EGYPT 247 



antiquity and wonder in every inch of every 

 pathway. 



From my perch at the Citadel I could just 

 distinguish the silver thread of the Nile twisting 

 like a spangled serpent. To my right the great 

 mass of the alabaster mosque towered moon- 

 wards. The muezzins had ceased their callings 

 to the Faithful, and the hush of Allah had fallen 

 over the city below. 



I feel sorry for the man whose soul is so bereft 

 of imagination that he could have looked on Cairo 

 that evening and not seen phantoms of the past 

 dancing round the city. I feel more sorry still 

 for the mind so barren of real joy that could have 

 looked up into the soft dome of the evening sky 

 and not felt thrilled with the sheer beauty of the 

 thing; sky and stately minaret, evening glory 

 and snow-white mosque. These are things which 

 make one realize how leaden are our Western 

 ways, how sullen, and gray and forbidding are 

 our lives and our monuments. Our Western 

 world has envied Egypt her beauty and her 

 slumbers, and has tried to steal them, and 

 Egypt has borne the invasion with a spirit of 

 sublime tolerance. 



Modern Cairo is the fashionable centre of the 

 East. The wealthy of three continents winter 

 there and bask in the Egyptian sunshine, and 

 feast and drink and make merry. But for all 

 the modern splendour of the hotels, for all the 

 demi-mondaines who have migrated along the 

 sun-path from every city in Europe, Cairo retains 

 all her old-day mysteries, all her archaic glory. 

 The motor-car has not defaced her antiquity, 

 the cradle of the world's learning has not lost 

 a single shaft of light from her hoary halo 



