The White Gate of Egypt

Hokitika Guardian, 18 March 1922, Page 4

The White Gate of Egypt

(By Harold Lake).

\!1 the fit ios to which one comas in tho course of his pilgrimage of life leave their mark upon the memory. And of those cities which I have found I cannot recall one which could show such clear-cut contrasts of good and evil, of beauty, and ugliness, of splendour and loathsome filth as Alexandria, that white gate of Egypt, where in these days there a,re riots, confusion, and turmoil. It lives in the mind as the home of the wildest contradictions, a place adorable and detestable. sacred and vile. As your boat feels its way landward through the shifting sands which guard its bar- ; hour, Alexandria changes from a, more , flash on the horizon to a tall gleam- | ing city, watching those perilous waters with the insolence of intolerable ; ne'e. Tn some queer way you feel that tho whole place is judging you. and finding you wanting. It is so very, very old. There may be electric tram- ! way-ears and petrol-driven machines | in its streets, and many of the ( ! houses may look like hits of Paris j [ transplanted bodily to that Southern I Mediterranean shore, but the spirit I of tho city survives those accidents of to-day and compels: you to remember how great and proud a place it. was while Britain was still a wilderness. As is the town, so are its people, and one becomes curiously aware of their scorn. Tt is true that, they will debase themselves to tho dust in the hope of obtaining half a piastre, that * fawning and flattery are among the chief of their arts, and that they will obey with cringing zeal any order you may choose to give—hut behind it all is their contempt.

All the tides of flirt East and the Most meet in those sun-swept streets. The most modern of motor-cars will he cherked in its progress by the passing of some madly decorated funeral procession; outside a shop where goods, fresh from the newest factories of Europe are sold you will find a beggar with some loathsome disease which was being exploited before a beginning was made of the writing of the Bible; you may pass in twenty minutes from the Stock Exchange to the catacombs, which hear witness of the Creeks who worn before the Homans.

All religion, all science, all philosophy. and all sin which the ages have known meet within the borders of the city, together with all loveliness and all those things which are most hideous. T>ut the vision which remains of aquiet Coptic monastery T found in one of its hack streets on n. certain happy day can be set against the echoes of the voices of those detestable Egyptians who volunteer to guide the stranger to the habitations of vice. All round Alexandria the hibiscus blooms, that scarlet trumpet which is at once the most beautiful and most evil of flowers.