“he seems as one whose footsteps halt

toiling in immeasurable sand

and o’er a weary sultry land

sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill

the city sparkles like a grain of salt.”

in the desert not twenty miles from cairo there has sprung up the mushroom growth of a wonder-working health resort. it possesses several hotels, an “establishment,” a golf links, and everything which a really desirable health resort must possess.[1] but at the time when i first knew that tract of sand on which it stands the case was far otherwise. if one must have summarized the attractions of the place they would have run:—

fifteen pyramids

distant

one palm-tree

distant

several ill-smelling streams

quite close

flat sandy desert

near and distant

a perfectly bare range of low hills beginning half

a mile away and reaching to arabia.

an english advertisement of foreign appearance bore witness to these charms and ended with a striking appeal to leave for desert air “the filthy, stinking city,” as it characterized grand cairo.

we responded to the appeal, and went to stay in a hotel of large corridors and wide balconies which looked out upon the fifteen pyramids. opposite was a small, bare house called villa mon bijou. the town was planted on a desert so flat that it seemed a german toy town set upon a table; only there were no trees with curly green foliage to be seen, because no one might plant a living thing unless by order from government.[2] neat little pavements with new little gas lamps traversed it rectangularly, and came every way to an abrupt stop in heavy desert sand. there was a tiny english church, in which the few english christians staying in the place assembled. little flat-roofed villas like coloured cardboard boxes stood back from the pavement with strange ornaments above the gate; here a stone eagle with knees turned outwards, there a stuffed fox. backwards and forwards we went under noontide sun to the baths, and were told to rest in the khedive’s sitting-room, upholstered with yellow satin.

one would have thought that nothing so brand-new could have been found in sight of the pyramid of unas and the cemetery of sakkara. even death seemed glaringly recent. one day we drove in the desert and searched the horizon for objects of interest. “what is that?” we said, pointing to a small building on the outskirts of the town. “that,” replied saïd with pride, “is the new slaughter-house.” “and this enclosure?” “the english cemetery.” “and that yonder?” “the italian mortuary.” “what is that which looks like a village on the hill?” “that is the mahommedan burying-place.” “and that beyond?” “another graveyard.” then he drove us through a valley of hinnom, where we marked, among other things, a dead camel and a dead calf; and as we passed between the windmill and the ill-smelling stream we saw three coffins lie, brand-new, unguarded and alone.

but towards evening a certain magic fell upon the place. we had gone one day towards the single palm-tree in the desert. miles and miles of sand and air, unstirred by any slightest sound, seemed to lie between us and that solitary tree, and when we reached it nothing could be seen but the slot of beasts around it.

then as we turned the light began to change. behind the fifteen pyramids the sky glowed scarlet till it tinged the water of the nile with blood. far up in the blue hung an ethereal arc of crimson light; the heaven deepened to indigo where it met night; kindled into indescribable sapphire where it touched the dying day; the conflagration grew till at last earth glowed its answer to the sky with a purple flood rising and deluging sand-hills and valley.

as we neared the toy town with its twinkling lights the glow had died away, and there gloomed before us dimly a knoll round which knelt the camels of the bedawîn; the figures which moved beside them with dark, fine profile and the white cloths round their heads seemed like magi come to greet the royal child.

again we went up the hills which, like a low rampart, bordered the plain to the east. at the foot they were carved into quarries of a stone so white that it seemed like wedges cut in a great cream cheese. the hills were barren, but for a few straggling plants and grasses about; like a raised map or the skeleton of the world. yet as we went on we still found always in front, like the marks on the carriage drive, a curving, trodden road, winding up vanishing out of sight.

while we stood looking at the loneliness there came daintily stepping, with embroidered shoes and black silk mantles round them, a party of women to meet us; in front a man carried a child. i cannot but think that they vanished into thin air when they had passed us.

or again one might descend towards the river, on the road between the fields. there as the sky lights its fires towards evening the men would leave their work and stand with dripping feet on their coarse outer garment by the water’s edge to say the evening prayer. near the town stood a sycamore, under which, on a raised platform, some men prayed loud and lustily five times a day. “god likit them very much,” said the donkey-boy; but with cynical estimation of the importance of this fact he added, “if i bray, where is my business?”

a brougham on the road as we returned: europe is at one side. but within sat a woman golden haired, with her veil pushed back and a cigarette between her teeth. that one passing, demure and dignified, with an attendant wrinkled and stately, is a princess walking for her health. here two in a victoria, with transparent veils and paris bonnets, show turkish emancipation; and the shut and blinded brougham with a sudanese on the box gives sign of arab propriety.

and now as the town is reached we begin to see the meaning of this modern city; those high walls are not merely meant to hide a garden of flowers, nor does the lattice serve only to keep the sunlight from fading eastern fabrics. but behind the pierced work of that window peers some scheherazade at her story-weaving, wondering what life means, “half sick of shadows.” there is the pasha’s house, and the whisper goes that these are slaves.

a strange, pathetic figure trod this road daily, a man of aquiline face, brown skin, and pointed beard, dressed in a fine embroidered garment of scarlet with white cloth falling on his shoulders.

evening by evening he left the town, and squatting by one of the sulphur streams looked out with level eyes towards the farthest horizon of the south, his beads held idly in his hands. that man, we learned, was the pasha’s gatekeeper and came from the sudan.

one day a crowd ran and digged by the side of this stream. “what are they doing?” we asked, and the answer was that they were making a garden. it will surely blossom like the rose—but not on those flowers will the gatekeeper gaze.

in the evening when the moon has risen, and a great star close to her tip hangs the banner of the moslems in heaven, the magic is most potent. then the flat-roofed houses become palaces of marble, and among the dark figures stealing through the street you look for mesrour on his secret errands, that he may show you the mysteries of life and death behind veil and wall and lattice. then one may well believe that over at sakkara under the sand-hills the dead are sitting in their carven chambers, to play their games and cast their spells and eat and drink.

and yet in europe they talk of freeing egypt, and speak of the “patriot” dervish; and at gordon’s death-place, where the gatekeeper was born and from which he was stolen, they entertain the pasha with the honours of a burgess.

who wakes? who dreams? surely the western eye sees clear, which looks on the place in the searching noonday light; for it is the hand of the western that planted villa mon bijou and raised the gas lamps.

leave it then with its neat realities and its fancied magic; draw away over the sand towards the great river and the dwellings of the dead; and as one might see across the great ocean a line of reef built up by tiny busy insects, so look back once to see over “immeasurable sand,” “the city sparkle like a grain of salt.”