Here were veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaar
fronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow
streets. Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and
figs and dates--a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold.
Pitchers and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered
windows and flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two
Jews in black robes, a band of wild- looking desert wanderers in white
with hoods and veils.

Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe there
could be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?

It was a short march, but we saw much.

So this was the land of Egypt. It was good. What a pity we could see
so little of it . . .

There were very smartly dressed French women with faces powdered and
painted and scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow parchment
skins all creased and wrinkled squatted on the cobble-stones, smoking
hubble-bubbles and long ivory-stemmed pipes.

Arab boys selling oranges ran about the streets. The heat was
stifling--the shadows purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white
on the buildings and towers and minarets.

Here were curio-shops with queer oriental carvings and alabaster
figures.

It was like a chapter of my _Thousand-and-One Nights_ come true, and I