THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Egypt, serious and devout, is still the land of enigmas and mysteries.  There, beauty surrounds itself, as it has ever done, with veils and coverings, a depressing habit that soon discourages the frivolous European.  After a week, he has had enough of Cairo, and hurries off to the cataracts of the Nile, where fresh disappointments are in store for him, though he will never admit it.

*

It was with regret that I left this old city of Cairo, where I found the last traces of Arab genius.  It did not give the lie to the ideas that I had formed of it from the stories and traditions of the Orient.  I had seen it so many times in the dreams of my youth, that it seemed to me that once, at some uncertain time, I had stayed there before, and I was able to reconstruct the old Cairo among the deserted quarters and crumbling mosques.

*

Perhaps, I thought, it is some shepherd’s song from Trebizond or the Marmora.  I seemed to hear doves cooing upon the tips of the yews; it was a song which should be sung in blue valleys, where swift-flowing waters brighten with flashes of silver the dark branches of the larches; where roses blossom luxuriantly on lofty bowers; where the goats cling to the green rocks as in some idyll of Theocritus.

De Nervel/Cairo, 1930