DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0183
{ASSUAN
least a dozen decent houses and is the pride of Assuan.
Otherwise European dwellings are rare, and the greater part
are helter-skelter huts made of Nile mud. In the courts
palm-trees grow here and there, surprisingly close together,
in picturesque confusion. As they are of varying height it
often looks as though they were growing on the houses in
dung which the natives are fond of using as a warming thatch.
You become reconciled to the palm-trees here. They have
none of the neat decorativeness of an Italian or Spanish square
and none of the symmetry which degrades them into pot
plants even when they occur in masses. On account of their
colour I like to think they belong to a different species. Their
scale of colours is not derived from the European green,
which always looks slimy because of the structure of the palm,
but from a dusty grey; and what they offer us is not contrast,
which is no use here, but a silvery glitter. They are some-
thing like torches in the daytime. Perhaps that is the beauty
of this place, that you get far less contrast but immeasurably
more tones. Yellow and blue are the great dominants; but
what a range of tones in between!
The blond and the doctor go sailing every day. He hopes
to shoot a crocodile and generally takes with him the hunter
who wears a dilapidated cockade as a sign that he once served
the German Crown Prince. He can say: ‘At your service.’
The Crown Prince shot crocodiles every day here, and for
each of them the hunter got ten pounds. The silver cockade
once bore the mark lJager I.’ In course of time the a has
fallen out, and so we read Jger. The doctor will only go up
to five pounds, and wants me to go equal shares. Babuschka
is inquiring about elephants. We saw two gigantic elephant-
tusks at the station, the trophies of a Hungarian magnate;
but they came from Khartum which is over a thousand
kilometres to the south. We are on the edge of things here.
Just behind Schacht’s house the street climbs up to the
bazaar on its way out into the desert. The bazaar is just one
163
least a dozen decent houses and is the pride of Assuan.
Otherwise European dwellings are rare, and the greater part
are helter-skelter huts made of Nile mud. In the courts
palm-trees grow here and there, surprisingly close together,
in picturesque confusion. As they are of varying height it
often looks as though they were growing on the houses in
dung which the natives are fond of using as a warming thatch.
You become reconciled to the palm-trees here. They have
none of the neat decorativeness of an Italian or Spanish square
and none of the symmetry which degrades them into pot
plants even when they occur in masses. On account of their
colour I like to think they belong to a different species. Their
scale of colours is not derived from the European green,
which always looks slimy because of the structure of the palm,
but from a dusty grey; and what they offer us is not contrast,
which is no use here, but a silvery glitter. They are some-
thing like torches in the daytime. Perhaps that is the beauty
of this place, that you get far less contrast but immeasurably
more tones. Yellow and blue are the great dominants; but
what a range of tones in between!
The blond and the doctor go sailing every day. He hopes
to shoot a crocodile and generally takes with him the hunter
who wears a dilapidated cockade as a sign that he once served
the German Crown Prince. He can say: ‘At your service.’
The Crown Prince shot crocodiles every day here, and for
each of them the hunter got ten pounds. The silver cockade
once bore the mark lJager I.’ In course of time the a has
fallen out, and so we read Jger. The doctor will only go up
to five pounds, and wants me to go equal shares. Babuschka
is inquiring about elephants. We saw two gigantic elephant-
tusks at the station, the trophies of a Hungarian magnate;
but they came from Khartum which is over a thousand
kilometres to the south. We are on the edge of things here.
Just behind Schacht’s house the street climbs up to the
bazaar on its way out into the desert. The bazaar is just one
163