The Sun Itself Has
Deigned To Remain On The Scene A Few Seconds Longer, Held Beyond Its
Time By The Effect Of Mirage; But It Is So Changed Behind Its Thick
Veils That We Would Prefer That It Should Not Be There.
Of the colour
of dying embers, it seems too near and too large; it has ceased to
give any light, and is become a mere rose-coloured globe, that is
losing its shape and becoming oval.
No longer in the free heavens, but
stranded there on the extreme edge of the desert, it watches the scene
like a large dull eye, about to close itself in death. And the
mysterious superhuman triangles, they too, of course, are there,
waiting for us on our return from underground, some near, some far,
posted in their eternal places; but surely they have grown gradually
more blue. . . .
Such a night, in such a place, it seems the /last/ night.
CHAPTER VII
THE OUTSKIRTS OF CAIRO
Night. A long straight road, the artery of some capital, through which
our carriage drives at a fast trot, making a deafening clatter on the
pavement. Electric light everywhere. The shops are closing; it must
needs be late.
The road is Levantine in its general character; and we should have no
clear notion of the place did we not see in our rapid, noisy passage
signs that recall us to the land of the Arabs. People pass dressed in
the long robe and tarboosh of the East; and some of the houses, above
the European shops, are ornamented with mushrabiyas. But this blinding
electricity strikes a false note. In our hearts are we quite sure we
are in the East?
The road ends, opening on to darkness. Suddenly, without any warning,
it abuts upon a void in which the eyes see nothing, and we roll over a
yielding, felted soil, where all noise abruptly ceases - it is the
/desert/! . . . Not a vague, nondescript stretch of country such as in
the outskirts of our towns, not one of the solitudes of Europe, but
the threshold of the vast desolations of Arabia. /The desert/; and,
even if we had not known that it was awaiting us, we should have
recognised it by the indescribable quality of harshness and uniqueness
which, in spite of the darkness, cannot be mistaken.
But the night after all is not so black. It only seemed so, at the
first moment, by contrast with the glaring illumination of the street.
In reality it is transparent and blue. A half-moon, high up in the
heavens, and veiled by a diaphanous mist, shines gently, and as it is
an Egyptian moon, more subtle than ours, it leaves to things a little
of their colour. We can see now, as well as feel, this desert, which
has opened and imposed its silence upon us. Before us is the paleness
of its sands and the reddish-brown of its dead rocks. Verily, in no
country but Egypt are there such rapid surprises:
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