"Egypt," he said, quietly. "That is a lighthouse—they call it a pharos, after the one that Ptolemy built; it must have stood about in the same direction."
Certainly that was not very dramatic, not actively so at least, but to me it was impressive; and stealing into that dream-like harbor, through the mellow quiet of the morning, I had the feeling that we were creeping up on the past—catching it asleep, as it were; that this was indeed the pharos of the Ptolemies—the harbor they had known.
I shall always remember Alexandria, Egypt. I shall always remember the railway station with its wild hallabaloo of Arab porters, who grab one's hand-baggage, make off with it, and sit on it in a secluded place until you race around and hunt it up and produce baksheesh for its return. You do not check baggage in Egypt, by the way; you register it, which means that you tell somebody about it, then try to convince yourself that it is all right and that some day you will see it again.
But I shall remember that station for another reason. When we had finally fought our way through to the train, and Laura and I had placed our things here and there in our compartment—in the racks and about—we realized that we were hot and thirsty, and I said I would slip back and get some oranges, seeing we had plenty of time.
It was easy to do that—easy enough, I mean, for I no longer had anything for the Bedouins to grab. I got the oranges and paid a piastre apiece for them—about ten times what they were worth in Jaffa, and I had the usual difficulty making change—a detachment of interested Arabs looking on meanwhile. Then I started back, and was stopped by a guard who wanted to see my ticket. I felt for the flat leather case which I generally carry in my hip-pocket. It was gone!
If there had been anything resembling a chair there I should have sat down. As it was I took hold of the little railing, for my knees had a watery feeling which I felt was not to be trusted. That pocket-book contained my letter of credit; all my money, except a little change; my tickets, my character—everything that an unprotected stranger is likely to need in a strange land! When I got my breath I dived into all my pockets at once, then went through them categorically, as much as three times apiece. I had never realized I owned so many pockets or that they could be so empty, so useless.
Those Bedouins had done it, of course. I rushed back to the orange-man, and in a mixture of three languages which nobody, not even myself, could understand, explained my loss. He shrugged his shoulders in French, elevated his hands in Egyptian, and said "No can tell" in English. I glared around at the contiguous Bedouins, but they all looked disinterestedly guilty. In a mixed daze I went back to the guard, and crept through when he was attending to another passenger. I still held the bag of oranges, and handed them to Laura, who was quietly waiting, looking out the window at the passing show. Little did she guess my condition, and how could I tell her?
It was quite by chance that I glanced up at the overhead rack where I had stowed our smaller packages. Ah me! The gates of bliss open wide will never be a more inspiring sight than what I saw there. There it lay—that precious pocket-book! In the disordered mental state of our arrival I had for some unguessed reason taken out my pocket-case and laid it there with the other items. It was safe—safe in every detail. The world suddenly became glorified. Those Bedouins were my brothers. I would have gone back and embraced them if the train had not begun to move.
Yes, I shall always remember Alexandria.
There is a continuous panorama between Alexandria and Cairo, absolutely fascinating to one who has not seen it before, and I wonder how it can ever grow old to any one. Almost immediately there was water—the Nile, or one of its canals—and stretching away, a dead level of green—lavish, luxurious, blossoming green—the delta-land of Lower Egypt, the richest garden in all the world. A network of irrigation; mud villages that might have been made by wasps; a low-dropping sky that met the level green—these made a background, and against it, along the raised road that follows the Nile, an endless procession passed.