Through isle and empire - Softcover
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...have come to see the sunset from my roof at Bulak. On the neighbouring terraces are goats and fowls; an Arab, anxious for the safety of a goose that has ventured on the ledge, fetches it back with the aid of a long palm-branch. At the top of a minaret, I see the form of a muezzin proclaiming the glory of Allah on this ninth evening of Ramadan. A nearer minaret, pink and fluted, vainly lifts its balcony: no one appears there; the mosque is deserted. A grey crow perches on the left horn of the crescent that adorns its point. In the west, following the line, close by, along which the Nile flows, the dainty lateen-yards of the cangias raise their mobile outlines beneath the vast golden dome. Over my head hangs the quite young moon. A palm-tuft rustles in the cool wind; tambourines rattle up from the street. Yonder lie the mauve pyramids. This is the hour when, under the crescent moon, bodies begin to cast a shadow, a pale, vague shadow, as though all things, turned to precious stones by the magic of the twilight, do nothing but delay the light in their flanks of beryl, topaz and pearl. It is a diaphanous light: the great planet up there must aid it as well as the moon in its fleeting shadow-life; and it goes down the stair of my terrace, regretfully, before me. CHAPTER V THE STREETS--HASHISH--IN LOWER EGYPT I Here, the people spend their whole lives in the streets: shops, coffee-houses are but large alcoves opening on the public way. Lumber, dead cats, crumbling plaster-work, a chaotic heap of dusty rubbish where a little minaret tilts a wooden roof from which the sun has blistered the paint, or a palmtree shivers in the wind. Amid these numberless ruins, in which appears the gaudily-painted door of a bath or the rush-carpeted threshold of a mosque crowded with...
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- PublisherRareBooksClub.com
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 1152068776
- ISBN 13 9781152068773
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages74
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