The farewell pause on the deck of the Samsun
Nur Salman and Samira Hibr
A promenade for the eyes... a swing for the soul... travel! Travel is a great school... would that I might never graduate from it...
Neither boredom nor tedium did I know aboard the small dancing steamer... the Samsun... everything about her was sweet... even the Turkish phrases that met us right and left without our understanding a word of them... for of Turkish we command only the words... bey... and pasha... and efendim... and hanum...!
Alexandria was the first land my feet touched after Beirut... and I felt no burning of exile there, for in Alexandria all you need do is soften the "jim" and lighten your accent as you hear it from the mouths of the people of Studio Misr, for instance, to make yourself understood by everyone!
Every touring visitor must pass along the beaches of Alexandria and her long, broad corniche... and he must also make the round of her palaces and stand a long while in one of them... Ras el-Tin Palace, listening to the guide tell him the story of a day... on which a throne collapsed and a king fled — a king whose life had
been the life of the Thousand and One Nights.
A young servant there spoke to me at length about his master the king... how he used to strut through the palace till its corners shook with the echo of his guffaws... yet they loved him, though he never once spoke to them... they loved him, though he paid them no heed... they loved him, because their affection too was in bondage...
This young servant told me the story of that historic day when despair and gloom settled over the palace and its inhabitants, and everyone wept, even the servants... their master went away and left them, and they remain within its vast precincts and sumptuous halls... they were servants, and they became the guards of a museum...
A single visit to Ras el-Tin Palace brings us close to the spirit of the revolution... the revolution of deprivation against wanton luxury!
And after Marseilles, Paris was where the baggage came to rest!
In Paris you feel as though the hand of man were cooperating with nature to create beauty, to root it and strengthen it, here and there and everywhere.
They say she is crowded and noisy... yes, but she is Paris, and she will remain Paris, wrapped and cloaked in her unique character — that character which broods over all that is ancient... enduring... defying the storms of time and its vicissitudes... Paris
remains modern, and the age cannot surprise her with its changes and alterations... Paris remains a bride in Europe, though her quarters and squares and halls are fragrant with age!
The wedding-feast of art is forever in Paris... Good Lord, how I envied it there, enthroned in her palaces, in her museums, in her clubs, in her exhibitions... and in the hall of the Opéra, where it struts and leaps high, high, on a splendid stage in a frame of gold! The eye is bewildered where to alight and rest — on the walls whose height it can scarcely follow, or the sumptuous seats that fold you in their embrace, or the ceiling — say rather the ceilings — from which hang shapes and colors of gleaming, glittering lamps... or the stage itself, where art has set down its baggage and settled...
The grave of a dear departed dog!