A corner of a club..
Luxor..
The Museum garden in Cairo
He who travels to Egypt is no longer an Ibn Battuta, for she lies within range of a short-winded airplane.. a neighbor to whom the Lebanese hasten in every season. This one goes to touch with his own eye, in surrendered wakefulness, the obstinacy of the Pyramids; that one to tuck into her handbag two pieces or more of Egypt's fabric, brocaded with the sweetness of colors; and that other to carry back to the lovely girls who wait a bracelet, a necklace, and a soft shoe..
Egypt loves the visitor and welcomes the tourist, and she has a surprise for everyone. To her one says: to you we shall return again!
My visit to Egypt was short.. its days passed with overwhelming speed.. yes, they were days — how lovely if they could be renewed..
Like every tourist I had to wander through the worlds of the Pharaohs.. their power is astonishing, and their skill confounds history, which is still searching for the key.. for the secret of the secret. It was the Pharaohs of Egypt who laid the cornerstone in the edifice of civilizations..
What phantoms of jinn they were, to whom the secrets of wonders surrendered — and they harnessed them greedily, for the coquetry of their ambition and the wantonness of their luxury, in life and in what comes after life!
The peak of the pyramid is sharp.. very insolent.. Why, facing this swollen triangle, did I feel a longing for weakness.. Yes, for in weakness there is rest and tenderness, and reassurance too..
As for the Valley of the Kings at Luxor.. it is the legend of death that is almost past believing.. for the Pharaohs lived for death, not for life. Their tombs are halls of level expanses, their walls arabesqued with speaking lines.. The Valley of the Kings is a citadel of the dead. In it they speak and stand fast before your eye in a confident mockery that astounds us but avails them nothing..
Nor has everything in this valley been discovered.. The inspector of antiquities told me that the scholars are still discovering new tombs to this day. And how many of these scholars have devoted years to searching this strange, overflowing patch of ground.
As for talk of Egypt's museums, gardens, and clubs, it is longer than long. Egypt is faithful to her past and her present. The important thing, in my view, is that her spacious clubs fill a great void: they are refuge, outing, and lovely rendezvous... How delightful are the Maadi Club and the Gezira Club!
Like the Pyramids, Taha Hussein drew me in Egypt. I visited him in
his elegant