The Spell of Egypt by Robert Hichens — Read

I do not find in Egypt any more the strangeness that once amazed, and / at first almost bewildered me. Stranger by far is Morocco, stranger / the country beyond Biskra, near Mogar, round Touggourt, even about El / Kantara. There I feel very far away, as a child feels distance from / dear, familiar things. I look to the horizon expectant of I know not / what magical occurrences, what mysteries. I am aware of the summons to / advance to marvellous lands, where marvellous things must happen. I am / taken by that sensation of almost trembling magic which came to me / when first I saw a mirage far out in the Sahara. But Egypt, though / it contains so many marvels, has no longer for me the marvellous / atmosphere. Its keynote is seductiveness.

In Egypt one feels very safe. Smiling policemen in clothes of spotless / white -- emblematic, surely, of their innocence! -- seem to be everywhere, / standing calmly in the sun. Very gentle, very tender, although perhaps / not very true, are the Bedouins at the Pyramids. Up the Nile the / fellaheen smile as kindly as the policemen, smile protectingly upon / you, as if they would say, "Allah has placed us here to take care of the / confiding stranger. " No ferocious demands for money fall upon my ears; / only an occasional suggestion is subtly conveyed to me that even the / poor must live and that I am immensely rich. An amiable, an almost / enticing seductiveness seems emanating from the fertile soil, shining / in the golden air, gleaming softly in the amber sands, dimpling in the / brown, the mauve, the silver eddies of the Nile. It steals upon one. It / ripples over one. It laps one as if with warm and scented waves. A sort / of lustrous languor overtakes one. In physical well-being one sinks / down, and with wide eyes one gazes and listens and enjoys, and thinks / not of the morrow.