The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

Author:Maya Angelou [Angelou, Maya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-43205-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

We stayed in Alexandria two days before moving on to Cairo, but I would not leave the hotel again and refused to explain my seclusion. My close friends thought I had fallen in love with the doctor and I accepted their teasing without comment.

We were driven to Cairo, and thrown into another world. More black-skinned people held positions of authority. The desk clerk at the Continental Hotel was the color of cinnamon; the manager was beige but had tight crinkly hair. The woman who supervised the running of the house was small and energetic and her complexion would never have allowed her to pass for white.

Beggars still hounded our footsteps and the audiences which shouted Bravos at our performances were largely European, but I felt I was at last in Africa—in a continent at the moment reeling yet rising, released from the weight of colonialism, which had ridden its back for generations.

We toured the city and went en masse to the pyramids. We rode camels and had our photographs taken in front of the Sphinx, but I couldn’t satisfy my longing to breathe in the entire country.

I went again to the pyramids, alone. I used the few Arabic words I had picked up to tell the camel drivers and guides that I wanted to be alone. I took off my shoes and dug my feet into the hot sand.

Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land,

Tell old Pharaoh, to let my people go.

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