When The River Is Low There Are Three Such Basins,
Placed One Above The Other, As If They Were Stages By Which The
Precious Water Mounts To The Fields Of Corn And Lucerne.
And then
three "shadufs," one above the other, creak together, lowering and
raising their great scarabaeus' horns to the rhythm of the same song.
All along the banks of the Nile this movement of the antennae of the
shadufs is to be seen. It had its beginning in the earliest ages and
is still the characteristic manifestation of human life along the
river banks. It ceases only in the summer, when the river, swollen by
the rains of equatorial Africa, overflows this land of Egypt, which it
itself has made in the midst of the Saharan sands. But in the winter,
which is here a time of luminous drought and changeless blue skies, it
is in full swing. Then every day, from dawn until the evening prayer,
the men are busy at their water-drawing, transformed for the time into
tireless machines, with muscles that work like metal bands. The action
never changes, any more than the song, and often their thoughts must
wander from their automatic toil, and lose themselves in some dream,
akin to that of their ancestors who were yoked to the same rigging
four or five thousands years ago. Their torsos, deluged at each rising
of the overflowing bucket, stream constantly with cold water; and
sometimes the wind is icy, even while the sun burns; but these
perpetual workers are, as we have said, of bronze, and their hardened
bodies take no harm.
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