Sand in the Wind by Ruth Hay

Author:Ruth Hay [Hay, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ruth Hay

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She turned from these unhappy thoughts to look out of the plane’s windows again. They were flying south to Aswan and following the line of the Nile, a blue snake winding through the desert below. She noticed at once how clear the view was from the plane. There were no clouds obscuring the scene. It was like flying on the wings of a soaring bird.

On each bank of the Nile a blackish green stain spread out from the water into the sandy terrain where the soil that the floods had washed down each year for millennia had made agriculture possible.

She began to understand how the Nile meant life, itself, in Egypt, and how a religion could develop to appease the forces of nature personified in a panoply of gods. If the floods should fail, the desert would swiftly reclaim the river’s banks and the people would starve.

She saw rocks of red, purple, or occasionally grey tones, which formed high ridges further back from the Nile. Roads followed the ridges passing infrequent settlements of red clay houses. The rest of the visible land was dry baked surfaces and winding valleys of soft sand that looked as if they might once have been river courses.

Anna saw little in the way of towns or cities although her map indicated they must have flown over the temple complexes of Luxor at some point. Tiny buildings that could have been temples could be seen briefly on high dunes but only small villages clustered near palm groves dotted the shores. When the plane approached Aswan, the alluvial soil disappeared to be replaced by dusty roads on each bank, more houses and taller buildings and rocky islands in mid-stream.

Anna felt her excitement grow. Soon they would touch down and begin their adventure.

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