orientalcairocit00sladuoft

32 8 Oriental Cairo
us, we hoped that they would stay there all night and form
part of our seance.
Then two fat Indians came along on very small donkeys,
attended by two little boys in fluttering white night-shirts.
The Indians and our Arab policeman conversed with each
other in English. I could interpret a look of surprise, and
certainly a look of utter boredom, on the face of the Sphinx
to suit my frame of mind.
To get away from the Indians, who really were rather good
adjuncts to the scenery, with their black faces and fancy dress,
we left the Berberine, who was comforted by the presence of
the policeman, to unload the camel while we took a walk into
the desert. The old Arab cemetery struck exactly the right
note in the moonlight, with its white-turbaned tombs, its dark
sycamores, its two tall palms, and the four pink pyramids
beyond. The little pyramid, too lowly to be noticed often,
stood out well from here beside its lordly brothers which
were built to entomb Cheops and Chephren and Mycerinus,
who would none of them recognise their own names in this
popular form. Cheops called himself Khufu, Chephren called
himself Kha-f-Ra, and Mycerinus called himself Men-kau-ra.
We wandered on to the top of the bluff to see the darkheaded
white Sphinx surrounded by all the pyramids and
jnastabas : the little tombs of the Arab cemetery were spread
out like a map at our feet. Farther off were the lights of
the two Pyramid villages : we could see the
nearer— they were so white in the moonlight.
houses of the
Last time we
passed that little graveyard in the dark everything seemed
so very different, for some notable was being carried to his
grave, followed by hundreds of torches, with a noise of wailing
and chanting which could be heard half a mile off in the
night stillness of the desert. Then the air had been as keen
as frost, now there was a soft, sweet wind—the Zephyr of
classical story.
I don't think I ever remember air so lovely as we lay under
our blankets on the desert sand — with waterproof sheets
between : the surveyor insisted on that. It was not the
soft bed that the sand itself would have been. I have often