exquisite. It is not the peace of the desert, but rather,
perhaps, the peace of the prairie - an atmosphere tender, delicately
thrilling, softly bright, hopeful in its gleaming calm. Often and
often have I left the /Loulia/ very early moored against the long sand
islet that faces Luxor when the Nile has not subsided, I have rowed
across the quiet water that divided me from the western bank, and,
with a happy heart, I have entered into the lovely peace of the great
spaces that stretch from the Colossi of Memnon to the Nile, to the
mountains, southward toward Armant, northward to Kerekten, to Danfik,
to Gueziret-Meteira.
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