Bedouin Love

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

Chapter XIX: LOVE IN THE WILDERNESS

During the day the dahabiyeh was towed a few yards to the south of the great bluff of rock in which the temple is cut, and was moored in a small, secluded bay, where it would be sheltered from the prying eyes of tourists who would be coming ashore from the weekly steamer. Here, on the one side, there were slopes of sand topped by palms and acacias, behind which were precipitous cliffs; and, on the other, the wide river stretched out to the opposite bank, where, amongst the trees at the foot of the rocky hills, stood the brown huts of the village of Farêk.

It was a hot little cove, and by day the sun beat down from cloudless blue skies upon the white dahabiyeh; but the richly-coloured awnings protected the deck, and a constant breeze brought a delectable coolness through the open windows of the cabins below, fluttering the little green silk curtains and gently swinging the hanging lamps. By night the moon and the stars shone down from the amazing vault of the heavens, and were reflected with such clarity in the still water of the bay that the vessel seemed to be floating in mid-air with planets above and below.

A scramble over the sand and the boulders around the foot of the headland brought one to the terraced forecourt of the temple where sat the four colossal statues; and at the side of this there was a mighty slope of golden sand, sweeping down from the summit of the cliffs, as though in an attempt to engulf the whole temple. A laborious climb up this drift led to the flat, open desert, which extended away into the distance, until, sharply defined against the intense blue of the sky, the far hills of the horizon shut off the boundless and vacant spaces of the Sahara beyond.

It was a place which, save at the coming of the tourist steamers, was isolated from the modern world: a place of ancient memories, where Hathor, goddess of love and local patroness of these hills, might be supposed still to gaze out from the shadows of the rocks with languorous, cow-like eyes, and to cast the spell of her influence upon all who chanced to tread this holy ground.

Of all the celestial beings worshipped by mankind this goddess must surely make the fullest appeal to a man in love, for she is the deification of the eternal feminine; and Jim, having lately studied something of the old Egyptian religion, deemed it almost a predestined fate that had brought him to this territory dedicated to a goddess who personified those very qualities that he loved in Monimé.

Hathor, the Ashtaroth and the Istar of Asia, was the patroness of all women. Identified with Isis, her worship extended in time to Rome, where she was at last absorbed into the Christian lore and became one with the Madonna, so that even to this day, in another guise, she accepts the adoration of countless millions.

Here at Abu Simbel, in her aspect as Lady of the Western Hills, she received into her divine arms each evening the descending sun, and tended him, as a woman tends a man, at the end of his day’s journey. As goddess of those who, like the sun, passed down in death to the nether regions, she appeared as a mysterious saviour amidst the foliage of her sacred sycamore, and gave water to their thirsty souls; while to the living she was the mistress of love and laughter, she was the presiding spirit at every marriage, she was the succouring midwife and the tender nurse at the birth of every child, and upon her broad bosom every dying creature laid its weary head.

In this charmed region, where yellow rocks and golden sand, green trees and blue waters, were met together under the azure sky, which again was one of the aspects of Hathor, Jim passed his days in supreme happiness, now working with tremendous mental energy at some poem which he was composing, now tramping for miles over the high plateau of the desert, whistling and singing as he went, and now basking in the sun upon the terrace of the temple where Monimé was painting. The benign influence of the great goddess seemed to act upon them, for daily their love grew stronger, working at them, as it were, with pliant hands, until it smoothed out their every thought and rounded their every action.