An Egyptian Journal by William Golding

Author:William Golding [William Golding]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571265497
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

10

From Qena to Luxor is about forty miles. We got away at 6 o’clock in the morning and the air was bright. The Theban Hills rose higher and higher. Shasli was pushing the boat again and the engine was dancing in its bed, the propeller shaft doing a Dervish dance. There was no question of getting used to the noise. Noise and vibration were one and the same thing so that you could not tell if you felt the constant shudder through your ears or your feet. It encouraged us to go on deck. The usual north wind was blowing, but now from astern. Above Qena the river turns back on its course and ‘bahari’ really is north. The sun rose higher and almost immediately we were in subtropical weather again. Suddenly we were both of us overwhelmed with a positive lust for Luxor, hot baths, clean sheets, leisure, space, privacy. We went below for all the dancing deck, got down a large suitcase, filled it with laundry, changed into clean clothes and put others in a second suitcase. We planned an orgy of cleanness and prayed that the boat would hold together at least long enough to get us made fast alongside in Luxor and a bit of our own kind of civilization. Then we climbed back on deck, not so well wrapped up this time and willed the boat forward. The Theban Hills closed in on the right hand. A large sugar factory appeared on our left. To the right again and moored in an elbow of water were two very large tourist boats. They might reasonably be called ships. They were both burned out. On one, the upper deck had crumpled and collapsed. The other was all in one piece but burned and stained everywhere down to bare metal. It looked like a child’s toy that has accidentally fallen in the fire and been raked out next morning with the ashes. I thought them a poor advertisement for the tourist trade and wondered why they had not been towed away – they were both afloat – and put in a shipyard or breaker’s yard, but no one could tell me. Alaa said they had been set on fire by electrical faults. He also said there were no casualties.

Luxor was barely recognizable. The corniche was hidden for a mile by craft of all descriptions, but tour boats, of course, predominated, sister ships to the ones burned out and I wondered what their passengers made of the spectacle. The smaller craft were a nondescript multitude; ferries, open motor boats, a private yacht or two, launches of the river police, feluccas of several sizes. There were also the big sandals which would take those people who had the taste for it and the leisure still further up the river to Esna, Edfu and Aswan. But those sandals as I remembered seeing them years before were only the same as the working ones of the lower river in build. Not for them the worn paintwork, the patched and tattered sail and ragged crew.

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