DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0181
ASSUAN
to and fro on its hinges until somebody came to give us a
good spanking. This screeching goes on all along the Nile.
It is something like the bagpipes, but less sonorous, and as
no other sounds drown it you can hear it miles away. I get
up early, about four o’clock as a rule, but the sakiyeh is going
still earlier. You forget that the noise is caused by the wood
and an ox walking round and round, and you take it for a
resonant property of the atmosphere. If you have nothing
else to do, the continual repetition of the same phrase gets on
your nerves, and you stop your ears. You see fat oriental
women with painted woe-begone faces and drooping breasts;
they loll on ottomans with the white Turkish stuff called
nougat between their teeth. It often happens that you go
out into the desert simply to get away from the sakiyeh. The
ancient Egyptians must have known the sound, for they used
the same method of irrigation. As soon as I start a serious
conversation with anybody or attend to some business I find
the sakiyeh not merely inoffensive but actually pleasant.
At Assuan the Nile indulges in its richest variations and
does everything it can to prepare for the first cataract.
Innumerable islands are dotted about; most of them are toys
abandoned by the river, whose torrent once fretted the rocks
into queer shapes when the course was different — funnels
shaped like coffee-mills, so that you can’t imagine how they
ever were made, crazy weather-vanes that look as if they had
been pulled out with gigantic corkscrews, and antediluvian
spiral shelters. No river dreams of such antics in our part of
the world.
The long stretch of Elephantine is idyllic. Once the
island possessed its own god and temple, and in those days
elephants must have occurred hereabouts. Now the island
boasts a big yellow hotel with green shutters; it is the Savoy,
the smartest hotel in Assuan, but it has been closed since the
war, for even the others are hardly full. The big yellow
building, surrounded by luxuriant palms and huge red
l 161
to and fro on its hinges until somebody came to give us a
good spanking. This screeching goes on all along the Nile.
It is something like the bagpipes, but less sonorous, and as
no other sounds drown it you can hear it miles away. I get
up early, about four o’clock as a rule, but the sakiyeh is going
still earlier. You forget that the noise is caused by the wood
and an ox walking round and round, and you take it for a
resonant property of the atmosphere. If you have nothing
else to do, the continual repetition of the same phrase gets on
your nerves, and you stop your ears. You see fat oriental
women with painted woe-begone faces and drooping breasts;
they loll on ottomans with the white Turkish stuff called
nougat between their teeth. It often happens that you go
out into the desert simply to get away from the sakiyeh. The
ancient Egyptians must have known the sound, for they used
the same method of irrigation. As soon as I start a serious
conversation with anybody or attend to some business I find
the sakiyeh not merely inoffensive but actually pleasant.
At Assuan the Nile indulges in its richest variations and
does everything it can to prepare for the first cataract.
Innumerable islands are dotted about; most of them are toys
abandoned by the river, whose torrent once fretted the rocks
into queer shapes when the course was different — funnels
shaped like coffee-mills, so that you can’t imagine how they
ever were made, crazy weather-vanes that look as if they had
been pulled out with gigantic corkscrews, and antediluvian
spiral shelters. No river dreams of such antics in our part of
the world.
The long stretch of Elephantine is idyllic. Once the
island possessed its own god and temple, and in those days
elephants must have occurred hereabouts. Now the island
boasts a big yellow hotel with green shutters; it is the Savoy,
the smartest hotel in Assuan, but it has been closed since the
war, for even the others are hardly full. The big yellow
building, surrounded by luxuriant palms and huge red
l 161