The road was straight and wide; I made good speed most of the time, although I had to slow down through the villages. It was a hot day, and the heat climbed as the sun climbed across the sky. In the broad fields, graded to a perfect slope by millennia of floods, the fellahin tilled the rows of cotton, the buffalo trudged around the track of the pump that raised water to the fields, the Nile gushed over the land. The road came down suddenly into a twisting alley through the outskirts of Luxor. A crowd of boys blocked my way. I held down the button of the car’s horn, but the boys only grinned over their shoulders and sauntered down the middle of the street. The white brick walls came down flush to the edge of the pavement. The city closed around me. The air was thick with the fighting odors of beans, fish, sewage, and incense. I left the car on the ferry stage. The barge was in the slip, but the crew was hosing the deck down, and it would be a few minutes before I could cross the river.
