And the people who go to the tea-shop, the English officers and officials, are stamped as English and also stamped as official.
They are generally genial, they are generally generous, but they have the detachment of a governing group and even a garrison.
They cannot be mistaken for human beings.

The people going to a cafe are simply human beings going to it because it is a human place.
They have forgotten how much is French and how much Egyptian in their civilisation; they simply think of it as civilisation.
Now this character of the older French culture must be grasped because it is the clue to many things in the mystery of the modern East.
I call it an old culture because as a matter of fact it runs back to the Roman culture.

In this respect the Gauls really continue the work of the Romans, in making something official which comes at last to be regarded as ordinary.

And the great fundamental fact which is incessantly forgotten and ought to be incessantly remembered, about these cities and provinces of the near East, is that they were once as Roman as Gaul.
There is a frivolous and fanciful debate I have often had with a friend, about whether it is better to find one's way or to lose it, to remember the road or to forget it.

I am so constituted as to be capable of losing my way in my own village and almost in my own house.
And I am prepared to maintain the privilege to be a poetic one.
In truth I am prepared to maintain that both attitudes are valuable, and should exist side by side.