"PHARAOH'S BED"
OLD CAIRO





I

THE PYRAMIDS

Why do you come to Egypt? Do you come to gain a dream, or to regain lost
dreams of old; to gild your life with the drowsy gold of romance,
to lose a creeping sorrow, to forget that too many of your hours are
sullen, grey, bereft? What do you wish of Egypt?

The Sphinx will not ask you, will not care. The Pyramids, lifting their
unnumbered stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held, still
hold, their secrets; but they do not seek for yours. The terrific
temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men,
crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their
brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose. The brown children
of the Nile, the toilers who sing their antique songs by the shadoof and
the sakieh, the dragomans, the smiling goblin merchants, the Bedouins
who lead your camel into the pale recesses of the dunes--these will not
trouble themselves about your deep desires, your perhaps yearning hunger
of the heart and the imagination.

Yet Egypt is not unresponsive.