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Heliopolis 347
at the polite native, who was conducting us round the village,
though he knew not a word of English, for an explanation.
" Morto," he said, perhaps his only word of Italian ; and we
knew that they were not celebrating a wedding, or the
return of a pilgrim, but paying the last tribute of respect
to the dead.
We wandered through the narrow, palm-shaded streets,
winding in many places between high, blind Nubian walls.
The doors and windows of the houses had often moulded
arch heads. We passed here a coppersmith, there a barber
plying his trade, or a basket-maker showing the use of the
palm-leaf stacks piled against the houses. There were many
dear little boys and girls about, but they were flyey-nosed
and flyey-eyed. We were looking for a saint's tomb—
popular postcard subject at Cairo—and at last we found
it, thanks to a sketch of it which Norma Lorimer made, like
Archimedes, with the point of her parasol in the sand. It was
charmingly picturesque. The curved stretch of water in front
of it had taken the colours of the sunset, and by the water's
edge were elegant desert women in thin black veils close-
drawn, and men, resting from their day's work, in blue
galabeahs, faded to the colour of the pale Egyptian sky,
with a background of palms that reminded me of the orangegrove
in Botticelli's Priviavera. Here and there were
clusters of prickly pears, or a child drinking the viscous
green water out of a grimy pan. It looked horribly enterical,
but it takes more than that to upset the stomach of an
Egyptian child.
Marg was like a dream to me. The palms and the water
and the sunset, and the veiled, black-robed figures, so perfect
in their grace, and the little mediaeval town, seemed to have
no place in actuality .
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