The thrilling
squeal of the kites - those same thievish Companions of the Road who, at
that hour, were watching every Englishman's breakfast in every compound
and camp from Cairo to Calcutta.
[Footnote 6: The Koran.]
Voices rose from below - unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar
accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as
fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the
window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling
kites. And beneath our balcony rolled very Nile Himself, golden in
sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking
cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened.
On the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers - a ticca-gharri
stand, nothing less - lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their
harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt East. All the ground
about was spotted with chewed sugarcane - first sign of the hot weather
all the world over.
Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this
yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and
bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world
was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at
dawn.
