Chapter 7 - Luxor - the West Bank

The Nile is the main artery of Egypt, pumping its life-giving water to the towns and villages which huddle along its sides.  But it is also like the cut of a knife on the map, dividing the land from the delta to the depths of Africa.

The Nile's unswerving south-north passage heightened a perception the Ancient Egyptians already had of the difference between the east and the west.  The west for them was inextricably linked with idea of the setting sun, and hence death.  The long line of pyramids, all to the west of the Nile, began the tradition; the West Bank of Luxor is its culmination.

Although the graves, temples and mortuary complexes all speak obsessively of death, they do so in the most affirmative way.  For the Egyptians, they promised resurrection; for us they offer one of the greatest and most uplifting artistic experiences.

The astonishing concentration of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings can be attributed to a number of factors.  First, from the establishment of Thebes as the undisputed capital of Egypt naturally grew a desire to be buried nearby.  Secondly, the widespread robbing of the pyramids and other visible tombs led to the use of hidden ones.  And thirdly, the limestone hills to the west of Thebes provided perfect material for the construction of deep and many-chambered tombs - strong enough to endure but easy to cut.

The result is a total of some sixty tombs, originally guarding the remains of all of the greatest kings from the height of Egypt's empire.  Despite their builders' best efforts, and the various tricks used to mislead potential thieves, the tombs were soon found by grave-robbers - some shortly after their construction.  As a result, the mummies of the greatest pharaohs were removed during this epoch to another hiding place, though far less glorious than the carefully carved tombs.  Fortunately for the modern archaeologist, these caches of kings - dumped somewhat unceremoniously in simple pits - escaped the further attention of the thieves, and have been discovered only in recent times.  Among those whose eternal rest was so rudely disturbed was the greatest pharaoh of them all, Ramses II.

There was, of course, one exception to this sad record of depredation: the tomb of Tutankhamun, found positioned slightly oddly under that of Ramses VI - which is probably why it was never discovered by the robbers.  Its tiny, cramped rooms form an odd contrast to the immense suites of chambers enjoyed by the great pharaohs.  But it does make us wonder at - and mourn for - the unimaginable quantities of treasure which have been lost from the latter.  Today the Valley of the Kings is a suitably bleak place, spurs running off hither and thither, with a warren of passages into the friable rock.  By noon the sun beats down upon it like a hammer on an anvil.

In addition to this principal cemetery, there are also two others worthy of note.  The Valley of the Queens, further to the south, has a number of similar graves, while the Tombs of the Nobles are interesting for the light they shed on less exalted personages.  Among the most beautiful of these is the Tomb of Nakht, royal astronomer, keeper of the king's vineyards and in charge of the granaries.  His wife was the chantress of the great god Amun.  Both are represented in his tomb, along with a famous relief of female musicians and dancing girls.

In addition to the hidden tombs, the pharaohs also built more visible monuments on the West Bank, temples where their name might be venerated for ever, and where offerings could be made for their souls.  One of the earliest of these is the unique mortuary complex of Queen Hatshepsut, herself one of the most extraordinary characters of a time not wanting in outstanding individuals.

Against all precedents, Hatshepsut declared herself Pharaoh - even down to the royal beard, and being the 'son' of Amun - and ruled jointly with her son, Tuthmosis III.  It was only at her death that he was able to assert his own power - which he did by creating the Egyptian Empire, almost as a demonstration of his independence.

At Hatshepsut's command, her architect Senenmut devised a temple built against the cliffs of the Theban hills in a stepped series of three colonnades with sweeping terraces which look down to the Nile and across to Thebes itself.

Perhaps inevitably, one of the grandest monuments on the West Bank is that of Ramses II.  His Ramesseum is now much ruined, but there remains sufficient for us to appreciate the grandeur of his vision.  Built with a series of pylons - the face of one depicting the Battle of Kadesh - the site is probably most famous for the fallen colossal statue of Ramses himself.  It was upon the arrival of the head of its twin at the British Museum that Shelley was moved to write his famous sonnet 'Ozymandias' - a Greek corruption of the original 'Usermare', one of Ramses II's names.  The lines 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/Look on my works ye mighty and despair' are supposed by the poet to be written on the pedestal of the king's abandoned statue.

A better idea of the original glory of the Ramesseum can be obtained by visiting the Mortuary Temple of Rameses III nearby at Madinat Habu.  Based very largely on the design of his predecessor's temple, and borrowing extensively from its reliefs of victories over foreign enemies, this masterpiece of architecture is neither well-known nor much visited - which is strange, given its almost complete and perfect preservation.  Entering through its massive first pylon and gazing on the enormous series of inscriptions and reliefs - the most extensive that have come down to us - is to be confronted with the marvellous reality of the Egyptian achievement at the height of its glory.

On the way back, in contrast, the two so-called Colossi of Memnon are a salutary reminder of how much has been lost.  Originally part of a huge temple complex, like that of Ramses III, they are all that now remains - largely because of the theft by later Pharaohs of stone to build their own memorials.  During the Roman period one of the Colossi was famous for the high-pitched whistling noise it emitted, probably caused by the wind passing through cracks in the rock.  Sadly, a later restoration cured the statue of this habit.

• Chapter 7 - Luxor, West Bank, Friday 24 February, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 7 - Luxor, West Bank, Friday 24 February, 1990

Up at 5.30 am this morning - luckily they sensibly serve breakfast from 6 am here.  We've a lot to see today - and before the sun comes thundering down.  On the ferry - a cold, cold crossing - I can barely hold my pen.  Morning glorious: the Nile misty, the sky a clear, pale blue.

I really don't like doing it this way - the 'tourist' ferry, rather than the real, public one; along to get the tickets - what a fight - then to the coach to take us out to Hatshepsut.  As I see all these beloved landscapes go past me, my heart aches for what was, how I did it when I first came here on my own, for what was simply one of happiest times of my life, one of those rare peak experiences you know you'll never achieve again.

As today, I got up very early, then down to the public ferry - further south along the Corniche.  E£1 for the crossing.  A crossing with Egypt - people crammed in, with their fruit and vegetables, their chickens, their snivelling kids.  A man selling cakes in the middle of the covered area.  Battered old boat, as ancient as the monuments.  Then, when we get to the other side, everyone tried to jump off before landing - and everyone waiting to get on jumped on too.  Mayhem, but good fun.

Then, for the princely sum of E£8, I hired an equally rickety old bike.  The public ferry is quite a way south of the tourist ferry - where the ticket office is.  I encounter this ruck for the first time - and made the mistake of waiting my turn.  And so was promptly ignored and sniggered at by a chorus of loud and none too clean Egyptians who were buying tickets for their tours.  A great cavalcade of buses waiting for their human cargo.  But me, I was off on my bike again, cycling serenely through the dark green fields - everything seemed to grow so effortlessly here - praying that I didn't get knocked off by some clanking lorry as it stormed past.

Up to the cross-roads where the road goes over the canal and the railway - a local line.  A small village, kids running everywhere, staring at the funny foreigner wobbling along on his bike in his funny hat.  Another long straight road, past the lonely Colossi of Memnon, then right along the main road, past the Ramesseum - which I left for the moment - and then on to the amazing and glorious Temple of Hatshepsut.

Where I sit now, with a couple of horrible tourist coaches - one of them ours - spoiling the view down to the Nile.  But that first time, when I came on bike, I took a crazy short-cut past a couple of villages.  It was like some moonscape: piles of stones and vertiginous holes everywhere, poor single-room dwellings.  I wondered whether my tyres would hold out.  Then it all began to hove into view: the huge yellow-grey curtain of rock.  Below, the strata of rocks clearly visible, then some rubble.  Then the tomb itself.

Even allowing for the fact that it has been restored, it still looks shockingly modern in design - it could easily have been yesterday that it was built, its lines are so clean.  What a stroke of genius, the use of the third dimension, the great stepped structure.  Though pyramids and temples necessarily are three dimensional, they do not play with that third dimension: it is merely a statistic - height - to impress peasants like us who come to gawp.  Hatshepsut, brilliant woman that she was, teases us with subtle variations in height, cumulatively leading our eyes to a climax.

The first colonnade - nice picture of Hatshepsut's obelisk that we saw yesterday being transported by boat - a big boat.  I still want to know how they got it to the boat....  Unexpectedly, but perhaps inevitably, the cheeky cartouche of old Ram, laying claim to everything as usual.

Up the ramp.  Nice to see on the right Anubis getting his own chapel for a change.  And - what!  I do not bloody believe it.  How can the moron do it?  These bloody Frogs.  What does he do, but goes up to this wall covered in coloured hieroglyphs, and starts to rub one of them, just to see whether the paint comes off.  When it doesn't, he licks his bloody finger and rubs harder until some does come off.  The bastard.  Four thousand years that endured, and then some nit tourist comes along and destroys.  This is one of the problems with Egypt: everything is so open, you can touch and destroy so easily.  And yet that is also its glory: it is not nannified, cocooned with museumitis.

I feel quite upset - and annoyed with myself for being too stunned to stop him.

Along to the temple of Hathor, the cow-faced goddess.  Such an old look, as it was on the Narmer tablet.  These ancient religious hangovers - worshipping animals.  

So, back in the coach, and once again we cheat, taking the boring tourist road round to the Valley of the Kings.  The memories come flooding back of how it was for me the first time I came here.

But before I write about that, some notes on the tombs themselves, in no particular order, as we visit them.

Ramses I: simple design, down steps into the ground, well-decorated.  I find Osiris, judge of the dead, his skin an eerie green/blue - the colour of death, wrapped up in a mummy's shrouds.  Most affecting.

Tuthmosis III: weird.  At the end of a long, high gully, deep in cold shadow, up steep, rickety steps - avoiding hordes of yabbering Italian schoolchildren, who obviously care nothing for all this stuff, and would rather be on a beach somewhere - why bring them then?  An amazing warren - and quite tricky to negotiate - hope my party are managing all right.  Narrow winding design.  In the antechamber - strange, rapidly drawn images - a list of hundreds of gods - just to be on the safe side, presumably.  Then more steps into the final burial chamber.  Total silence.  Again that sudden fear comes upon me: what am I doing here, deep inside a mountain, disturbing the last resting places of ancient kings?  More line drawings, rather than full-blown paintings.  Eerie.  Some of the text slants oddly.

Seti I.  One of the biggest, as befits the founder of the great Ramessid dynasty.  Beautiful bas reliefs and hieroglyphs - including rough sketches, still waiting for the chisel, a chisel that never came.  Why?  Did the carver die?  Was there a war?  Who knows what stories lie behind such apparently trivial facts?  An unknown mummy, dried to a crisp.  This white stone just begs to be carved - or touched.  It looks almost edible.  A worrying note in the Blue Guide about lack of ventilation.  It is certainly oppressively hot and fetid inside some of the innermost chambers of these tombs - again, think of the damage we are doing just being here.  One day, it must stop....  Outside, into the literally blinding sunshine - I cannot look at the dazzling rock around me.  Glancing back into the tomb - strange, this black maw of death.

Horemheb: not a name you meet much.  Unbelievable tomb: very long, and very, very, very deep.  Just down all the way.  What made them go along or down?  The kind of rock they met?  But this is seriously weird.  Great scene with Maat, the jackal-god Anubis, Hathor with the cow's head, falcon-headed Horus and a mummified Osiris.  On the other side, Osiris' sister and wife Isis - with a throne on her head for some reason.  But beautiful in her white dress stopping just below her breasts.  Very sensual, even here among the dead.

Amenhotep II: another deepy - 90 steps no less.  A number of royal mummies were found here - probably after their own tombs were robbed.  Sad end for all that greatness.

Ramses VI: one of the longest, and best decorated - and most crowded now.  Lots of very strange drawings on its walls - that occult stuff again.  Apparently they show how in death the soul becomes strong enough to be reborn.

Tutankhamun: a good one to finish with, just when everyone is dying of heat/thirst/tiredness.  Apart from the fact that we have to queue to get in.  And there is so little to see - such a footling king.  And ironically so important to us, and probably the best-known of them all.  That's history for you.

Now in the nearby rest-house.  Squat concrete building - but blissfully cool.  Looking out at the valley roasting in the midday sin - even though the air is still cold - I am blinded by the reflected light.

This is a strange place.  So much thought and energy - and unimaginable wealth - put into these zigzagging holes in the ground.  And inside them - real horror movie stuff: narrow corridors, bridges across deep pits, twisting turns, sudden drops.  The half-finished charms on the wall, the watching eyes of the gods, waiting to be discovered, or perhaps annoyed at being disturbed.

Unlike some other monuments the tombs feel frighteningly fresh and new - partly because they were hidden for thousands of years, like time capsules, and partly because there is no distracting, distancing modernity that you often find at other sites - except the odd light bulb.  If you stand here, within a hill, absent from the world, it seems just as likely that you will step out to find yourself transported back 3,000 years as to regain what we call the present - which, as every schoolboy knows, does not exist except as a hinge between what will be and what was.  Perhaps this feeling of uncertainty, this frisson, is bound up with the fact that they are tombs, not just rooms: their future inhabitants, before entering for the last time in death, could not be certain where - or if - they would emerge.  Religion might offer vague hopes, but no more.  So a tomb stands as a reminder to everyone - a warning, a threat....

Before we get on the coach for a deeply unsuitable exit from this place, I must just jot down some of my memories of the first time I came here.

I left my bike propped up against a wall by the parking area in front of Hatshepsut's temple.  I then took one of the well-worn paths - rather too well-worn for someone as unathletic as me - paths which led up the ridge behind the temple.  Over the ridge there was another track which led down to the valley here - about an hour's climb and descent.

On the way back, instead of descending immediately, I turned right, and walked along the ridge for a way.  At one of the points which command a stunning view over both the Valley of the Kings and of the Nile Valley, I sat down and drank it all in.  The warm afternoon sun poured down on me; the cooling wind refreshed me.  Behind was the lunar landscape, bare of vegetation, the Land of the Dead.  In front of me was the plain down to the Nile, with the great temples of Ramses II and III clearly visible - but looking like child's building bricks, the Colossi of Memnon mere dolls -  and the more recent villages which had sprung up among them.  Further away I could see the various roads leading to the ferries.  And beyond that the Nile, which stretched away like an enormous band in both directions for what - twenty, fifty miles?  The town of Luxor, the temples; and I remember that as I sat there, a tiny toy aeroplane landed at Luxor airport beyond the town, coming down in front of the chain of hills which echoed the ones I was sitting on.

And I thought then of how little changed this scene was in essentials from one that someone at the height of the Egyptian kingdom might have seen - from this very spot: the temples, complete, the town of Thebes, the mountains - and of course the Nile.  And I could imagine the Pharaoh Ramses II at his peak - his dark, powerful, body shining like polished metal from the thin veil of sweat brought on by the intense heat, by the pace of the march, by the memory of battle - returning with his army after a great conquest, a huge cloud of dust rising up behind them, moving over the plains in numbers almost unimaginable for the time - tens of thousands of men, the greatest army in the world, led by the greatest king alive.  And I would happily have swapped places with that person sitting here then, to have experienced that peak of history.

Because everywhere, it was a truly amazing time, as if something was abroad.  For example, it is highly likely that the pharaoh under whom Moses and the Jews suffered was Ramses II.  It is almost certain that the Fall of Troy took place at around this time - and indeed, the Egyptian records refer to some of those pesky Greeks turning up in the Nile delta on their way back.

And it was a true pivot in history, though none could have known it.  Those same Greeks, or rather various tribes of them, were marauding around the whole of this end of the Mediterranean.  The ancient civilisations of Egypt and the Sumerians and the Hittites would all be conquered in time by the newly powerful Assyrians - until they in their turn were defeated by the Medes, then the Persians, met and matched by Greeks at the Battle of Marathon - and finally conquered by Alexander the Great, who would also add Egypt to his huge if short-lived empire.  And this great and mighty Thebes, known to Homer, the wonder of the world, would fall into decay, abandoned to a few villagers, its monuments covered up with sand, or robbed for stone, or built over.  And yet enough survived that I could sit on that ridge and wonder at it all.

As I do now, sitting in the shade of the Ramesseum, next to the fallen man himself, Ramses II.  I cannot agree with Shelley's spiteful irony: apocryphal though the inscription was, had it been there we would indeed despair in looking at all these works, huge giants' works which have survived for three millennia.  The boast of Ramses - Usermare Sotpenre - Ozymandias - would not have been in vain.

It was to the Ramesseum that I went after I came down from the ridge that time.  During the descent the cliff wall behind Hatshepsut's tomb was clearly visible: it looked like a curtain with folds, frozen in stone.  I could also pick out what seemed to be countless squirming figures struggling to emerge.  I remember the bicycle ride from the Queen's mortuary complex along to the Ramesseum as a ride from hell, grit in my eyes, grit in my mouth, tears streaming down my face, unable to see anything.  I can still feel the grit in my eyes.

But the sights at the Ramesseum were worth it - in retrospect.  That Battle of Kadesh, together with another, the story of Dapur.  These scenes of walled cities being stormed: this must have been a very disturbing idea for the ancients.  Cities were, after all, still quite a recent invention, certainly these huge fortified ones.  They must have seemed impregnable - until someone like Ram came along and took them.  Then a new fear must have entered the hearts of the city-dwellers, a new sense of insecurity, a feeling that civilisation - literally born of the civil, the city - was something fragile and easily lost back to chaos.  

Apparently the two colossal statues of Ram would have weighed about 1000 tons originally: how did they move them?  I mean, how would we move anything that big and bulky today?

Nice with the vegetation growing amidst the ruins - junipers? - looks quite English-like.  Delicate fragrance.  I am sitting by the throne that the Italian Belzoni inscribed with his name and the date - 1816 - one of the earlier excavators-cum-tourists.  I really like the Ramesseum.  For all its attempted grandeur, it has paradoxically a very personal feel about it, all those cartouches of Ram.  And the scale of everything fits.  The papyrus columns are elegant, as are the pillars.  Good to see the hypostyle hall covered, as it would have been at Karnak.  And the setting helps, with the natural amphitheatre of the hills behind.  Interesting mud-brick structures behind, crumbling even as we walk through it, as we touch it and break bits off - why do we feel this urge? - a reminder of how much we have lost that was built in this material.

On previous occasions I visited the Tombs of the Nobles, and the Valley of the Queens, but we don't have the time today.  Pity, because the situation of the Nobles' tombs is striking.  To get to them, you go through the village of Abd al Qurnah - a poor dry place, with squat houses higgledy-piggledy.  And then the fun begins as you try to find the tombs - because many of the houses are built over them.  And the entrances to the tombs are little more than a small quarry-type pit, a door and then a plunge into darkness.  They are like smaller - often very small - and more intimate versions of the royal tombs.  My favourite still remains that of Nakht and his wife, with the stunning and mouth-watering painting of the beautiful girl musicians and dancers.  I was a little startled to see this image in our hotel bedroom - on the curtains.  But it does make you wonder what the everyday reality of life in Ancient Egypt was like - rather than for the kings and queens.  A good view, I remember, from the top of the village.  But hard work clambering around.

And so now to the end of our day, and to one of the most amazing masterpieces of the West Bank - but I am getting tired writing here, and there is too much to tell people.  Later, on the terrace - with that Turkish coffee.

Which by magic, I now have in front of me - oh! the power of words.  So here I am, sitting in my accustomed seat, watching the sun sink down again - and hoping for a better sunset than yesterday.  It is amazing how quickly we fall into set habits when travelling abroad.  As soon as we stop in one place for a few days, we establish our routines as an army might set up a camp.  We return to those routines eagerly, and feel secure with them - and are annoyed if they are disrupted.  I suppose what we are trying to do is establish a little island of security amidst an ocean of uncertainty - for that is what travel is normally about, confronting - and often trying to tame - the new and the threatening.  Which is also why people like going on tours - the company and the guide act as an insulating factor around the tourists, sealing off the foreignness, or at least only letting it past the gates in controlled and manageable quantities.

So, to this afternoon.  [The sun has turned a glorious gold - Re is on his way down.]  After the Ramesseum, we went along to the temple of Rameses III at Madinat Habu.  This seems to be one of Egypt's better-kept secrets.  Although it has everything that the Ramesseum has, and is complete, rather than in a ruinous condition, and in its sheer extent is on a par with the Great Pyramids, most tourists miss it out - which is bliss for me and my groups, since we generally have the place to ourselves.

But it does pose a bit of problem for me when I write 'Egyptian Romance'.  Since it is one of the most fascinating places in Egypt, I must write about it - particularly because other writers have failed to trumpet it enough.  But if I do write about it, it will just become another tourist trap - and lose much of its attraction.  This is the paradox of all travel writing: we want to describe places that retain a unique, unspoilt beauty - and in doing so, we destroy that beauty, and the whole point of writing about them.  In that sense, it is like tourism generally: we want to go to places which are different from where we are, and which do not have all the same people we meet every day, who are just like us.  And yet when we get there, we inevitably change the place we visit just by virtue of visiting it.  And who do we find there but hordes of other tourists - people just like us and those we know at home.  Perhaps the only people who can win in this situation are those that get there early enough to write about it before it is spoilt - and who move on insouciantly to new conquests as it becomes spoilt as a result of their descriptions.  Sounds a bit unsatisfactory to me. [Fragrances in the air, the birds' dusk chorus.]

The approach to the temple of Ram III is a bit deceptive: you go through this undistinguished-looking gate - actually ancient and architecturally interesting for its crenellations which were copied from some Asiatic fortress - walk on a bit - and 'pow!' - it hits you.  This amazing giant pylon, in perfect condition, about 60 feet high and 200 feet long.  It is covered with an immense representation of Ram III with Amun slaying sundry foreigners.  Unlike Ram II and his beloved Battle of Kadesh, the images here are a bit of a sham: Ram III never really fought any big battles himself - but by now the mythology of the pharaoh as hero was fixed.  [Liquid yellow now].

Stepping through the first pylon, you enter a court, again in almost perfect condition.  More depictions of sundry bloodthirsty deeds - including an extraordinary one of priests tallying up the number of enemies' willies they had in a mound.  Very odd - and disturbing: it makes me want to walk past it with my legs crossed.  There is so much colour left in this court, it is hard to remember that it is over 3,000 years old.  [An orange tincture now - and in the after-image of looking at the sun, I have a hundred swirling Re's in my eye.]

Up a ramp through to the next court, apparently smaller but actually bigger in area - the extra columns crowd in to deceive.  Up another ramp into the hypostyle hall - unfortunately open to the skies and much damaged.  A few rooms at the back - but all looking a bit unimpressive because of the missing hypostyle hall.  The outer walls covered with hieroglyphics - the longest inscription we have, apparently.  Also interesting are some strange deep gougings visible: the temple was such a holy place that dust scraped from its stones was regarded as efficacious against many ills.  The faithful came here and wore away the stones - just like tourists, really.  [The mountains of the West Bank have turned to some incredible chocolate flake confection - I'm sorry, but they have.]

Then after this rousing finale, a quick glance at the disappointing Colossi of Memnon - one of which is wrapped up in plastic as if for Christmas.  To the ferry, and then back to here. [The first pinks in the air, the birds going nuts.]

Rather different from the first time I visited Ram III.  It was of course, totally awe-inspiring - I was just so unprepared - it was as it must have been for the original archaeologists.  I rode my bike back, the sun sinking behind me, casting long shadows everywhere.  To the public ferry, where hordes were waiting to jump on.  A few other westerners whom I ignored.  [Perhaps peach-coloured now.]

The ferry came, and we got on - some quicker than others.  Once we had all clambered aboard I saw this girl sitting opposite me with a friend.  She had blood all down her - and great dusty gashes on her arm and leg.  A bright red patch ran down her calf.  I presume she must have taken a corner too fast on a bike - the gravelly roads are treacherous here - come off, and slid along on the sandpaper-like surface.  But the thing was, I felt incredibly impotent in the face of her injuries.  What should I have done?  Going up to her and asking if she was all right was plainly daft; what help could I have given her?  So I decided that it would be best not to trouble her - she was with someone who was obviously taking care of her.  A trivial incident, perhaps, and yet the memory of the look of pain on her face, of the dried blood darkening on her leg, has stayed with me.  I don't really know why.  [Re is slipping behind the hills, changing boats for his nightly voyage - as Thoth? - it's all so confusing.]

And here we are, the past catching up with the present - today's past, that is.  [Red leaking out along the horizon, a tiny, unlookable-at segment still above the hills.]

I hope that bloody hotel is all right in Aswan tomorrow - I still haven't got through.  [Feluccas serene on the Nile, a falcon hovering - Horus the god.]

The coffee was good.  [Re dead now, the darkness descends even as I sit here.  Chilly.]

• Chapter 7 - London, Saturday 8 September, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 7 - London, Saturday 8 September, 1990

Yes, John, you did seem particularly happy that day - as if everything you saw filled you with a kind of special energy and intensity.  It also meant that you ignored the rest of us pretty much all the time - except when you were doing your duty, telling us about what we were looking at.  But even then, you seemed to be talking more to yourself.  I'm not begrudging you this; it's simply a bit of a shame that you couldn't take the trouble to talk to your group more.  I think you would have been surprised at them - I know I was.

Alekko, for example.  His story about his youth, and his first love, and his flight suddenly made me see him in a different light.  I mean that until then I'd somewhat patronisingly seen him as this jolly old man.  It is hard for someone who is much younger to see the old as ever being our age or being passionately in love.  So Alekko made vivid for me - in part, of course - how he felt, what it was like then.  And he lost nothing of what I first saw; instead, he gained - his past filled out his present.  But perhaps I am projecting what happened later; perhaps it was only when he told me some of the other extraordinary events in his life that I realised this.  Perhaps I should have kept a travel journal, too, so that I could pinpoint the exact moments when things happened.  But there again, does it really matter exactly when or where they occurred?

Anyway, that day we - Alekko and I - first talked, our first day in Luxor, I decided not to press him further.  And I felt that I had been selfish again, concentrating just on him, and more or less leaving the others in our party to their own devices.  So over dinner I chatted to them.  I liked the dining hall at the Savoy.  Such lovely waiters, really proud of doing their jobs - despite the indifference of the all the tour groups in there.  Food was reasonable, I thought, quite light even though filling - which we needed after the day's exertions.

And which we would need the next day as well, as you have described.  Yes, it was a bit of struggle getting up so early and staggering down to breakfast.  But it was worth it - that fresh bite in the dawn air, the peacefulness of the Nile as it moved past effortlessly.  The bustle of the ferry - even if it was 'only' the tourist one - it was still fun to be out on the Nile.  And that sense of crossing from the land of the living to the land of the dead that you explained - the vastness and majesty of the water separating them seemed appropriate somehow.

But what can I say about Hatshepsut's monument?  I thought that I was impressed with the Great Pyramids, but this - I was bowled over.  It was so beautiful to look at, so stunningly sited against that great rearing up of stone.  And especially - you will doubtless say this is irrelevant John, but it is what I felt - especially because a woman had done it.  Although you did point out that it was exceptional for her to have done so, you didn't actually say what the implication of that was: that this was the first historical woman to rule a mighty nation (who knows what great women ruled tribes in the dim and distant past?).  The name of Queen Hatshepsut should be inscribed on every schoolgirl's heart.

Here was a woman who dared to rule not as a faithful consort helping her husband, not as some all-powerful mistress who dominated her weak pharaoh lover behind the scenes, but as a woman, confident in her abilities, and strong-willed enough to use them.  All this, a model of her kind - and not some a modern 'feminist' precursor of the last hundred or even two hundred years, but fully thirty centuries, a hundred generations, ago.  Is it any wonder that I was impressed?

As was Alekko - who put up with my excited gabblings along the lines of the above remarkably well.  He then uttered the fateful words:

"Yes, you have right, of course.  A great woman, a strong, magnificent woman.  Truly, she reminds me of the Contessa...."  And once again he smiled that small, distant smile of his, as those scenes from the past began to pass before his inner eye - but said no more.

"Alekko!" I said.  "You are a cruel man: you cannot leave me hanging like that.  What Contessa - if I may - ?"

"But certainly, of course.  - But I fear it is a rather long story - if I become boring, I beg you that you stop me."

But I knew now that Alekko was one of those people who can never be boring - either because so much has happened to them, or because they see much even in little, or possibly because they just know how to tell a story.

"So," he began as we walked back to the coach for our visit to the Valley of the Kings.  "I think that we spoke yesterday of my flight from Paxos, and of my poor, beloved Nafsika, no?"  I nodded.  "What can I say?  I was heart-broken.  I had lost what was most precious to me - almost before I knew how precious.  Did I think of madnesses?  Of course - I wanted to rush back, face the father.  I wanted to throw myself into the black sea.  But I was sensible.  Perhaps even then I remembered an old Albanian saying: 'the heart is like a mirror - though it is broken, its pieces are still mirrors.'  And so I was happy weeping.  I lived.

When I arrived on the land of Greece, I decided to go to Athens.  I had never seen a big city before - Albania had not one then, I know not now - perhaps not now either - so in my youth I was interested.  I arrived in Athens and was amazed at the size - and the people.  Everywhere, people, people.  I decided that it was necessary for me to see lots and lots of people, so I went to the biggest hotel in the city - the 'Great Britain', Sindagma Square - and asked for work.  I became a messenger there, taking letters and telegrams and messages.  

I had a beautiful blue uniform - a good thing, because I had little clothes.  Every day and night I ran with letters and messages, I was quick, I was a tidy young man - I looked good with the suit.  The ladies, they tipped very well, and sometimes - but that is not in this story.

I worked hard, saved some money - I did not drink or gamble like the others - I ate in the kitchens where I helped sometimes, extra to win friends, and there was this beautiful chambermaid - but enough.  I was not happy.  When I was in Albania, and my tongue was forbidden, I dreamt of talking Greek every, every day.  Here I talked Greek, heard Greek.  But I was not happy.  Why you ask?  Is this not foolish, all these good things?  But that is why, lady.  In my heart all my Greek words were for her, and for her alone.  All the beautiful Greek ladies, all the kind ones, they only reminded me of her.  And in my good things there, I was unhappy because I was not with her, and she was - who knows? - in pain.

So, I decided: I must leave this hotel, this Athens, this Greece - the land of my tongue, I thought, but I must give them up because of her, perhaps as a punishment to myself - I must leave and go away somewhere.  Perhaps too - I will be honest with you, I will try that I say how it was - I wanted to see the world.  Athens was a great city - but it was not the world.  I talked with those in the hotel - many had been in the world.  They knew places - Rome, Paris, Germany, London - and told me marvellous tales.  My heart beat as it beat when I saw my lovely one.  It is necessary that I travel.

And so with my money, I said farewell to my hotel, to my chambermaid, to the fine ladies, to my Greek tongue.  I went down to the harbour, and walked by the ships.  I asked where they were going.  Some said Greece, some said Africa, some said America - and one said Venice.  Now Venice was a name that people said.  They told me it was a land built on the water, and that no man had lived until he had seen this wonder.  And I decided then that this was where I would go.  So I paid the money for a passage there.  You see, perhaps now a Contessa who is coming, true?" he teased.

We had parked the coach by now, and were walking from tomb to tomb in the Valley of the Kings.  It sounds so, well romantic - 'Valley of the Kings'.  I don't know quite what I expected, but I was rather disappointed with this, this quarry, unnaturally white, and getting hotter by the minute.  The first few tombs were fascinating, stepping down into the earth, entering a magic kingdom.  And the paintings were beautiful - where they survived.  But after a while it was hard to see differences - apart from obvious things like shapes.  Perhaps they would have looked more personal - if that's the right word - with the kings in them, particularly with all their treasures.  But then obviously we couldn't have seen them.

I suppose also that what I disliked about them fundamentally was their obsession with death.  Yes, I know John, that you said they Egyptians were very affirmative about death, but to my eyes it just looked like death.  But you, you were like a schoolboy exploring some pirates' cave.  Also, we were all exhausted long before we finally broke for lunch.  But of course nobody dared say anything because, after all, they were on a tour, and so felt obliged to see everything that they were shown.  But what's the point if you are too tired to take it in?  I'm being unfair; I suppose what I am saying partly is that I was impatient to get to Venice - with Alekko.

It was strange sitting there in that resthouse place, with blinding sunlight outside, and 60 ancient pharaohs' tombs, listening to this wonderful old man talking about Venice in his youth.  I have to admit that Venice won against what was around us.

"I do not know if you have seen Venice?  No?  Ah, you have such a pleasure that will come then.  I cannot describe with my poor words the sight which greeted me when we arrived.  It was as they said - no, better, more everything.

We arrived a little way from the great square of St Mark's.  They were rows and rows of great ships alongside the wooden quays, and then near them, rows and rows of black boats - the gondolas - tied to old trees in the sea.  I got out where it was the Riva degli Schiavoni - the Bank of the Slavonics - and I thought: this must be me, I am almost a slavonic.  Is this home, then? - you know, I was always looking for a home.  But it was not to be.

I go to the square of St Mark's, and what do I see?  A Greek church, St Mark's is a Greek church.  At every step my heart grows bigger - it will break my body with joy.  And the women - I stand by the church and watch hundreds, thousands of beautiful young women go by.  I think that I am in heaven again.  And this time, the language is not Greek - it is music, Italian.

I do not know where I am going, but I do not mind.  I am so happy, it is of no importance - and I know that something good will happen.  And it is the truth.

I walk, and it is a confusion of roads and bridges and squares.  I am lost, but I cannot be lost because I have no home - yes, you have said it, another saying from my old country.  I find myself in a square with a church and a tower.  I remember the name because my life changed there - and because the name was a name for me.  It was the square of the - not beautiful, well, yes beautiful, but there is a better word for the Italian  - " Alekko searched for the word " - yes, the square of Mary with shape, of the shapely Mary.

It is late in the afternoon. Now I am hungry, and wish to sit.  I see tables and shops in the square.  I buy some food - bread and cheese with wine - my last money.  What will I do?  I speak no Italian then.  I cannot ask except with signs.  I decide to sit and think and watch.  I sit and think about the beautiful young Italian ladies I see.  And as I sit and think I smile, and they smile back sometimes.

And then what do I see?  I see a man dressed in a hundred colours, and wearing a mask.  He is running around us, around the square.  He is making noises like a bird, like a dog.  Now he has a bell - he rings it, and shouts something.  Then, I do not understand, but later yes.  He is shouting to the people to come and see the Comedy.

And people start to come, they move up to something I had not seen before, away from the church, a stage with a curtain, in front of a big wall.  The crowd gathers round.  Lights are put around the stage - it is dark now, the sky coming down black.  People - and me - stand around the stage and the curtain.  There is a drum, a trumpet, a pipe.  It is a noise, and suddenly the comedy begins.  The curtain opens and there is the man with the bell, but without the bell.  He is with another man, very big, a fat man, with a mask too and a long great nose.  They argue.  I cannot understand, and yet I can understand, I understand the hands and the bodies.

And then something strange.  A young woman comes on, with no mask.  She is beautiful, but with much make-up on her.  Suddenly everybody goes off, but the man with the bell - and a clown comes on too.  They start talking - and talking to the audience.  The audience laughs at the noises of their words, but does not understand.  The crowd shouts back, but not Italian, nonsense.  And now suddenly I can understand - because these nonsenses for the crowd are not nonsense; they are my old Albanian.

I stand there with the mouth open.  Then I shout back - in the Albanian.  The men on the stage fall down.  The crowd laughs.  The men stand up, jump off the stage and run up to me.  They do jumps and rolls as they come.  They ask me - in the Albanian - where I am from - making jumps, with the crowd laughing and laughing.  But I am young, I too can jump and roll.  Now there are three of us jumping up and down and around through the crowd, shouting questions and answers to us, the crowd crying with laughter.  We have to stop while they are so happy.  The men say never have the people wept so much.  Then all the actors rush out with hats for money.  The crowd gives and gives - it cannot help themselves, even though the Comedy is so short - it is so good too.  As we say: 'who looks at a clock while he laughs?'.

Behind the stage the men count the money, and ask if I need money.  I say yes, and I need work.  The two men talk in Italian with the others.  They ask me to jump and roll with the Albanian for their Comedy.  And so look I am an actor.  But yes, soon, the Comtessa, I can almost hear her.  But did I not say it was a long story?  You wish that I stop?"  he asked with mock seriousness - knowing that I was now hanging on his every word, jump and roll just like that poor, happy crowd, laughing helplessly in Venice.

Now we were at the Ramesseum - your beloved Ramses.  One thing that was troubling me increasingly was all the little children at the gates of these monuments.  Tiny, tiny children - some only four or five, hair dusty and tousled, dressed in mere rags, with their little statues of mummies wrapped up in a dirty cloth, a few crude brooches, bits of papyrus.  I found their appeals hard to resist, their plaintive little cries of 'baksheesh'.  It is so demeaning this whole baksheesh business, this graciousness of the master to the servant, slave almost.  It must sap the spirit of the whole nation, having to beg so shamelessly to all these foreigners - however much they may despise us, they must be affected in their self-esteem by all this.  And yet there seems no way out.  If we fail to give baksheesh they are understandably angry - and financially losing out.  But if we give baksheesh - or, even worse, if we are generous or simply ignorant in giving it - we support the system, and perpetuate it.  It is hard.

And the Ramesseum?  Yes, evocative ruins - perhaps more 'typical' than many in Egypt, which are, as you say, almost too good.  But I cannot agree with your comments about Shelley's poem.  Yes, much remains of Ramses' achievements; but as you yourself point out, his tomb was robbed, and his body dumped in some hole somewhere.  Surely we should despair when we look on his works, but as Shelley meant it: because nothing really endures of even the mightiest works.  It is pointless pinning our faith - our lives - on this kind of thing.

To which you will probably answer 'but look at the temple of Ramses III, which has endured to this day.'  But to me it just looked bombastic.  And you yourself observed that it was a sham in many ways, a monument to battles hardly fought, a lie in stone.  It is undeniably impressive in a basic sort of way - but only in the same way that equally gross office blocks are in London.  They do not really lift the spirit.  Why can't there be more monuments to some of the positive things in life?  Why is it always war, death, destruction?

Anyway, it was pleasant enough wandering through all these ruins in the lovely afternoon sun - a bit hot for you, though - listening to Alekko tell his story.  But I suppose that is just another of saying that I didn't pay that much attention to what we looking at, that instead I was caught up in the world Alekko was creating with his words.  He continued:

"So here I am actor.  The two men - the man with the bell and the clown - were Albanians, who had escaped long years ago.  Their names were Leka and Sarif.  When I went back to their lodgings, an old palazzo, surrounded by water - ah! happy me - and with big dark rooms and candles, they asked me a hundred questions about our old country.  They shook their heads, tears rolled down their faces.  They knew they would never go back now.

The actors were here for the Carnival celebrations.  They wandered over all Europe.  They had Albanians, Italians, French, Swiss.  They became my friends.  Apart from Leka and Sarif, there was Miele, who was the beautiful lady, Samuele - who was strong and silent - Monsieur Leboeuf, who played the fat man, and was the leader of the actors, and was very good to me, helping me, and there was Frau Heckli, who played the mothers and the bad wives.

We were so happy in our place there.  After each day's performance - we gave two on Saturday - we would walk the streets of Venice in our costumes, making noises, making jumps and rolls.  Because you know Venice is the heaven for such acting - there are no cars or horses, just people and boats on the canals.  So we could go everywhere as ourselves, with no sounds but the talking of people, the boots on the stones, and our crazinesses.

We would walk and walk and walk, but never could get lost.  We always hit the great square with the Greek church.  But it is impossible to lose yourself in Venice.  All roads lead somewhere.  And so we would walk, find a place to eat, sit, eat and drink and be happy.  I learnt a little Italian - my friends helped -  and soon I was laughing and joking too.  Once again, I wanted to die I was so happy.

But Fate was watching me, it did not want me to rest there in this heaven of water.  Because it was Carnival time, there were many balls.  And anyone could go to these balls, if they were in costume.  But actors are always in costume.  We put on our masks and we were there.

So one day we decided after dinner after the Comedy to go to a ball.  It was easy - we walked and watched for people and listened for the music.  It was not long that we found it.  It was a huge palazzo - I do not know which - by the Grand Canal.  There was a small square with many people, all in masks - some over the eyes, some over all the faces - mine was over only the eyes, perhaps I am vain.  From the square there is a courtyard with a fine staircase rising up.  At the top, bright lights, much happy music.  People outside were going up, some were coming down laughing and happy.  We looked at ourselves, my friends, and we said 'this is the place, yes?'  And joining arms, we went in a line.

The hall was big and bright - candles everywhere hanging from the ceiling, mirrors on the walls making a thousand more candles.  People dressed in beautiful costumes - the ladies in great dresses, full of flying cloth, diamonds, jewels.  And the other side, tall windows with balconies looking at the Grand Canal - a great darkness below us, except for the gondolas going past with more people, lanterns on both sides, some singing sad beautiful songs on the water.

The musicians were at one end, on a raise.  They were playing and playing, melodies and melodies.  We had to dance - our feet were forced.  So we danced, and did not stop.  I danced with Miele, with Frau Heckli.  I danced with Leka and Sarif, I even danced with Samuele and Monsieur Leboeuf - and these do not dance, but tonight they danced because of the music and the Carnival and it was good to be alive.

And then I danced with others.  Now because of our masks it is very strange and exciting dancing with others at Carnival.  You do not know who they are.  Perhaps they are your friends, perhaps your enemies.  Perhaps they are your wife.  Perhaps they are young and beautiful, or not so young and not so beautiful.  No more you can choose.  Instead, you let Fate take your hand, and lead you to a partner.  You learn to accept as it comes, because otherwise you cannot dance, you cannot love the music.

And now it was late in the night.  Many dancers had gone - some home, some not.  My friends too were going - I saw Miele and Leka and Sarif and I waved as I danced.  But I wanted more.  I was young, I was strong, I was happy.  And I was dancing now with a woman - a wonderful woman - who was dancing and dancing.  Like me, she could not stop.  And she smiled as she danced - I could see half her face only, but her mouth smiled, and her body too told me that she smiled.  Her hands were light but firm in mine.  Beautiful hands, not the hands of a not young or not beautiful woman.  

Finally the musicians could no more.  Their faces were red, their arms shook.  They played a final dance, a final long note, then must stop.  We clap their great efforts.  Then - what then?  This is the interesting.  I ask my beautiful lady if we shall take some air.  She bows, we go to the balcony.  We talk for a while - with my poor Italian - but already I know the important words, I can survive in the language.

We watch the dawn in the sky.  A few lonely gondolas below us, but all very quiet, just the lovely Venice, the water of green glass - and us.  And somehow - but how do these things happen, I have never understood - somehow we kiss, and we kiss, and we stay kissing as the light comes.  I feel her warm body against mine and I know, mask or no mask, that she is young and fine.  And so that is how I met the Contessa."

"But Alekko, this is still only the beginning of the story, not the story itself.  Who was she?  What did you do then?  What about your actors?  What happened?"  It seemed the more that Alekko said, the more he left unsaid.  Or rather, the more I knew, the more it revealed there was to know.

"Ah lady, is it any wonder?  Life is so full and rich, it must take life to tell all of it.  But you are right, there is more, and I will try to tell it quickly so that you can hold it all at once.

I had luck, I had reason - she was beautiful.  Her name was the Contessa Arabella dei - but it does not matter, her family name.  I of course called her Bella, and that she loved, for she was proud and of fire as I found.  But she had the face and body of a goddess.  Her hair was long and dark golden and with waves like water, her eyes were like honey, her lips wet and sweet like water and honey together.  She stole my soul with those lips.  And she held it with her perfect hands, and held it against her body which had waves too, long waves.  

She was married to the Conte when young, by her family.  She did not love him - but she loved his title, his palace, his wealth.  She ruled him.  She did as she wished, but was by his side when his duties needed her.  They seemed a perfect husband and wife, but it was all a lie.

But what did I care of this?  I was young, I was stolen by her kisses.  That night, we went down to the floor at the Canal.  There was a kind of cave there, the water came in under the house.  It was cold and dark and smelt of the sea and sea plants.  There was a gondola tied up there, swaying with the waves as they came in.  My Bella rang a bell, and a little later a man appeared, stretching and yawning.  She told him to take us to the island.  The man prepared the gondola for us.  Inside it was covered in blood velvet, soft and lovely.  We closed the doors of the gondola, so that the wind and waves did not come in.  We swayed with the boat as the man moved it out through the entrance on to the Grand Canal.

Then it was magic.  I lay in the arms of my beautiful Contessa as she played with my hair and kissed me and whispered Italian to me - music.  And outside the great line of palaces went past, sleeping nearly all of them, a few with a light at the window.  And were they as happy as me?  I thought.  We carried on, the boat moving forward in gentle pushes, past the great church by the customs, past the great tower, past the Greek Church, past where my boat from Athens had arrived so many months ago - but so many years it felt.

And now we were out in the water.  We passed the island of St. George with the tower and the most beautiful church in the world - I went there with my friend, Miele - past that, between strange logs, old and cracking, in the water like marks for a path.  The man pushed the boat still, and we went past little islands with little churches on them - who went there? - past islands with a tree only.  Finally we came to an island with a wall and a house.  The gondola stopped at the bank, where there was a stone part, and the man tied it up.  He helped me out, and then Bella.

'Welcome' she said to me, squeezing my arm as we walked towards the house - palace in truth.  'This is one of my husband's old castles.  We will stay here.'  Would I argue?  My friends the actors - I could not tell them - they would worry, but I knew they knew I was young and could live.  Also, they would change the play - it changed every time.  They did not need me.  I knew also that they would understand when I told them.  They too would do the same.

We went straight to bed.  We were tired.  We rose later, in the afternoon.  I sat on the edge of the great bed - with a tent over the top - Bella still sleeping beside me, her hair like little gold wires on the sheets, her skin very pink, and I looked out of the window.  It was raining.  A heavy rain that falls in Venice, but a beautiful rain.  It fell on to the water, shaking it everywhere.  The sea was grey and moving all the time.  It was good to be inside, warm with my Bella.

We got up, and Bella found some fine clothes for me of her husband.  I have never been proud.  I take what is given.  I looked like a prince she said.  And I did.  We went down to eat - was it breakfast or lunch or supper?  I do not know.  Servants hurried around us, as if frightened of the Contessa.  And they had reason.  As I knew her a few weeks, I learnt that she was a tiger.  She became angry, and then quiet like little child.  And she was passionate.  I felt as if drunk on her, drunk on her kisses, drunk on her body.  

I did not count the days, I did not worry, I did not even think of my friends.  I could not.  My mind was full of Bella, Bella, Bella.  Outside it rains and rains, but I am glad.  We never leave the castle.  Sometimes we sit and talk, we eat, we drink, but mostly we lay in our arms, for days and days.

How can it end?  I do not think but I do not have to.  One day, when we are still in bed - morning, afternoon, the words lost their meaning - I hear a huge shouting and banging of doors downstairs.  I listen, unable to think what it might be.  My Bella moves beside me.  Then suddenly like an animal she runs out of bed, puts on her gown, then runs downstairs.  'Stay!' she commands - and I do not disobey.

I lie in the bed, watching the rain against the window, hearing the wind beat at it.  I do not think of anything.  I lie and lie, waiting for what will come.  And I hear voices downstairs - my Bella, and a man.  They are shouting, screaming - it is like a song in the opera, now one, now another, their voices rising and falling, in and out.  It is music - even shouting Italian is music.  Bella comes back.  'I am sorry, you must go now.  My husband - the fool! - is returned, and waits for an important visitor.  His stupid politics - what do I care for politics?  And yet, and yet...bo!, let us go, it must be done.  Alekko, my prince, it is time for you to return to the land of the ugly people, the land of politics, the land of my husband's great friend, the great Leader.'  And her face had such a look of hate as she spoke this.

I was still in a dream.  These weeks - surely I was still at that ball, still dancing - surely I would wake up there again?  I felt nothing as I put on my old poor clothes.  My heart was not breaking - but I knew that I would wake up tomorrow and be sad.  I looked at my lovely Contessa, she was pacing the room, an animal, angry, muttering to herself in her beautiful tongue.  I could not tell what she felt - apart from her anger.  I felt sorry for her - I who was leaving this magic castle, I felt sorry for her, for her life, for her being married.  It is a sad thing such marriages.  I have seen it so often, and yet men and women still marry, I do not know why sometimes.

I went down to the bank again.  The servants stood and watched me with silent eyes.  I did not see the Conte.  At the bank, there was the gondola and the man.  He was wet and tired.  Bella took me in her arms.  She wept now as she saw that I was going.  She kissed me, just as she had kissed me that first time.  I felt a tingle on my head - perhaps she gave me back my soul then.  'Addio!' she said, and let me go.  I could say nothing but 'Addio!' too.  I went in the gondola, and watched her as she stood on the bank, shivering in the wind and the rain, her cloak pulled tight around her, her golden hair going wet, going darker.  Then I could see no more."

"Did you ever see her again, Alekko?"  I asked.

"No, never, but it is best that way.  She was from a different world, a world of contessas and magic.  We have an old saying: 'you cannot enter the same room twice.'  What was past was past."

"And your actors and friends?"

"Ah!, lady, it was the end of the Carnival.  They must move on.  They could not wait for one actor.  The Comedy must go.  At our lodgings they left a message that they were going to Switzerland and that they would see me there.  But no, I thought, I will not go to Switzerland with them, with my friends.  I had been an actor long enough.  I would go somewhere, somewhere warmer.  

And so I left that wonderful Venice, that land of the water and of Carnivals and of Contessas.  But to Venice I have returned, because it is too beautiful to see only once.  And as I walk down its roads, it seems that nothing changes, the roads, the waters, the gondolas, the balls at Carnival.  And sometimes I think I will see her again.  But I also hope that I do not - she would not recognise this fat old man as her dancer.  And - who knows? - perhaps her hair is not so golden now either.  It is better so."

We were sitting on the terrace at the Savoy by this time, a glorious sunset unfolding before us - the same one you tried to capture, but which can never be captured with mere words.  But it was a lovely end to the day.  It was peaceful sitting there, the birds flying around us, the sails of the feluccas drifting slowly past.  And after Alekko's simple and moving tale, I felt suspended somehow, between what I had seen during the day, and what my mind's eye had drawn from his words.  It was a strange feeling, but not unpleasant.  At dinner, with the babble of tourists' tongues around me, I felt again that sense of dislocation.  I was no longer exactly sure where I was.  But like Alekko on his island in the lagoon, I didn't really mind.  And as it turned out, the following days would help me resolve myself - as I hope to explain to you, John.

• Chapter 8 - Aswan

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 8 - Aswan

After the splendours of Luxor, everything must seem an anticlimax.  And yet the next stop on the tourist's itinerary, Aswan, is not without its attractions.  It is chiefly used as a jumping off point for a visit to the last great monument to the glory of Egypt, Ramses II's temple at Abu Simbel.  But the town itself - its name means simply 'the market' in Coptic - has a certain Mediterranean charm, one or two noteworthy ancient monuments, and one modern one.

The latter is the great High Dam, built with the help of the Soviets.  The dam is the end of a long line of attempts to control the Nile, a line that ultimate goes back the first Egyptians and their ability to predict the cycle of the river's rising and falling, and to direct its life-giving waters along irrigation channels.  After various smaller dams to regulate the flow built in ancient times, the British constructed a dam here at Aswan around the turn of this century.  The High Dam tops that achievement with the creation of an immense man-made lake, now named in honour of the man who caused it to come into being, and who was largely responsible for moulding modern Egypt - President Nasser.

For the visitor the construction of the High Dam has had a number of important - and often regrettable - consequences.  Damming the Nile upstream has flooded many ancient sites along its banks.  Some of these were hurriedly excavated; others simply disappeared beneath the waters for ever.  Two of them were saved by extraordinary means: the temple of Ramses at Abu Simbel, discussed below, and the remains on Philae.

Because of the British dam, the island of Philae was regularly swamped with water for six months of the year.  The arrival of the High Dam threatened to drown it for ever.  So the remains were removed from Philae, and reconstructed piece by piece on the nearby island of Agilqiyyah which had higher ground, and which was specially landscaped to reproduce the appearance of Philae.

In truth, the remains on the new Philae can hardly compare with those of Luxor or the Pyramids.  Most of the monuments are from the end of the Egyptian Empire, around the beginning of the Christian era.  Workmanship is markedly inferior, though the ensemble of buildings is attractive enough.  Perhaps the best of them is the Kiosk of Trajan, built by the Roman emperor of that name.  Its calm and classical poise contrasts forcefully with the tired and jaded reworkings of ancient Egyptian motifs in the temple of Isis.  Of note too are the Temple of Hathor, the ancient cow-headed goddess, and a chapel to Imhotep, the architect of Zozer's Stepped Pyramid at Saqqarah, now elevated to a minor deity, and identified with Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.  Perhaps the best thing about Philae is its location, dreamily set amidst the still waters created between the two dams.

On the way back from Philae and the High Dam the famous Unfinished Obelisk can be visited.  Emerging from the hillside's pink granite is the recumbent form of a giant obelisk, apparently the twin of Hatshepsut's great monument at Luxor.  This one was abandoned after a fault was found in the stone.  It is particularly interesting for the insight it gives us into how such enormous monuments were created - with simple stone pounders to shape it and wedges to break it away from the rockface.  The modern traveller can only wonder at the ancient Egyptians' vision and ambition in conceiving of these vast objects, and transporting them over hundreds of miles.

In the town of Aswan itself, there is little to see, except perhaps the famous Cataract Hotel with its stunning situation opposite one of the islands in the Nile.  Called Elephantine Island on account of the elephant-shaped rocks which seem to be wading in the shallow waters, its ancient monuments - for example of the late temple built in honour of the ram-headed god Khnum - are now very ruined, although Elephantine was once an important, thriving town.  Today the island is mostly inhabited by the darker-skinned Nubians, a reminder that for the Ancient Egyptians Aswan was the main frontier post where their southern empire began.  At Aswan, Africa started.

Finally, for the visitor exhausted by the wonders of Luxor, and unimpressed by the weak Ptolemaic derivatives of Philae, one of the most delightful places to find some repose is on Kitchener's Island.  Named after the Consul-General of Egypt to whom the island was given, it is now a botanical garden with shady trees and fragrant flower-lined paths.  To get there, the tourist can take one of the many picturesque feluccas that ply the Nile here.  After a hard day's sightseeing, there can be nothing more romantic or relaxing than to glide effortlessly along the great river as dusk begins to fall.

• Chapter 8 - Between Luxor and Aswan, Saturday 25 February, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 8 - Between Luxor and Aswan, Saturday 25 February, 1990

Up very early again, to the station to catch the 6 am train to Aswan.  It breaks my heart to leave Luxor - it always does, but today more than usual, I don't know why.  Out of the Savoy, to see the Theban Hills for the last time on this trip.  Perhaps for ever - who knows when or whether we will ever return, what lies ahead?  And yet to work on the assumption that you will never see a thing again is terrifying - how can you possibly look hard enough, see everything before the train leaves, or the boat departs?  But that is what most tourism is based on: most people come to see something, then leave, secure in the knowledge that they have 'done' it, and need never come again.  I, on the other hand, have to believe that I will return.  Life would simply be unbearable without that hope for the future.

Anyway, on the train now.  The others snoozing or talking away.  For some reason Janet is laughing her head off, making all the Egyptians stare at her.  I wish she wouldn't.

I can't help remembering the first time I went to Aswan from Luxor.  I took a taxi so that I could stop off at some fairly inaccessible sites along the way.  Apart from these, the road was pretty dull: just mile after hair-raising mile - Egyptians seem to love mad, reckless driving - of straight road with occasional poor towns, a donkey, lush fields either side.  

Then we crossed over a long bridge to the west bank, at Esna.  A dusty, fly-blown place.  But in the middle, in a huge pit like a caged monster, was an extraordinary temple, reached by stairs descending some fifty feet or more.  This strange sight has been caused by the Egyptians' habit of building their houses on the top of old ones - causing the level of the land to rise over time, and leaving ancient monuments yards down.  Unfortunately the chief attraction of the temple was its position - otherwise it showed the typical degradation of style found in all the stuff dating from the Ptolemies - none of the architectural elements meant anything, it was all just convention.  But amazing to think that over two thousand years ago this was the fag-end of a two thousand year old tradition.  Nice flowery capitals to the columns as I recall, though.  

Back on the east bank, the desert really asserted itself south of this point.  The road was the boundary: crops to the right, bare desert to the left.  The Nile's inundation must have seemed truly miraculous to the ancient Egyptians, offering life from death.  Everything would revolve around it.  About here I remember passing some mounds that could have been crumbling mud pyramids, and ugly factories belching smoke.

Next stop: Edfu.  Once more, through backstreets to an apparent dead-end.  Then through a small gate - and you are confronted with another Ramses III-type temple, huge and in almost perfect condition.  But once again, that Ptolemaic slackness, and crudeness of execution.  An empire in the last stages of decadence.  I recall how the hieroglyphs had retreated into the background, looking Chinese almost - they would have been practically meaningless by now - and images rather than words dominated things - rather like our own degenerate era.

Finally on to Kom Ombo - what good names they have.  This is a only a ruin, reached down a long, tiny side road - I began to wonder whether my driver had got lost.  An atmospheric ruin though, perched on the edge of the Nile with some attractive greenery and islands providing the backdrop.  Its general air was very Greek - appropriately enough, since the Ptolemies were descended from Alexander the Great.  

But if I think back to all this Ptolemaic stuff, I inevitably think of the greatest of their temples - that of Denderah, another place I failed to see this time.

Once again, I reached it from Luxor by taxi - it only takes about an hour, for a fare of E£40 as I recall.  Denderah is unusual in that it sits in solitary splendour, away from any squalid towns, or even any other antiquities.  It is astonishingly complete.  In particular, it offers the visitor perhaps the best experience of entering a fully-covered Egyptian building - an important difference from the more ruinous ones that are open to sky.

It turns out that the darkness was an important element in the overall effect of these mighty temples - and Denderah is as mighty as any in its way, though spoilt again by the lateness of its style.

You enter through an archway into a large, walled court.  At the end, the temple looms up like a crouching beast, great black spaces visible between its massive pillars.  There are six of these, three deep, all carrying the huge cow-head of the goddess Hathor.  Unfortunately the sculptures were much damaged by overzealous Copts - luckily the Hathor heads were mostly left intact - and they also left the hieroglyphs, which is intriguing: did they recognise or acknowledge some deep affinity, some link here?  Or was it just ignorance or indifference?

A few feet in and it is already dark - and the outside looks blindingly bright.  Stepping through into the inner hypostyle hall, you are suddenly unable to see until your eyes adjust.  There are various small rooms off to the side, but the main route lies forward, ever deeper and ever darker. Pigeons flap around occasionally overhead, adding to the eerie quality.  The central sanctum, at the heart of this stone, of this darkness, was one of the most atmospheric holy places I've ever been to.

Also memorable was the view from the roof - reached by a staircase with exactly 100 steps.  No protection on the roof from a 70 or 80 foot drop.  Along the roof edge, hundreds of tourist graffiti, mostly from the ubiquitous British.  I noted some down in the margin of my Blue Guide: Charles Inby, May 1817; T Sproat, C P Parker 1827; John Gordon 1804; John Malcolm 1822; Holroyd 1833; D W Nash 1836; E K Hume 1836.  I wonder who they were, what they did, what they experienced up here?  I feel now - as I felt then when I saw their names for the first time - strangely obliged to record their identities, this achievement - tiny though it is - to memorialise them.  Perhaps in the almost superstitious though vain hope that someone might do the same for me one day.  And their names shall live for ever....

Brilliant view: I remember hills to the west, the stratified rocks turning from yellow to pink.  A vast string of modern-day pylons loped from horizon to horizon.  The whole Nilotic plain spread before me.  Nearby a dry, sunken court - the sacred lake - with six huge palm trees.  Rubble all around the place like a huge rubbish dump.  And a sound too: I vividly recall the terrible bronchitic squeals of a poor donkey rending the air, mourning its abject life.  And the sun breaking through the clouds, its rays a perfect pyramid.

While wandering around I was clobbered by one of the nominal 'guards' - who seem to do more damage than even the tourists.  For the usual baksheesh he volunteered to show me the crypts, usually closed off to visitors.  He lifted some planks of wood, fumbled around for a dodgy light switch, went down some creaky stairs and then had me crawling - on all fours at times - through narrow, dusty tunnels, until we came to some fine alabaster reliefs of Hathor - mutilated unfortunately.  But what I remember above all else in this airless, confined closeness, was the overpowering stench of cigarettes on his breath.

Anyway, none of that today.  We arrived at Aswan about 10 am, then went straight to the hotel - which, by some miracle, had indeed received my booking, so at least we have a room here - not like the first time I came.  Since we took an early breakfast - prepared for us by the Savoy the night before, nothing special, but it filled a hole - we are lunching early too.  We have quite a lot to see in the next day and a half.

Out, first, to Philae, by taxis, then boat.  Pleasant enough on the water, the sun noticeably warmer here than in Luxor, but my heart sinks in Philae.  Yet more Ptolemaic stuff.  Hathor-headed columns in the Kiosk of Nectanebo - but nothing compared to Denderah.  Nice to see a colonnade for a change - shows how conditioned we are to 'classical' ruins.  Temple of Isis with standards reliefs, few hieroglyphs.  Good to see old Imhotep remembered here two thousand years after his breakthrough.  The Forecourt interesting because of its asymmetry.  Hypostyle hall all right - covered in black and white bird droppings which make it look like fake mottled marble.  Small temple of Hathor, notable only for its scenes of musicians - double-flute player and harpist.  That tantalisingly silent music again.  Best bit definitely the Kiosk of Trajan - partly because unlike the other stuff here, it does not pretend to be Egyptian: it looks what it is - Roman.  Surprisingly graceful and powerful.  Setting magic.

So, without much lingering, we take our motorised felucca back - but with a turn around old Philae to see if any of its charm remains.  But no Egyptian Atlantis in view, no submerged cathedral.  Instead, a few pillars on land, a few houses, plus the old tin dam that was built up around the threatened monuments.  Dull.

Out to the High Dam.  Impressive in a gross sort of way - 18 times the amount of material used in Khufu's Great Pyramid, world's largest artificial lake etc., etc., blah-blah-blah.  But the damage to the monuments both upstream and downstream - the latter through the effects of the rising North African water table, which is rotting the very foundations of the Ancient Egyptian buildings - and the total loss of those as yet undiscovered - terrible, and certainly not justified.  Lake Nasser looks like a huge sea, an incomprehensible dark-blue expanse stretching away into Africa.  They must have been pleased when it filled up.  Lots of military paranoia everywhere.  The Soviet-Egyptian monument rather out of style with everything else in the country.  Neo-Ptolemaic perhaps?

On the way back, we stop off at the Unfinished Obelisk.  Strange that it is such an attraction, this failure.  But then I suppose that failure tells you more than success.  And it is fascinating to think how it was hewn off the hillside with simple stones, and would have been levered off, had they not discovered the flaw, and then taken down to the Nile, to a waiting ship - as shown on a relief in Hatshepsut's mortuary complex - to be carried to Thebes, where it was intended to make a pair with the other great pink obelisk there.  Another of those unique, pinpointable moments in history: the day they found the flaw, their disbelief, their frustration.  Now it lies a monument to unfulfilled ambitions.

En route to the hotel, we stop off for tea at the Cataract Hotel - strange that something for tourists to use during their visits becomes something for them to visit in itself.  Feels a bit out of place this great maroony moorish villa.  Overpriced, rather pretentious - rather touristy in fact - but a fine location, looking across to Elephantine, the beasts down at the water.  Felucca sails pass by in ever-changing abstract compositions of shape and colour.  I am now drinking my tea.  And - but I can't be bothered writing all these words any more.  'The Ptolemy Factor' - good title for a book.  Must write it one day.  Enough.

• Chapter 8 - London, Sunday 16 September, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 8 - London, Sunday 16 September, 1990

Poor John, you really were not very happy in Aswan, were you?  And you have missed so much out - which isn't really like you at all.  It's strange, I feel oddly constrained by what you write, and how much of it there is.  I suppose it's this business of trying not to abuse my position - after all, I can write whatever and however much I like in response to your thoughts, and now you must sit there, and read it.  To tell the truth, I fear I may have overstepped the mark in the last description of my day at Luxor.  I got carried away with Alekko's tale - as I am sure you would have, if you had heard it, or asked him about himself....

And so today (is this a today or a here?  I get so confused with this mixing of times and places - then, in Egypt, now when I write this, later, when you read it.) I shall restrain myself.  I shall not go into the long and marvellous story that Alekko told me on the train from Luxor to Aswan, about how he travelled from Venice through Milan up to Lake Como, and then across into Switzerland at Lugano, and about the family with the twin daughters he met there, and - but I shall not say any more of this, or of how he travelled down to Spain disguised as a nun, even though it made me laugh so much I cried.

Instead I shall say something about our hotel.  I wonder what made you choose this particular one - 'Ramsis' - I don't think.  Actually its position was good, the rooms OK and food not too fattening.  Generally with a nice small and friendly feel - lots of corners to the staircase - and that interesting design leading to the dining room which itself was divided off in unusual shapes.  It felt like an up-market version of some of the youth hostels we used to stay in.

Aswan was simply beautiful.  It reminded me of pictures of the Riviera - a long corniche, the expanse of shimmering water full of slow, elegant boats with their bellying sails, lots of trees and flowering shrubs.  Especially the trees with the amazingly luscious red blooms which lay along the pavement by the Nile like rinds of some exotic fruit.  I remember the sound of them falling behind us, a loud dull squelch.  

I have a memory of a flock of birds, far away in the clear light-blue sky like a tumbling dust cloud.  And there was even a kingfisher - with a fish in his mouth.  Mosquitoes zizzing around.

And everything bathed in the most wonderful sun - like a great amber liquid poured from a jar in the sky.  It caressed the exposed skin - which was something you missed, I suppose, what with your long-sleeved shirt, long trousers and broad-rimmed hat.  Pity you're so sensitive to the sun - this was a sun-worshipper's dream.  In fact, that's something that struck me: even for people who find ancient monuments rather boring - they exist, John, I'm afraid - Egypt is still a holidaymaker's heaven, what with its perfect weather, peaceful resorts - and the biggest beach in the world....

I rather liked Philae.  Probably for all the reasons you didn't - that it wasn't like the great temple of Ramses III.  It reminded me of our hotel - lots of odd angles, nooks and crannies.  And the view kept changing like some touristic kaleidoscope - bits of buildings peeking out, a frieze, a ruin here, a row of columns there.  And all around, that marvellous water, ruffled by the breeze.  Perhaps I liked it too because everything shone in that sun so that the stones were dazzlingly bright as if lit up from inside.  The motorised boat roaring through the water, the sun flashing on the ripples, the wind in my hair.

Unfortunately these wonderful images were rather spoilt by our trip to the dam.  All those signs, all those soldiers, and then this huge brutal slab of concrete, stuck across the poor Nile like an arm in its face.  It just felt so unnatural.  As you've written many times in your account, the yearly flooding of the Nile was of central importance to every aspect of Egyptian life - its origins, its rituals, its daily life.  So what could be more damaging to the soul of a nation than to block this natural ebb and flow?  Only a man would do this - taking control, mastering Nature and all the rest.  I know that all the electricity is necessary for the development of the nation, and that regulating the flow of water allows more efficient use to be made of it, but there must be better ways.

Perhaps because my favourite Queen Hatshepsut ordered its construction, I found the unfinished obelisk rather touching.  And it was strange how the tourists - hundreds of them - simply had to walk up and down it like performing penguins.  Perhaps it was just the notion of walking up an obelisk.  One thing that struck me there was that man playing his little Egyptian violin - a tiny squeaky noise, no tune that I could really hear, but perfectly right for the day and for the place.

I surprised you didn't mention our felucca trip.  Perhaps it wasn't historical enough for you.  And yet I imagine that boats like this have been plying the Nile for a good few thousand years.  Perhaps you just didn't like to record our mishaps.

Like the difficulty we had finding someone to take us out once we had walked back to our hotel from the Cataract - you insisted that we would be ripped off if we took one near that hotel.  You were probably right, but it would have saved us all that searching high and low.  And when we did find one - what did we get, that poor little old man - and his boat trapped by the Nile cruise ship and all the other feluccas?  It only took us about half an hour to edge back and forwards out on to the river.

Then the wind drops, so that poor old man has to row - and you have to help.  After a while it sounds as if he is going to die - he made the most dreadful racking sounds as he tried to catch his breath - he even gets out his asthma inhaler, and sucks it long and hard.  Meanwhile we are drifting on the surprisingly fast current, and the huge tourist cruise ships are roaring past.  Hardly very relaxing for any of us.

But I enjoyed it, nonetheless,  The knocked-about boat, its paint fading and chipped; the little old man - asthma or no - running up the mast like a monkey to unfurl the sail; his constant shouts while you were rowing - you never seemed to be doing what he wanted; getting stuck in the reeds at the end of Elephantine; eventually making it to Kitchener's Island.  It was all worthwhile, John, it really was, all that effort and aggravation.

Kitchener's Island was a gem, like something from another land.  Its lush flowers, and shady trees seemed to have little to do with the harsh terrain which surrounded it on either side of the Nile.  It was an oasis - if you can have oases in the middle of the river.  It was so peaceful just wandering there, quietly, relaxing after a long and hectic day.  Alekko seemed to like it too:

"Ah, lady, is this not good?  And it does remind of somewhere...yes, Granada, I think...."

"Granada?  In Spain, after your escape as a nun?"  I asked, egging him on in the hope of another story.

"Ah, I have said enough of that.  But, you know, what happened in Granada was very strange.  It was like nothing I ever saw again."

"And that was...?"  I had the feeling that Alekko loved to be asked to talk, loved to play with as well as to his audience.

"I will tell you.  As I said, my coming to Spain was, well, different.  It does not matter how that thing was completed - I arrived, that is the important, and I soon found myself in Granada.  Perhaps for the weather, perhaps for the countryside - it called back to me Greece, Albania, my home - I was there.

I found a job as a waiter in a restaurant - I ate all I could after that ride from Switzerland, hiding in the wagon of cheese, believe me - and I love the Spanish food, especially - do you know? - yes, the paella: fish, and no cheese.  So each day, I would not work in the mornings, and I would walk in the city.  And of course, where could I go one day but to the Generalife - the Gardens of the Moors - Arabs like the Egyptians perhaps.

Do you know this place?  No?  It is like here, this island, only bigger and not an island."

"But where was your beloved water, Alekko?  Surely no place without water is a place for Alekko?"

"Lady, you have right.  There were fountains - such fountains, I cannot say.  Delicate gentle things, with buildings and courts around them.  The buildings with walls like wood, full of holes and fine lines.  Everything very gentle and soothing.  And each day after I would go there in the morning, because it reminded me of something, perhaps a place I had never seen."

"But how - ?"

"Have you never been to a place and known it if and you never saw it?  Surely - and so it was for me.  I had never seen this place, but I knew it.

And one day, I was there, standing by a fountain, not looking, just standing, not moving for a long time.  I hear a tap-tap behind me, I am about to look round and suddenly - bang - there she is, this young lady.  She walks straight into me - I stand in an odd place - and we fall.  She apologises in her beautiful Spanish - I can survive in it, I understand.  But it is I who must apologise - for she is blind, you understand, she could not see me.  It was me, foolish, to be there so.

I insist that we sit, to make ourselves refreshed after our hit.  We sit by one of the fountains.  We talk.  She lives with her mother down in the city.  She comes here often.  Why?  I ask her - meaning, very rude, that she cannot see what is here.  But she comes for the sound of the fountains, for the smell of the flowers, the cool breezes - for it is hot summer now.  We talk, I ask if she comes tomorrow, she says yes.  

The next day, I am there, waiting, and yes, she comes, her white stick tap-tap along the ground.  I say hello, she smiles, we sit, we talk.  I know, I find myself falling in love once more, though she is not a beauty queen, but she is yet beautiful, with her smile of the closed eyes.  She is lovely.

And for days we meet, and talk, and I suddenly realise that this is what will happen - we will meet, we will talk, and nothing more.  That I want nothing more but that I sit in these beautiful gardens, by the fountains, among the flowers, with this lovely blind girl, who cannot see these things, and I talk with her thus every day.  And this was this thing that I never saw again, " he ended simply.

"Do you mean you never saw her again?"

"Not at all, I saw her for many days.  I mean I never even held her hand.  It would not be right, I thought."

"Did you ever wonder what she wanted?" I asked.

"Ah!, lady, that was clear.  She wanted to sit in the gardens, listening to the fountains, sometimes to me, but mostly the fountains.  And so one day I said that I must go.  She says goodbye.  But I lie - I did not leave, I worked as a waiter still.  And I go to the Generalife still, and see her come and sit and listen to the fountains, but now I do not talk, I leave her with what she has.  Because I can offer her nothing that will take its place."

"And you never spoke to her again?"

"Never."

"Even though you loved her?"

"Because, dear lady, because."

"And then what happened?"

"Oh, the usual - another girl, another town, the old story," he said simply.

But that day I did not want to hear any more of those stories.  His blind girl in the gardens of the Generalife suited my mood as I wandered about Kitchener's Island, a mood of gentle melancholy almost.  A mood that was abruptly broken when I happened to look across to the west bank.

There, a huge sandy slope reared up from the river for some hundreds of feet.  Its smooth face was largely unbroken - except for a message, picked out in stones forming letters ten feet high.  The message said 'Janet, O aged Jamaica.'  I looked again in case it was a trick of the light, or my eyes playing up.  But it was definitely there.  But what did it mean?  Was it a message left for some other Janet, years ago?  But it seemed unlikely, the coincidence too improbable.  But if it was meant for me, what did it mean?  It meant nothing - unless that 'O'....  But that was surely impossible.  Besides, the rest of it - 'aged Jamaica' - was meaningless to me.

I stared and stared at this disturbing vision, hoping it might vanish, or at least resolve itself.  But nothing changed - words cannot explain themselves.  They just hung there, like a plea, a taunt, a warning, a - what?

Luckily it was time to go back to the felucca, and back to the hotel.  The wind had now risen, and we were sailing with the tide, not against it.  We flew along as the sun began to fall towards the hills, and the air grew cooler.  My spirits began to lift again, and I thought no more about what I had seen.  Instead, I watched the old man shimmying up the mast as he dexterously pulled in the sail and lashed it secure with rope - a beautiful performance he had doubtless done ten thousand times in his life, and which had happened millions - billions? - of times in the history of the Nile.

Back to the hotel for dinner.  A nice sociable buzz in the room filled with various tourist groups.  Even though it had been a long day, I still felt wide awake and suggested that we go out for a walk along the river.  You didn't seem too keen - I think that you were still enervated by your experiences at Philae.  But you came, probably doing your duty....

It was a glorious evening - a clear sky, with stars so bright.  And most wonderful of all, the moon is out, a thin crescent - and turned horizontally on its side, as if it has rolled over.  I clap my hands and laugh - and you look at me as if I'm mad.  Which I am, but with the beauty of it all.  Lots of people about, taking their evening stroll.  I feel filled with a new energy, a vague sense of awakening purpose - though what, I cannot tell.

We walk about halfway to the Cataract Hotel, and then turn.  I make a suggestion: how about a stroll through the town? - I can see what looks like stalls in an opening.  The others agree, and you seem unwilling to argue any more.  So we go.  And wasn't it magic?  A long, lively street market bustling with customers and shopkeepers, caught in pools of light from simple bulbs hung over their wares - huge troves of bowls, cutlery, pots and pans; row upon high row of dresses and shirts and scarves and blankets hanging over the shopkeeper like a crazy, ragged tent; neat pyramids of glowing oranges, dates, and spotty apples; wicker baskets of deeply-coloured dried petals and spices, their scents filling the evening air with an overpowering perfume, each stall repeated many times down the street, the same, yet with small, personal differences.  Horse-drawn carts somehow ease their way through the narrow spaces, children run shouting about the streets, music plays from shops and cheap restaurants where men sit smoking and watching the world go by.  Ah! John, this was something else.

I slept like a log that night.

• Chapter 9 - Abu Simbel

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters