Notes from Egypt

Dearest Alick,

I have not written for a long time because I have had a fever. Now I am all right again, only weak. If you can come please bring the books in enclosed list for an American Egyptologist at Luxor—a friend of mine. My best love to Janet and my other chicks. I wish I could see my Maurice. Tell Janet that Hassan donkey boy, has married a girl of eleven, and Phillips that Hassan remembers him quite tenderly and is very proud of having had his ‘face’ drawn by him, ‘certainly he was of the friends if not a brother of the Sitt, he so loved the things of the Arabs.’ I went to the Hareem soirée at Hassan’s before the wedding—at that event I was ill. My good doctor was up the river, and Hekekian Bey is in Italy, so I am very lonely here. The weather is bad, so very damp; I stream with perspiration more than in June at Luxor, and I don’t like civilization so very much. It keeps me awake at night in the grog shops and rings horrid bells and fights and quarrels in the street, and disturbs my Muslim nerves till I utter such epithets as kelb (dog) and khanseer (pig) against the Frangi, and wish I were in a ‘beastly Arab’ quarter.