There is no shade anywhere and everything suffers.
Everything grows yellow on the yellow sands.

But there is no cause for uneasiness: the inundation is at hand, which has never failed since the commencement of our geological period.

In another few weeks the prodigious river will spread along its banks, just as in the times of the God Amen, a precocious and impetuous life.

And meanwhile the orange-trees, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, which men have taken care to water with water from the Nile, are full of riotous bloom.

As we pass the gardens of Old Cairo, which alternate with the tumbling houses, this continual cloud of white dust that envelops us comes suddenly laden with their sweet fragrance; so that, despite the drought and the bareness of the trees, the scents of a sudden and feverish springtime are already in the air.
When we arrive at the walls of what used to be the Roman citadel we have to descend from our carriage, and passing through a low doorway penetrate on foot into the labyrinth of a Coptic quarter which is dying of dust and old age.