The Quest of Julian Day (31 page)

‘Of the Empire we have many remains. You see, perhaps, the treasures of Tutankhamen in Cairo. These are of the Empire XVIIIth Dynasty 1360 B.C. At Luxor and other place I show you many fine temples of Empire period; greatest in Egypt. Also tombs in Valley of Kings, XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth Dynasty.

‘After the Empire much troubles again. Later come the Persians and the Greeks. The latest make new capital at Alexandria and found the last Dynasty of Egypt before the Roman conquest, number XXXIII. It last 300 years and end with Cleopatra; what a girl, eh! The Ptolemies build much. I show you their temples at Dendrah and Edfu; best-preserved in Egypt but very decadent. The true history of Egypt, ladies and gentlemens, lies in those Dynasties of which I tell you, the IVth, Vth and VIth of the Old Kingdom, the Xlth and XIIth of the Middle Kingdom, and the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth of the Empire.

‘This afternoon at three o'clock we make excursion by car to Sakkara, visiting the two colossal statues of Rameses II, the beautiful alabaster sphinx, the Serapeum where are the tombs of the Sacred Bulls, also those of the Old Kingdom nobles Ti and Ptah-Hotep with their very nice coloured scenes depicting the life of Egypt five thousand years ago. Afterwards we return by way of the site of ancient Memphis which was the capital of old Egypt; we come on board for nice-cup-of-tea and continue our voyage. You all have your tickets for visit the ancient monuments, yes. You bring them, please. No tickets no in; no galloping donkeys. Thank you very much. Much pleasures, ladies and gentlemens.'

I knew at once that I for one was not going to enjoy Mr. Mahmoud's ministrations as guide, philosopher and friend. He was doubtless quite a good fellow in his way but any real interest in his job had probably long ago been undermined by dreary repetitions of parrot-learned lectures delivered mainly to abysmally ignorant tourists who did not know the first thing about Ancient Egypt. His ingratiating semi-comic style of address had doubtless been developed as the best method of getting good tips out his simple-minded charges, but I could see that he would be little use to any Europeans who had read, even casually, a certain amount about the Egyptian civilisation.

When we went ashore that afternoon my impression was confirmed. At each of the places we visited he reeled off his patter interspersed with jokes which were doubtless hoary with age but nevertheless raised a laugh among the tourists, many of whom had only just arrived in the country; but the thing that annoyed me most was that he didn't even know his stuff thoroughly. He was correct in the main but his knowledge of Egyptian history was extremely sketchy and when he was questioned about the lesser gods of the vast Egyptian pantheon he got hopelessly confused; while about the symbolism of the religion and its wonderful inner meaning he knew absolutely nothing. I suppose that didn't make the least difference to the majority of his audience but I found it intensely irritating and after a while I wandered off on my own.

I had visited Sakkara before and done it very thoroughly with Amin, spending several days out there the previous winter; but the paintings in the tombs showing the Egyptians hunting, fishing, counting their cattle, dancing and harvesting are so fresh, so colourful and of such infinite variety that I was only too delighted to have the chance of visiting them again. I remained there while Mahmoud took the crowd to see the Tomb of the Bulls, which is far bigger than the one in which I had taken refuge in Alexandria, but merely a series of great man-made sandstone caves without any paintings or carvings on its walls.

On our way back we passed through the acres and acres of beautiful palm groves which now cover the site where once stood the mighty city of Memphis with its five million inhabitants. Not a brick or stone remains of that once teeming city
which for thousands of years thrived and flourished as the great metropolis of the Nile Valley; but the cars pulled up in the middle of it and we got out to see the two colossal statues of Rameses the Great, who flourished about 1250 B.C.

One statue is badly cracked and Mahmoud informed us that the damage had occurred during the great ‘erti-quake'—that was how he pronounced it—of AD. 27. The earthquake he referred to was an extremely serious one and damaged many of the statues and temples throughout the whole of the Nile Valley but it happened, as I knew quite well, not in A.D. but in B.C 27 and, by this time, thoroughly irritated with the man, I said so.

He smiled deprecatingly and assured me I was wrong, upon which I promptly bet him a pound that I was right and offered to verify the fact from a guide-book when we got back to the ship; but he wouldn't take me.

It was, perhaps, a little unkind of me to have made him look a fool in front of the goggle-eyed group who were hanging on his every word and to undermine their faith in him for the rest of the voyage; but one good thing came out of this little passage of arms.

I had studiously avoided attempting to make any contact with Oonas during the excursion, but at the moment when I had contradicted Mahmoud she had been standing only a few feet away from us. As the party moved off, she left her maid who had been tagging round behind her all the afternoon, and came up beside me.

‘I am so glad,' she said in halting English, ‘that you tick off that stupid man. It is an insult that people of intelligence should be expected to listen to him.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘It's nice to hear you say that because I was feeling rather a cad about it. To most of these people it doesn't make the slightest difference in what year the earthquake happened and I suppose he's doing his job as well as he knows how.'

‘That is no point at all,' she went on hurriedly. ‘These peoples come to visit my country and learn about its great past. They should be told right even if they are stupids who have not so much knowledge of history.'

You can imagine how delighted I was that she had contacted
me herself and, quite obviously, regarded me as a complete stranger. Regardless of tourist etiquette, by which each person having secured a seat in a car sticks to it throughout the whole journey, I calmly got into the one in which she had been going from point to point and studiously ignored the old gentleman whose seat I had taken.

‘So you're an Egyptian?' I smiled at Oonas. ‘It's rather surprising to find anybody who actually lives in the country making a trip like this with a bunch of tourists.'

She laughed then. ‘Is it not the same the big world over? The foreigner in London, he runs to see Westminster Abbey and the Tower but the Londoner who lives there all his life, no, he never makes the visit. I have lived most of my life in Egypt but what do I know of our great monuments? Nothing at all. A year ago I read a novel which is about Ancient Egypt. I become interest in the old time of my country and read more—big, serious books about it. I go to Luxor last winter and I become fascinate by the wonderful things there. Now I go again, but by the Nile ship, so that I can make visit the places I have not seen on the way.'

This statement showed Oonas to me in a completely different light from that of the beautiful little vamp I had met in Alexandria; but, after all, because a person is mixed up in criminal activities that is no reason whatsoever why they should not have interests outside their work, like other people. Evidently Oonas had brains and a serious side to her character, and since she was going to Luxor it was quite reasonable that she should have chosen this way of making the journey.

When we got back to the ship tea was served in the observation-lounge while the steamer pushed off and began to chug its way again up the river. Quite naturally Oonas and I sat down to a table and had tea together. It was then she asked me if I spoke French and when she learned that I did it was agreed we should speak it as that made conversation so much easier for her.

The only male on board, other than myself, who might have intrigued her was the handsome young American, but he was glued to his good-looking wife so I had nothing to fear from possible rivals and I began to congratulate myself on my good fortune. Here was an exceedingly beautiful young woman who
had interests in common with my own and it was my particular job to get to know her as well as possible. It seemed that business might be combined with considerable pleasure.

We parted to change for dinner but got together again immediately afterwards for coffee and liqueurs, and she said at once how stupid we had been to eat the meal at separate tables when we might quite well have shared one between us. I had thought of that already but I wanted Oonas to make the running, at all events to begin with, so that she could have no possible suspicion that I had any motives for wanting to see as much of her as possible, other than those normal to a young man on meeting an attractive girl, but it was decided then and there that for the rest of the voyage we should have our meals together.

I soon found that in addition to beauty this little Egyptian princess had a quick, lively mind and an excellent education. She was rather small, coming only up to my shoulder, but she had the right sorts of curves just where they should be and was extremely soignée. I have always been interested in women's clothes and I could see with half an eye that all her things came from the best places. The lovely flame-coloured thing she was wearing that evening positively screamed Schiaparelli.

We anchored off El Wasta that night at about eleven and most of the passengers drifted off to their cabins. Oonas and I sat on for a little while, but when she said she thought it was time for bed I did not press her to stay up longer as I knew that we had plenty of time before us.

The second day of the Nile voyage is the least interesting of the whole journey as there are no ruined temples or ancient monuments on either bank during the hundred-mile run; but I was much more interested in Oonas than in Ancient Egypt by that time and we spent a delightful day together.

Immediately after breakfast I secured a couple of armchairs right in the very front of the observation-lounge where one could get an uninterrupted view of the ever-changing scene as it unfolded on the approach of the steamer. I had a job to
retain the extra chair as half-a-dozen people tried to grab it off me and showed barely-veiled resentment when I insisted that it was already taken; but I had not the least interest in any of the other passengers and stuck to it like a leech until Oonas put in an appreance and, I was pleased to see, came straight over to me.

It was one of those days all too rare in most life-times when one has nothing to do and all day in which to do it; and what could be fairer than to spend it in the immediate vicinity of an exotic beauty who is quite prepared to give one her undivided attention?

She told me a lot about herself, her travels abroad and her home-life in Alexandria; but she made no mention whatever of Zakri or anything which appeared to have the least connection with the people I was after and I was much too wily to ask her any leading questions so early in the game.

For the time being I was content to take what the kind gods had sent me and watch the broad, calmly-flowing river with its picturesque native craft. Long vistas of cultivated country stretched to the ridge of hills which marked the beginning of the desert on either side, and in the fields unhurried labourers were tending their crops with just the same primitive methods that had been used season after season for countless generations by their ancestors.

Occasionally we passed a grove of date palms near which there nestled a mud-walled village where noisy children stopped playing in the dirt to hail us from the river-bank. Every mile or so we saw a water-wheel with a game little donkey staggering round and round it; or that even more primitive method of irrigation in which half-a-dozen natives, stripped to the skin and sweating in the sunshine, levered buckets of water on long poles from stage to stage up the river-bank until it could be poured into the channels of the fields.

It is virtually slave labour, as they continue their monontonous task from dawn to dusk for about eightpence a day, but perhaps even such a dreary existence has some compensations. Storms are almost unknown in that sheltered valley, where it is always spring or summer, so a mud hut which costs nothing to build and can be erected in a couple of days is adequate shelter thus disposing of the problem of rent. The mild climate
makes clothes unnecessary, except for a single cotton gown, and the fertile land with its modern irrigation system makes the more common kinds of food incredibly cheap and abundant. The standard of life of the peasantry is amazingly low but they are always laughing and joking together and if they lack the benefits of cinemas and night-schools at least they do not have to worry themselves about gold-standards or gasmasks; and they are not even aware of the existence of Czechoslovakia, Spain or China.

One of the most fascinating things about the Nile voyage is the splendour of the sunsets; nowhere else in the world have I ever seen such unbelievably fantastic colouring and they are no rare phenomena but, owing to the almost unchanging climate, occur regularly day after day. As the sky is nearly always cloudless the sunset lasts for the best part of half-an-hour while the scene gradually changes, the bright, hard blues and yellows of sky and sand taking on softer hues in the evening light until at last the outstanding objects on the west bank are silhouetted, as though cut from black cardboard, against the gold-and-orange glory of the dying sun which sinks unseen into the desert beyond.

While Oonas and I were watching it that evening a small caravan of some twenty camels, moving in single file, passed along some high ground on the western bank towards a small palm grove which fringed a native village; and the beauty of that silent procession in the distance against the flaming sunset utterly defies description.

That night for dinner we split a bottle of champagne and afterwards decided that we would get our coats and sit out on the deck where we could talk more freely than in the crowded lounge. Since the previous afternoon we had spent some fourteen hours in each other's company and we had discussed a vast variety of subjects, from Egyptology to Paris fashions, and from Chinese ancestor-worship to, inevitably, love. So it was not unnatural that having once reached that all-important topic, whatever else we touched on while we sat there watching the rise of the Egyptian moon, we should come round again and again to the old, intriguing mystery.